Down on Love

by Jayne Denker

  George sat back and stared at her old blog entry, her insides roiling. Seeing the remnants of her former self stirred up all kinds of emotions, and they were all violently colliding, like she was hosting the world’s smallest demolition derby in her chest. But she reread every word. It was imperative she remind herself of what happens in relationships, what had happened to her just a few years ago. She’d almost forgotten, and she could never allow that. If she did, she ran the risk of repeating the same disaster with yet another guy . . . and she had to be honest, if anybody was going to get her to cave and make another massively bad decision, it was Casey.

  Then a tiny voice shouted over the cacophony of crashes in that echoing cavity where her heart was supposed to be: Hey, Casey wouldn’t do the same thing to you. Even Sera says he’s a good guy.

  Oh great. The Optimism Fairy. George just couldn’t manage to kill that thing, no matter how hard and how frequently she tried. She told it to shut up and go stand over there, right in the middle of the arena, and await further instructions. There, it’d get pancaked between two half-demolished cars—maybe three, if she was lucky—any second now. She waited quietly for the anguished scream that proved the little Optimism Fairy had met its maker.

  It didn’t come.

  She decided she needed more ammo. Oh yeah, this old entry should do the trick.

  Hi DoLlies. I had a dark, backslidey moment the other day, and I wanted to tell you about it. My roommate brought home a new boyfriend (she goes through quite a few, and rather quickly), and as I was listening to them go at it on the other side of our adjoining bedroom wall for the third time in as many hours, I hate to admit it, but I started wishing I had someone special in my life. (Get your fingers off that keyboard! I have told you time and again I am not up for grabs! I said it was a moment of darkness, not a change of heart!)

  Anyway, it sort of made me want to booty-call Lucifer, or—even worse—contact him at a normal time of day instead of three in the morning, and ask if he’d like to “get some coffee” and “just talk about things.”

  Did I actually call him? No, I did not. Is that progress?

  God, she was so weak. More reminders. More.

  Guest post! Please welcome Andrea and behold her Tale of Woe:

  I had been going out with Vlad the Impaler for about a year. Okay, he’s not actually a vampire, but he managed to stick a fang in my hopes and dreams and drain them dry before I even knew what hit me, so the name applies. He led me to believe we’d be together forever. He told me he loved me. I believed him. I was an idiot.

  We went on vacation to Mexico. We were in a market, browsing the stalls. The proprietor of one stall struck up a conversation with Vlad. I had taken Spanish in school, so I can make out some of it, but darned if I can speak it anymore. Anyway, I overheard the guy ask Vlad if we were newlyweds. I blushed, thinking it was so sweet. Even though I played it cool, pretending not to be paying attention, I was listening really closely, because I couldn’t wait to hear what Vlad was going to say.

  He practically bit the guy’s head off—started yelling that we were sólo amigos, “just friends.” Yikes, right? He knew the Spanish word for “girlfriend,” but he refused to use it. In fact, there was no “amor” in there anywhere.

  I didn’t say anything, but when we got back to the hotel, he started acting all weird, and then, out of the blue, he freaked out and broke up with me in the middle of our vacation. Because a total stranger thought we looked cute together and innocently asked if we were married. I got dumped in the middle of Mexico, where I’d never been before, and I had a really fun time trying to make my way back to Mexico City on my own to get out of the country a week earlier than planned.

  Whatta guy, right?

  Oh yeah. That was a good one. George paused and listened closely for any sound of the Optimism Fairy, maybe fluttering her wings feebly as she tried to extricate herself from the midst of a many-car pileup.

  Nothing.

  Nothing was good.

  George knew the Mexico entry would do her in. Because there was no “Andrea.” The entry was one of the ones she’d made up early on, before she’d built up a following and people started sending in their dating horror stories. “Vlad’s” real name was Freddy (maybe she should have used it in the blog entry to really convey what a horror show that relationship was). They’d done the too-fast-too-soon two-step and crashed and burned quickly. Yeah, she had a million of her own Tales of Woe—if nobody else had ever sent her one, she could have kept the blog going with her own anecdotes for a good long time. God, so humiliating, but there it was. She sucked at picking guys. She’d have loved to blame the men, but if she channeled Jaz and looked for a common denominator, she had to acknowledge it was her.

  This was probably one of the entries Casey had read and figured out she was the real author. How did he do that? I know you, he’d said. Good grief, what if he really, truly did? What if he could see right through her? There would be nowhere to hide. And she really, truly wanted to hide.

  She knew a good place for that. As long as Amelia was actually napping for once (miracle of miracles), she could hide in her blog. First she went back into the Vlad the Impaler entry and put an asterisk after the name “Andrea,” then added a footnote stating it was really her. Then she did the same for the other entries she’d fabricated. Time to come clean with an entry explaining her past foibles and begging for forgiveness from her DoLlies. She hoped they’d accept her apology; it was better late than never. After that, she’d check her inbox. There was sure to be a whole batch of new messages; it was time to start mining for some gold.

  “Goddammit, Jill, what’s the matter with you? We’re trying to build something, here, not play demolition derby with the Bobcats!”

  “Sorry, Casey! I’m sorry! It was an accident!”

  “Just drive it into the ditch next—make it a trifecta.”

  “Hey, man, lay off,” Darryl called from across the yard. “She said it was an accident.”

  “And why are you here when those pumpkin slingshots need to be put up?”

  “Like I’m going to go halfway across the farm when you’re doing your best impression of the Hulk. Somebody needs to babysit you before you start throwing picnic tables.”

  Casey turned away, so aggravated he felt like his skin was on fire. Why the hell had he ever hired Darryl and Jill, anyway? The first rule of running a business was never to hire your friends. But then who else could he get to work for him? He knew everybody in town. It was a pain in the ass when your employees thought they could talk to you any way they wanted. He should reprimand him. Both of them. Why was everybody going off the rails lately? It was like they were possessed or something.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” Darryl demanded, marching up to him.

  “What’s the matter with me?”

  “Yeah, you—aw, shit. Never mind. I know what your problem is. But it is not cool to take it out on the rest of us.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Like hell, you don’t. You’re still pissed off about the whole George thing.”

  “I am not—”

  “Don’t waste your breath, dude. This is me you’re talking to. Jesus, what’s it been, two weeks now? Go and see her. Try again.”

  “No way in hell.”

  “Then suffer. But keep it to yourself. Don’t take the rest of us down with you.”

  “I’m not suffering. And I’m not stuck on ‘the whole George thing.’ I’m just trying to get the farm ready for the opening. There’s so much—”

  “Aw, quit that. We’re right on schedule.”

  “We’re opening in six weeks, plus all the stuff for the gala!”

  “Never thought I’d hear you use the word ‘gala,’ like, ever, let alone with a straight face.”

  “This is huge, D. You know that.”

  Darryl shook his head, incredulous. “Of course I know it. You’ve been working on this for years. But you a
lways forget we have too. What you want is what we want. You’re not on your own with this. The place is going to be great, I swear. So just chill, all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re about as far from fine as you can get. You’ve been working nonstop ever since—”

  Darryl stopped short, but Casey knew what he was going to say. He’d been up to his eyeballs in the farm since George had shut him down so definitively on the Fourth of July. After he’d spent a little time in Self-Pity Land, he pushed past it and decided to focus solely on work. It felt good to have specific goals to reach, things to check off his list: finishing the petting zoo corrals, clearing the ground for the punkin-chunkin’ slingshots, installing the playground equipment, making the hay bale mountain bigger, painting the picnic tables. His employees hated him by now, because he had been working them till they dropped. That hadn’t been fair. He was willing to work till he dropped, but he was exhausting them right along with him. Putting the pumpkin farm together wasn’t fun anymore. He regretted that.

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “It’s okay. We understand.”

  “No, it’s not okay. Look, I’m going to get out of your hair for a while—take a drive, take care of some things. I’ll be gone for the rest of the day. Tell everybody to . . . keep doing what they’re doing. Oh—and tell Elliot to get everybody sundaes from Lix around three o’clock. There’s money in the petty-cash box.”

  He started to walk away when Darryl called after him, “Hey! Case!”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s gonna be okay, dude.”

  Casey smiled grimly. He wasn’t sure if Darryl was talking about the farm or the situation with George. He also didn’t believe it was true for either thing, but he nodded all the same. “Sure.”

  Chapter 22

  “George.”

  “Ssh.”

  “George!”

  “Ssh!”

  “Will you please—”

  “What part of ‘ssh’ do you not understand? I’m trying to concentrate!”

  Sera crossed her clay-caked arms and leaned in her sister’s bedroom doorway. “Fine. I’ll wait.”

  George held up one hand and kept staring at her laptop screen. Then she slouched and rubbed her eyes. “And whatever that idea was . . . it’s gone. Thanks a bunch.”

  “I still don’t understand why you act like you have to bleed for that blog of yours.”

  “Never expected you to.”

  “Nice.”

  “Mind telling me why you yanked me out of my groove?”

  “That’s what you’re calling it?” Sera smirked.

  “Well?”

  “You have a visitor.”

  Legs crossed, George leaned back against the maple headboard of her old twin bed. “There is nobody out there I want to see.”

  “Nevertheless—”

  “Tell them to go away.”

  “Nope.”

  “You are such a pain in my ass.”

  “I’m your sister.”

  “Synonymous.”

  George slammed her laptop shut, threw herself off the bed, and pushed past Sera, intending to get this over with as quickly as possible. She’d spent the past couple of weeks hiding out in the house, avoiding the folks in town—and even her own family—as much as possible. Whoever this person was, the conversation was going to be so brief they wouldn’t know what hit them.

  Then she paused halfway down the stairs. What if it was Casey? She hadn’t seen him since the Fourth. Since she’d blatantly rejected him, for the second time. And this time he hadn’t come back around to see if she’d changed her mind.

  She started down the stairs again. George really didn’t blame him—after all, there was only so much a guy could take. Which was what she was counting on. She really, really needed him to give up. She needed him to go be with—

  “Celia.” The dark-haired woman was standing on the porch, looking out over the yard. George pushed the screen door open. “Why didn’t Sera let you in? I swear, my sister has no manners—”

  “Hey, George. It’s okay. I just came by to give you this.” Celia held out a purple flash drive. “It’s the photos I took for the Bowen Farms brochure.”

  Oh, right—the Web site she’d promised to build for Casey. What was she going to do about that now?

  “Wow, Celia, thanks. You didn’t have to hand-deliver them. You could have e-mailed them to me.”

  “I know. But I wanted to talk to you. If you have a minute.”

  “Yeah, sure,” George stammered, stepping outside with her.

  They sat on the top step, and George suddenly remembered a late spring day, years and years ago, when she had been about eleven and Celia twelve. Their mothers had gotten together to discuss some PTA stuff, leaving them to spend time however they chose. So they ate popsicles and talked about boys and gossiped about girls and discussed their plans for summer camp. George had done a little skateboarding, and Celia had watched. No, wait, George had managed to get her on the board eventually and had shown her a few moves. She’d completely forgotten that day till just now, completely forgotten she and Celia had kind of been if not friends, then amiable acquaintances before they had been relegated to their separate social corners as teenagers—Celia to the cheerleaders and the popular kids and classes one year ahead of her, and George to the geeks and intellectuals. Well, not even that. George had been an island, with just Megan as a best friend. Still, their school was so small the social divides weren’t too severe, and bullying was minimal, but it was the last time the girls had spent time together. And from what George recalled, they’d had a really nice time. She wondered if Celia remembered that day as well.

  If she did, she didn’t mention it. Instead, she pressed her palms together between her knees and said, “It’s about the whole ‘taking sides’ thing. I guess you probably figured that out,” she added. “I just . . . couldn’t believe those shirts and everything.”

  “You and me both.”

  “I didn’t know anything about that.”

  “Of course not. Why would you?”

  Celia shrugged and fiddled with her earring. “Well, I should have figured it out. Ray and Nate got into this argument—I suppose you could tell Ray was on, uh, my side, and Nate took yours—and it just snowballed from there. I tried to stop them, but they wouldn’t listen. So we got . . .”

  “Dueling T-shirts.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Celia, can I ask a question?”

  “If I were you, I’d ask a whole lot more.”

  “I’ll start with one: Why?”

  Celia laughed, showing off her perfect white teeth. She and Casey had always looked so good together—the ideal couple everyone wanted to be like. Of course, the entire time they were going out, the rest of the girls were plotting ways to wrest Casey away from her. And it was likely the rest of the guys were thinking the same thing about Celia.

  The pretty woman shook her head and sighed. “God, I don’t know. Ray got it into his head a while back, after my husband and I divorced, that I needed another guy. Even though I told him I didn’t. He looked around, zeroed in on Casey, and has been doing the full-court press on the poor guy ever since.”

  “And you’ve never considered it? Going out with Casey again?” George ventured. Celia looked at her strangely, so she pushed on. “I mean, he’s nice, he’s handsome, he’s single. You’re nice, you’re beautiful, you’re single. Why not?”

  Celia shook her head again. “Honestly, Casey’s great and everything, but I don’t . . . I don’t think I’m ready to date just yet. And I mean anybody, even somebody as great as he is. I had an ugly breakup. I need some time just for me, you know?”

  “I do know. I went through something similar last year.”

  “You got divorced too?”

  “A live-in-boyfriend situation. Even so, it was tough moving on from it. Even if he was a jackass.”

  “Then you know where my head is
. The need to take a break.”

  “Yeah . . . but . . . put a time limit on it. It’s okay to take that break, but if you stay there too long, you get stuck. Take it from me.”

  “You really are good at this advice thing, aren’t you?”

  George rolled her eyes. “Oh God, no. ‘For entertainment purposes only. For actual guidance that won’t completely screw up your head, consult a professional therapist.’”

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard good things about you.”

  “Celia,” she said suddenly, “are Marsden folks writing in to the blog?”

  Celia smiled slyly. “Oh, yes. I know that for a fact.”

  “Great,” George groaned.

  “And they like the advice you’ve been giving them. They really have.”

  “They’ve gotten me away from my standard ‘dump his ass’ reply, you know. That was always my policy—to recommend breaking up with a significant other if you had any complaints about them. I mean, any at all. Well, anything that would make you write in to a strange relationship-complaint blog, anyway. If you do, you’re pretty much asking for it. But now that I suspect I’m actually getting requests from my friends and neighbors, I’ve ended up being more . . .”

  “Thoughtful in your responses?”

  “Ugh. Sounds awful when you say it like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Out loud.”

  Celia laughed again, stood up, and brushed off the seat of her shorts. “You’re doing great, George. Don’t worry.”

  “You should go out with Casey again,” George heard herself say, even as another part of her brain screamed in protest—at her bluntness? Or because she was still campaigning to get Casey out of her life when it wasn’t what she wanted at all? She avoided examining the reason.

  “I . . . uh . . . don’t know how to answer that, to tell you the truth.”