Misery Loves Cabernet

by Kim Gruenenfelder

  Liam clicks the button on his phone, and puts it back in the charger.

  I wait for him to talk. He doesn’t. “You want to talk about it?” I ask anyway.

  Liam turns to me. “Could you hand me that pillow please?”

  “Sure,” I say, giving him the king-size pillow on his bed.

  “Thank you,” he says.

  Then he puts the pillow over his mouth, and screams a muffled, yet loud, scream.

  He calmly hands it back to me. “Can I get you some wine?”

  “Well, I . . .”

  And he’s already up and out his bedroom door.

  I put my shirt back on, then follow him to the kitchen, where he grabs a bottle of red from a wine refrigerator. “Her name’s Kelly,” he tells me as he angrily yanks open a drawer to get a corkscrew. “She’s a sports reporter for ESPN. Travels constantly. Between my traveling and her traveling, we just couldn’t make it work.”

  “Wait. You don’t mean Kelly Timbers, do you?”

  He nods.

  “You mean the one we saw on the TV that night at Score! Why didn’t you tell me she was your ex-girlfriend?”

  He begins twisting the corkscrew into the cork. “Well, at the time, I was trying to figure out how to get you into bed, and it seemed as though pointing out my ex-girlfriend on the telly might impede my goal,” he answers, as though it’s the most obvious reason in the world.

  “Oh my God! She’s beautiful!” I blurt out.

  Liam glares at me.

  I wince. “Sorry.”

  But then I can’t help myself. “But, I mean, she’s, like, stunningly beautiful. I always thought the only guy who would ever have a shot at being with her would either be an Abercrombie and Fitch model, or . . . well, you.”

  Yup, a man I’m trying to seduce has opened a bottle of wine, and I cannot help but espouse the virtues of another woman. I’m right on track for a healthy relationship.

  “She broke up with me,” Liam reminds me.

  I think about that a moment. “No, she didn’t,” I let slip.

  Liam’s eyes widen. “I’m sorry,” he says, almost sounding offended. “Were you there?”

  “I didn’t have to be. I’m a girl.”

  Then I enlighten Liam on a rule that I thought all men knew:

  When women break up, more than half the time what we mean is, “I need this relationship to change.” Or, “I need you to change.” When men break up, what they mean is, “I want to break up.”

  Liam shakes his head as he takes two wineglasses out of a cupboard. “You sure have a lot of theories on dating,”

  “What can I say, those who can, do . . . those who can’t, teach,” I joke.

  He pours the wine. “I wonder if there are other things you could teach me?”

  And before I can say anything else, he takes me by the waist, pulls me into him, and slides his tongue back into my mouth.

  My God, he’s hot. And he smells amazing, and his chest feels perfect, and I can almost put Kelly Timbers out of my head.

  Almost.

  I pull away from him, and turn my face to scrutinize him. “You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”

  Liam leans in to kiss me again. “Let’s not talk about it. . . .”

  Now I pull my whole body away from him. “I love you,” I say quickly, and in a mild state of panic.

  Well, that stops him cold. (Wanna freak a man out? Tell him you love him. Works almost every time.)

  “I . . . love you, too?” he asks me back.

  I nod. “ ‘Thank you’ would have been rude, huh?”

  Liam shrugs. “Well, yeah.”

  “I’ll rephrase. I love you . . . as a friend. As my insanely hot friend who I’m really going to regret turning down. But I have to ask, why did she break up?”

  Liam debates answering me. He shrugs. “I proposed.”

  I shake my head. “Was your proposal conditional in any way?”

  Liam’s jaw drops as though I’ve just sided with the enemy.

  Which means “yes.”

  I rub his arm. “What happened?”

  He shrugs. Answers in a very teenagery I’m so over this lecture kind of way. “She got a job offer in Connecticut, and wanted us to move to New York. I had just bought the house, and wanted to stay here. I proposed, she said yes, we looked for engagement rings, and then she burst into tears at Cartier, and said she needed to take the job in Connecticut. Then she broke up with me.”

  Liam leans into me, and begins kissing my neck.

  Damn. It’s like the neck is attached by some electric wire all the way down to my . . .

  “Doesn’t seem fair that you have to be the one to move,” I say, as my knees practically lock from ecstasy.

  “No, it doesn’t,” he says, right before beginning to lick my neck.

  I take a deep breath that might resemble a moan. “Gold medals are a bitch to go after, aren’t they?”

  Liam stops mistaking me for a lollipop. He pulls back, and asks, “Why are you doing this?”

  I sigh. “Because I could never be with a man who wanted to be with someone else.”

  His home phone rings again. We look at each other before I say, “If you propose to her right now, I guarantee she’ll say ‘yes.’ And this time she’ll mean it.”

  Overall, it was the most amicable breakup I’ve ever had. It took less than ten minutes, and he even told me he loved me.

  So I guess the day wasn’t a total loss.

  Forty

  Success always requires work—that’s one of life’s big shockers.

  I jot down in my notepad as I wait at a red light on Sunset Boulevard.

  I take a deep breath, and let out a heavy sigh.

  On the one hand, I know I did the right thing. I had to encourage Liam to go be with the woman he loves. Otherwise, I would just be the placeholder girl that he dated while he pined for her for the next six months. And I really did like him as a friend.

  So I made the right decision not to jeopardize my relationship with him.

  Nonetheless, I feel like crap. I can’t even cry, I’m so . . . resigned to the idea of never being part of a couple again for more than a few months at a time.

  The light turns green, and I wonder what I can do to make myself feel better.

  Fuck it. I pull my car over to the side of the road, open my glove compartment, and pull out my trusty pack of Marlboros. I rip open the cellophane tab, and light the cigarette so quickly, I don’t even quite comprehend that I’m inhaling the first drag and making the conscious decision to smoke again.

  The second puff is much more intentional. I open my window, inhale deeply, hold my breath, then blow the smoke out through my nostrils and into the cold November air.

  On the third drag, I hold the smoke in my lungs for so long, that I almost choke as I cough it out. After coughing several times, I stop puffing, and look at my half-smoked cigarette in disappointment.

  Damn it. I had gone almost three months as a nonsmoker. And now my abstinence and self-discipline have disappeared in a puff of smoke.

  If I quit now, I’d have to go back to it being Day One. I just don’t think I have the strength for that.

  I take another puff as I mentally flagellate myself. Why is this so fucking hard for me? And when is it going to get easier?

  As I silently ask myself those questions about the cigarettes, I can’t help but see how the same questions pertain to my relationships and breakups: Why are they so fucking hard? Am I making them hard? Is dating difficult for anyone but me?

  I stare at my cigarette.

  Debate.

  I reluctantly stub out the cigarette in my ashtray. I suppose two breakups tonight won’t kill me.

  The road to recovery is a crooked one.

  Okay, I messed up. And, yeah, quitting smoking is really hard for me. Maybe it’s easier for other people, maybe not. Doesn’t matter. Right now, I just have to be on Day One.

  I pull away from the curb, and drive home
.

  As I head up into the Silverlake hills, and drive up my street, I see a small silver mustang parked out front. There’s a man at my front door, leaving a bouquet of flowers on my doorstep.

  I can’t see his face. Although from the back, it looks like Jordan.

  The man turns around to look at my car, and I see in the headlights, it is Jordan.

  I pull into my driveway, and quickly get out. Jordan picks up the flowers, a dozen silver roses, and walks over to meet me.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, as I close my door and beep the alarm.

  “You never answered my e-mail. I decided to drop by, and see if you wanted company.”

  He hands me the flowers. I sniff them. Ah, the smell of roses. There’s no better scent in the world.

  “I picked them out myself,” he tells me. “And, I know how much you hate carnations, so there are none of those, and no baby’s breath.”

  “They’re beautiful,” I say. “But where did you find roses in the middle of the night on Thanksgiving?”

  “It’s L.A. You can find anything here,” he says awkwardly, putting his hands in his pockets, and looking at the ground.

  This would be the perfect opportunity to invite him in to warm up.

  I don’t. “So,” I say. “What are you doing home?”

  “Well, they had to do a location move over to the South of France. And, since most of the cast was American, we got the week off. I’m here until Saturday.”

  I nod. Decide not to say anything else. Jordan looks at the ground again, then looks up at me. “You were right about Stacey. She did hit on me.”

  I wait for more.

  “I told her no, and she seemed to accept that. But, um, I still passed on the Germany job.”

  “So . . . does that mean you’re home after Christmas?” I ask.

  “Yeah, maybe,” he says. “So what happened with that Liam guy?”

  “Nothing,” I say, shrugging. “Actually, turns out he’s engaged.”

  “Oh,” Jordan says, some hope coming back into his voice. “Hey, do you want to go grab a sandwich or a drink or something?”

  I debate that. “Actually, I was thinking about making myself a hot chocolate. I have an early morning but, if you want, maybe you could join me for a quick cup.”

  Jordan smiles at me. “I’d like that.”

  So I made him cocoa, and we caught up on each other’s lives. And I’ll admit, I missed him. And I was tempted to ask him to stay the night. But, after about an hour I told him I was exhausted, and needed to go to bed.

  We shared a good-bye kiss.

  It was nice.

  I asked him to call me when he gets back into town, but I’m not sure he will.

  And I’m not sure if it matters.

  I think I need a break.

  I’m tired of defining my life by who I’m sleeping with. I’m tired of wondering if I’m good enough based on whether the men in my life think I’m good enough.

  And I’m realizing:

  You can’t change the past. But you can say, “I’m going to live a happy life from now on, no matter what happened.”

  So I think I’m going to spend a little while being single. Not because I don’t want to be in love with someone. But because I’ve decided—for now at least—that I need to love myself more. And part of loving myself is taking care of myself. Because here’s what it comes down to:

  If you were advising your great-granddaughter about the man you have a crush on at this moment—what would you tell her? Would you be protective, and tell her to kick this man to the curb because he’s treating her so badly, or would you tell her to hold on to this man for dear life?

  Now, why aren’t you taking your own advice?

  ALSO BY KIM GRUENENFELDER

  A Total Waste of Makeup

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,

  and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s

  imagination or are used fictitiously.

  MISERY LOVES CABERNET. Copyright © 2009 by Kim Gruenenfelder.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.

  For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue,

  New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  eISBN-13: 978-1-429-98952-7

  Date of eBook conversion: 07/17/2010

  First Edition: April 2009