“I’m actually … going to bed,” I half lie.
Marc gets quiet. “The boyfriend.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I quickly insist.
“Are you sleeping with him tonight?”
“You know what, Marc, until you actually break up, you’re not allowed to guilt-trip me,” I snap, surprising myself with my sudden backbone.
“No, darling, I’ll be right there,” I hear Marc say, presumably to her. Then he whispers to me, “I have to go. Wish me luck.”
And he clicks off the phone.
I have no idea what to think. I have no idea what the right answer is. Do I even want Marc anymore? I mean, sure, I love him and there’s a chemistry …
Actually, do I even love him? Or am I just in love with the romance? I’ve been wanting him to be free for years, and now that he’s about to be, I feel … clenched.
Why aren’t I happier about this?
But I am happy. I’m just in shock. Supposedly, some women who get proposed to need a few days to let everything sink in. It’s probably that. My phone beeps a text. I immediately check it.
I’m passing out on the couch, trying to stay awake. If I don’t answer the door, knock harder.
Giovanni. Right.
Beautiful, super-nice Giovanni. Really one of the good ones. Jessie did an amazing job picking for me. I text him back:
Perfect.
Oh, and I made you the Italian hot chocolate we talked about. It’ll be waiting for you when you get here, Nice and warm.
Just like you.
I wasn’t going to say that, but yes. Now stop texting and get over here.
Be there in 20.
The kind of guy who gets up in the middle of the night to make me hot chocolate. The kind of guy you build a life with.
I’ll cancel my dinner with Marc.
Why couldn’t things have just worked out with Chris back in college? Then I wouldn’t be dealing with any of this drama.
Where did that come from? Probably because I miss college. I miss having the certainty I had at twenty that my knight in shining armor would make my heart flutter, without being a dick. Without breaking my heart.
I sure wish I could get that certainty back at thirty-two.
Chapter Thirty-five
HOLLY
After saying good-bye to Jessie and Nat (and mouthing an exaggerated Thank you to them when Sven wasn’t looking), I follow him to his car, parked about a half block away. Ick. A white BMW. I don’t know why, but I find BMWs annoying. They don’t cut me off in traffic quite as often as Audis, but pretty close. Somehow, he didn’t seem like the type to buy a …
What is wrong with me? I am on a date with the guy I have had a crush on for months, and the little voice in my head is already trying to find fault with him.
Wait, is this a date? Is he just driving me home because Nat asked him to? I mean, he did come to the bar and hang out with me, but lots of my friends showed up tonight. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. How can I figure out if this is an actual date?
“So…” I begin awkwardly as he clicks his car alarm and opens the passenger door for me. “Are you hungry? If you’re still awake, we could go get something to—”
Sven leans in and kisses me hungrily. So I guess he was hungry—just not for food.
I’m so not mad at that. Yay! I’m on a date!
We immediately begin pawing each other out there on the street. Disgusting, lustful open-mouth kissing that makes any accidental spectators look away uncomfortably, and makes your friends disdainfully advise, “Get a room.”
“Do you want to go somewhere a little more private?” Sven asks me between hyperventilated breaths.
“Mm-hmm,” I mumble as I come up for air between kisses. We pull away from each other just long enough for me to get into the car and for him to close my door and walk around to the driver’s side …
Where I am already leaning over from the passenger’s seat, waiting for my next kiss. Sven gets in and pulls me onto his lap. The make-out session gets even hotter. I unbutton his shirt as he unzips the back of my dress and unhooks my bra.
Yikes. Slut alert.
I pull away from the tongue trading, smile, give him a closed-mouth kiss, and return to my seat. “I would love to see your apartment.”
Sven grins and turns on his car. “We’ll be there in five minutes.”
We make out at every red light. At one point, the car behind us honks angrily. Green light.
We make out after he parks, we make out as we walk the pathway to his apartment. We stop kissing at his doorstep only long enough for him to find his keys.
As he fishes around in his pockets, I notice I smell like … what the hell is that? Patchouli?
Never mind. He finds his key, opens the door, and pushes me up against his doorway.
I wrap my legs around him, and he carries me through the dark living room to his bedroom.
Wait—right to the bedroom? We’re not even going to make out on the couch for a little while? Aren’t we going to do a little bit of the dance of seduction?
“Do you want to slow down a little?” I ask as he moves his hands up my dress.
“I don’t need to. Do you?” he asks as he pulls my dress over my head in one quick maneuver.
Fortunately, I’m wearing pretty underwear. I mean, no, it’s not the red lace I just bought, because I didn’t know he was coming to opening night, but it’s still … Oh, hello, he’s really good at that.
Let’s just say the next thirty minutes are very nice.
* * *
Which I wish I could say about the thirty minutes after that.
I am lying in Sven’s bed in pitch dark, waiting for him to return from the bathroom. He jumped up the moment we were done, said, “Can you excuse me for a moment?” then left me in the dark to run a shower.
First off, that’s weird. But also, he didn’t ask me to join him. And now I smell like whatever the hell cologne he was wearing. I lift my arm to sniff. Yuck.
But wait, I think I’m also smelling rotten food. What is that? Pizza? Very old pizza? Very young blue cheese? Dirty socks?
I sit up and look around. My eyes have adjusted to the dark enough to see his floor is completely covered in clothes. God knows what’s under those clothes. I hear the shower go off and lie back down as Sven takes his time coming out of the bathroom.
The moment his door opens, I am slammed with the stench of that cologne. Seriously, how have I not noticed that before? It makes Axe body spray seem subtle.
Sven lies down next to me and puts out his arms, silently inviting me to rest my head on his chest and fall asleep.
I kiss him once, then take my spot. I must say, I sure like this spot.
Except his heart is beating fast enough to rocket out of his chest and onto the ceiling. I move my ear over to listen. “Your heart’s thumping like a jackrabbit.”
Sven doesn’t respond. Both of us just lie there awkwardly in silence.
“Would you mind going to your own bed?” Sven asks me out of the blue.
I pop my head up, more shocked than I guess I should be. “You want me to leave?”
Sven quickly sits up, clearly relieved to have me off of him. “It’s nothing personal. I just have a problem falling asleep with someone in my bed. It’s not you, it’s me.”
Well, of course it’s him. WTF? Who doesn’t want to have a naked woman in his bed? Hell, in a few hours I’ll be ready for Round Two. Does this mean nothing????
“I normally I wouldn’t ask,” Sven says apologetically. “But it’s not like I’m really kicking you out. You’re just next door. You can just go home, shower, we’ll both get some sleep, and then in the morning you can come back and we’ll have some more fun, and then I can make you breakfast.”
Wait, I’m the one who needs the shower?
Twenty-two-year-old me would have gotten emotional. Would have wondered what she did wrong.
But I’m too old for this.
I immediately get up and grab my clothes. “You smell like a wet grave,” I announce as I throw my dress over my head, not bothering to take the time to put my bra back on. “And your room smells like a combination of cat litter and feet.”
“Okay, never mind. You’re mad. You can stay.”
“Can I?” I ask sarcastically as I shimmy into my underwear. “You know … I have to ask, no judgment,” I begin, with judgment seeping through my pores, “as good-looking as you are, what on earth makes you think it’s okay to have sex with a woman for the first time, then immediately jump out of bed, shower, then ask her to leave?”
He tells me something in Swedish.
“Oh, my fucking God!” I exclaim as I yank my bra off the floor and storm out of his bedroom.
“Wait,” he yells from the bedroom, “I’m trying to think of how to translate my explanation into English.”
I grab my purse and let myself out. “Instead, why don’t you tell me how to say ‘Go fuck yourself’ in Swedish.”
Pretty sure he answered me as I slammed his front door.
Chapter Thirty-six
JESSIE
It’s amazing how much can change in only a few hours. I’m not talking about the major things: life and death, birth, seeing Love Actually for the first time. I’m talking about how bipolar we are during the hours immediately following a breakup.
At two this morning, when Nat and I were cleaning up, I felt giddy. Empowered. Hear me roar!
But now it’s five in the morning, and I’m lying alone in my California king-size bed I picked out with Kevin, taking up only the right side, and wondering, What the hell am I going to do?
I’m too old to start over. I can’t go through the anguish of a first date ever again. I don’t want to fall in love with someone new. A whole new set of failures and ‘coulda beens’ and ‘almost but not quites.’
Kevin had been sending me texts and e-mails for several hours after I hung up on him. At the time, I didn’t want the distraction. I didn’t want to think about anything other than all of the great things that were happening to me at that moment. So on the advice of a (male) customer, I texted:
I’m swamped with work. Can’t talk. Get some sleep.
And the text worked. Kevin stopped bugging me.
But now, in the silence of dawn, I desperately want to talk to him. I’m terrified of losing him. Or maybe I’m just terrified of being single again.
Maybe this is for the best.
No, I should be terrified. I want kids. And if I start over again with someone else, that could mean having kids three years later than I want. Or maybe only being able to have one kid, because I’ll be so old when I start trying. Or maybe never getting to have a kid at all, or a husband, ever, and being single for the rest of my life.
Then Giovanni pops into my mind. What a depressing reminder of what I’ll never have. When he left tonight, he kissed me good-bye on the cheek, and my knees gave out a little.
Knees turning to jelly. I hate that feeling, I crave that feeling.
I miss that feeling.
Now that I think about it, it’s been years since my body went limp from a guy. I don’t remember ever having that candle-in-the-sun feeling with Kevin. But I must have. I wouldn’t have stayed with him for three years, I wouldn’t want to marry him, if he didn’t make my heart and my loins ache with desire, at least at the beginning.
Loins ache with desire? I have got to quit reading romance novels. You know who would make a really good novel cover boy …
Stop thinking about Giovanni. He belongs to her. He picked her. And she’s my friend.
Which makes me a really terrible person, because I am obsessing over the riddle of how to kiss him without getting into trouble.
I wonder what they’re doing right now. Probably having sex. I mean, seriously—how could they not be having sex every minute of the day? He’s the most beautiful man in the world. How can she not just bide her time all day waiting to get him back into bed? Or onto a couch, or in the backseat of a car. The backseat. I only thought of it because Nat did that with Marc with a c. I wonder if I could get her back together with … Jessie, stop that! It’s bad enough you want her boyfriend—do you have to wish Marc back on her besides?
I should text Kevin. It’s daytime there, and he’d be happy to hear from me. He’s sorry. He wants to marry me. Yes, he had a few moments of doubt, but didn’t I as well? I bought a bar, for God’s sake. First stone and all that.
I should text Kevin. Shorthand the apology. Figure out our next step and get to the wedding planning.
I pull my phone off the charger on my nightstand and look at it.
For a while.
What do I really want? If I could do anything in the world and not fail, what would I do?
Finally, I type:
You up?
I wait.
Nothing. Then …
Indeed. How are you holding up?
I can’t decide what to do about Kevin. Any advice?
Holly would say what’s your heart telling you?
I can’t tell Nat that my heart is telling me to go after her man. But I can tell a half-truth.
What my heart is telling me is that I don’t want to move to Copenhagen.
That actually is the truth. I have no desire. I don’t know what I do want, but I’m absolutely positive about what I don’t.
Well, there you go.
Thanks. Am I keeping you from Giovanni?
Nah. He’s asleep. I kept him up too late, which I feel little guilty about. (Yeah—not at all.) Have I thanked you for finding him for me?
She kept him up too late. Right.
And it’s all my fault.
The heart doesn’t really get to decide much in life. If it did, we would all live in Paris, painting for a living during the day and sleeping with the father of our children, Ryan Reynolds, at night.
Maybe there’s some way to convince Kevin to come home.
Chapter Thirty-seven
NAT
My Friday started out so promising. I got to wake up to a beautiful man, who’s still happy to only make out with me for hours on end. I have a man leaving his wife for me (which I assume he did last night, based on his texts. All he told me was that things at home had blown up and he’d see me Monday), and I was at a job that I liked, working with people who I love.
And then at five oh five, just as our first happy hour is officially under way, Chris strolls in.
My shoulders sink. “Oh, good Christ, what are you doing here?”
“I have decided to become the Norm to your Diane,” he chirps happily as he plops down on a center barstool. “Did you get beer yet?”
“Get out,” I mutter menacingly.
“We still don’t have anything on draft,” Holly answers. “However, we do have bottles of the local craft brewer’s IPA and stout.”
“Whose side are you on?” I ask her.
“The side of the customers,” she answers. “Always. Particularly the ones willing to pay ten dollars for a bottle of IPA.”
“And I am willing to do that,” Chris tells her, smirking at me.
I swear, that’s not an exaggeration. He’s smirking.
Holly points to him and flirts, “I like the way you think. So I’m assuming you like your beer the way you like your women.”
“How did you manage to buy dumb beer?” I ask her.
“I was thinking bitter,” Holly tells me as she pops open the cap of a bottle of IPA and pours it into a pint glass.
“I like the way you think,” Chris tells her playfully.
“Where did you find pint glasses?” I ask Holly accusingly.
“BevMo!” she answers. When I glare at her, she doubles down. “And the best was on sale for ten ninety-nine a six-pack.”
“So you are really making a killing off of us beer drinkers,” Chris says.
He holds up a credit card, which Holly cheerfully plucks out of his hand. “Thank you, baby. Start a tab
?”
“Yes. I plan to be here late.”
As Holly walks to the end of the bar to start Chris’s tab, I follow her and whisper, “Why are you acting all friendly with him?”
“Um … I’m a bartender. It’s what I do.”
“But…” I turn to look at Chris, who surveys the room, checking out the women here for happy hour. “He’s an asshole. We don’t need a guy like that hitting on our customers all night.”
“Actually, we do. Do you know why women go to bars?”
“Yes. To hang out with their friends and decompress.”
“Sometimes. But frequently it’s to dress up and flirt and feel pretty amid hot guys. And I hate to break it to you, but your friend over there is a hot guy.”
I make a face. “Ick.”
Holly shakes her head at me. “He’s so not an Ick. What’s your problem? Did you sleep with him?”
“What?! No! Ick.”
“So he didn’t fuck you over in any way?” Holly clarifies.
I look up at the ceiling, trying to find a way to tell her what happened in college without actually telling her what happened. Holly continues, “Trust me, I know Ick. Sven’s an Ick. And if he ever shows up here again, I apologize in advance for all of the glassware that gets broken and the tables that splinter apart when I tackle him and haul him out by his ear. But your guy? He’s fine.”
Holly grabs a huge bag of peanuts from beneath the counter, pours some into a pink wooden bowl, and walks them over to Chris, who asks me, “So which station are you working tonight? I want to be at your table.”
“She’s working the bar,” Holly tells him as she puts down the peanuts, then walks away to serve other happy hour guests.
Chris’s face lights up. He turns to me. “Excellent.”
“Chris! Yay!” I hear Jessie exclaim from her table near the window.
She quickly walks up to us and hands Chris her phone. “What do you think this means?” she asks.
He studies the text for a moment, then winces. “Oh. Stage one of the negotiation. He’s trying to be nice but still make it seem like it’s all your fault. I would steer clear for at least another three days. Give him time for it to sink in that he really fucked up.”
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