“And you? You’re a negative person?”
“I’m a realist,” he says. “And the realist in me says that if we were meant to get on so well with our exes, they wouldn’t become exes, and so if they are exes, they are crazy douches.” He raises his arm in the air, like an orator declaring victory. “Or frogs, and neither is terribly appealing. Both men and women can be douches or frogs.”
“That’s the difference between you and me. I played with frogs when I was a kid, and no, that’s not a euphemism.”
“You played with frogs?”
“Yes. And I put one in Logan’s bed too.”
His mouth twitches in a that’s too good grin. “Well done. How did he take it?”
“Screamed like a boy,” I say, proud of my frog fearlessness. “Also, it was a tiny frog. Like, maybe an inch big.”
“Things no one says about me,” Oliver whispers.
I shoot him the side-eye he deserves. “It’s a wonder any woman has lasted with you for any period of time.”
He wriggles his brows. “Oh, sweetheart, they last because I can last. All night long.”
“I take it back. You are a pig,” I say.
“Guilty as charged.”
As we stop at the next crosswalk, I reach into my purse and grab the bag of cookies. “All right, frog prince, this is my small way of saying thank you.”
He takes one. “Aww. This is a thanks for me letting you check out my package earlier?”
“You ass.”
“Ah, it’s for the time I let you check out my arse. I see,” he says, biting into the cookie.
“Double ass,” I say, but I’m laughing.
He chews and somehow looks sexy while eating, crumbs and all. “Admit it—I’m the sexiest of your ex-boyfriends.”
“You’re not a real ex,” I point out as we turn the corner then head into Central Park.
“I know. That’s what makes me the sexiest.”
“Cockiest maybe.”
“Like I said, the sexiest.” We wander along the mall, almost by instinct. He knows this promenade, with its towering elms and green canopy, is one of my favorite parts of the park, which is my favorite place in the city.
“More like most infuriating,” I say, as we slide back into our rhythm.
The rhythm that reminds me to squash any inappropriate tingles.
This rhythm is worth so much more than testing a theory would be.
We continue debating exes along the Literary Walk.
He hooks his thumb at a statue of Shakespeare. “He thinks exes are rubbish.”
“He killed most of his heroes and heroines,” I point out. “Hello, tragedy?”
“Like I said, rubbish.”
As we pass stone replicas of Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns, the great debate rages on, until he walks me all the way home, where he gives me a hug outside my building and says goodbye.
Later that night, as I read in detail the magazine page Stella gave me, our debate gives me a brilliant idea.
A brilliant idea that might solve a big, hairy problem.
8
Summer
I wave the magazine page at Maggie. “I should do this, right?”
“Darn straight you should do it.” My grandmother, also my roommate, affirms my decision as she slices off the top of another strawberry with precision, and slides the red fruit to the edge of the cutting board.
“I mean, this is tailor-made for me.”
Another slice, another cut. She drops a handful of berries into the blender. “It’s as if it was written for you.” She holds up the knife to make her point. “Just for you.”
I back away. “Mags, put the knife down.”
“I have excellent vision and dexterity, you know.”
“This isn’t about your vision or dexterity, you crazy old bat,” I say playfully. “It’s about you wielding a sharp knife.”
“Impudent whippersnapper,” she mutters under her breath, but I smile at her teasing. She sets down the knife, drops the rest of the strawberries into the blender, then hits the crush button.
As the machine pulverizes the fruit, she chatters above the noise. “In any case, you’ve always loved contests, and you’ve always excelled at them, so you should do it.”
She hits end with the panache of a former professional cheerleader.
Because that’s what she is. This seventy-five-year-old babe shook her pom-poms and backflipped her way from the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders to a forty-year career as a cheer coach and a trophy case full of well-deserved bling.
“But you could also let me fund your gym,” she adds like she’s trying to entice me into her car with candy.
“No way.” I shake my head and gesture to her rent-controlled two-bedroom Upper West Side palace. “You barely charge me rent. You’ve already made it possible for me to save a ton of money and live in one of the world’s most expensive cities on an activity manager’s salary. No way am I taking the cash from you.”
“But the offer stands.”
“And I appreciate it, but my answer is still no. I want to do this on my own.”
“Always digging your heels in.” She rubs my back gently. “I know you don’t like to accept help. And I know it’s because you think your mom should have kept working instead of quitting her job to help your dad.”
“Well,” I say, straightening my spine, “she gave up her own career managing a bookstore when his company took off. And she always reminds him.”
I love my parents madly. They have a great marriage, and they raised me with love. But every now and then when I was growing up, my mom made little comments about how proud she was of the success his consulting company was having, in part because she quit her job to support him.
I don’t ever want to be the person who quits.
The one who has to remind the other that she did.
Or the one who maybe wishes she hadn’t quit. Because I suspect that’s what’s behind her little asides.
Maggie tilts her head with a skeptical look. “Always reminds him?”
“It feels often to me,” I say, then I wave a hand breezily.
She pours her concoction into two glasses and slides one to me, then whispers, “I have an extra thousand under the mattress. C’mon. Take it.”
“Please tell me you don’t keep money under the mattress.”
“Mattress. Bank. Same thing.”
I shake my head. “Nope. You didn’t fund Logan’s business. You’re not funding mine. Besides, I’ll either win this contest or nab a loan.”
She takes a long swig of her smoothie, and I do the same. Then I nearly spit it out as my tongue rebels against the taste. “This is the worst one ever. What did you put in it?”
“Wheatgrass.”
“You do know grass is what dogs eat when they need to barf?”
She laughs. “Wheatgrass is very popular in healthy beverages.”
“No. Just no. Wheatgrass is wrong. It’s grass, Mags. Grass.”
She gives me a look like I deserve to be sent to my room for impudence. “It’s good for you. Keeps you healthy. And I need to replenish after my workout. By the way, I killed it at my bike-training session today. Mildred and Octavia had nothing on me. I left them in the dust in Central Park,” she says, then heads to the living room, where she grabs her phone and, judging from the beeping sounds, returns to her Words with Friends game.
From the stool at the kitchen counter, I review The Dating Pool contest rules one more time.
The theme is spot-on: letters to exes, with the proviso that you must have learned something from the past relationship. No slams, no digs, no skewering. Show us how you’re moving on.
Dating Pool, I’ve got this. I’ve so got this.
This is my jam. Learning. Takeaways. Putting a positive spin on nearly everything.
I can bang out this letter, easy peasy.
I have the perfect person to write about.
Grabbing my tablet, I flip it open.
9
Oliver
One year ago
There are things a man just needs to know how to do by the time he goes out on his own.
How to tie a necktie, ideally without looking in the mirror. How to parallel park in one try. How to build a campfire—with and without matches. (Hint: magnifying glasses. Learn how to use them and you, too, can become Prometheus.)
And how to answer a Mayday call from your female best friend.
As it happened, Jason and I were hanging in his apartment one evening, working our way through the top ten skills any man must know.
I strummed a chord on his acoustic guitar, working my way through “Love Me Do,” the song we’d dubbed easiest to learn to play on a guitar. (On the list of things a modern man should know: how to play at least one song on the guitar.)
“Stop. Stop. It’s like a parrot mating with a trombone,” Jason said, clapping his hands over his ears.
Naturally, I played louder. “You’re just jealous that I’m ahead of you. I’ve tackled six items, and it’s your bloody list.”
An eye roll was his answer. “I would never be envious of someone who is total rubbish at item number four.”
“Building a campfire?” I scoffed. We’d worked on that skill last weekend while camping an hour outside of the city. “Please. I excelled. Yours was more like a bonfire, Smokey Bear. You do know the point isn’t to set the whole forest alight?”
“I made an elegant fire and cooked a burger on it. A burger you enjoyed,” he pointed out as he reached for the composition notebook with his list.
“Fine, I concede. The burger was tasty. But when you do your podcast on the top ten requisite skills, I want credit for excelling in outdoorsmanship, which is all the more impressive given my day job. Not only can I argue a case in court, but I can also survive a bear attack.” I eyed his notebook. “Check out item number seven. It’ll get any bloke past a grizzly or a black bear.”
He smacked the notebook on his thigh, looking skeptical. “I’m not questioning that you can research how to survive a bear attack, since you did it to put the item on here. Frankly, neither one of us ought to be putting that one to the test. Spoiler alert—the bear usually wins. But let’s go back to your other supposed skill.” His eyebrow rose to the ceiling. “‘Argue a case’? You’re a corporate attorney, inking contracts from your swank Park Avenue office. You’re hardly a prosecutor orating in court, Atticus.”
I stopped strumming, shooting him an oh no, you didn’t stare. “First, you enlist me as your comrade in tackling this Be a Man list for your podcast. Then you malign my ability to execute the tasks. Now you question my talent in the courtroom? I’m not sure you understand the meaning of the words help a fella out.”
“Fine, fine. You can fend off the next black bear we run into if-slash-when we answer the call of the wild,” he said, just as my phone bleated.
Jason peered at it on the coffee table, then arched a brow. “Ohhhhh. Summer’s calling. Your totally charming, utterly adorable bestie who you deny having a thing for,” he said in a high-pitched tone, sliding the phone across the coffee table like he’d caught me in the act of—what? Having a friend with breasts? “Go on. Answer it.”
“Men and women can be friends, as you well know.” I clicked answer on the call and said, “Oliver Harris, at your service.”
“Hi,” Summer said, biting out the word. Sensing the rage in that one little syllable, I sat up straighter. Then, like she was breathing fire, she scorched the next word from her mouth. “Drew.”
As she hissed, the light bulb went on in my brain, illuminating an image of someone she used to date. “Ah, Douchey Ex Number Three?”
“Yes. He took my work ideas and claimed they were his.”
“That is grounds for top prize in jackassery.”
“And obviously why I broke up with him, though he never saw it that way. He thought my ideas were just ‘part of the conversational fabric and, therefore, fair game, and why don’t we try to work this out, sweetie-pie lovey-bear?’”
“And the double pet names didn’t win you back? Such a shock.”
“I know, right?”
“Also, who the hell says ‘conversational fabric’ unless it’s an op-ed piece for a snooty newspaper?”
“Drew, that’s who. And guess what he did now?”
“Don’t keep me waiting. I’m on the edge of my seat.”
“He invited me to his wedding,” she said, irritation thick in her voice. Suddenly, I had one goal—erase that irritation as soon as possible.
“Say no,” I said, since that was the easiest method to wipe it away.
“I would, except . . . remember? We work together, and the whole department is going. There’s this office-vibe thing, and I look like the petulant jackass if I don’t attend. Like I’m holding a grudge.”
“‘Conversational fabric’ is reason enough to hold a grudge. It’s in the guidebook.”
“Along with claiming any idea of yours is ‘fair game.’ Also, inviting an ex to your wedding should be in the guidebook.”
“That’s in the How to Be a Total Arse handbook.”
“Ah, but of course. Why did I take a job at this company?”
“You’re a glutton for punishment, clearly.”
“I know, and now I have to go to this wedding, says the rule book for being the bigger person compared to my douchey ex. What am I supposed to do?”
The answer was so simple I barely thought about it. There was one way to survive a black bear attack—make yourself look gigantic. I could help her in that department.
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
“You will?” Her voice lightened immediately. Gone was the anger. In its place was something else . . . amusement perhaps.
“I’ll be your pretend boyfriend,” I offered. It seemed like the ideal solution.
My normally confident, outgoing friend was quiet for a beat. “Like we’ve done before?”
“Exactly. Unless you don’t want me to, in which case I will spend the time showing my hapless cousin how to fix a flat tire, because I’ll wager he can’t do that without my help.” I looked over to tell Jason, “You do know law school teaches students how to fix flat tires?”
“Exactly what law school did you go to?” he asked, rolling his eyes.
Summer laughed—a warm, happy sound that made me certain playing her beau for the night was the right choice. “So it’s between helping me and fixing a flat tire with Jason?”
“Yes, but you’re far more interesting than working on a car, I assure you.” I returned to the music, absently strumming The Beatles again.
“What is that sound? Is there a cockatoo strangling a trumpet near you?” she asked.
My shoulders sagged. “I’m playing the guitar. And I swear, you and my cousin are in cahoots. Did you go to the same school of insult metaphors? Now, would you like me to go with you, and we can show this asshat at the office that, one, it’s rude to invite an ex to a wedding, and, two, if you are such a twit that you do invite an ex, you are going to be shown up by a much sexier, much more handsome new beau?” I paused for dramatic effect. “Me.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you have a ginormous—”
“Yes, of course. All the time.”
“Ego, Oliver. Ego.”
“If you mean ‘ego’ as a euphemism for the crown jewels, then also yes.”
“You’re incorrigible,” she said, but she was laughing again, happy again. And that was what I wanted from Summer. After all, she’d been one half of the reason I didn’t spiral into depression during high school. She’d done everything she could to keep my spirits up during the darkest days of my life. This was the least I could do for her.
“That’s better than being corrigible, isn’t it? Tell me when to pick you up.”
She gave me the details, and when I hung up, Jason stared at me, lips twitching, eyebrows archin
g. “So, it’s the old pretend-boyfriend ruse, is it?”
“Why, yes, it is.”
“You know what they say about that.”
I strummed another chord. “No, I don’t. Enlighten me.”
But he simply laughed rather than answering, and I didn’t give his comments a second thought.
After all, being Summer’s pretend boyfriend had always been easy.
On a Sunday evening two weeks later, I knocked on the door to Summer’s apartment. As it opened, I said, “All right, sexy fake girlfriend, get on my arm and let’s show you off like the—”
My jaw dropped.
Possibly literally.
Definitely figuratively.
Because holy fuck.
Summer was a fox.
She wore some kind of dress. Some kind of fabric. Who the hell knew what any of it was except light blue and delectable.
She looked nothing like the girl I’d known most of my life, yet everything like her too.
She was sex appeal and sweetness all wrapped up in one delicious package.
“Like the what?” she asked, curious. “Show me off like the what?”
My throat was dry, but I managed to speak through the desert. “Let’s show you off like you’re the thing he most regrets.”
Because jackass or not, how could Drew not regret his fuckup? Losing this woman had to be cause for going to the hospital to check for alarmingly high levels of relationship remorse.
She smiled, and it did something funny to my chest.
Something funny that I shoved into a dark corner of my mind, determined not to examine.
I hooked her arm through mine, then we left her building and slid into a waiting Uber.
In the car, I reminded myself of our roles, and that quick reset was all I needed to ignore that dark corner of my mind.
At the wedding, it was easy, so damn easy to pretend she was mine, but that wasn’t because she was all dolled up.
It was because we knew each other. We had an ease between us. A rhythm.
Dear Sexy Ex-Boyfriend (The Guys Who Got Away Book 1) Page 5