Page 79 of One Night Only
“Or he’s just being friendly,” she says when I don’t respond.
“There’s plenty of time to figure something out between now and then. We’ll go over some key talking points, start a spreadsheet.”
“You’re making fun of me.”
“Because you deserve to be made fun of.”
“I know!” She drops her head to the wall, pouting childishly. “I can’t help it. I don’t know what to do.”
“You do what you can. You wear the slutty dress.”
She sighs, drumming her fingers against the laptop.
My phone vibrates against my hip and I pull it out to see Dad’s sent me a two-week-old meme of a cat watching a horror movie.Reminded me of you!
I respond quickly as my stomach knots with a different kind of worry.Haha :)
I spoke with him again this week, planning our belated camping trip for the fall. I’d been tempted to tell him about Matthias. Proof of why I shouldn’t date and how I’d just mess it up, but I know he’d only tell me to try again.
“I think I’m going to wear those gold earrings to the party,” Claire says, tugging absently on her earlobes. “You know the really heavy ones?”
“The heavy ones you always complain about it?”
“I can suck it up for one night.”
I lock my screen, twirling my phone against my thigh. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“Do you think I’m a coward?”
The question sounds bizarre even to my ears, but her expression doesn’t change. “Elaborate.”
“Do you think I’m a coward because I shut myself off from potential relationships? Yes, I’m aware I sound like a woman’s magazine from the nineties.”
Claire smirks but seems to think about it. “Is this because your work date went badly?”
“No. But it’s got me thinking. I mean, I haven’t been with anyone seriously since Josh.”
“Josh the dick?”
“He’s not a dick.”
“You’re my friend and he broke your heart,” she says seriously. “Therefore he’s a dick.”
The whole thing with Josh went down before I met Claire. But I was still getting over him when we moved in together. Barely a week in she came home after work to find me ugly crying into a large bag of Cheetos on the kitchen floor because I spotted him in a CVS buying multivitamins.
“I’mthe one who made him take them,” I’d sobbed while she sat beside me, getting orange cheese dust all over her Ralph Lauren dress.
“You don’t want to get hurt again,” she continues now. “I think that’s pretty understandable.”
“But what if that’s stopping me from finding someone?” I think about all my conversations with my dad. “Relationships are important.”
“They are. And you have lots of them. Work relationships, friend relationships. You get on great with our building manager and the guy at the deli always gives you extra hot sauce. They’re relationships.”
“Not romantic relationships.”
“You were just at your best friend’s wedding. Of course you’re going to feel confused. I dropped five k to freeze my eggs because one of our senior partners brought in her baby when I was ovulating. Hormones gonna hormone.”
