I’d dated plenty of good men. Bad ones too, a couple of unfortunate times, but mostly good ones. Nice ones, smart ones, good looking ones. Guys that had great senses of humor, guys that could cook, guys that liked kids and animals, guys that were in touch with their emotions, guys that weren’t afraid of commitment. Ambitious, kind, handsome men that would make good husbands and fathers one day. None of them, none of them, had ever meant anything to me compared to Cole. There were other guys and then there was Cole. He was in a league all his own.
The fact that I’d been in love with Cole since I was sixteen years old wasn’t something I could lie to myself about. Not anymore. Ever since he showed up on my doorstep with daisies and showed me what a gentleman could be, I’d been holding a torch for him.
Which was why it was so hard to do what I did next. My instinct for self-preservation might be rusty, but it worked. And my instinct was telling me to run.
“Cole, I’m not the girl I used to be.” I looked down at my hands, twisted into one gnarled knot on my lap. “I can’t do this. I can’t keep seeing you.”
I felt the change in the atmosphere of the car, like all the air had rushed out. But I kept my eyes on my hands. I couldn’t look at Cole.
It was a long time before he replied. “Why?” he asked softly. There was pain in his voice.
Telling him the truth was too painful. But I was going to do it—at least halfway. “Because I don’t want to get hurt by you again. I can’t go through that again. I don’t think you know what you did to me during college.”
“Tell me.” His voice was so soft, I wondered if I almost imagined it. “Please tell me Kate,” he repeated, and I swallowed hard.
“I’d been in love with you for two years by the time I asked you out. Crazy, obsessive, teenage love. I wanted to be with you so badly, and then you took me on that date and it really messed me up for a while. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know how crazy I was about you. I know you were just trying to run me off. But after that I had a small-scale breakdown. I stopped going to my classes, I started smoking, drinking, hanging out with a bad group of people. I made out with drunk guys at parties. I danced on tables, accepted pills from strangers, got depressed, went wild.”
“Kate…” His voice was full of what sounded like shock and horror, but I wasn’t finished yet. This wasn’t even the worst part.
“Look, I’m not telling you all this because I want you to feel guilty or pity me. That isn’t what this is about at all. I just want you to understand. When we met up at that party and ended up having sex, I was still a virgin. You were my first. And I knew what I was getting into. You told me I was just a distraction, and I knew that was true. But my self-esteem didn’t recover for a very long time. And I’m not going to risk myself like that ever again.”
Cole was silent. I finally looked over to see that his face had gone blank. I wasn’t sure if it was horror, pain, or just shock that had forced those walls to come up, but I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Maybe it was a blessing. It made it easier for me to say what I had to say.
“This is why I can’t be with you. I didn’t want Ward or anyone to know about us, because I’m not going to go through pain like that again. Ever. I won’t do it. I don’t think I would survive it.”
“But I—”
“No. Don’t tell me you love me. Because I don’t care. I can’t trust you. I loved you once, and it nearly killed me. You can’t love me already, it’s much too soon. I don’t believe you...” I trailed off. My voice was bitter. What did it matter if he loved me? He could still rip my heart out, and I’d barely survived it the first time around. “I’m not going to make the same mistake twice.”
Then I was shooting out the car so fast he couldn’t stop me. I didn’t look back.
38
Cole
I’d never been heartbroken before. I thought that I had, after sleeping with Kate on the golf course that time, but I was wrong. That wasn’t heartbreak. That wasn’t anything.
The morning after being dumped, I awoke in pain. Everything hurt. My bones ached. My muscles throbbed. My eyes burned in their sockets. My soul felt like it was being torn in two. If this was how I made Kate feel, it was no wonder that she drove me away rather than risk this again. I wouldn’t wish this feeling on my worst enemy.
The next three weeks passed in a haze. I think that I managed to go about my daily business in an ordinary way. Errands were completed on time, bills were paid, meetings were conducted. I continued to live a regular life on the outside, even though I was rotting on the inside.
Ward called me to let me know that he’d made up with Emma. Kate had come by and the two women talked for a long time. Ward told me that he knew that Kate had ended things with me. He told me that it didn’t change anything between us. I was still his best friend, and best man. He promised to be in touch soon.
I must have said the appropriate things at the appropriate times in that conversation, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what they were. Maybe I just grunted like an ape. Either way, Ward was left with the impression that I was ok, or at least alright to be left on my own.
The dealerships kept my days busy. I threw myself into work, and into learning the minutiae of selling BMW’s with so much enthusiasm, eagerness, and focus that I think everyone around me thought I was some kind of idiot savant. In reality, I just had nothing else to occupy my time during the days.
The days were fine, or at least bearable, but the nights were total torture. The revelations about Kate that I’d learned in front of the Lone Star Lounge at three thirty in the morning haunted my dreams. She’d been a virgin when I’d walked with her out onto the dark golf course that night. And then she hadn’t been a virgin when we returned an hour or two later.
How could I not have known? Shouldn’t I have been able to feel it somehow? Well, I hadn’t. In the dark, on that cool and quiet spring night, with the amount of beer I’d consumed, somehow, I hadn’t realized that I was deflowering the woman I loved. I didn’t think I was particularly rough. I knew I’d been careful, but I hadn’t necessarily been gentle. I would never have hurt her during sex, not on purpose. Never. But maybe I had hurt her unintentionally. Even if I hadn’t hurt her physically, however, it was clear I’d inflicted other, more lasting damage.
She didn’t trust me, and I didn’t blame her. I didn’t deserve her trust. I never would.
After three weeks, I got a text message from Lucas. I’d been starting to wonder what he’d been up to. He asked to meet me, and I agreed to come over to his place. He sounded excited.
When he opened the door, his hair was uncombed, and his shirt was wrinkled. “Hey! Come on in.” He looked and sounded somewhat manic. “Beer?”
“Sure.” I hadn’t touched alcohol since Kate dumped me. I was half afraid that I’d enjoy it a bit too much in my current state. But Lucas’ super-hoppy beer was still as disgusting as ever. I was safe from any risk of alcoholism if I was drinking this crap.
“Sorry about Kate,” he told me. He shook his head at me. “I really am.”
I didn’t reply. There was nothing to say. I hoped this wasn’t what Lucas called me over here to talk about. It was going to be a very one-sided conversation. Lucas cleared his throat uncomfortably.
“Anyway,” he told me, “I wanted to tell you about something I’ve been working on.”
“Oh yeah?” I brightened a bit. Talking about Lucas’ work was much easier than talking about me. Anything to avoid thinking about Kate, though. I would be happy to talk about the weather for a few hours if it helped distract me from Kate.
“Yeah, I think I’m finally onto something big.” Lucas had been keeping his latest project under a veil of secrecy for the last few years. His first success—an app that connected a wide variety of other apps in a complicated way that helped advertisers target consumers—had sold for a solid seven and a half figures. That nest egg had been enough to fund his one-man startup for the last few years.
Lucas shook his head. “Not exactly. It’s something that I’ve been toying with for a long time. But it was actually seeing Victoria that made me realize that I’ve been doing everything all wrong. She was the key.”
Oh no. Not fucking Victoria. I looked around his apartment for any sign that she’d been here. There was nothing. Lucas’ place still looked as threadbare and bachelor pad-like as ever. I prayed she wasn’t lurking in the bedroom.
“Victoria?” I asked him carefully.
Lucas smiled a tiny, cold smile. “Victoria,” he repeated. “When I saw her, I realized what was missing in all my prior algorithms.”
“You have algorithms now? Why?” I remembered algorithms, at least a little bit. They were used frequently in statistics, although the applications were broad. Algorithms could be complicated or simple, but at their core they were just methodologies for problem solving. Anyone who has ever solved a crossword puzzle or a sudoku puzzle has used an algorithm.
“Yes. For my new, amazing, dating app.” Lucas’ voice was as proud as if he were introducing his firstborn. Despite my depression, I found myself getting excited for Lucas.
“Ok, lay it on me. Let’s hear your pitch.”
He grinned. “Most dating apps focus on the premise that you can match two people by asking them to rank their preferences about life and love and then using some percentage of objective criteria that the two people have in common to predict the likelihood of them liking one another. People tell you what they think they want and who they think that they are, and then the app matches them with other people that say they meet those criteria. But it’s all fundamentally bullshit, right?”
“Um, is it?” I’d never tried dating websites. My publicist did try to get me to sign up for a season of The Bachelor, but I refused.
“Yes!” Lucas was excited. “Total bullshit. These websites say that they have all these proprietary algorithms that match people at the deepest levels of compatibility or some shit. But really, it’s a complete crapshoot. Just because someone says that they like long walks on the beach and puppies doesn’t mean that they’re going to like some rando that also likes long walks on the beach and puppies, will they?”
“I assume it’s more complicated than that.”
“Not really. I mean, the thing that the more successful dating apps appear to be doing, at least from my research, is that they match people primarily by age, race, and location. They group similar types together. Attractive people get matched with attractive people. Successful people get matched with successful people. That’s all there is to it.”
“That’s… actually really depressing.” I knew people that had met and married on dating websites. I guess opposites didn’t attract?
Lucas shrugged his shoulders. “Yeah maybe,” he said, “but the thing is, they’re simple. There is nothing that’s actually very proprietary going on behind the scenes.”
“And you’re going to improve on this broken system how?”
“By creating something that is actually going to be innovative. I’ve found a metric that can actually be used to determine compatibility.”
“Well don’t keep me in suspense over here.”
Lucas spread his hands wide. “Musical preference.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Unpack that for me.”
“Musical preference as a compatibility indicator is pure genius because it isn’t based on similarity. It’s waaaay more nuanced than that. Statistically, someone who likes the Pixies isn’t necessarily that likely to like someone else that likes the Pixies.”
“Really?”
“Really. In fact, someone that likes the Pixies is statistically five times more likely to be interested in dating someone that likes Taylor Swift than someone that exactly matches their own musical preferences.”
“Ok?” That didn’t make a ton of sense to me.
“I’ve got the data that supports it. I mean, there’s still work to be done, obviously, but there’s a lot of promise here. There’s a ton of potential if I can get a large enough sample to do real beta testing to make sure that my algorithms are sound.”
“So how do the algorithms actually work?”
Lucas gave me his best Mona Lisa smile. “I’m sorry, that’s proprietary information.”
“You mean it’s bullshit?”
“No. I mean, for once, it isn’t bullshit. Because I’m not matching like with like, it’s much more complex. I can’t even tell you how it works if I wanted to, because it’s way too complicated. I could draw flowcharts for hours and still not be able to summarize it.”
I looked at Lucas to see if he would divulge more information, but he just continued to smile his secret little smirk.
“Ok, I think I understand. It sounds like a good idea. So, what’s next?”
Lucas was practically vibrating in his seat from exciting. “Testing. Testing. And more testing. Want to help?”
“Help how?”
“By creating a profile and then rating some females.”
“Rating some females? That sounds very sexist.” Also, unless Kate was on there, I was going to rate all the women at zero. There was no competition. To me, all other women looked like water buffalo.
“This is a dating app remember?” He laughed at me. “The female testers will be rating you back if that makes you feel better. And women are super harsh when it comes to dating apps. They usually reject nine out of ten guys that match when them.”
“I’ll think about it.” I wasn’t sure I wanted any more rejection right now, even if it was the theoretical, beta-testing type.
“You’re no fun.”
“You’re definitely right about that.” I’d probably never been less fun in my entire life than I’d been since Kate dumped me. Lucas was the first person that I’d spoken to in a halfway normal, personal way in weeks. I’d basically become a hermit who only emerged to work and then went back to his half-darkened cave of a hotel room to mope each evening.
“You should go and talk to her,” Lucas offered. He’d shifted gears now and was looking at me with what I interpreted as well-meaning sympathy. “Did you end up telling her everything?” That had been his initial advice. I should have followed it.
He wanted to know if I’d told her how much I’d cared about her. Not just now, but always. I knew that I should have told Kate that I’d loved her from the start.
“I never got the chance.” My admission was sad.
“You could still tell her. It’s not too late.”
“What do you mean? It is too late. She already dumped me.” I sounded pathetic, even to my own ears. It grated on me to be so damn weak.
Lucas took off his glasses, cleaned them, and slid them back on before replying. When he did, his voice was mild but serious. “Do what you want. But if it were me, I’d go find her and make her listen. That’s what I should have done with Victoria. But instead I let her go on tour and disappear. I lost my chance to win her back. I had to wait almost two years just to get in the same room with her again.”
I wanted to tell Lucas that his experience with Victoria was completely and totally different from me and Kate’s relationship. Victoria was a freakin’ energy vampire. Kate was perfection made flesh. Comparing the two was just beyond ridiculous. But I didn’t. Not only would it hurt his feelings when he was trying to help me, but it might get me injured if he felt the need to defend Victoria’s honor. I was fairly certain that I could take Lucas in a fight—the guy was only six-one—but I didn’t want to fight him over something as stupid as Victoria. She certainly didn’t deserve it. And she definitely didn’t deserve Lucas’ loyalty.
“I’ll think about it,” I mumbled. I thanked him for the beer and went home, but not before Lucas had installed his new dating app—Notable Match—on my phone. I looked it over and then promptly forgot about it. My depression was waiting, and it required all of my time and attention.
39
Kate
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“Hey darlin’ can I get another old fashioned?”
I nodded at the man who thought I was his darlin’. The fact that I was still standing, walking, and talking, was a miracle. But my miraculous ability to continue my normal life after breaking up with Cole had somehow also robbed me of my ordinary reactions. I made the drink with practiced hands and barely a thought in my head. I felt like a robot, or a sleepwalker.
“Thanks sweetheart,” the guy said when I slid his drink across the bar to him.
I nodded again, mute.
“Smile, sweetheart,” he told me. His tone was petulant. “A pretty girl like you shouldn’t frown.”
I forced myself to smile at him, drawing my lips away from my teeth with effort, and then immediately turned away. It probably looked more like a sneer than a smile, but only because I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t have the heart to tell him off. I didn’t have a heart at all these days. I found something to busy myself with and tried not to think.
The days had been sliding by around me, turning into lonely, long nights. Most of those nights I dreamed about Cole, and it was only then, in dreams, when I felt like I was real. Then I’d wake up and go through my waking life in a haze. I’d gone through this before and my response had been to internalize my pain and go wild. This time I was smarter. This time, at least, I was numb.
“Hey Kate,” Ward asked a bit later, approaching in my peripheral vision with a frown on his face. “When you get a second, I need your help on the payroll.” He had a handful of rumpled papers in one hand and a calculator in the other.
In anticipation of finally, finally doing something other than working at the Lone Star Lounge, I’d been working to get Ward up to speed on some of the business processes at the bar. Of course, I didn’t say that to Ward. Not yet. Instead, I told him that I was sick of it and he had to do it.
“You’ve only been at it for fifteen minutes.”
Kiss Me Like You Missed Me Page 19
