BooksBarbecue
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Chapters (32)
  1. Copyright Notice
  2. Dedication
  3. ONE
  4. TWO
  5. THREE
  6. FOUR
  7. FIVE
  8. SIX
  9. SEVEN
  10. EIGHT
  11. NINE
  12. CHAPTER TEN
  13. ELEVEN
  14. TWELVE
  15. THIRTEEN
  16. FOURTEEN
  17. FIFTEEN
  18. SIXTEEN
  19. SEVENTEEN
  20. EIGHTEEN
  21. NINETEEN
  22. TWENTY
  23. TWENTY-ONE
  24. TWENTY-TWO
  25. TWENTY-THREE
  26. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  27. Excerpt: Never Ever Getting Back Together
  28. ONE
  29. TWO
  30. Also by Sophie Gonzales
  31. ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  32. Newsletter Sign-up

I stared after him, swallowing my outrage. Twenty-five dollars an hour. Twenty-five dollars an hour. If I’d had the chance to meet him before we struck our deal I would’ve applied an asshole tax and never agreed to less than fifty.

FOUR

Dear Locker 89,

I don’t know whether it’s time to break up with him. I keep trying to communicate, but it’s like he doesn’t hear me. I’ve told him about 20 times I need him to text me more, I need him to pay me more attention, and to come sit with me in the cafeteria at least SOMETIMES. But the more I communicate my needs, the more he avoids meeting them. One of his friends actually called me demanding the other day! Am I being demanding? Is it unreasonable to know what you need and to communicate that? Serious question. Be honest with me. I can take it.

[email protected]

Locker 89 <[email protected]>     5:06 p.m. (0 min ago)

to Strangerthings894

Hey strangerthings!

Let’s do some redefining. It’s totally reasonable to communicate your needs. But you seem confused about what your needs are. You don’t *need* anything from your boyfriend. You want it. Saying we *need* something from someone else makes us feel like we can’t live without them, or they completely control how we feel, which is not true. When you say you *need* him to do xyz, what I’m hearing is that your real need is to feel loved, and special, and wanted. And you can get that need met from people other than your bf! I recommend rewording the way you explain your needs to him. Tell him your real needs, and then let him know what kind of things he *could* do to help you feel loved, special, and wanted. People respond better to encouragement than criticism. Then it’s on him. Once he understands that it’s not about him and what he’s doing wrong, but about you and how he can make you feel awesome, he might step up to the plate! And if he doesn’t, that’s when you ask yourself if you’re satisfied getting those needs met through platonic relationships, or if maybe this isn’t the right guy for you.

Good luck!

Locker 89

I swallowed hard in the driver’s seat of Ainsley’s car—she’d lent it to me for the day so I could fulfill my extortion requirements—as Brougham pulled off the road ahead of me into what I assumed was his house. To put it lightly, though, this was no house. It was a mansion. A fuck-off enormous mansion.