There’s that annoying word again. “But?” I ask, trying with all my might to stop my lip from trembling.
“But I’m not going anywhere. Let’s take it slow. And if you’ll allow it, I’d love to see you again when you get back.”
That’s it? No explanation? I’m still stumped, even if enamored by his proposition.
I can do one of two things. Walk away and sulk because I didn’t get my way. Or, gracefully trust his hesitance as an it’s not you, it’s me situation.
While the old Leni would no doubt opt for scenario one, make a fool of herself, and then drown her sorrows in a gallon of Rocky Road, the new Leni has turned a new leaf. “Fine,” I huff, my body slumping against the wall. I almost make a joke about how my trusty Lelo will have to finish what he started, but I think better of it and smile with poise. “I hate to see you go, but I’ll love watching you leave.” I wink, masking the devastation that has to be visible in my eyes.
Lane hovers against me and places a soft kiss on my lips. I want more. I want to pull him closer and get lost again, but I have to trust that he knows what he’s doing. With one final peck on the tip of my nose, my hand falls from Lane’s as he withdraws. “Thank you for a perfect date. It may not have ended the way you wanted it to, but this is far from over.”
I smile, hoping this isn’t a let down, just a hold up in our—whatever this is. I wave him off as he gets back into the cab, holding back the tears of rejection until he’s out of sight.
I CAN’T RELY ON HER as a shopping buddy, but Tatum wants to be front row center while I wallow on Misery Lane, pun totally intended.
She shows up at my place wielding a giant stuffed teddy bear that’s almost the entire length of her five foot four frame. I can barely see her behind the massive thing, but there’s no denying it’s Tatum. I’d recognize those hot pink Uggs anywhere.
“Get in here, you idiot.”
I pull her inside and she stumbles, the bear breaking her fall.
“I thought you had plans with Paul, number one. And number two, what’s with the bear?”
Tatum seats our new furry friend on my oversized armchair and adjusts him, just so, until he’s no longer lopsided. His inanimate, beady black eyes mock me and I hold myself back from punching the factory manufactured smile off his plush face.
“Paul fell asleep mid-Netflix so we never got to the chill part, and the bear is a comfort gesture because I know Rocky Road is off limits.” Her eyes flicker with an idea. “Oh! That can be his name! Leni, this is Rocky Road. He’s here to listen to your dilemma.” Her voice is high pitched, saccharine. She over enunciates her words the way a mother would when speaking to her baby in goo-goo-ga-ga language. It doesn’t make me feel any better. In fact, it pisses me off even more.
“Please don’t make fun of this situation. This blows donkey balls, Tay. You shouldn’t have come. I’m just gonna haul my ass to bed and forget this night ever happened!” I plop down next to Rocky Road and crane my arm around his neck. It’s not a hug, it’s a choke hold, but his warm, round body is kind of comforting so I ease up on the big fella.
“Start from the top and leave no stone unturned. I need all the deets to make sure I can give you the best friend advice you so rightly deserve.” I almost expect her to whip out a pencil from behind her ear and a notepad from her back pocket. She doesn’t have to, though. We’ve been down similar roads many a time, and Tatum is like my own personal therapist, minus the hefty copay.
“We had the best time.” My heart thunders in my chest when I recall how effortlessly wonderful the entire day with Lane was. “We laughed while we shopped, and he actually helped me pick out a few things that I might not have found on my own. He carried my bags for me, waited patiently outside of dressing rooms, yayed and nayed when I asked for his opinion. It was surprisingly comfortable, considering we just met.
“Then after we were done, we walked over to La Esquina—hand in hand, the way a couple would. We sat at a quiet table; it was romantic, and candlelit, and all the things a girl hopes for in a first date setting. He never took his eyes off me; his hands, either. The connection was intense. I’m not just saying it, Tay. I felt it. From the tips of my fingers to the ends of my toes. His words mesmerized me and his touch made me weak. I haven’t enjoyed a man like that since—since never.
“And before you think about mentioning Hudson, just don’t. Hudson was a one-night stand, a Stella’s-got-her-groove-back moment. Sure, it felt good, but it didn’t feel Lane good.” I sigh and deflate into the couch cushions, remembering just how good that feeling was. Good, but gone.
Tatum remains quiet, her wheels turning underneath her beachy blonde waves. Her silence means she’s evaluating, trying my tragic love story on for size. I won’t dare mess with her mojo and ask anything prematurely, so instead, I continue. This is the part that needs the most judgment, anyway.
“So, after dinner I was tired and my feet hurt a little from all the walking. I suggested we get a cab back to my place—and let me tell you, Tatum, there was no denying what I was getting at. It was an invitation to jump my bones and he had to know that when he accepted. The heat between us was the real deal Holyfield, even in the restaurant. If I weren’t so worried I couldn’t stuff my big ass and his together in a bathroom stall, I would’ve dragged him into the little niñita’s room and had my way with him right there. So, we get in the cab and we’re talking and flirting, and he’s dimpling and I’m squirming, and one thing leads to another, and—Oh my God. The kiss. Earth shattering. Measured 9.5 on the Richter scale. Things got a little heated, his hands copped their feel and mine wound up in his lap—”
“You copped the cock. In the cab. You dirty, dirty whore. Continue.”
“It was a nice cock, too, might I add. But! And this is a major but, this is where the goddamn cabbie stopped the car and our momentum, and rather than pay the dude and rush upstairs, Lane asked him to wait so he could say goodnight to me. The end. Good night. No night cap.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it . . . Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. What did he say when you asked him why?” Tatum scootches to the edge of her seat and narrows her penetrating gaze. Damn, when did she become Dr. Fucking Ruth?
“That’s the thing. He never really gave me the answer. He beat around the bush.”
“Not your bush, unfortunately,” she sneers.
“No, Captain Obvious, but he did pin me against the wall and he did tell me he wants me but also wants to take things slow.” I take another long breath. Getting it out feels better, but I’m also biting my nails in anticipation of Tatum’s analysis. She knows the male species better than any of my other friends. Ashley’s been with Reynold and only Reynold since tenth grade. Jane and Mandy are into each other. Raven and the girls at work are all married with children and totally out of the wooing stage. That leaves Tatum. My lovely, wonderful, beautiful friend, who has been around the block a time or two. She’s not exactly what you’d call a slut, but . . . okay, there’s a very thin line here . . . but my point is that Tatum knows her dating shit and I’m scared to hear her achingly truthful advice about my flop with Lane.
My thumbnail is down to a jagged nub waiting for her to process. I picture her brainwaves working on overdrive, computing and calculating. She snaps her neck from side to side and then cracks her knuckles. The chick is ready for battle. This can’t be good.
“Okay, from the way I see it . . . he seems . . . I don’t know, Len. I hate to break this to you, but is there a possibility that Mr. Fancy Pants is, well, you know . . . fabulous?”
Oh no she didn’t. “Gay!? You think he’s gay?” I scream, jumping out of my seat and sending Rocky Road the bear tumbling to the floor.
Tatum rushes to rescue him and pulls him onto her lap where she can hide behind her accusations and his fuzziness. “Your story had a couple of red flags, Len. His love of shopping. The ‘I’m not the kind of guy you think I am.’ His hesitance to get down and dirty with you. I’m sor
ry, babes, but there is a strong possibility that Lane is playing for the other team. Call it a hunch or what have you, but—”
My brain becomes an internal cheerleader chanting, DEFENSE—clap clap—DEFENSE—clap clap. “So, basically what you’re saying is that I’m crazy for thinking there was any kind of spark between us—I imagined it—and that a guy as good-looking and swoony as Lane can’t possibly be attracted to someone like me.”
Rocky Road is tossed to the floor again as Tatum stands to make her point. “No, that’s not what I said. He’s not not attracted to you because of who you are, Leni. What I’m saying is, maybe he’s just not attracted to women. Period.”
This is a lot to take in. I mean, seriously. I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life with the opposite sex, but this is a first. I’ve never thrown myself at a gay guy, and I’d like to think I’m pretty keen on reading people and would have known if I set my sights on someone who wasn’t into me. I replay every conversation, every tender touch, every dimple flash, the kiss that felt like fireworks inside my body. “It can’t be. It simply can’t be.” My head falls into my hands as uncertainty plagues me. When you don’t want to believe that something can be true, you find every excuse to have faith in the opposite. But I’m drained. From the accident, from the dieting, from the day with Lane, from this joke of a life.
Tatum’s hand jolts me from my blubbering. “Hey, come on. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe he’s just shy, Leni. Maybe he doesn’t know how to handle someone as fierce as you.”
“Fierce?” I don’t lift my head, I don’t react, I just mumble the word, wondering what business it has describing someone like me.
“Look at me!” Tatum orders, her hands prying my own from the clutches of my tear sodden face.
I don’t budge. I can’t. I don’t want to face her. I don’t want to face this. I’m not up for convincing myself of his reasons for rejecting me. I can’t force myself to believe that what I felt was nothing more than hopefulness because it was . . . wonderful. It was so goddamn wonderful to feel wanted by Lane and there was not one second of our time together when I was fat Leni. I was just me. And the thought that Lane liked me for me was simply . . . wonderful.
“Madeline Moore! Look at me! Now!” Tatum stomps her foot like an insolent child and then shakes my shoulders.
I can’t ignore her forever and maybe if I just get on with this humiliation, I can move on and she will leave me alone to wallow in my misery. “What? What can you possibly say to make this any better?”
Tatum kneels in front of me, her hands on my knees, her eyes sparkling with optimism. I have been friends with this wacko a long, long time. She’s been by my side for all of it—the good, the bad and the portly—I don’t know what I’d do without her. And although I’d love to push her tiny frame and send her teetering over to join Rocky Road in the belly up position on my area rug, I don’t have it in me to do anything but hug the bitch.
“Why do I love you? Please remind me?” I fling my arms around her neck and squeeze—maybe a little tighter than I should. That’s for making me think he’s gay, bitch.
“You trying to thank me, or kill me?” She breaks free of my hug/choke hold and sits in front of me, legs criss-crossed into a pretzel.
“I wish we had real rocky road right now,” I admit with a sigh and wipe the remaining droplets from my soon-to-be-puffy eyes.
“Well, you have me instead, so deal. Slumber party?” Tatum’s smile spreads wide across her flawless face, her eyebrows reaching her hairline.
It’s been eons since we had a good old fashioned sleepover that didn’t include puking and morning after hangovers. As much as I thought I wanted to be alone to overanalyze this whole Lane thing, a Tatum and Leni couch-campout including our time honored favorite and most quotable flick, Mean Girls, might just be what I need to recharge before my trip to Miami.
“DVD in place?” she asks, reaching for the remote.
“Of course.”
Midway into Regina George getting her plastic ass fooled by the pre-train-wreck Lindsay Lohan, I sleepily surrender to the reality that I cannot allow a man’s affections or rejections to define me. Before I slammed into that tree I was on the right track—the road to loving me. Gay or straight or what have you, I cannot give Lane, or any man, the power to doubt myself. Anyone with that influence, is just totally fetch.
MY PHONE BUZZES LOUDLY, SKIDDING across the side table in an effort to get my morning off to an aggravating beginning.
“Shut it up! Stop it! It’s too early!” Tatum mumbles from underneath the blanket cocoon we shared in our toe-to-head position last night.
I rub the sleep out of my eyes and focus them on the cable box clock. “Not exactly that early, Tay. It’s nine o’clock.”
“Ungodly,” says the woman who doesn’t ever have to be at work before noon. She pulls the fleece throw over her head and curls herself into the fetal position. “Wake me in half an hour.”
We stayed up to watch all of Mean Girls and then wound up chatting some more, way into the wee hours of the almost dawning new day. While I’m okay with less than eight hours of beauty rest, my best friend is a diva who can barely function on nine.
The phone vibrates again, reminding me that I already ignored one incoming message. I stretch out the kinks in my back caused by uncomfortably squeezing on the couch with my restless sleeper of an overnight guest, and reach for the confounded thing that just won’t stop buzzing. “Geez! Who are you and why are you so persistent?”
My eyes go wide and I gulp back a nice helping of stanky morning breath when I notice I have a few messages from Lane. Before swiping the screen to open them, I shake the shit out of Tatum. “It’s him, Tay! It’s him!”
A moan that could rival a lion’s growl erupts from the fleece cocoon. “Who? Who the hell is so hell bent on waking me up?”
“Lane! Lane texted me—”
“And?” One eye pokes out of the blanket, waiting for my answer.
“I didn’t look yet.”
Tatum rockets into a sitting position and snatches the phone from my hand. Typing in the passcode I once told her in a drunken stupor—stupid me for not changing it—she scans through the texts. A beaming smile brightens her groggy features as she reads. “Definitely not gay, I’ll tell ya that.” She hands the phone back to me and then drops back onto the pillow.
I open the texts to see for myself what has Tatum convinced she was wrong. This is a day for the Guinness Book of World Records. My best friend rarely admits defeat. Between that victory and Lane’s messages, my skin is tingling all over.
Lane (8:30am): Hey, gorgeous. Did you open those beautiful big brown eyes yet? Wanna join me for a run?
Lane (8:48am): Either you’re still asleep or ignoring me. If it’s the latter, I need you to know that I hardly slept last night, thinking about how we left off. I’m sorry if I weirded out. It’s not what you think. You definitely know how to drive a guy to the brink of insanity with that incredible mouth of yours.
Lane (9:12am): I’m not leaving until 10, so if you get this and feel up to it, put a guy out of his misery and text me back.
“Oh my God! Praise the Lord!” I clutch the phone to my galloping heart and let my head fall back against the couch.
“Are you going to answer him or leave the guy hanging?” Tatum still hasn’t emerged from the blanket, but I know she feels the deliberation oozing from my always indecisive body.
Biting my lip and bobbing my leg up and down like a jack hammer, I take a split second to ponder and then—fuck it! My fingers fly across the screen with more ambition than a backstage groupie after a rock concert.
Me: Morning! I’ll meet you at the benches by the fountain in twenty.
I press send and within seconds—seconds that drip with the agony of anticipation—the three tiny dots appear in the bubble, mocking my eagerness.
Lane: So you’re not ignoring me?
Me: Nope, not today.
Lane: Good, because I was
up all night thinking of a way to leave you with something to remember me by while you’re away.
That elicits a squeal and an uncontrollable burst of energy. “I gotta get ready. Get your ass up and out!” I pull the blanket off of Tatum with a strong tug that rolls her onto the floor. She comes nose-to-nose with Rocky Road and then looks up at me with a what the fuck expression.
“I take it you and your beautiful big brown eyes are meeting Lane for that run?”
“Uh huh!” I nod joyfully, folding the blanket.
“What else did he say?” Tatum rises into a sitting position. So does Rocky Road.
I’m not one to kiss and tell but—who am I kidding? “He said he was up all night thinking of a way to make me remember him while I’m in Miami. He was . . . flirting. I think.” And just like that I’m back to reading in between the lines. I hand my phone over to Tatum again, showing her exactly what he said.
“Have I not taught you anything?” She shakes her head and hands the phone off.
“I was never an A student, you know this.”
“Even though it kills me to say this—” She winces, her tongue hissing between her teeth as if whatever she’s about to say is painful. “I was wrong.”
I clamp my mouth shut with both hands, as to not spoil this moment of triumph.
“He likes you, Leni. For the record, I never doubted he could. I just thought—”
“You thought wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong. Say it again, Tay. Savor it on your lips, cherish how it feels on your tongue. This might be the first and last time you ever experience it, you stubborn bitch!”
Never faltering or discounting my minute of glory, Tatum rises from the floor and searches for the bra she peeled off before we went to sleep. “I have to say, it’s a great reason to be wrong. This is a good thing, babes. I’m really happy for you.”
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