Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 438(@200wpm)___ 350(@250wpm)___ 292(@300wpm)
“Ok. So Friday, I’m going to one of the hottest nightclubs in the city.”
“You’re going for work.”
“Still.”
“Fernando told me the brother of his cameraman is gay. And he lives in Berkeley. He got this guy’s number for you, so why don’t you give him a call?” Jess and her husband Fernando had spent the last five months frantically trying to fix me up with every gay man in the greater bay area, ever since Charlie, my long term boyfriend, dumped my ass.
“Fernando has the worst taste in men of anyone I’ve ever met in my entire life, so I really don’t think I’ll be calling this guy.”
“He does not!” Jess exclaimed. I stared at her with eyebrows raised, and after a minute she relented. “Ok, he really does. Well, what do you want from a straight guy? But who knows, maybe this one will accidentally be cute.”
“Not happening, Jess. So, speaking of Fernando, how many times has he called you today?” Her husband was a documentary filmmaker, currently on a job in northern Canada filming some kind of duck, which Jess insisted was not a duck (but which was, in fact, a duck). They’d been married two years, and still completely acted like newlyweds. Fernando couldn’t go half an hour without calling her, which was a source of endless amusement for me.
“Nine times,” she grinned, all starry eyed. She was so totally in love that sometimes I wanted to stick my finger down my throat, especially now that I lived in the land of the jilted. And then she said, “Way to change the subject away from your sex life, by the way.”
“Jess, I’m not on a deadline. I’ll meet someone when I meet someone.”
“I know. I just want you to be happy, Jamie. I want you to find someone who loves and appreciates you. You so totally deserve that.” She broke eye contact and toyed with her fork.
And I said, “Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“Well, yes. But eat your lunch first.”
“Because it’ll spoil my appetite?”
“Yeah.” She fidgeted uncomfortably.
I pushed my plate away from me and said, “It’s about Charlie, isn’t it? Now you have to tell me. Whatever it is, I can take it.”
She reached across the table and took my hand, some sort of strong emotion welling in her eyes as she said, “I don’t even know how to tell you this.”
“Just say it.”
She took a deep breath and blurted, “Charlie got engaged.”
I dropped her hand and wrapped my arms around myself, feeling like I’d just been kicked in the gut. “Do I know her?”
“Yeah. It’s Callie McLoughlin.”
“Oh.” I stared unseeingly at the tabletop for a long moment, and eventually said, “Well, he didn’t waste any time.”
Charlie Connolly had been my first (and only) boyfriend. We were together for eight years, ever since we were fifteen – until he dumped me five months ago to go off and pretend to be straight. I’d been totally in love with Charlie, despite some serious flaws in our relationship. Like the fact that – ok, brace yourself – good Irish Catholic boy that he was, and as much as he struggled with his sexuality, we never had sex. Literally never. Not once in eight years.
Don’t get me wrong, we did plenty of other stuff. I was pretty damn good at giving a blow job after eight years of practice, thank you very much. But somehow, actual sex was one giant step too far for Charlie. And I’d loved him so much that I’d figured I could wait out his crisis of conscience, no matter how long it took.
But ultimately, he left me. And apparently was wasting no time in finding himself a wife and carrying out the sham of pretending he was straight.
“Jamie,” Jess asked quietly, “are you ok?”
“Yeah. I mean, he could do worse than Callie McLoughlin, right? I like her.” I’d known Callie almost as long as I’d known Jess. She wasn’t a close friend or anything, but her family and mine went to the same church. “When did you find out?”
“Last night. Charlie called and told me.”
I said, “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why didn’t you call me last night?”
“I did call, remember? But then I just couldn’t tell you over the phone, so I made this lunch date.”
“And then you still took a while to tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Jamie. I was trying to figure out how to work it into the conversation without just clobbering you over the head with it.”
I sighed and reached for her hand. “It’s ok, Jess. I get it. If the situation were reversed, I wouldn’t know how to tell you, either.” Then I met her eyes and said, “And you know what? I’m glad he’s engaged, actually. I need to put Charlie Connolly behind me, you and I both know that. And this just makes our break-up all the more final, you know?”