Design Your Life Book Novels & Stories

Whatever came next, we would face it together. As I looked around at the people who had been my constant through it all—Ethan, Ivy, Jasmine, and Leo—I knew I wasn’t alone. Whatever came next, we would face it together. But life, as I had come to realize, rarely followed a script. The weeks that followed were a whirlwind of preparation for the book launch. The publisher was eager to move quickly, capitalizing on the growing buzz around my content creation journey. It was surreal to think that my life, once confined to the walls of a small café, was now reaching people in ways I never imagined.

The books, the shelves, the paint— even though it wasn’t the same house, or the same room, I could see myself and John talking late into the night, kissing, reading, writing essays, preparing for exams… The night I officially started my fashion designing business, we celebrated with champagne, and tons of books on fashion. I decided to leave before anyone could see me standing there, and looking around. If it was Mandy, she could think I was trying to steal something, or attempt to frame me for something else. If it was Katie, she could think I was unable to get over John— but the space in my heart for John had already closed up, and tight. It was unlikely anyone else could creep in.

It hadn’t been easy. In the beginning, she spent weeks working with contractors, helping Jordan design the space exactly how she envisioned it—earth tones, exposed brick walls, hanging plants, and shelves stacked with books people could borrow or leave behind. She had saved every penny left from her old life, combined with what she made selling off designer things she no longer felt belonged to her. Jordan, true to his word, kept the rent reasonable and even stopped by once in a while to grab a cappuccino and check in, though their conversations stayed brief and polite.

I nodded my head and sighed. "They are soulmates and Life, it's as it should be," I stated firmly and headed towards my bedroom. I swallowed my pain and stuffed it deeply inside. I would stay positive and be glad for his happiness. I opened the bedroom door and was shocked to see it redesigned as well. Rai was soon inside the room with me. "I moved in here a few years after you left, it helped keep the loneliness away," he said softly and sat on the bed. I cocked my brow and glanced down at him.

The designer puled out a knife from her bag and smiled at the crowed. I slammed the book shut with a loud groan and threw it across the room. I'd bought this book in hopes of getting an inspiration to try and get a design out. But from the beginning up to the part of the first run way show, the entire book was about a creepy designer stealing corpses and is obsessed with dressing them up. There was a whole weird chapter dedicated to how obsessed she was about measuring their sizes and trying to find the right fabric to make the dresses because the longer the body stays in her basement, the more decomposed they get. So she needed a clothe that would fit them at any size.

“I love self-help books. A lot of them repeat the same information, but it makes me feel like I’m getting my life together every time.” I scoffed. “You seem like you have things together to me.” She laughed. “That’s the secret to designing. Make things appear as if they’re together on the outside, even if the inside might need some work.” “I never looked at it that way before.” She was talking about designing, but her words hit home. I was starting to face the fact that I’d presented myself one way to everyone around me for years, the playboy content with one-night stands, while secretly I’d longed for something more. With Sav. It had been so secret, I hadn’t even admitted to myself until re

Today I was going to figure out how to stop worrying so much. The most important thing came first. I scribbled save arroyo on the sand. Save the restaurant. Everything else came secondary to that. Ethan said he had full control, but I knew as long as I followed through our contract for the year, I could achieve what I was here for. It gave me a semblance of control in my life, and slowed the feeling of being swept away in a whirlwind of activities. I wrote number two. All publicity, is good publicity? I had dreams of being a great designer. Maybe just good enough to inspire someone like me who felt they were rotting away at a job because they had no choice. And now, I wasn’t even known for d

It has entries — each one a day or a week of being inside the thing — and the entries have been organizing themselves, gradually, the way the second life organized itself: not by design but by accumulation, each one finding its place in relation to the previous ones until the whole has a shape that could not have been planned but is exactly right. She can see, at eighty-one entries, what the shape is. The book is in four movements. Not parts — movements, the musical sense, each one with its own tempo and register but continuous with the others. The first movement: the first life, described from the inside at the distance of forty-four years. What it was to be that woman. Not the decisions —

Entirely my own. Later that night, alone in my apartment, I placed the first copy of Unbound on the shelf beside my journals and stood in front of it for a moment with both hands at my sides. The spine faced out. The title caught the lamplight in the specific way the designer had intended. It felt heavier than the physical object it was, carrying the weight of years and struggle and the long and specific work of reclaiming a life that had been systematically built around someone else's need for control. My phone lit up on the desk. A message from Elias.