“Do you think I’ll be easy to replace?” I asked, the words falling out more easily than anything I’d said to her, ever. I stared at her, desperate for her to respond.
She swiped at her cheek with her fingertips, trying to keep the movement subtle. It didn’t work. I’d made this strong, sassy girl cry. A small part of me hoped, pathetically, that at least some of the tears were due to a broken heart.
I took one more tentative step her way. She didn’t move back this time, but she didn’t acknowledge me, either. I watched a tear roll down her cheek, heard the whisper-quiet sound of it plopping on her shirt. “I really am sorry, Liz. I’d give anything to—”
“You’ve done enough,” she ground out through her teeth.
I nodded, then took a step back. I should have said something else—anything else—but she was so closed off that I didn’t think she would have really heard me anyway. Every second standing in front of her while feeling like she hated me was one second too many.
So I quietly walked back to my room. Just as I was about to open the door, she said, “You know, you really did have me fooled. The whole time I was dating these other guys, I kept thinking that it proved something, about how perfect you were for me compared to anyone else, and about fate and inevitability or some shit. Like it was serendipity that I happened to move in with a guy that was perfect for me. I thought that since Philadelphia could only find me guys to date that I hated, and then I came home and had such a good time with you, it meant that I could never get along with anyone as well as I got along with you.”
“And?” I asked, my eyebrows up, my heart begging for this to be my second chance.
“And what you proved instead was that you’re a creep who was just trying his hardest to keep me to yourself! Or maybe it was all some sort of sick, weird game to you. Either way, I’ve been jerked around and you are trash.” Then, she broke. Her chest heaved in a sob and the tears started in earnest. She looked like she could collapse to the floor at any moment, and I would be the one responsible.
Dammit, she was right. I was scum.
“Liz, I—”
“Just…make sure you’re out. Soon.”
Chapter 24
Liz
I couldn’t think straight enough to try to make sense of the complete and total mess that was Jordan’s excuse for weighting the vote for every single one of my Liz Dates Philly matches in favor of the worst choice. I’d spent the last four months quietly stewing in a detached sort of hatred for the readers of Philly Illustrated for picking these horrible dates for, when in reality the villain of this whole haphazard debacle slept the next room over. And sometimes in my bed. And sometimes naked next to me.
The problem was, that just thinking about Jordan that way made me ache. Thinking about being alone in in our – my – apartment was crushing. I had to push through, though. I only had one goal, now - figure out how to make this Liz Dates Philly voting fraud disaster better. But first I had to get myself cleaned up.
Okay, then. Two goals.
As much as I hated the idea of putting my body any closer to Jordan’s, whose bedroom door was mere footsteps away, instinct told me that a long, hot shower always made me feel more human and helped me think. I desperately needed both things right now.
Letting the steam fill my nostrils and wrap around my body was comforting, as always, and when I stepped out of the shower I felt less like a snotting, rabid anger beast and more like my determined, rational self. Well, as rational as anyone could have been in my situation. I wrapped myself tightly in my longest, plushest robe - there was no way Jordan was ever going to see those parts of me again after what he’d done, no matter how hot I still thought he was. I tentatively stuck my head out of the bathroom, then darted out to the living room to gather the papers Monica had shoved into my hands just a couple hours ago. I didn’t really know what I was looking for, but I knew I had no clue how to fix any of this.
I also knew Monica had put the full responsibility on me.
I pulled up the “Liz Dates Philly” homepage and rolled my eyes at the ridiculous display of guys who had been ‘in the running’, each picture of a rejected guy crossed off with an ‘X’ that looked like it had been drawn with red lipstick.
I remembered all of them, some of them more vaguely than others. My eyes landed on Sam, who I thought wouldn’t have been a bad choice at all. I scanned the tally of votes he’d received and compared it to the others - they were within dozens of votes of each other. The date could have gone to any of the guys in a matter of minutes.
Which, of course, made sense. Jordan would have started slow, realized he could actually sway the votes in a meaningful way, and then become more methodical about it. Jesus, was he planning to greet me at home after the most awful of dates? Playing the long game of being the understanding, supportive friend for months until my frustration with the awful bachelors boiled over? Waiting to swoop in to my rescue, look like the hero, and then, of course, get laid? Thinking through, step-by-step, the best way to make my eyes rove over his muscles, the quickest way to get me to scream his name?
A whimper broke out of my throat. He was awfully good at all those things. And as good as he was at the actual seduction-and-sex side of stuff, he was even better at what came after. Jordan’s fingers smoothing through my hair or his lips pressing lazy kisses to my neck after he came were some of the most calming, warm, loving memories I had. Everything between us had felt so genuine.
How had I been so stupid?
I blew out a long breath and forced my thoughts back to where they needed to be. On bringing Monica a solution to all this that would not only let her save face, but be a damn good twist on the unexpected capstone of this whole thing.
I buried my face in my hands and groaned. Being a grownup sucked. I would have given anything to be back in Political stats class, analyzing polls and calculating errors of margin.
Then, something clicked. Of course. This wasn’t a dating game. This was a voting game. A shallow one in the form of a voyeuristic popularity contest, sure, but votes were votes. Jordan’s vote-stealing was an error, but that didn’t mean the whole election was lost. I could still figure out who would have won each date even if the guy I was sleeping with on the side hadn’t decided to piss all over my choices.
I sat up and started attacking my keyboard, loving the heady rush that I always got when my thoughts were flying around too fast for me to type. I had to get these thesis notes down if I was going to crunch these numbers with any kind of integrity.
If I took Jordan’s votes out of the equation, tallied up the vote totals for each of the guys I didn’t end up going on a date with, then removed any outliers within a standard deviation, then quietly deleted any of the guys who just weren’t viable candidates because of obvious factors like lack of hygiene or obsession with their mothers, I would have a list of the winners, top-to-bottom, in no time.
Excel spreadsheets would be my best friends today. I opened one, grabbed a highlighter in one hand and the stack of papers bearing IP addresses in the other, and got to work literally erasing Jordan Jacobs from the last four months of my life.
Several hours later, the early November sun had already started its early descent. The darkness edged the sunlight into deepening vibrant stripes of orange and yellow, and exhaustion crept over me, making my head and limbs feel heavier by the minute. I hadn’t finished tallying everything yet, but I was getting close. There was a light at the end of this tunnel.
I snuck into the kitchen to heat up some pizza rolls and cobble together a salad. After eating just enough to stop my stomach growling, I slunk into the bathroom, quiet as a ghost, to pee and brush my teeth before collapsing into bed.
Jordan wasn’t as quiet - not nearly. He clunked around the bathroom, letting the cabinet slam shut and struggling with the shower curtain. Even the squeak when he turned the handle for the shower seemed louder, even from inside my room.
I smirked at the idea of him standing th
ere under the shower head, shocked by how cold the water was after I’d stood under it for far longer than was responsible given our shitty water heater.
My traitorous imagination, though, worked too fast for my logic to keep up. Because as soon as I opened up to the thought of Jordan in the shower, my brain went straight to Jordan naked in the shower. I’d memorized the planes of his chest, his strong arms, the way those muscles cutting over his hip bones were carved into the most deliciously suggestive lines.
“Dammit!” I hissed into the darkness. The fact that Jordan was a lying, possessive asshole didn’t negate the fact that he was the hottest guy I’d ever seen naked. And now I was all hot and bothered.
I groaned and got out of bed, heading straight to the still-unpacked moving box that I knew was labeled “bedside table.” It took a few minutes of loud rumbling and cursing as various items crushed or pinched my fingers, but eventually I found the zippered case that held the latex-covered battery-powered column that had, on occasion, been my little workhorse disembodied buzzing boyfriend.
It only seemed right to wait until Jordan was out of the shower to put my memories of his naked chest, his tongue lapping at my clit, his heavy, hard cock rocking inside me to good use. I made damn sure that he heard my vibrator working in and out of me that night, and I didn’t even try to hold back on the moans.
Luckily, I came to my senses just before his name came screaming from my lips.
It took every ounce of confidence I had to walk into the Philly Illustrated office Monday morning.
I hadn't been able to sleep very well, tossing and turning and reliving my fight with Jordan, and his betrayal, in a dozen different ways - in a fantasy kingdom, where he was supposed to rescue me from a tower and ended up freeing the dragon instead of killing it; in a business office where he took credit for a report I had been the main worker on; in a restaurant where I was the manager and he sabotaged the staff to work too slowly to bring in any real cash.
The betrayal was a shock every time, and that was what upset me most when I woke up, thrashing and fuming mad, from each dream.
Eventually, I forced myself to sit up, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and snuck into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. It was still pitch-black outside, and the cold hardwood floor sent a chill up through my legs. I blinked and stared at the clock until the red glowing numbers were no longer a blur. Four fifteen. Great.
French press and mug in hand, I traipsed back to my room, settled myself on the bed, and cracked open my laptop. "Might as well start trying to figure this whole clusterfuck of a situation out," I muttered to myself.
I pulled up the tally of numbers I'd finished before going to sleep last night. The guy with the most votes was one of the main crop of super-generic-looking guys that I'd begun this whole thing with. As the weeks had worn on, Monica had found increasingly...interesting men for me to date. This one wore a suit in his picture, but it wasn't a law-office headshot or a drunken wedding outtake. He was at a bar or club of some sort, evidenced by the soft orbs of light in the background and the tumbler of amber liquid in his hand. He had on a white button-down shirt and a skinny black tie, with scattering of reddish-brown stubble, just a shade darker than his hair, over his jaw and chin. He was laughing at someone or something off-camera, and he looked genuinely happy. The light in his eyes was the kind that didn't come from faking it.
He looked real. Nice. Successful, and confident, but good.
Just a basic, good guy.
I could use a basic good guy, I decided.
"Nathaniel Perfect," I murmured as I clicked open the more detailed file buried in the "Liz Dates Philly" folder on Philly Mag's common drive. "His name is literally Mr. Perfect?" I let out a soft, incredulous laugh, and scrolled further down his profile. He was a research geneticist at children's hospital. Not a doctor, exactly, his profile said, but you could tell your mom I help sick kids. That's gotta be worth something. I laughed. Very cute. Lives near CHOP, so not too close by if things went really bad. I could avoid him in the future. If he was as health-conscious as he seemed, I probably would never see him at Joey and Hawk’s.
And he had all those votes. He was cute, and successful, and he took a chance on submitting his name for this dumbassed project with Philly Illustrated that just so happened to be kickstarting my career. Maybe he thought I was cute, too. Maybe he liked my writing or maybe he read my list of interests and thought he'd like dating me.
With that thought, all my dates from the past couple months ran through my mind. How many of those guys had signed up for the project because they were interested in having a conversation with me? Exactly zero.
Which was how you rationalized sleeping with JJ in the first place.
I shook my head back and forth, hard, trying to jar myself from this train of thought. I was a very cute girl with mad writing skills and a varied set of interests in one of the most populous cities in the United States of America. I refused to believe that the only guy in this city that I was compatible with was Jordan fucking Jacobs, especially since he turned out to be possessive and borderline-stalkery. Stacking those votes took hard work and dedication. He had to really want to screw me over.
Or maybe he just wanted to be the only one screwing me.
Either way, I wasn't happy about the deception. Not one bit.
"Okay, Mr. Perfect," I muttered as my fingers began to fly across the keyboard. "I hope you're still up for this."
Four hours later, I emerged from my room, dressed and as well-made up as possible while avoiding the bathroom. My whole frosty bitch strategy toward Jordan would be messed up if I bumped into him coming out of the bathroom in any state of undress and stammered all over him, so I'd snagged my makeup bag and perched myself on the edge of my mattress with a compact in one hand while shakily applying eyeliner and lipstick.
Damn Jordan Jacobs. He could even force me to mess up my makeup.
Whatever. It didn't matter, not one bit. I was ready for this.
Until, that is, I reached for my keys and my fingers brushed against a white wax-paper bag. Inside was a blueberry scone wrapped in white paper, with two words scrawled on it in red sharpie.
With a pang of sadness, I realized how rarely I'd seen JJ's handwriting. We'd lived together for five months, known each other in so many different ways, and I didn't even know if I'd be able to pick his messy engineer's scrawl out of a lineup.
Just two little words were scrawled on the bag.
“I'm sorry.”
I pressed my lips together and squeezed my eyes shut, taking a deep breath. I would not cry. I would not, and I could not. Especially since I was trying to avoid the bathroom.
The first time I'd ordered this and told Jordan it was my favorite, he'd made annoying jokes about Italian blueberries the whole walk home.
A lump rose in my throat, but I pushed it back down with all the fierceness I could muster. I couldn't allow myself to care. I couldn't let him pull me down again and out of a job.
I unwrapped the scone, gently broke its perfectly-glazed, blueberry-drizzled surface in halves, and sighed in sadness over what I was about to do to it. Then, I broke the scone into a pile of teeny tiny crumbs. I moved quickly but precisely for a minute or so, then stepped back to admire my handiwork.
There, in the middle of the little table that had definitely seen the full range of the drama of me and JJ's relationship, was spelled out with purple crumbs,
JJ - Fuck off. <3 Liz.
I nodded, then brushed the stray crumbs off my palms. That should get the message across nicely.
My stomach growled, the sound ripping through our—my—quiet apartment.
God, even my appetite was attached to fucking Jordan Jacobs.
I ducked into my cube and opened my laptop, breathing out a long, slow breath before doing a final review of the presentation.
"So you're telling me that your plan for apologizing for all these rigged dates and making it right is to go on another rigged date?" Monic
a asked wearily, peering at me through the pink-and-purple spectacles slid down on her nose.
"Sort of. It'd be an apology to the voters, because we'd be honoring their actual votes. Nathaniel Perfect would have beaten all the other guys in a landslide if Jordan hadn't been fucking with the poll, see?" I leaned forward and tapped the pad of my index finger to the paper. "They actually really liked him. They wanted me to have a nice time. It's kind of sweet."
"Yeah, adorable," Monica grumbled. "What about the sponsors?"
"That's easy. I go on a date with him every day for a week, where we visit every establishment that paid. We’ll start with dinner on Friday and end with dinner on Sunday. Brunch, city walks, and other stuff in between. If Mr. Perfect turns out to be awful, it'll still be enough entertainment to make up for all the dates that both the voters and sponsors might feel shorted out of. If it's great...and I kind of think this guy has the actual potential to be really nice, and a good date—then it'll be romantic and intriguing and all the sponsors will get really, really good reviews."
Monica shook her head, like she was stumped. "There's gotta be something more. Something unique to the marathon nature of the thing, which I'll admit, is kind of genius. If readers don't have to sit down and read one huge-ass piece about it to get a sense of what happened.”
"Easy," Alphonso said. "Just live-tweet it. Link to Facebook and Tumblr and whatever and Instagram pictures of you guys at each location. We'll get a hashtag. We'll hype it up hard over the next two days. As the week goes on, we’ll get more followers. Maybe even local news coverage if we get on it."
"Alphonso, that's really smart," I said, admittedly a little surprised that he'd pulled something so well-thought out from his brain at just the right moment.
"I can't believe this guy's name," Alphonso said, falling against his chair back in a slouchy mope. "Only you would actually go on a weekend-long date with a literal Mr. Perfect, funded by the good business owners of Philadelphia."
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