Page 89 of Man Cuffed
Am I crying? Maybe a little.
I’m sitting in my car. I can go early to Chicago. I can stay with a friend. We film next week. But there’s no reason to stay here. In fact, the only obstacle to my departure right now is my feng shui plant. Someone has to water it while I’m away.
I could ask Sadie, but I don’t think I can handle seeing her right now.
And I almost call Aubrey and Cassidy, but I also can’t handle that right now. I know what they’ll say. All the good things girlfriends are supposed to say when your heart is breaking. “He’s such a douchebag!” “I never liked him.” “He’s an asshole for treating you this way.” “You deserve better.”
I do deserve better, but those aren’t the things I want to hear right now.
I could chuck the plant on the curb and leave it forever. But none of this is the plant’s fault. So I do something that surprises me a little. I pick up my phone, hit my contacts list, and press call.
“Hi, Rosie,” I say. “Can I ask a tiny favor?”
* * *
Rosie and Kwandon’t leave for their honeymoon for a week, so Rosie waves me in when I show up toting the plant.
When Kwan takes it from me, though, Rosie gets a good look at me.
“Oh, no,” she breathes. “What did he do?”
“It’s…” my eyes water again, dammit. “It’s a long story.”
“This calls for mimosas.” She leads me straight to her comfy front porch with more pillows than they have on a home-decorating Instagram feed. It’s very satisfying.
“I’m not really in the mood for champagne,” I say.
“Nonsense,” she says. “You know why there’s so many bubbles in champagne?”
“Why is that?” I ask, sorta genuinely curious.
“To lift you up. And that’s what you need. I can tell.”
She’s not wrong.
She pushes me gently down so I sit on a wicker couch, surrounded by a garden of pillows. Ten seconds later, mimosas in hand, she sits across from me.
“What did he do?” she demands.
I smile. She’s made this so easy. So I just start talking. I tell her that I’ve dated a lot and never wanted anything more than that, but maybe it’s turning thirty, or maybe when I met Mac, something just clicked.
“Like a puzzle piece,” she says. And it reminds me of what Julie said at the boat, and how of course Rosie heard it all.
I nod. “I thought, maybe, after all this time and bad relationships, that I’d found the one I didn’t know I was looking for.”
“I agree,” she says, nodding. “I think you and Mac are a fit. I’ve never seen him so at ease with someone. And the way he looks at you…”
I can’t hear any more of that sentence so I say, “I know. I know.” And then I tell her the rest. What happened after the wedding, the connection we had, the smooth ease of today and earlier, and then how everything went to hell.
“He said WHAT?” she says. “That fucker!” she explodes.
I’m a little taken aback. Rosie is usually, well, sort of like champagne herself. Bubbly. And you don’t expect a glass of sparkling wine to drop the F Bomb. Only she’s just getting started. “That motherfucker! Dipshit! Asshole. Smug, emotionally blocked son of a bitch…”
There’s a pause. I can’t help but laugh. “Are you done?” I ask.
“Dick needle swizzle stick ass munch!” She explodes. And then she just pants.
This. This is exactly what I needed to hear. And it’s better coming from his own sister.
