She's With Stupid

by Amanda Dennis

  When he sheepishly shook his head, she rolled her eyes. Again. Sheesh.

  Ethan abruptly stood up and started hopping around her tiny living room like a jackrabbit on speed. “This has to mean she still loves me!”

  The gooey expression on his face caused her to wince. It was like someone had injected him with a radioactive happy serum that lit him up from the inside.

  Then his face fell as he turned to face Kate again. “She never said a word. All those years, she never said a word. Why?” He took one look at the pitying expression on her face and grimaced. He scrubbed his hands over his face, trying to take it all in. “She loves me, all right, but she still hasn’t forgiven me for what I did.”

  “I think she wants to, Ethan,” she quickly assured him. “I really do.”

  He put his head in his hands again and groaned. Observing his brooding frown as he stared dolefully at her through his fingers, Kate was again struck by the knowledge that he really did love Emilie. It wasn’t a childhood crush, it wasn’t lust or a passing whim — it was honest to goodness, bare your soul no matter how vulnerable it makes you, happily ever after kind of love — and he wasn’t even bothering to hide it. Kate forced herself to ignore the slight twinge of jealousy she felt that her idiot cousin had somehow managed to find true, uncompromising love when the very idea of such a thing completely baffled her. Never mind the fact that she was the one who was supposed to be getting married in two months.

  With an only slightly bitter sigh, Kate smiled encouragingly at Ethan and tried to make him understand. “Em does love you, Ethan, I’m sure of it. But it’s hard for her to align her old concept of you with the new and improved version. You broke her heart once before…” She shrugged apologetically. “She’s too smart to let you do it again without putting up a fight.”

  Ethan ground his teeth in frustration as he started pacing around the room again. All that was missing was the steam blowing out of his ears to complete the picture of a man about three breaths away from blowing a gasket. “I didn’t mean to break her heart the first time!” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and appeared to be communing with God for patience. “I would never hurt her again,” he said earnestly.

  She slowly shook her head. “I know you think that, but never say never, Ethan.”

  “I love her! And I plan on doing everything in my power to prove it to her,” he insisted. “The willful woman just has to let me!”

  “Ethan, stop pacing. It’s making me dizzy.”

  He reluctantly halted his progress and put his hands in the pockets of his jeans with a resigned sigh. Kate patted the empty space beside her on the couch, and he shuffled his feet for a moment before falling onto the couch with a brooding grunt.

  “Give it a few more weeks, okay?” She smiled encouragingly. “Then, if she still hasn’t relented, I may be persuaded to accidentally let her current address and daily schedule slip so you can try utilizing your charm in a more personal, face to face manner.”

  He cast a confused look her way before breaking into a smirk. “Seriously, Kate? I’ve known Emmy lives in those fancy apartments on Edwards since about five hours after she moved in.”

  Kate’s face scrunched up. “Eww, creepy much?”

  He shrugged, completely unrepentant. “I wanted to know she was okay. What’s creepy about that?”

  “So, you’re the good kind of stalker,” she said sarcastically before sighing in disgust. “If you know where she lives, genius, why are you here bugging me?”

  Ethan shrugged. “I was trying not to spook her.”

  “She’s not a horse, Ethan!”

  He gave her a look that spoke volumes before replying. “I know her better than you seem to think I do, Kate. I didn’t come here for permission to pursue her — that’s going to happen, it’s already a given. I just wanted your opinion about whether or not it’s time to push her yet.”

  Kate shrugged and ignored his resulting scowl. “I think she needs more time to work out for herself that you’re not going to leave her in the lurch again before she’ll agree to any kind of permanent relationship with you.”

  When his thoughtful expression and lack of snark seemed to indicate that he might actually be taking her opinion into account, Kate concluded that it was quite gratifying to help fix someone’s problems, even if she couldn’t seem to fix her own.

  “Give it a little more time,” she suggested. “Then you can go over to her apartment and use a more direct method of persuasion with her.”

  Ethan smiled at her exaggerated wink, and he nodded in agreement. Then his brows scrunched together as a dire thought crossed his mind. “What do I do in the meantime?”

  Kate smiled at his need for action and reached over to give him a consoling pat on the head. “Keep calling her. She listens to those messages you leave her, like, a hundred times a day.”

  Ethan’s chest puffed out at that, and Kate disdainfully marveled at how easy it was to boost a man’s ego.

  “Anything else?”

  Kate grinned. “Well, I’m sure they’re expensive, but you might send her a few more of those obnoxious flower arrangements. Her apartment is starting to look like a flower shop, and Lana says Em is always stopping to smell them or stroke the petals when she thinks no one’s watching her.”

  Ethan grinned and closed his eyes, as if to savor the idea of Emilie stroking his flowers. Kate’s face scrunched up in equal parts humor and scorn. Those two had better get together soon—her patience for their mutual stubbornness was definitely wearing thin.

  Chapter 17

  Lana groaned into her pillow before drowsily hitting the snooze button on her alarm clock. She was not looking forward to work today. Her shifts at the coffeehouse were longer this week due to the large number of workers who had left for spring break, and she was the only one left to pick up the slack. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and yawned.

  It was already nearing the end of April, and Kate’s wedding was fast approaching, though Kate seemed hell-bent on ignoring this fact by letting Emilie carry the burden of all the final details and decisions. Emilie, meanwhile, was still desperately avoiding the subject of her unexpected tryst under the bleachers with Ethan by refusing to take his calls and pretending it had meant nothing. Judging by the shadows under her eyes and the muffled echo of Ethan’s voice coming from the machine in her room for the fifth time that morning, she was plainly not having much success with her attempts at avoidance.

  Lana was doing her best not to judge, especially since her life was no less dysfunctional, due in large part to her pseudo, nearly nonexistent relationship with Brian. They had prolonged their inevitable end by continuing to answer each other’s three a.m. booty calls. Just when Lana was convinced that she was way too strong to continue to self-destruct like this, he would call. And just like that, she would scurry on over to his apartment despite all of her best intentions.

  Since she had no real idea of where she stood with him, Lana was feeling increasingly insecure and restless. She wasn’t seeing anyone else, and Brian kept assuring her that he was not interested in being with anyone but her. When Lana brought up the procession of dirty/ preppy/ just plain slutty girls Brian managed to surround himself with whenever she happened by the Pub Hub, he would brush it off as “innocent flirting.” It was obvious that Brian found the casual arrangement they had going ideal, and Lana was too big of a wuss to admit that she did not feel the same way.

  For the last month, the girls had spent most of their evenings in Emilie’s living room, discussing where they had gone wrong and trying to figure out how they had ended up with such messy love lives. Kate had a theory that, since they’d never really needed to go outside of each other for friendship and support before, all three of them were finding it nearly impossible to form emotional attachments with other people now.

  When Emilie had asked Kate why, if she was so aware of the fact that she wasn’t ready to “attach” to someone new, she was still unwilling to call off her loom
ing wedding to Will, Kate had thrown a handful of popcorn at her. “That is not going to happen. Will loves me — that has to count for something, right? I said I’d marry him, every member of my family now expects me to marry him, ergo I am going to marry him.”

  Lana had gently reminded Kate that her family wasn’t going to have to spend the rest of their lives trying to get that cheesy smell out of the upholstery, but Kate had lobbed a jelly bean at her head, thus ending the conversation.

  As Lana lay in bed, going over the past two months, she felt very tired. Emilie kept telling her that she was way too good to let Brian treat her like this, and Lana knew on some level that she was right. She felt horrible about herself every time she slinked out of his apartment and left him sprawled on his mattress of shame. But she couldn’t seem to make herself stop either.

  To make matters worse, she was still suffering from writer’s block, which was putting a major crimp in her style. She shoved the covers off of her legs, sat up, and pondered her predicament. She had two major responsibilities for Kate’s wedding: 1) plan the Bachelorette party and 2) compose and perform a song during the ceremony. The party was a no-brainer, but the song was proving to be a whole other story.

  She wanted to blame her lack of inspiration on the rather lackluster love story that Kate and Icky Willy shared, which did pose some motivational problems for her, but the truth was that Lana was having trouble writing any songs lately. It was extremely upsetting and un-fun, and she was forced to acknowledge that the fault rested solely at her feet.

  She had thought moving back here from L.A. would solve her dilemma, but she had been wrong. At first, she had been so wrapped up in Brian, and then in Kate and Emilie’s respective dramas, that she had not worried much about it. Now, however, she had all the time in the world to worry and it was becoming more and more depressing. She hadn’t disclosed her issue to her friends as of yet, fearing the inevitable freak-out that would ensue when Emilie realized there was yet another wedding glitch she was going to be expected to solve.

  Shaking off her dismal thoughts, she managed to drag herself out of bed and take a quick shower before trudging out the door with an absent-minded wave to Emilie, who was right on her heels juggling a mug of coffee, her school bag, and a purse the size of an end table. They walked out together and then parted ways across the street to make their way to their cars.

  Two minutes later, Lana looked up to see Emilie barreling towards down the street in her Mercedes. “Ciao, bella!” called Emilie from the front seat as she zoomed past Lana in a silver blur, her hair whipping around her face in the soft morning light. Lana still did not understand how Emilie managed to avoid being cited for excessive speed. She was downright scary sometimes.

  As she was turning on the ignition of her own no-frills car, smiling as she recalled the look of utter terror that had been painted on their instructor’s face when Emilie had taken the test to get her driver’s license, her phone beeped.

  Checking the number, she winced to see that it was Brian. After a moment’s hesitation, she put the phone to her ear. “Hey,” she said softly.

  “Hey sugar. You free tomorrow night? ‘Cause I was thinking you could come over; I’ll order some Thai. We can relax, maybe watch a movie?”

  Lana closed her eyes and hung her head. “That sounds nice, Brian. I have to work late all week though—I don’t think I’ll get off before ten. Is that too late?”

  “Nah, I don’t mind waiting for you,” Brian said smoothly. “I’ll see you tomorrow, babe. Around ten-thirty?”

  Lana rubbed her temple — she could feel a migraine coming on. “Okay, I’ll see you then.” She clicked off the phone and carelessly tossed it onto the seat next to her.

  Way to be strong, Lana. She really annoyed herself sometimes.

  The next afternoon, Kate sat in her Molecular Chemistry class zoning out on the professor’s lecture on atoms and fission and other trivial things, and she wondered, not for the first time, if she was a bad person. She thought she must be; what other explanation was there for the ugly, slightly nauseating twinge of satisfaction she had whenever her friends talked about their messed-up love lives?

  Kate knew how upset Lana was about Brian’s generally Stupid demeanor. Not to mention his regrettable knack for choosing the absolute dirtiest girls to cheat on Lana with. It was as if he had some kind of skank-radar that enabled him to hone in on the trashiest, most-likely-to-be-disease-ridden girl in a three mile radius and then parade her around under poor Lana’s nose.

  She also knew how wracked with confusion Emilie was over her relationship with Ethan. Though she refused to admit it aloud, and maybe even to herself, she was absolutely terrified that Ethan was going to leave her again, so she was trying to do some kind of reverse psychology on herself by leaving him first and saving them both the trouble. This led to increasingly frantic calls from Ethan at all hours of the day and night, bemoaning his predicament to Kate and listing possible variations on how he might discover the key to Emilie’s heart so that he could fix things as quickly as possible and show her that he was a changed man.

  Kate found the whole thing exhausting, and not only because she was stuck hearing both Emilie and Ethan yap about it constantly.

  She should feel nothing but worry for her best friends’ troubles. She should not be relieved that their problems were almost as bad as her own. It wasn’t that she didn’t care; it was just that she was sick to death of analyzing herself and her debilitating, growing fear that this thing with Will was just wrong. Because even if it was wrong, there was nothing she could do about it now.

  The wedding was six weeks away, the invitations were sent, presents were even now being piled onto her mother’s dining room table, everything was paid for with her father’s master card, and Kate was going to have to suck it up.

  It wasn’t as if she didn’t have genuine feelings for Will. She had agreed to marry him, so of course she had feelings for the guy. But she was pretty sure now that she had never actually been in love with him. He was simply the first guy who had ever thought she was amazing and beautiful, and Kate had liked feeling adored. Now, though, whenever Will paid her a compliment or offered to give her a foot rub, she was hard-pressed not to tell him to get out of her house. Then she felt an enormous wave of guilt wash over her at how selfish she was being. Then she went and did stupid things to take her mind off of all those nasty, conflicted feelings.

  She still hadn’t been able to fess up to Lana and Emilie about where she had been going every time Will worked late, mainly because she was fairly certain that they would rip her a new one once she did.

  Kate groaned and put her head down on the lab table. No one had warned her that being an adult was going to be so difficult.

  Sneaking a glance at her fellow classmates, Kate realized that everyone was packing up for the day — she sure hoped she hadn’t missed anything important. Kate started to clear her desk when her cell phone started singing “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” She was going to have to change the ring tone because Emilie had already asked her about it twice. Lana merely raised her eyebrows and gave her an odd look whenever she heard it.

  “Hello?” Kate muttered into the receiver.

  “Hey, Katie. When can I see you?”

  Checking her watch, Kate had an internal debate with herself for a heartbeat before answering. “I guess I’m done with classes for the day, so…”

  “Excellent. I’ll be waiting.”

  Kate ended the call without saying good-bye. This was absolutely the last time she was going to that hotel. She was going to be a married person soon, and her childish antics were going to have to end. Tomorrow.

  Emilie opened the door to her apartment later that afternoon, hoping against hope that Kate might have gotten out of class early and was actually planning to help with the seating arrangements instead of once again dumping all the responsibility onto Emilie’s shoulders. So she was more than a little dismayed to find the wrong Drake standing outside of
her apartment with a broad grin on his stupid, handsome face.

  Ethan gave her his standard, appreciative appraisals of her person and she inwardly cringed because she couldn’t have looked grubbier if she tried. Her unfortunate lack of height, normally helped by three-inch heels, was exposed by her bare feet. Now her head barely reached Ethan’s shoulders, which left her feeling at a distinct disadvantage. Her usually sleek hair was pulled into a messy twist on top of her head, and she was wearing cropped grey yoga pants and an old navy-blue t-shirt that had ANARCHY IN THE U.K. scrawled across the chest. The neck on her shirt had been cut out years ago to accommodate her growing bosom, it was so thin you could practically see through it, and she was relatively certain she had stolen it from Ethan years ago and then held onto it out of warped, sentimental whimsy.

  Of course Ethan would pick this particular moment to knock on her door. It was like God sat around thinking up new and exciting ways to torture her.

  Her hand found her hip and she blocked the doorway with her body. His grin widened at her defensive stance, but she chose to ignore that and focus on the issue that had been uppermost in her mind since she’d received that first flower arrangement at her unlisted address. “How did you know where I live?”

  He raised one dark brow at her query, and she instantly wanted to slap herself for not having figured it out before. And she would have, if not for Ethan’s insistence on scrambling her brain.

  “Kate’s mom,” they said in unison. Her mouth lifted in a grudging smile as she hesitantly stepped back to let him enter the apartment.

  Emilie watched as another lazy grin spread across his face as Ethan got his first real look at where she lived. She felt herself blush as he took in the brightly hued flowers on every available surface and quickly walked ahead of him to her retro-fitted kitchen, where she had just taken a batch of chocolate chunk cookies out of the oven to cool. Ethan dutifully followed her, and she could practically feel his eyes on her.