It’s like when my dad left my mom, but it’s worse because this is Jean-Marc leaving me.

“Holly.”

But I don’t speak. I can’t. My chest burns. My heart, even with the hole, aches, and I screw my eyes closed even tighter. I feel like shit, like the worst person alive. I did love him. I really believed in him.

I believed in us.

“Take care of yourself,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Gone.

For thirty seconds I think I’m going to be sick. For thirty seconds I want to rip my heart out and throw it in the street and hope some goddamn cable car runs over it, but that’s really dramatic, a little too Gladiator, not to mention Lorena Bobbit.

Before Jean-Marc, I was the most romantic person I knew. I was going to be the one who never got divorced. I was going to be the one who did it right. I grew up on Barbara Cartland romances (with some Erica Jong and Xaviera Hollander thrown in for good measure), and I believe in soul mates. Marriage. Commitment.

Being good doesn’t really pay off.

And I didn’t know it until now. My mother (God forgive me) not only read me the wrong books, but told me a pack of lies. Everything she passed on to me had to do with being good. And there were so many goods I can’t remember them all, but in short, these were some of the biggies by academic year:

Kindergarten: Good girls don’t show boys their underpants.

Second grade: Good girls eat their lunch quietly.

Fourth grade: Good girls go to church on Sundays.

Sixth grade: Good girls don’t backtalk their parents.

Seventh grade: Good girls sit with their knees together.

Eighth grade: Good girls do all their homework.

Tenth grade: Good girls don’t kiss on a first date.

Eleventh grade: Good girls don’t go past second base.

Twelfth grade: Good girls don’t get reputations.

And I did it all. I was the ultimate good girl. I followed the rules, made my mother, my teachers, my high school guidance counselor happy. I wasn’t a problem. I didn’t need attention. I didn’t require energy. I took care of myself. I managed my needs. I was so damn good.

And it was a mistake. I shouldn’t ever have been good. I should have been bad. I should have broken every rule and made up my own rules and experimented like crazy and spent the summer between high school and college on my back...

Well, not really. But close. I should have at least messed around. Being a good girl screwed me over.

To hell with the good girl.