The Theory of Happily Ever After Book Blog Tour and #Giveaway #LoneStarLit

EXCERPT CHAPTER ONE, PART TWO OF

THE THEORY OF HAPPILY AFTER

BY KRISTIN BILLERBECK

A harsh reality is better than a false fantasy. Life is not a fairy tale.

The Science of Bliss by Dr. Margaret K. Maguire

LIFE is filled with irony. I mean, I wrote the book on bliss, and currently I am the most miserable person I know. Probably I’d be the most miserable person you know as well. Which is why I have been perfectly content to hole up in my tiny apartment for the past two months and binge-watch romance movies while simultaneously gorging on eggnog ice cream. There’s the science of happiness, and then there’s reality.

Unlike life, heartwarming television movies never let you down, and there is no unexpected twist in which the heroine looks like one big cosmic punch line. The hero in a TV movie never leaves our heroine for the mean girl—the mean girl actually gets shot down. There is no crisis too great that it cannot be overcome by true love. And everyone lives happily ever after. Isn’t that how life should be? Truly blissful?

“In a Hallmark movie,” I say to the cat, Neon, “your ex never tells you that his new girlfriend’s hobby is aerial dance or that she’s a professional trapeze artist. It just wouldn’t happen.”

Neon raises his head and looks at me questioningly. The cat generally stays near the door across the sparsely decorated apartment. It’s as if he instinctively knows my failures might be contagious. My living room has a barren, college-dorm feel, which serves as a constant reminder that I didn’t make the time to buy a condo with the royalty windfall from my book, that my hard-won title of doctor hasn’t translated into practical motivation. The walls are a stark white, and there’s a white processed-wood TV shelf against the wall by the door, a navy rocking chair my parents handed down to me, and the white vertical blinds that came with the place. Nothing screams home. It’s like a lab experiment.

I set another Diet Coke bottle on the lonely IKEA coffee table. “Well, it wouldn’t,” I reiterate.

Neon meows. Even the cat is annoyed with me.

I scoop up a giant spoonful of ice cream and let it touch my tongue and linger momentarily, then devour it as though I haven’t seen food for weeks. For one incredible moment, I feel only unadulterated joy, and Jake Stone’s epic departure is not fresh on my mind. Dirtbag.

There is nothing more fantastic than the sappy, sugary-sweet love of a television movie followed by a creamy chaser of gelato. My life’s work—the scientific study of how people find joy in life—isn’t proper science. I see that my research is all unfounded now. Perhaps to find the secret of happiness, I should have studied miserable people and found out what they were missing. True bliss, it seems, is found in the avoidance of ugly truths and evading reality. Reality bites.

My phone trills and Jake’s handsome face lights up the device. Argh. Why does he have to look so good? This would be so much easier if he were troll-like in appearance. I debate answering. Do I really want to hear anything he has to say?

Curiosity rules out.

“Hello,” I say in a clipped business tone.

“Maggie, hi. I’m so glad you answered.”

Silence. Inwardly, I’m congratulating myself on my self-control because I really want to resurrect my nana’s barrage of Italian swear words.

“So, I know it’s awkward that I didn’t invite you to the wedding, but we didn’t—”

“We?” I don’t know why, but the word set me off. “There’s no we, Jake. There’s you and this ridiculous acrobat you’ve decided to marry on some wild whim or early-onset midlife crisis. We would be the couple who were engaged for one year, an appropriate, reasonable length of time to plan a wedding.”

“You’re still mad.”

“I’m angry. Dogs get mad. People get angry. You made the university question my judgment. My chances of getting to work for Dr. Hamilton are nil.” Dr. Hamilton is the renowned expert in the science of happiness at NYU. He takes on very few neuroscientists, and without my university’s glowing recommendation, the chances of me going anywhere have evaporated, along with my dignity.

“So it’s my fault you’ll never work with the esteemed Dr. Hamilton?” Jake asks. “See, Maggie, you’re so miserable to be around, and you take no responsibility for your own failures. It’s comments like those that make me necessary in your work. You can’t be Eeyore and go preaching about the science of happiness. We’ll talk to the university together when I get back. We are fantastic together. As a working couple.”

“Is there a reason you called, Jake?” Besides wanting to create a reason for justifiable homicide?

“Maggie, you’re a terrible speaker. You excel in your data gathering and research, but you need me to sell it. You always have. You’re a scientist. Don’t let your feelings cloud your judgment. If you ever want to get to NYU under Hamilton, you need me.”

I pull the phone away, stare at it, and slap it back to my ear. “This is about your job?” I mean, one assumes when you dump your boss in front of the entire tenured faculty, you’re going to accept that you must look elsewhere for work. Am I right?

“Think about those awkward speeches you’ve made on the speaker circuit. People were walking out in droves.”

My TED Talk did okay without you. Half a million books sold in twenty different languages! I need you? The data tells a different story!

But I don’t say any of this because some part of me—some icky, feeble part of me that I clearly need to shed along with the gelato weight—must think his version of the truth is genuine. He’s rendered me a complete cliché. Kicked to the curb for a younger, hotter, more inane version of myself, and I never even saw it coming.

Click to read Chapter One, Part Two on Lone Star Book Blog Tours 8/23/18 Tour Stop!