This is a chapter-by-chapter review of problematic romance novel ‘Walking Disaster’ by Jamie McGuire. Posts in the series will all be linked back to the initial post, here.

This was initially a companion series to the magnificent Jenny Trout‘s review of the original novel, ‘Beautiful Disaster’. Jenny has since stopped her review, not wanting to give McGuire any further publicity in the wake of her attempts to run for office.

 

Chapter Twenty-Four: Forget

Another surprise: at the beginning of this chapter, Travis is actually trying something helpful. He’s realised he’s got to keep himself from constantly calling Abby, and he’s recognised there’s a huge chance of him giving in to temptation, so he’s managing this by avoiding having his phone with him. Initially he leaves it in his car. Shepley objects because what if Travis’s dad wanted to get in touch with him (uh, Shep, you’re Jim’s nephew; I’m sure he could send a message via you in case of emergency) so Travis leaves his phone on the TV so that he’s not constantly reaching for it. Good for you, Travis!

And another: This bit is actually reasonably well-written. Did Maguire take a writing class part way through and then just not bother to go back and rewrite the earlier bits? Anyway, we’ve time-jumped forwards to what we find out is New Year’s Eve. We learn that Trenton keeps phoning Travis in what Trav describes as ‘some sort of Maddox suicide watch’ which is well-meant but a) irritating for both Trav and Shep and b) really not helping with the whole ‘stay away from the phone’ thing, and that Travis is trying to take his mind off things by doing as many of the illegal fights as Adam will arrange, which isn’t very many because it’s winter break and there aren’t enough people around to want to watch them.

Trent tells Trav he’s being ‘a huge pussy’ for not doing more to get over it, because apparently we’d gone a bit too long without having some sort of misogynistic/toxic masculinity moment. Oh, well, my few minutes of not hating this book were quite nice while they lasted.

Anyway, Trent thinks Trav ought to come out with him for New Year’s Eve, so when Trav keeps refusing Trent tells him that if Trav isn’t showered, dressed, and ready to go out by the time Trent turns up Trent will phone everyone up and tell them that Trav’s having a party at his place with beer kegs and hookers. That’s… actually kind of ingenious in a ‘yes, but next time use your powers for good and not for evil’ kind of way. Anyway, it works and Trav gets ready, but not before taking a few minutes to gaze longingly at the engagement ring he bought for Abby back when they were still together. You know, when these teenagers dated for… I was going to say a couple of months but it isn’t even that, since it was well into autumn when they got together and still before Thanksgiving when they broke up. During which less-than-two-month period Trav bought her an engagement ring. Because, apparently, it ‘made sense to keep it just in case the perfect moment happened to arise’. No, Trav, it makes sense not to assume you’re going to get to the proposal stage with a relationship that just started weeks ago. Sigh.

Trent arrives and the three of them (Shepley included) head out to the Red. Apparently Trent has got ‘a friend coming’ and Trav seems to understand immediately who he means by that… (scans ahead) oh, wait, it wasn’t that Trav had someone specific in mind, it was that Trent’s trying to set Trav up with someone. The ‘someone’ in question turns out to be a divorced woman called Carissa who apparently used to babysit for Trav, which doesn’t sound like a great setup for getting together. Though she was in the same school year as Tyler and Taylor, so it must have been a teenager babysitting for a slightly younger child rather than a situation where she was taking care of an actual toddler, so, less weird than I initially thought.

Anyway, she drunkenly tries the whole don’t-want-to-be-alone-tonight line and Trav’s not interested. Carissa tries kissing him at midnight anyway and he pulls away, runs off into the bathrooms, struggles with himself over whether to phone Abby, and ends up resisting the temptation and hurling his phone at the wall instead, startling some poor guy at the urinal. Then he tells the guys he’s going and Trent drives him home…. despite having been drinking heavily through the evening. Sigh. They make it back without incident but Jesus fuck, McGuire, stop normalising drunk driving. Stop normalising something that destroys lives both metaphorically and literally.

We time-jump ahead to the start of spring semester, which Trav has very mixed feelings about because he’s longing to see Abby again but at the same time dreading it. He tells us that he was ‘determined to be all smiles, never letting on how much I’d suffered, to Abby or anyone else’, which makes me suspect that we’ve got some sort of ‘clearly he doesn’t really care that much about me at all’ misunderstanding coming up, but, oh, well, hopefully I can skim through it quickly if so.

Anyway, Trav sees Abby at lunch but spends the first part of lunch telling his frat boy friends Wild Anecdotes of drunken adventures with his brother, then briefly tries making heartily casual conversation with Shep and Abby while resting his hands on Abby’s shoulders and… swinging her from side to side? Is she now a fidget toy or something? Anyway, Abby sounds unhappy and it’s all seriously awkward and Trav heads outside pretty quickly.

Trav makes it through his last couple of classes and heads home with Shepley. Shep reluctantly tells him that America reported that Abby’s been miserable over Christmas break. Since Shep isn’t sure why she’s miserable or what she wants from Travis, this doesn’t really help the situation and Travis just gets upset again.

Shep, still trying to be helpful, tries the following suggestion:

“You think . . . you think if maybe you focused on all the bullshit you had to endure with her, that’d make it easier?”

I’m at a bit of a loss as to what ‘bullshit’ Shep thinks Trav had to ‘endure’ as a result of being with Abby, though I’d have no problem coming up with examples of the converse. Trav’s reply that he wishes he could ‘have all the bad stuff back . . . just so I could have the good’ is not much help in clarifying what the hell McGuire thought she meant here.

Shep is saved from his further clumsy struggles to be helpful by Trent texting to ask Trav to pick him up from work and take him to Cami’s, as his own car’s broken down. Oh, sorry, not Cami’s place, but the Red, where she works. (Cami is the main bartender there and Trent’s love interest for the next book in the ‘Beautiful’ series, or at any rate the next one after ‘Beautiful Disaster’, since I believe ‘Walking Disaster’ was written later.)

Trav borrows Shep’s car to take Trent to the Red and proceeds to get blasted drunk, without Trent trying to stop him despite the fact that he is supposed to be driving someone else’s car home. McGuire, fuck your horrible examples with a cactus. Megan (I think she’s the one who was staying over in the first chapter but who gives a fuck at this point) comes and tries to get off with him; she does offer to drive him home and Trent persuades him to let her, which, despite her obvious ulterior motive, is a pretty good idea right then.

They get out to the car and Megan promptly starts snogging the face off Trav and moves on to pretty much dry-humping him. Trav goes along with this in a why-the-hell-not kind of way, and they go back to the apartment, obviously planning sex. I assumed from the start of reading this bit that Trav would look up at some point and see Abby was watching all this, and, with depressing predictability, so he did. When he and Megan get back to the apartment, to be specific. Also, Abby is holding Toto, so Maguire has clearly remembered his existence yet again after weeks of him getting ignored during the breakup.

Abby storms out in a huff saying that she doesn’t even know why she’s surprised. Yes, Abby, you broke up with him weeks ago, I don’t know why you’re surprised either. He does get to move on.

No matter what I did – moving on without her, or lying in my bed agonizing over her – she would have hated me.

Trav follows her screaming at her for being mad at him for this, and, just for once, he’s not wrong. (Oh, wait… have now checked the scene out in ‘Beautiful’ and it seems my skimming means I missed the bit where this whole argument, including the bit where Abby is getting huffy with him, is only happening because instead of just letting her go he runs after her and grabs her coat to keep her there. Which, by the way, is on icy ground so she damn near falls over. OK, I retract my statement. Trav’s still actively being a dick.)

There’s a short scene which is basically several lines more of Abby being mad that the man she split up with has now decided to have sex with someone else and Trav being upset about that she’s mad about it, and then Trav grabs Abby’s arm to try to stop her leaving. Which I agree isn’t great and he should lay off, but America loses her entire shit over this and starts hitting him.

“How could you? She deserved better from you, Travis!”

So once again America, who has regularly been willing to give Travis a pass for his aggressive, stalkery, and borderline abusive behaviour, decides that the one thing she’s not going to stand for is Trav having sex with someone else while he’s single. And, when Shep tries stopping her, she ‘glares at him in disgust’ and we get this:

“Abby broke up with him. He’s just trying to move on.”

America’s eyes narrowed, and she pulled her arm from his grip. “Well then, why don’t you go find a random WHORE” – she looked at Megan – “from the Red and bring her home to fuck, and then let me know if it helps you get over me.”

America gets in the car with Abby and drives off after telling a pleading Shep ‘”There is a right side and a wrong side here, Shep. And you are on the wrong side.” Shep reacts to all this by punching Trav, which Trav figures he deserves, for… the heinous crime of being about to have sex with someone else almost two months after his girlfriend broke up with him, I suppose. Anyway, this all puts a comprehensive damper on anything he was about to do with Megan, and the chapter ends with Shep being about to drive Megan home.