Page 42 of My So-Called Perfect Life
“Like kill you and then take care of your body?”
“That’s not the kind oftaking care of my bodyI had in mind.”
“Well, it’s the only kind you’re going to get. Now, can it! I want to know all about what other diseases our boy here passed along to that poor woman.”
Evan’s favorite thing to do is hit on Roxy, but she’s loyal to the bar before anything else. She’s told Evan countless times she doesn’t shit where she eats. Doing the boss’s best friend is off limits in her book. Honestly, I wouldn’t care. Roxy would be good for him. But their hook-up would inevitably end in drama, and I don’t have the patience for drama.
I groan. “How many times do I have to tell you? I didn’t give that woman chlamydia.”
That turns Evan’s attention from Roxy’s rack to me. “That was the chlamydia girl?” he asks and then takes a sip of his Heineken. “I was expecting something like porn star Barbie, not little sister Kelly.”
Roxy snorts. “Big fan of Barbie and her friends?”
“I just spent the last three hours with my nieces. Give me a break, okay?”
Evan watches his nieces twice a week for his sister. She’s recently divorced, and she needed someone to cover the girls a few days a week for the summer. Being a real estate agent with a flexible schedule, Evan is able to help her out.
Thanks to the amount of time he spends with those little girls, he knows more about little-girl pop culture than anyone I know.
“So?” she redirects her attention to me.
“So what?”
“Come on, Ryan,” she coaxes, batting her long eyelashes at me. “I’m already invested in this soap opera. This is like season three at this point. Don’t leave me hanging now.”
Glancing around the bar, I try to collect my thoughts for a moment. Part of me feels like it’s wrong to talk about her with Roxy and Evan. I mean, Evan knows all about the incident and my trip to the clinic this weekend, but now, with her apology, my anger has lessened. Then, the other part of my brain reminds me that she made this all public knowledge.
“She came to apologize.”
“For giving you an STD?” Evan asks. “How sweet of her.” The sarcasm drips from his voice.
“No, she didn’t know she had given it to me until just now. She just found out from the ex’s mistress that he was the one who gave it to her. She came to apologize for her stunt on Saturday.”
He scoffs, “I hope you told that sack of crazy to never come back.”
Evan’s right. I should’ve told her to have a nice life and left it at that. So, why does the thought of not seeing her again make me feel a tinge of sadness in my gut? Everything about our night together was seriously screwed up. But at the same time, it was also the best night I’d had in a long while. Despite the need for antibiotics after.
“Ryan?” Evan says. “You did tell her not to come back, right?”
Roxy just laughs.
“She’s not crazy,” I tell him, feeling the need to defend her. “She was down on her luck and blindsided by her ex. Cut the girl some slack.”
“Dude, she told your whole bar you gave her an STD. That’s a telltale sign of batshit crazy. Tell him, Rox.”
“I like her,” Roxy says, not siding with him. “She’s not crazy. She might have been a bit irrational the other night, but tequila can do that to a person. She’s not ready for a padded room though. A woman scorned is a force to be reckoned with.”
“But he didn’t do the scorning.”
“So?” She shrugs. “He did the screwing. She was content to find someone else to spend the night with, but your boy over here wasn’t having it. He’s just as much to blame. The girl didn’t know she had anything. She had literally just found out her ex was cheating on her.”
The thought of Danielle heading out to find some other douche to screw her brains out that night still irks me. “Yeah, because she’s fucking crazy!” Evan continues. “Isn’t there some other way for you to get your rocks off? Base jumping? Cliff diving? A cage surrounded by sharks?”
I completely understand Evan’s point of view:Get out now. Let it all be and move on. But the idea of that seems like I’d be missing out on something different . . . a new kind of adventure. You only live once and for whatever reason I keep thinking this is something I need to try.
But at the end of the day, it’ll all be up to fate or Danielle. One or the other since I don’t have a number for her or even know anything else about her to attempt to find her. I know her last name, but I’m sure as hell not going to stalk her on social media. That would makemebatshit crazy.
“I asked her to stay for dinner but then we got a rush. We didn’t make plans before she left so who knows if I’ll ever even see her again.” I narrow my eyes at Roxy. “If she comes back in, don’t give her any shots, Roxy. Whenever you do, it doesn’t end up well for me.”
