Putting Out

by S Doyle

  “Why is that?”

  Reilly nudged Luke with her shoulder. “Because I found out that there was more to life than playing golf, more to me than being a golf player. I got engaged that day, almost died that day. It helps you put things in perspective.”

  “I can imagine. Well, it certainly came as no surprise you would unfortunately not be playing in this year’s tournament.”

  Reilly could feel the one cameraman panning down her to her belly and she had to will herself not to try and suck it in. Not that it would have helped. Poor Pierce, all his hard work lost to nature. The bulge was big and round and as Luke liked to claim when he saw her naked… all boy.

  She, however, was still holding out hope for a girl.

  “No, Steve. I won’t be playing this year. I can’t get the club around the darn thing,” she joked. “We’re going to have to be represented by my husband.”

  “Luke,” Steve said, turning his focus. “You decided to go back on a limited tour schedule, which has proved successful for you. One win at Pebble Beach and another big win at the Players Championship. Why the change of heart?”

  “Are you kidding? I had to get back into competitive shape so I could beat my wife. Once I knew I could take her on, I figured the rest of the field would be a snap.”

  It was an old joke he’d repeated often, but the truth was, Reilly was happy to see him back doing what he loved for the reason he loved it. At first she worried about what the two of them competing against each other in some events might mean. But they had so much fun smack-talking each other, it never became an issue. Four events: He’d won two, she’d finished in the top ten in the other two.

  They had good times, some great parties after, and one memorable night when they snuck back onto the course to do it in a bunker surrounding the 18th green. Reilly was pretty sure they had made a baby that night.

  “You recently became an aunt, next is motherhood and after that….”

  Steve let the question hang, but Reilly wasn’t sure what the answer was. And that was okay, too. There might have been a time when the prospect of not playing professional golf would have meant the end of her existence.

  But her existence was so much more now.

  “After that, I imagine I’m going to have this kid to take care of.”

  Luke smiled into the camera. “I’m eighty-five percent sure it’s going to be a boy.”

  “See, and I’m leaning the other way. But either way…”

  She turned and smiled at Luke and he nodded, finishing her thought.

  “Either way,” she said. “ Boy or girl, we’re leaving room in the closet for a Royal Blue jacket.”

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  The Spy Who Loved Me…Sort Of

  Liza

  There’s a reason why Paris is known as the city of love. It’s how it makes you feel. As if you’ve seen someone for the first time and you’re instantly attracted. All you want to do is get to know them more. And the more you get to know them, the more you fall in love.

  A Lover’s Guide to Travel

  “So, what I’m trying to say…what I’ve been trying to say this whole time is that I think you’re great. I do. I just see us heading in different directions. You know what I’m saying?”

  I looked at my boyfriend of two years. TWO YEARS! And blinked. Because I couldn’t possibly be hearing what was coming out of his mouth. Because what was coming out of his mouth sounded a lot like he was breaking up with me.

  Which was ridiculous. Who would be my boyfriend if he broke up with me?

  I reached for the glass of wine in front of me and took a sip. Then a deep breath.

  “Jared, are you breaking up with me?”

  He let out of whoosh of breath, then wiped his hands over his face. “Liza! I’ve been…we’ve been talking about this for almost thirty minutes. And you’re just now understanding what I’m telling you?”

  I glanced at the tables around us in the restaurant. It was a Saturday night, our typical date night. Luigi’s, our typical restaurant. With our typical waitress, Cindy. People here knew us. If not by name, certainly by our faces.

  The single guy wearing a Phillies baseball hat sitting at the table next to us glanced over at our table. I knew he’d heard Jared’s raised voice. He’d probably seen the writing on the wall way before I had.

  Holy shit, this was embarrassing. Because I think Jared was actually breaking up with me.

  “I don’t understand. Nothing has changed between us,” I told him.

  He had his place in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. I had mine in the city. We’d once talked about moving in together, but we both worked from home. He was a programmer and I was a blog writer. So, living together, working together in the same space had always seemed like too much…togetherness.

  “That’s my point. Nothing has changed. We’re not growing as a couple.”

  Growing as a couple? Was he serious? Jared wasn’t the type of guy who grew. He was sweet and simple and as happy to have a girlfriend as I was to have a boyfriend. At least that’s how he’d always seemed.

  We were perfectly content! Only clearly not so much.

  I started to think about what might have happened to him recently that he’d even question us as a couple.

  “Is this because of that hippy dippy class you’ve been taking?”

  “It’s yoga therapy, it’s not hippy dippy,” he snapped. “Just because I’m trying to expand my horizons and think outside of the box doesn’t mean I’m not cool.”

  It was a hippy dippy yoga class.

  I didn’t say that though. I thought about what he’d told me about the class. How the instructor gave direction related to yoga poses while also helping people to work through their emotional bottlenecks. That’s what Jared said she’d called them.

  What emotional bottlenecks did Jared have?

  He grew up in a fancy, rich suburb in southern New Jersey. He had both parents, not divorced, who worshiped him as their only son. He’d gone to the University of Pennsylvania, without student loans, and he’d gotten a job right out of college doing programming.

  He was shy and a little nerdy—what programmer wasn’t—but decent looking with his light brown hair and hazel eyes.

  That night at the bar two years ago, I’d spotted him with his friends in the back. I could see he was conservative with his pressed jeans and button-down, white shirt and I’d thought him. That guy was a serious person. That guy wasn’t someone who’d been through a lot of drama. That guy could give me what I wanted.

  So, I’d tucked up my nose ring so that it was invisible and approached him.

  I was right, too. Jared had grown up with everything I never had, and dating him felt like plugging into that world. As if somehow, through him, I could be the only thing I’d ever wanted to be…which was normal.

  Jared was the king of every day ordinary. I needed that in my life.

  Only now, on Saturday date night—which was the most routine thing, ever—he was dumping me. Why?

  Do you really care?

  I snuffed out that thought immediately. Of course I cared. Jared was a really nice guy. We texted every day and had sex once a week on Saturday, date night. Then we went to his parents’ for dinner on Sundays and his mother pretended to like me.

  It was a perfect relationship. Maybe not the most passionate. Maybe not the most emotional, and part of that was probably my fault, but we were content.

  Content was a highly underrated emotion.

  Something had to have changed. Jared didn’t just up and decide to dump me without a reason. Something had to have pulled his attention in another direction…

  “Wait,” I said, as a thought occurred to me. “Is this about her?”

  He shook his head and slumped back in his chair. “I knew you were going to think that.”

  “What’s her name? ZooZoo, ZaaZaa?”

&n
bsp; “Zara, and this is not about her,” he insisted, but I didn’t believe him.

  “Jared, out of the blue you decide you’re going to take yoga, when I’ve never seen you so much as break into more than a soft trot when it comes to exercise. And not just yoga but emotional therapy yoga, and, after a few classes with ZaaZaa, you’re dumping me.”

  “Zara has helped me to see that you’re limiting my potential.”

  My jaw dropped. “How the fuck am I doing that?”

  That came out pretty loud and I could see his stunned expression.

  “Liza,” he admonished me, even as his face turned red. “You never curse.”

  No, I never cursed in front of Jared because I knew he considered it to be unfeminine. It’s also why I’d kept my nose piercing tucked up into my nostrils since that night we’d met, and why we only ever had sex in the dark so he couldn’t see my tattoo.

  For two years I’d played the part of Jared’s perfect girlfriend, to the point that I’d even won over his parents as much as they could be won over, given that I didn’t have a college degree from an Ivy league school.

  I only wore dresses to Sunday family dinner. I always brought a good bottle of wine for his father, and flowers for his mother. We ate things like pot roast with potatoes and carrots and talked about the weather.

  It was like being part of a family. A real one with none of the ugly shit around, so no, I didn’t ever curse in front of him. I crossed my feet at my ankles, and I said the right thing every time.

  For Jared. For his parents.

  “Maybe we should finish this conversation somewhere else if you’re going to get loud,” Jared suggested.

  My eyes narrowed as anger started to cut through the pain of what was happening. I’d done everything I could to be the person Jared wanted as his girlfriend. Just so I could have a little of what he’d always had and taken for granted. Only now I was getting tossed aside like garbage.

  “Are you fucking ZaaZaa?”

  Again, the guy at the table next to us glanced over, but this time I didn’t care. He could join us at our table and get a front-row view if he wanted. Because I was done holding back. I liked to curse. Cursing felt good. It felt fucking freeing!

  “No!” Jared shouted, outraged by my language or my suggestion. I wasn’t sure which.

  “But you want to,” I concluded, and he didn’t refute it.

  “What did I do wrong?” I asked him, slumping in my chair.

  He winced and I thought, at least that was something. At least he cared a little that he was hurting me, his seemingly perfect girlfriend of two years. Even if I was really a fake.

  “Listen,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice. Too late now. Everyone in the tiny Italian restaurant knew what was going on over here. “I like you, Liza. I do. But Zara thinks you’re trapped because…you know…because of everything that happened to you and she thinks you’re trapping me with you.”

  “You’ve talked to this woman about me?”

  My story. My secrets. Fuck being hurt, I was going to kill him.

  “She had to understand where my emotional bottleneck was coming from.”

  “I’m your emotional bottleneck?” I squeaked.

  “Liza, look at your life. You barely ever leave your apartment. You don’t do anything but work and see me occasionally. I’m not really sure why, either. You don’t like the movies I do, you don’t like the books I read. You only pretend to like my parents.”

  It was true. They were closed minded about a lot of things, and if they knew about my past, they would have insisted Jared break up with me. But I liked the idea of parents. The idea of a sweet boyfriend who I dated once a week.

  I liked the idea of us.

  “You won’t even let me turn the lights on when we have sex,” he accused me in a harsh whisper. “It’s like you’re afraid of me seeing you. Maybe you’re even afraid of sex.”

  “I’m not afraid of sex,” I snorted. I didn’t like it very much, but I wasn’t afraid of it. Mostly I thought it was boring, but it was something I was willing to give him once a week when I wasn’t on my period. Because that’s what normal couples did.

  That’s all I wanted to be.

  “You’re stuck, Liza, and I’m stuck with you.”

  “You’re stuck with me,” I repeated, feeling like a failure. Like this attempt I’d made to have something not corrupted in my life had failed.

  “I know this will be hard on you. You don’t really have any friends…”

  “I have a new friend,” I countered.

  He gave me that imperious, smug face he sometimes used, especially when talking about coding languages that I didn’t care about.

  “You’re not seriously suggesting someone you chat with online is the same thing as having a friend. Face it, Liza. You can’t handle reality. You make all this money writing a travel blog, but you don’t go anywhere, you don’t see anything outside of your condo. You don’t buy clothes or shoes or anything like that,” he said, waving his hand in my direction.

  “I think I’m wearing clothes right now,” I snapped.

  “Yep, a T-shirt and yoga pants. Probably the same ones you rolled out of bed in this morning. Wait, let me guess, you added a bra.”

  Had I? I fought the urge to feel myself up to check.

  I fell back against my chair. “I didn’t think you cared about that stuff. You work in sweatpants every day. You’re saying you’re dumping me because I didn’t buy enough fancy clothes to impress you?”

  “It’s not about the clothes,” he said. “You don’t put any effort into us, Liza.”

  I pushed my chair away from the table then stood, suddenly exhausted and tired of being on display for the entire restaurant. The need to go home and close the door behind me was palpable.

  “That was the point,” I said with a shrug. “I wanted simple and easy.”

  “I wanted more,” he said quietly.

  I closed my eyes. He was right. I’d been going through the motions of a relationship because it felt like such an accomplishment. Like I’d pulled myself out of the depths of hell only to find contentment, satisfaction and a nice routine.

  But looking at him now, I realized I didn’t like the movies he did. I didn’t like the books he read. I didn’t pay attention when he was talking about his work. I didn’t know his friends and I only let his parents see of me what I wanted them to see.

  And in two years I’d never once had an orgasm when we were having sex.

  None of that was fair to him. He should want more.

  I should want more. I didn’t because I knew what it was like to have nothing, so I was always just so grateful for the crumbs.

  I sighed. “You’re a good guy, Jared. You deserve to be happy. Good luck with the yoga chick.”

  I started to walk past him when he reached out and circled my wrist. “You going to be okay, Liza? You know I do care about you.”

  Was I going to be okay? I was going to survive. I knew that much about myself. “I’m always okay, Jared.”

  Then I shocked the shit out of him by pulling on the bottom of my nose and turning my piercing out so that the knobs now dangled from each nostril. He gasped and that was sad, too. Two years, and he’d had no clue.

  “Cursing, and now this,” he said, pointing to me. “Did I even know you?”

  I shrugged. Probably not. But I suppose that was the point, too. I wanted to appear normal. It didn’t mean I was normal.

  I jerked my wrist out of his grasp. “Have a good life, Jared.”

  Then I turned to the guy at the next table, the one who’d been pretending not to listen to our conversation; his head was turned away from me so I was basically talking to the top of his baseball cap.

  “Show’s over, buddy,” I told him. “You can go back to your calamari.”

  The Speedline had taken me from the restaurant in the burbs of New Jersey, over the bridge, into Philadelphia. I switched from that to take the train up a few bloc
ks closer to Northern Liberties where I lived. Walking down the block I stopped in front of my building, The Northern Liberties Plaza Grande.

  This was one of those areas of Philadelphia that was being gentrified and there were days I was astounded I actually lived in a community like this. With a Starbucks on the corner and everything.

  Sometimes when I thought about where I came from to how I got here, it almost seemed like someone else’s life. A prickle of unease crept over me and had me looking over my shoulder. Cars ran by, people walked along the brick sidewalks. Nothing at all strange at this time of night on a Saturday.

  But I still felt…something. Like that creepy feeling I was being watched.

  Since, in general, I wasn’t a trusting person, I chocked it up to paranoia, because, among the numerous hurtful but truthful things Jared had said to me, he was right about the fact there would be no reason for anyone to be following me. I didn’t give people a reason to know me at all.

  I made my way inside the building to the top floor. I owned my condo outright and as soon as the door was closed behind me, I felt like I could breathe again. Another truthful thing about me…I hated leaving my home.

  Shit. Was I becoming an agoraphobic?

  It wasn’t like I was afraid of leaving my space…I just preferred being here. Because here wasn’t out there in the world where I’d lived on my own for years. Here wasn’t the streets. Here there was food in the fridge, a bed with soft pillows and a blanket.

  People left their homes because they always knew it would be there to go back to. I’d only had that assurance for the past few years.

  I plopped on the couch and felt sorry for myself.

  It wasn’t my fault my mother was fucked up. It wasn’t my fault I had no father. It wasn’t my fault I had to run away from home at seventeen. It was either leave my mom and suffer the consequences, or stay and suffer the consequences.

  I’d decided to take a chance on me. And outside of what was a pretty horrible year living on the streets of Philadelphia, I’d mostly been successful.