Suddenly Dating (A Lake Haven Novel Book 2)

by Julia London

  She should have made her exit long before today, but the group was so dang small, and now everyone depended on her to bring the snacks each week. Oh, yes—somehow, Lola had become the donut-wielding smiling face who made sure all of her fellow divorcée snack needs were met.

  “You’re such a pussy,” her younger sister Casey had said when she dropped by Lola’s Clinton Hill apartment in Brooklyn and found her sister making a cake. “Just tell them all they’re a bunch of whiners and you’re never coming back.”

  “I really should,” Lola agreed.

  “But you won’t,” Casey said, quite matter-of-factly. “Because this is what you do, Lola. You take care of everyone else and neglect yourself. Give me a spoon so I don’t have to lick the batter bowl.”

  “I don’t neglect myself. And I was planning on licking the bowl.”

  Casey shrugged and wiped the bowl clean with her finger.

  Yep, Lola was definitely a pussy.

  She was mulling over all of that in the middle of the group session the next morning. She wasn’t thinking about how divorce made her feel, or how Betty was droning on and on about life choices. She was mentally absent from the discussion until Tamira, the counselor, snapped her out of it by asking, “Can we hear from you today, Lola?”

  What? No! Lola was used to sitting quietly while other people talked, fighting off yawns, wondering about things like whether or not she should take up knitting, or what was up with North Korea, or what the difference was between barley and bulgur as they had both made an appearance in her salads recently. She was not used to talking, and was so surprised that it took her a moment to realize everyone was looking at her. She slowly sat up. “Me?”

  “Yes, you!” Tamira chirped. “You’re so quiet, Lola. But I assume you’re in this group for the same reason as everyone else.”

  “Aah . . .” Jesus, she hoped she didn’t have to come up with a good reason for being in this group because she didn’t have one. Sara made me sounded a little pathetic, even to her.

  “By that, I mean, you’re divorced, right?” Tamira asked, as if Lola might have forgotten why she’d baked that stupid cake last night.

  “Yeah . . . about a year now.”

  Tamira nodded, and her head of amazing corkscrew curls bounced. She leaned forward, her arm braced on her thigh, absently clicking the end of her pen. “And?”

  “And . . . it wasn’t very dramatic,” Lola said apologetically. “We just grew apart.” She lifted her shoulders, let them fall.

  “That’s what happened to me,” Betty said as she studied her nail. “I realized that somewhere along the way Russell and I had gotten on two different ships and they’d gone in different directions. When did you get on your ship, Lola?”

  “I, ah . . . I don’t know that I got on a ship, exactly.” Lola hadn’t had to think about what went wrong between her and Will in a very long time and was suddenly aware how much she didn’t want to think about it now.

  “So how did you know you’d grown apart?” Betty asked. “I mean, I had no idea I even felt that way until one morning Russell was eating breakfast.” She suddenly leaned forward and looked around the group. “That man ate the same cereal every morning of his damn life. Frosted Mini-Wheats! Can you imagine, every day for fifty years you eat Frosted Mini-Wheats for breakfast? Every morning, the same thing, munch munch munch munch slurp.” She shook her head. “I was standing there listening to that and it suddenly dawned on me—he and I weren’t on the same planet anymore.”

  Everyone in the circle nodded.

  Lola eased back in her metal seat, sure that Betty would take over. But Betty didn’t take over. She looked at Lola and asked curiously, “So how did you know, Lola?”

  “Well, it had nothing to do with Frosted Mini-Wheats,” she said, and laughed a little. No one else did. It wasn’t anything like that—Will would never go near cereal. He was very careful with his diet. Lola fancied herself an excellent cook, but Will always complained if the meal wasn’t a salad and a piece of fish with some flax seed or some bullshit sprinkled on top. Whatever happened to lasagna? When did it become the bad guy?

  “So what did it have to do with?” Betty pressed.

  Lola swallowed. “I guess it had to do . . . with . . . a text message,” she said uneasily, and suddenly wished it had been cereal. How easy that would be! Will, we’re through because I don’t like your cereal choices.

  “A text message? For who?” Tamira asked politely.

  Lola crossed her legs. “It was a text message to Will from someone named Danielle.”

  Sara suddenly shifted around in her seat, her focus laser sharp on Lola. “A text? You never told me about a text! You never mentioned anyone named Danielle! What’d it say?”

  “I don’t—”

  “What’d it say, what’d it say?” Sara demanded.

  “It said . . .” Lola really didn’t want to repeat it, but she could tell from the way Sara was looming over her like a raptor that she had no choice. “It said, Babe, I can’t stop thinking about last night.” And boom, just like that, Lola’s stomach dropped down to her toes.

  She managed to get her foot crossed behind the opposite ankle.

  “Wow,” Sara said, eying her like some sort of alien. “How did I not know this? What’d you do?”

  What does anyone do when they see a text like that? She’d lost it. Just thinking about it made Lola’s heart start to pound, and she was suddenly overcome with an overwhelming urge to plant her face in a bucket of ice cream. “I talked to Will about it, of course.”

  Three or four days later after she’d stopped sobbing hysterically, which was how long it took her to process it—meaning get up off the bathroom floor—she’d decided to confront him. Sara would have picked up a bazooka and fired away if she’d found that text. But Lola didn’t know how to use a bazooka, so she’d had to approach it a little more sanely than that.

  “And?”

  “And . . .” Lola scratched the back of her neck. “Will didn’t deny it.” Actually, he’d kind of shrugged like she’d found some old sweatshirt he thought he’d lost. Oh, that. He’d asked her to sit down like he was the principal and she was the B-average student, and then very calmly told her he thought it was over between them. He’d said he was sick of her family’s constant needs and how she couldn’t say no to them when he had Bigger Needs. He said a bunch of other stuff, too, like how Danielle made him feel alive or some shit like that. “I guess he grew a little further apart from me than I did from him.”

  “Ya think?” Sara snapped, then threw up her hands and fell against the back of her folding chair. “See what I’m up against?” she said to the rest of the group. “This is how she is.”

  “What do you mean, this is how I am?” Lola demanded.

  Sara suddenly sat up again, planted her boots firmly on the ground, and leaned forward to Lola. “You’re too nice or something. I don’t know what it is with you, but you always act like nothing is wrong. Why didn’t you tell me this before? And why are you letting him off the hook?”

  “I’m not letting him off the hook! I divorced him, remember?”

  “The man is a dick. Get mad! Call him a dick!”

  “Why do I have to call him a name?”

  “Because you do!” Sara exclaimed, arms flailing. “He cheated on you! Am I right?” she asked, looking around to the other three divorcées.

  John shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt anything to call him a few names. Get it off the chest, you know?”

  “Russell definitely called me some names,” Betty snorted.

  “Everyone, let’s remember our rules. No judgments,” Tamira reminded the group, and to Sara, she said pointedly, “Please don’t project your anger with Zach onto Lola.”

  “I’m not projecting my anger with Zach onto her,” Sara said, mimicking Tamira sarcastically. “I’m projecting my anger with her like a missile right into her kisser. She sits here every week and doodles on her notepad like she is so above us.” />
  “That’s not true!” Lola objected.

  “It’s kind of true,” Betty said, without rancor. “If you don’t have any issues from your divorce, why are you coming?”

  “Because!”

  Everyone leaned forward, waiting for her to expound.

  Because Sara had asked her to? Because she had trouble saying no? Because she hid the truth of her sorry life from everyone and always had because that is how she’d learned to survive? Because she’d buried the pain of Will’s betrayal in a hole so deep she couldn’t dig it out if she tried?

  “Because, Lola, maybe you do have some issues you need to deal with, and your subconscious is aware of it,” Tamira suggested. She was practically levitating out of her seat with eagerness, as if she’d just led Lola toward some miraculous breakthrough.

  “Of course she has issues she needs to deal with. You don’t get divorced and not have issues,” Sara said with a roll of her eyes.

  The issue right now, Lola realized, was that she’d twisted herself into a human pretzel.

  “Well, okay!” Tamira said. “I think we’re getting somewhere.”

  Lola wondered where exactly they were getting, but she knew where she was getting, and that was the hell out of this group.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have time to tackle all of Lola’s lingering issues today. So next week, we’ll talk more about it.”

  “I don’t have lingering issues,” Lola insisted.

  “In the meantime, I’d like you all to read chapter seven from your handbook for next week,” Tamira said, ignoring Lola. “Sorry, but I have to run. Please don’t leave empty cups and napkins. There is a Zumba class in here after us, and I’ve had a few complaints.”

  Everyone else had left by the time Lola had obediently picked up the room. Sara had left with Betty, talking in low voices with their heads together, probably about Lola. Lola tucked her dirty cake pan under her arm, kicked the door open with her foot, and strode out of the building and into a breezy spring day. She walked across the Brooklyn College campus, headed for Flatbush Avenue and the subway.

  She wasn’t coming back. She’d have to deal with Sara in yoga class, but Lola had played at this “divorce trauma” long enough, and by God, someone else could make a damn cake—

  “Hey! Hey!”

  Lola whipped around.

  Sara was striding for her, with her arms and the fringe on her leather vest swinging with each violent step. “What the hell is the matter with you? Why are you letting your ex off the hook?”

  “I didn’t let him off the hook!” Lola said angrily. She wasn’t angry with Sara, but with herself, because maybe she had let Will off the hook. She was always letting people off that goddamn hook. “Why are you giving me such a hard time about it?”

  “Are you kidding me? I have tried to help you—”

  “If by helping, you mean having me sit while you talk about your divorce—”

  “And you sit there week after week, you never say a word, and when you do, you’re practically apologizing for having divorced a dickhead who I find out today was cheating on you!”

  Lola huffed. She folded her arms around the cake pan and looked away, considering it. “I don’t think that’s an entirely accurate representation,” she sniffed.

  “Ah, girl.” Sara suddenly linked her arm through Lola’s. “Come on, let’s get a drink.”

  “It’s only eleven o’clock.”

  “Fine, have it your way!” Sara exclaimed. “Coffee then.” She tugged on Lola to force her to walk with her, dragging her toward the avenue. “Look, I know you don’t want to be pushed. I get it. But we need to talk, and even though I’ve got a million things to do today, and saving you from yourself is not on my agenda, I’m going to be the kind of friend you need.”

  Lola wasn’t sure she needed that kind of friend, but as usual, she went along.

  At the corner Starbucks, Sara sauntered up to the counter in her skinny jeans and knee-high boots and ordered two lattes without asking Lola what she wanted, then bulldozed her way through the crowded tables to a tiny two-top against a wall. Lola looked down at her jeans and Keds and oversized sweater. Sometimes, she wished she could be like Sara, all sexy and entitled.

  “So,” Sara said. “You work in a law office. Paralegal, right?”

  “Right.” Her dream of getting a college degree in creative writing had been derailed by the need to send a few siblings to school. Like, all of them.

  “And the ex is a lawyer, right? And this Danielle chick is a lawyer too, right?”

  “Um . . . no,” Lola said. “Will met her at a law seminar in Miami. She was the hotel concierge.”

  “Jesus,” Sara said. “What, do you just walk up to the concierge and tell her you need dinner reservations and a fuck?”

  Lola blanched at that. She didn’t want to know what Will had said to Danielle while he was still married to her.

  “So listen, Lola. You need a friend,” Sara said, tapping her finger on the table.

  “I have friends, Sara—”

  Sara shook her head. “Not those friends. I’m talking a friend.”

  Lola blinked. “Like one with benefits?” she asked, slightly shocked.

  “No, I don’t mean that,” Sara said, and pointed her spoon at Lola. “But that’s not a bad idea. You should totally consider it.” She put her spoon into her cup and stirred. “The thing is, Lola, you don’t stand up for yourself. I’m going to help you do that.”

  Lola groaned and rolled her eyes. “Look, Sara, I’m sure you mean well. But just because I didn’t tell you the nitty-gritty about my divorce doesn’t mean I can’t stand up for myself.”

  “Oh yeah? Then why are you still working with your ex?”

  “I’m not,” Lola said smartly. “I transferred to another part of the company. To a different building.”

  “Even worse!” Sara cried, throwing up both hands. “You changed your life to accommodate his affair.”

  Funny, but Lola’s brother Ben had said the same thing one day when he asked her to pick up his son from basketball practice. Lola hadn’t been able to fill in for Ben that day because she’d started her new job in Manhattan.

  “Manhattan!” Ben had shouted into the phone. “Why did you change your job? That asshole knows you have family in Brooklyn!”

  Family that needed her to pick up their kids, Lola silently amended. “Actually,” she said to Sara, “I transferred when they gave my promotion to the new guy. It really had nothing to do with Will.” Except that Lola suspected it had everything to do with Will. She suspected that Will had suggested it to his buddy, Frank Perroni, who just happened to be Lola’s boss.

  “Tell me something,” Sara said, crossing her long legs and adopting a serious mien. “What do you really want to do? If the world was your oyster, what would you do? Where do you see yourself in five years?”

  “What is this, a job interview?” Lola asked with a snort.

  “If you will get off your high horse for one minute, I actually have a couple of ideas for you,” Sara said. “Come on, what do you want to do? And I mean do, as in, what in your heart of hearts would fulfill you? If you had no responsibilities, and could do anything Lola Dunne wanted to do, what would that be?”

  “I like the idea of no responsibilities,” Lola said. “I don’t know—date a lot of different guys,” she said, tossing that out there.

  Sara gave her a withering look. “I’m being serious. If you want to date, get on Tinder. I’m asking what you want to do with your life. And if you say be there for your five hundred brothers and sisters, I may punch you in the mouth.”

  Lola didn’t say that, but there was no avoiding her two brothers and two sisters.

  “So?” Sara pressed her.

  Lola knew what she wanted. She was writing a book. She’d never told anyone but Casey because it seemed so unattainable. Lola squirmed a little, could even feel her cheeks warming as Sara watched her so intently. “It’s stupid,” she said.


  “Is it?” Sara asked, perking up. “I’d like to say nothing is stupid, but we both know that’s not true. I’ll reserve judgment until you tell me. Come on, Lola, what is it?”

  “I don’t want to say,” Lola demurred.

  “Tell me!” Sara cried, and thumped Lola’s arm.

  “Ow. Okay, fine. I’m writing a book. I want to be a writer.” There, she’d said it. She’d admitted her dirty little secret to someone.

  But Sara looked puzzled, as if she was quite unfamiliar with the concept of writing. “Like . . . a legal book?”

  “No! A novel. I would really like to be a novelist.”

  Sara’s eyes lit up. “Now that would be cool. Lola, you would be cool if you wrote a whole book!” she said happily, as if Lola were uncool now.

  “Well, thanks, but cool isn’t exactly what I’m going for.”

  “What are you going for?”

  “I don’t know . . . fulfillment? It’s just in me,” she said, gesturing to herself. “I have this need to write. So I do.”

  “What’s the book about?”

  “It’s about a woman around our age, who is like every woman you’d ever know. She’s someone’s BFF, and she’s a good friend, and a good daughter, but she’s just pissed about life and why she never gets the guy. She’s also part psycho, and when a guy breaks up with her, she loses it and kills him. And it’s so easy, she does it again. And again.”

  Sara stared at her for a moment. “That is so weird, I would read it,” she said thoughtfully. “Can I read it?”

  Lola laughed. “I haven’t finished it. You asked what I want to do, and that’s it. I want to finish this book. And write a bunch more.”

  “So finish it already,” Sara said with a shrug.

  “It’s not that easy! I work full time and I have a lot of obligations.”

  “You mean you have a lot of siblings that always need something,” Sara scoffed.

  That was true, but in the absence of parents, Lola was all they had. “I’m just saying, there are only so many hours in the day. I’m working on it, but it takes time and concentration.” And she was stuck. She’d written ten chapters and she was frozen with indecision about which way to go with her book. She kept fantasizing about spending a week on a beach with nothing to do but think.