Page 1 of Dirty Legacy

1

ANGIE

Sorry, babe, but you fuck like you’re making a spreadsheet.

I stare at the text message as I click send on an email to the Big Boss.

I’ve read this same line over a dozen times in the last two days and I’m constantly moving from agonizing heartbreak to psychotic fury.

Years of my life vaporized in one casual message.

Right now, I’m in a downswing and feeling pathetic.

It can’t be true though, right? The sex thing, I mean. I don’t have a ton of experience, since Brad was the first guy I ever slept with. He seemed like he enjoyed it though, especially considering half the time he finished in like five minutes and left me to handle what was left of my own personal enjoyment.

I really tried with him. Like way more than he deserved, especially in retrospect.

But like with everything in my miserable life, I wasn’t good enough.

I open a folder hidden on my work computer titled Stock Photos (real clever, I know) and scroll through dozens of sexy pictures I took for him over our two-year relationship, photos which he was constantly begging me for. It was annoying at first, but I started to like it. I got good at lighting, outfits, poses, all that stuff. I flip through a particularly hot series involving nothing but a fluffy vest and fake handcuffs. I look goddamn good and he should’ve been worshipping at my feet every day and thanking the Almighty I ever let him touch me.

The rat bastard.

Bad at sex, my sweet ass.

“Angie, I can hear your teeth grinding again.”

I pop my head up and look over the wall of my cube. My best friend Nadia’s watching me from her area, one station down, on the other side of an older guy named Rick (who exhales through his nose and puts on headphones trying to drown us out). We both work in the accounting department of Washington Tow and Salvage, which isn’t glamorous, but the hours are good and I can’t complain about the pay.

“I’m fine. Honestly. Totally fine.” I click out of the sexy folder angrily, smashing the mouse with my finger. “Totally, absolutely, a hundred percent fine.”

“You’re abusing office equipment.”

“I’m fine!” I slam my hand down on the keyboard and rub my face with a groan. “Okay, sorry, you’re right.”

“That computer didn’t dump you for another woman. Pretty sure that was Brad the Douche.”

“Seriously, listen to this. It’s not you, but maybe it is a little bit. You organized my underwear drawer, you know what I mean? I love you, babe, but I want to live, and I don’t think I can if I stay with you. What the hell does that mean?!”

“Did you really organize his boxers?”

“He threw them in a bin under his bed! Honestly, Nadia, he can’t live with me? So he had to leave me for freaking Lavender Lane?”

“She does have an absolutely monstrous name.”

“Right! The most unserious human in the entire world!” Now I really am grinding my jaw thinking about Lavender. I’ve known her since grade school. She was always a pretty, flighty, outgoing, adorable party girl, and she hasn’t changed one bit over the years. The total opposite of me in every conceivable way.

Now we’re twenty-two and we’re supposed to be adults. Except Lavender spends all her time streaming on TikTok and trying to sell herbal supplements to men who only watch in the hopes they’ll see her hard nipples through her obscenely thin baby doll t-shirts.

And Brad would rather be with that?

“I’ve been saying it for a while.” Rick pops an earbud out, eyebrows knitted. “You should’ve dumped him a year ago.”

“Thanks for the insight, Rick,” I grumble and slump back down into my chair.

Where the heck did I go wrong?

Two years with Brad.