by Thea Devine
“You’ll see,” I said, still in mother-superior mode, “I’ll be a better person afterward. I need time to prepare.”
“You don’t prepare to go on a diet,” Paula objected. “And you have to promise to adhere to it when no one’s watching.”
“I keep reminding you, it was my idea. I need some reining in. Some power procrastination instead of going for the quickie meal deal.”
Paula snorted. “A gut check maybe. I never did like that Ron guy.”
“Exactly.” That “Ron guy” was my last relationship. The one that made me realize that being a free ingredient wasn’t the first step to got-your-back. Or love-you-forever.
Paula was right—I truly am a romantic, and I think on some level, I was hoping that this branching off the food chain would lead to something more substantial than regrets eating me alive.
3
NOT TALKING TO GUYS was more difficult than I would have ever believed. They’re everywhere. You’re walking down the street—bump, brush, “Excuse me,” and you’re talking to a guy.
You go to the corner newsstand to buy a New York Times. A guy is right next to you, you both reach for the paper simultaneously. You’re talking to a guy.
Do random guys count? Add them to the list. No, don’t. How would Paula know who I talked to on any given day? Why does Paula have to know everything?
Answer: she doesn’t, particularly since she ridiculed the whole idea in the first place. So why did she suddenly get behind it, anyway?
“Watch the light…” Nice guy, pulling me back from oncoming traffic on a change of light. Talking to a guy.
I could deal with that. I’d never see any of those guys again…except—what if I walked this exact same route tomorrow? I bet I’d see one of them and he’d smile at me. Then what? I’d have to acknowledge we’ve bumped elbows, wouldn’t I? It would be horribly rude to ignore an overture of polite friendliness, wouldn’t it?
I need to rewrite that list.
And then, Jed called.
Paula was out. There was something about the lure of the bed-head bar and the overripe sex that she couldn’t resist. It was almost as if she felt she’d miss something if she didn’t do the scene—like the one most-wanted guy, the best hookup ever, the heir to some fortune choosing her to bed down for a night. Maybe forever.
She was a gorgeous groupie, eternally on the hunt, and hoping that this night, she’d be the one to touch some equally gorgeous guy’s heart.
They have no hearts though. And a free ingredient is, after all, free. Still another reaffirmation why I’m on The Guy Diet.
I just didn’t expect a guy to call that night.
And yet, there he was, as unflappable as ever. “Hey, Lo—what’s doing?”
“I can’t talk to you,” I said sharply.
“Why is that?” he asked calmly.
“I’m on The Guy Diet. While you are a designated free ingredient, nothing is really free, so it would be better if we don’t talk right now.”
“Whoa. Wait. Don’t tell me. Paula.”
You see? My instincts were absolutely on target. “No. Just my own good sense. I’m off grab-and-go dating.”
He digested that for a long, silent moment. I thought he’d congratulate me on my fortitude, but all he said was, “Right. A Guy Diet. So that means…?”
“It means I’m not supposed to talk to you. You being a guy and all.”
“And yet you are.” He sounded vaguely puzzled.
“You’re my free ingredient, except if you say something you shouldn’t.” Oh God, why was I flapping on like that?
“Like what?” he asked curiously.
“I couldn’t begin to imagine,” I retorted. “And yes, I’m on track to deliver on Monday. Anything else?”
“Where’s Paula? No, don’t tell me. Loyal friend that she is, she’s behind this diet thing five hundred percent while she secretly revels in having nullified the competition.”
“I didn’t hear that.” Because I didn’t like what it implied.
“Well, you see? The loyal friend doesn’t think in those terms.”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I think in grab-and-go terms.”
“Precisely my point,” Jed said. “And now you’re not around to grab and go with her. She’ll do something about that soon, too. Remember I told you.”
“You’re evil and I won’t speak to you for at least a week for saying that.”
“You haven’t spoken to me this week as it is.”
“I know that.”
Oh, oh, there it was: the hum, the awareness. I felt it right through the cell. Or I was imagining it. Probably imagining it because Paula’s putting her finger in my Guy-Diet pie had unsettled me. And now Jed’s suggestion—not pretty.
Still, I hardly knew him, certainly not enough to trust him, especially after he’d proved to be a grab-and-gone guy with my very best friend.
“Okay,” he said. “I’m serving notice. The Guy Diet does not apply to me and you need to talk to me.”
You see? That’s Jed. Nothing fazes him.
“Need, Jed?”
“Need,” he said firmly, and disconnected emphatically.
I didn’t have time to even dissect that. Or maybe I didn’t want to know.
Honestly. Need?
I was working for the next few days, as I do sometimes, at the medical arm of an ad agency specializing in pharmaceuticals, transcribing test results and inputting them into a delivery system.
Isn’t that what dating is all about? Sorting through the chaff, finding the guy that delivers?
Check that. I couldn’t think about anything but the job at hand since it required full concentration, and in-depth handwriting-and-vocal-translation skills. Though somewhere in the mix, I began plotting the next week’s quick-prep gourmet meal. In fact, I was a little worried that food was fast becoming my real focus.
Tonight, for example, I had some leftover chicken in the fridge. I could toss some cooked pasta with that, then add chick peas, onions, peppers—which I cut up and keep frozen—olives, artichoke hearts, oil and vinegar and I had what I called fiesta bowl chicken salad, ready in the fifteen minutes you could be stuck standing in the checkout line with your ready-made salad.
Right there is what the Grab-and-Go Gourmet is all about.
Then, there was the grab-and-go girlfriend. Paula was waiting for me when I got home that night.
I’d had a fine few days—if you didn’t count that irritating phone conversation with Jed. I’d had lots of time to play with recipes, to take cold showers, watch hot TV and have nice, fast home-cooked dinners every night. Who needed a guy?
Obviously Paula did, and she needed to grab on to me for some reason, too, going from “You’re no fun” to “Can’t trust you not to cut and run” in one testy week.
Or maybe she was testing me.
“What’s this?” I really felt befuddled now. “I’ve got some nice fiesta bowl chicken salad waiting for me. You’re taking this way more seriously than I ever meant it to be,” I said sternly. “I’m doing fine. I haven’t thought about guys for more than thirty seconds during the day—” so I lied “—and that’s only because I have to talk to them sometimes.”
“Sure, sure, sure. I bet you backslid.”
“Not even tempted.” Big lie. And when did I tell her I spoke to Jed?
I didn’t. And I didn’t want to examine why.
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, which was too noncommittal and made me even more suspicious as we set out.
“Okay, cut the garbage. Why are you really here?”
“I’m a secret romantic?”
I made a sound. Paula was about as romantic as a down bathrobe. And hardly as soft.
I wanted to think my rationale for the Guy Diet was getting to her and that somewhere under the skin, she wanted me to be wrong, she wanted it to fail, she wanted her way to be the highway.
Or—she didn’t want me talking to Jed, it hit me sudden
ly.
That was my niggling suspicion. I mean, didn’t we make that long list of can’t talk tos and now, a week into it, Paula was giving me absolution to do just that?
Stop it! I was making molehills into tunnels. Jed was a guy on cruise control, chock-full of charm, charisma and ambition helped along by a little bred-in-the-bone business acumen. He had everything; he didn’t need anything—or anyone—even Paula, and least of all me.
“What’s the deal?” I said eventually, refusing to budge despite her insistence.
“We’ll just go get a drink and I’ll tell you.”
“Oh, no. I need to know right now or I’m going home.”
“Okay,” she muttered. “I thought you should try testosterone aversion therapy.”
“What? I’m doing great. As long as I keep a distance.”
“That’s the point. I’m bored. I’m keeping a distance. And I want my friend back. And the fun we used to have. So I thought if we eased you into a situation where you could practice no-go therapy, we could still have an after-hours life.”
“That’s nuts.” Paula had no other girlfriends? I knew that wasn’t true. And then I thought, this was exactly what Jed warned me would happen. So then I had no choice but to go out for that drink, just to prove that he was wrong. And not to mention to show Paula I was not going to succumb to the random, roaming guy, even though I knew that Paula would.
Maybe she needed diversion therapy because the only thing that was certain about bed-head bar hookups was that you’d be alone the next morning and on the hunt again by night.
Some people loved playing the game. Paula was one of them.
“Well,” I said finally, “I want The Guy Diet to be a success. I’m up for your throw-down. I am going to win. So where do you suggest we go?”
Paula knew all the best places—she’d hooked up in every one of them. The pool of men she hadn’t tried out must be diminished to drought proportions by now.
Since I was perfectly content in my no guys guise, I was curious to see what Paula was up to.
This could be a test of biblical proportions. Wait—shouldn’t that come way later, like after I’d suffered intensively and had been tempted beyond reason?
“Well, here we are. I found this place recently. You’ll like it.” The restaurant, on a West Seventies side street, was low lit, with wafting classical music and banquettes, but at the entrance was a long, heavily populated bar.
“Do I have to talk?”
“We’ll suspend the no talk rules tonight. Make them no walk rules.”
“I can do that for a glass of wine and some peace.”
Paula started working the crowd immediately. She knew exactly how to make a casual meet look easy: she knew the precise right thing to say and it never sounded cheesy or like it came out of a greatest pick-up lines book.
Before I knew it, we were surrounded by guys. Bob. Ted. Taylor. Ron. Exchanging cards, gauging the “are you good-looking enough?” factor, the cost of everyone’s designer clothes and earnings-potential scale.
I couldn’t possibly survive that kind of scrutiny. I grabbed my drink and sat down alone by the window that fronted the street, glad to be out of the fray. Let Paula reign in the chaos. A sip of wine was enough for me.
Then this totally caloric guy bent over and asked, “Are you saving the seat?”
Oh, the chocolatey goodness of that voice. And a body that I’m certain was wearing a sign that said, Bite Me.
“Please, join me.” I kept my voice nice and steady and this side of disinterested. Every nerve ending picked up and shouted hallelujah. My body spurted to life. My head clamped down on my hormones ruthlessly but it was too late.
“I’m Sean.”
“I’m Lo.”
“Short for?”
“Just Lo.”
“Nice.”
Shorthanding the conversation to get the essentials up front quick and clear. But he wasn’t in any hurry to talk, and I was fine with the wine and the line, and so…we sipped at each other, drawing out the information in short staccato sentences.
“Work around here?”
“No, midtown. You?”
“Live around here?”
“Farther west.”
“Me, too. Good restaurant.”
I didn’t know. “So I’ve heard.”
This was going nowhere. Aversion therapy worked. Taste, but don’t swallow, like wine you spat out after you rolled it around on your tongue to assess the complexities of the pour.
This guy wasn’t wearing a suit, just a shirt and a nicely tailored pair of trousers, high-end sneakers.
“My place is pretty close.”
Bam. Huge crushing disappointment, like a stone attached to my heart. Why had I thought he’d be different?
“Can’t,” I murmured.
“For real?”
“I’m on The Guy Diet.”
“Forgive me—a…guy diet?”
“Off guys till the end of summer.”
“So what are you doing here?”
I batted my lashes. “Aversion therapy.”
He bolted up from the chair. “It worked.”
“Well, you could’ve spent five minutes getting to know me.”
He glared at me. Not so yummy anymore. “Why?”
There, in one word, yet another reason for a Guy Diet.
He stalked away and Paula took his place so fast it was like she’d beamed down there. “What just happened there?”
“Aversion therapy—him for me, once I told him I was dieting. After two minutes of monosyllabic conversation, he invited me to his place.”
Paula was silent. She would have gone like a shot.
“It works!” I said, ginning up my enthusiasm. “All I have to do is mention The Diet. It’s the best letdown ever. Nobody’s feelings get hurt and you have a couple minutes’ conversation to spice up the evening. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. It would have saved so much grief.”
“Huh,” Paula said finally. “You could have introduced him to me.”
“Oh, please, don’t tell me you would have…”
“He looked pretty good from where I was sitting. And I know how to get more than a couple minutes’ conversation out of anyone.”
“Well, he’s mixing and mingling as we speak,” I pointed out, “so I can leave you and you’ll be in bed with him within the hour.”
“I am not that easy.”
“Okay, two hours.” I could almost feel her body humming with sexual tension. She wanted the get. It was all about the get.
“If you go home, I’m coming with you.”
“You’re not required to deny yourself.”
“What are best friends for?”
I’m telling you, this was weird. I felt as if we were at cross purposes. She obviously wanted to hook up. I just wanted to unravel.
“I’ll grab a cab so Momma doesn’t have to worry.”
She started to protest again, then looked over her shoulder to where Sean was standing, quite close to us, actually. Her eyes narrowed. Paula scented prey, someone who was commensurate in job, status, good looks, and—truth be told—stamina for the game.
I felt a glimmer of triumph. The Guy Diet was working.
JED WAS CURSING the damned Guy Diet as he paced in front of Lo’s apartment building. He thought he’d timed it just right, breaking it off with Paula early April, giving her a couple of months to get over their relationship and to distance Lo from any suggestion that she was stealing something that was Paula’s…
Only it wasn’t working.
Because Lo was feeling leery and guilty, and Paula was in full predator mode, encouraging both the saint and the sinner in Lo.
And trading on her loyalty.
He couldn’t let that go on any longer.
He was a patient guy—he’d learned to be during the debacle at the brokerage that had catapulted him into the real world of making a real living—and there wasn’t much that could unsett
le him now.
Yet this whole Guy-Diet thing, coming virtually the moment that he’d decided the time was right for him and Lo, seemed almost karmic in its potential to create trouble.
Or comedic. It was pretty funny that here he was pacing the sidewalk when he should have had a key to the apartment months ago. Hell. He should have had Lo months ago. He should have…
All in good time.
After all, what did she know about him? Paula’s version, and what she thought she saw all on her own.
Lo was as wary as a deer in the headlights all the time. So clearly she felt something between them that she couldn’t deny. That was encouraging. There was something between them, and she was just not giving in to it. Not yet.
But soon.
He just had to tempt her beyond her capacity to resist.
And, hallelujah, a cab had just turned the corner and was slowly inching its way down the street. Good. She was home.
Even if she didn’t yet know it.
JED WAS UTTERLY ignoring The Guy Diet. There he was, sitting on my front steps, and I was just not prepared to deal with him.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, sounding cranky.
“Sit.”
“I don’t think so.” It didn’t matter. He took my hand and pulled me down onto the steps beside him.
“What do you think about ice cream?”
“Not much open at ten o’clock.”
“I think we should go get some.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s hot.”
He drew me to my feet and we turned toward Broadway. He was wearing a blue cotton dress shirt rolled up at the sleeves and jeans.
Sexier than I wanted to ever admit. Formidable, and I couldn’t define why. There was just something about him. Ice cream, for heaven’s sake.
“Where are we going?”
“Not too far. Maybe you’d like to talk.”
“About what?”
“Anything.”
I bit my tongue. “I don’t know you that well.”
“No,” he said, and he was dead serious, “you don’t.”
I looked at the lights of Broadway rather than him. At least these lights couldn’t blind you, like feelings and emotions, and wants, needs and sexual tension.
