Page 22 of Bad at Love
He saunters off down the hall, waving the cucumber around like he’s going into battle.
“You know, I think with the book deal you’ll be able to afford a place without a roommate,” she says to me, keepingher voice low as she watches him disappear around the corner.
“I know. We’ll see how the book does. I don’t want to get ahead of myself and make any bad decisions.”
“You’re so adult,” she says. “If I had a book deal I’d be betting on the ponies.”
“The only ponies you’d bet on would be of theMy Littlevariety.”
“A hundred grand on Applejack.”
“High roller.” I head to the fridge and open it. “Want anything? Beer?”
“Sure,” she says and sits down at the table as I grab two Coronas and hand one to her.
I sit down across from her, the chair scraping loudly on the tile floor, and shoot her a grin that I hope looks absolutely charming. “So?”
“So,” she says, wrapping a strand of hair around her finger. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Apparently.”
She holds up that hair-wrapped finger to signal for me to wait, has a sip of her beer, and then reaches down into her purse that she hooked on the chair, digging for something. I wait patiently while she empties out the entire contents of her hobo bag onto the table.
“Where the hell is it?” she mumbles to herself. She pulls out handfuls of receipts, wads of cash, empty packages of gum, three pens, a compact, a comb, bottles of Benadryl and salve, hair ties, her phone, mints, lip gloss, a tiny rubber pig (?), her keys, a cigar cutter (??), a McDonald’s cheeseburger wrapper, a case of colored pencils, and what looks to be a chunk of honeycomb in a Ziploc bag. “Damn it.”
“Dare I ask what you’re looking for? I guess I should be glad it doesn’t involve a cigar cutter and Benadryl.”
She takes one of the receipts from CVS that’s almost longer than a roll of toilet paper, turns it over, then picks up a pen. “I thought I packed a notebook. I had made a list of rules at home but I guess we have to start from scratch.”
“You know I have paper here, right?” I tell her, getting to my feet and grabbing a notepad from beside the fridge. I slap it down beside her. “And I assume the rules are about…”
“You won me over,” she says.
I’m smiling like crazy. “Really?”
She nods quickly. “Yup. Though, at the end of our conversation there yesterday, you did say that I had a point. About the fact that we could ruin what we have.”
“That’s true.”
“So, I figured some hard and fast rules would keep us in line. And the moment it gets a bit weird for us, I think that’s the moment when we bow out.”
“Sounds fair. So, what are the rules?”
She clears her throat and sits up straight, pushing the emptied bowels of her purse over to the side.
“First, we start with the schedule,” she says matter-of-factly, like we’re having a business meeting.
“Schedule?”
She writes as she speaks, her hair spilling over her face. “A minimum of four dates over the next two weeks.”
“Why the timeline?”
“Because otherwise we’ll lose character. Best to stay in character.”
“But we’re playing ourselves, right? Isn’t that the whole point?”
“But we need to be strangers for a bit. And we’re both busy people with lives, so I think we can master four dates within that time frame.”
