Operation Resolution

By Sky Corgan

New Year's resolutions are for the birds. Lose weight. Get a promotion. Meet the love of your life.

Poppycock. I have a better one.

Be just like a dude.

I'm tired of being used up and spit out. Having guys make me believe that they really like me only to let me down. It's my turn to use them as my plaything.

At least...that's what I had told myself.

Then I met Matt. My first victim. He was just another rich jerk that wanted to show me a good time for the night then disappear the next day.

Except...he kept calling me afterward.

Well, I'll show him. I won't let him get one over on me. Commence Operation Resolution!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sky Corgan
• Release date: Nov 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9798215460344

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

BELLA

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Are you really sure you want to go to this thing, Bella? You know it’s going to be a madhouse, don’t you? Like, the craziest night of the year? I almost never go out on New Year’s Eve. It’s when all of the amateurs come out to play.

The amateurs? You make it sound like you’re out drinking every day. I’m pretty sure we’re the amateurs, buddy.

On the other end of the phone line, Maggie laughed sheepishly, which made me laugh in return. Maggie had been my best friend since our freshman year in college, and at twenty-four, it was a friendship that was still going strong. We had seen each other through illnesses, awful pseudo-boyfriends, family arguments, and less than desirable jobs. It was because we were such good friends that I had been able to talk Maggie into going out with me that night, arguably the craziest night of the year to go anywhere at all. I wasn’t a party monster by any stretch of the imagination, but on this particular New Year’s Eve, I had a good reason for doing so. Said good reason was about six feet tall with sandy blond hair and dimples when he grinned. Even thinking about Eli made me blush, and I was almost sure that Maggie would be able to hear it in my voice. The only question was whether or not she would call me out on it. 

Oh my God, this is totally about a guy, isn’t it?

She called me on it. That was the thing about Maggie. She was the kind of girl people tended to write off as a hopeless romantic, and some of the time, that was precisely what she was, but at other times? Other times she was like this, like she was right now, which was shrewd as hell. That, combined with the fact that she had known me for like, forever, and there was no way my intentions for the evening were going to remain my own. Even if I wanted them to, which I wasn’t totally sure I did. Backup was never a bad thing, or at least not as far as I knew.

Bella? She said with her best foreboding voice, Are you holding out on me? Have you been?

Um, maybe a little bit?

Spill it, then.

It’s really nothing, okay?

Nope. Not okay. If you want me to come to this thing tonight, you’re going to tell me why you really want to do it in the first place. I should have known there was something up! You never want to go out on New Year’s Eve!

Again, she knew me too well. So I spilled it, spilled everything that I’d been storing up inside of me for the last couple of months. Eli was a trainer at my gym. He was, in fact, the reason I had decided to shell out the big bucks for a personal trainer in the first place. I wasn’t exactly what you would call in impeccable shape, but I wasn’t in bad shape either, nor were my finances such that I could afford to drop an extra four hundred dollars a month on exercise. When I’d walked into my neighborhood gym to sign up, however, it had been Eli who had processed my information, and by the time an hour had gone by, I had signed a contract for a year’s worth of one-on-one sessions with him. I had wanted to crawl under a rock and die afterward, smart enough to realize that nobody actually wound up in a relationship with her freaking trainer, but as the weeks had gone by, my mind had started to waver on that point. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for a trainer to flirt with one of his clients, but the way Eli had been flirting with me seemed like more than basic flirtation. When during our last session, he had invited me to a friend of his’ New Year’s Eve party, my hesitation was almost gone. There was something there, and I wanted to see what it was. I wanted to see badly enough that I convinced Maggie and poured my five foot six frame into a little black cocktail dress that was tight enough I was iffy on my ability to breath. A short cab ride to retrieve my bestie and the two of us were in the middle of a warehouse party, unlike anything I had ever been to. Up to this point, I had been too driven to get there to give much thought to what the party itself would be like, which was a blessing. Now that we were actually there, though, panic was starting to creep into my blood. The people at this party were way, way more hip than I was, hipper than I had ever been in my life. If this was the kind of girl Eli thought I was, he was most definitely in for a disappointing surprise.

Um, Bella?

What? This is great, right? I’ve never been to a party like this.

Yeah, Maggie said uncertaintly, pushing her wire-rimmed glasses up her freckled nose and looking around doubtfully, me neither. Isn’t that kind of a good thing, though?

Aw, come on! You don’t really hate it, do you? You do. You hate everything about this.

Maggie shrugged her shoulders and gave me a look I was sure was supposed to be comforting. Suffice it to say, it was not that. Looking around at the immense crowd of people and the gritty, borderline dirty building itself, my stomach sank. I couldn’t exactly argue with her if she said she wanted to leave. In my head, I’d pictured a warm apartment with a smattering of people. Eli would greet us at the door and be so charming that Maggie would give me her blessing right there on the spot. He would sweep me off my feet, and the two of us would embark on a relationship right then and there. Instead, I was in a massive building made of corrugated tin, full of people in dayglo colors, sporting extreme levels of intoxication. Basically, it looked like a borderline rave, and any hope I had of finding Eli was fading fast.

Do you really think you’ll be able to find him in here? Maggie strained to make herself heard over the roar of our fellow partiers, This place is a madhouse!

I’m not sure. I hope so.

If you do, you better make it count!

What do you mean, make it count?

I mean, you better have your way with him, start the romance flowing! I didn’t come all of this way to have you strikeout.

Maggie! I wouldn’t just leave you alone here. We’re just here to see him, that’s all.

No way. Ideal scenario, you take him home and make sure he never wants to be with another woman, and I get to go home to my DVR. Win-win.

My whole face burned bright red, and I was about to tell her to talk a little more quietly when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I whirled around, somehow sure one of the hipster partiers had realized that I was in no way cool enough to be at the party in the first place. When I saw Eli standing in front of me, his brown eyes warm and full of mischief, all words died on my tongue. His hair was expertly disheveled, and despite the chilly weather, he was wearing a tight,