Clichéd Love: A Satirical Romance

by Lynn Galli

  The one sunny day tennis game cancellation. I’d thought she had another undercover job and couldn’t take an hour away. I was so wrong. It also explained why Lane had been so over-the-top miserable when Charlie announced her plans to sell the bar early. If the goal of buying the bar had been her steading baseline, having that drop out must have devastated her.

  “My friends, they just…and the looks sometimes, it gets to be too much.”

  She pulled the stepstool over and climbed it to wipe down the light fixtures above the bar. I finished wrapping the tins and put them in the bar fridge. When she was done with the fixtures behind the bar, she carried the stepstool over to the first of the fixtures in the bar area. I pulled down a chair from a nearby table and began wiping the next closest fixture.

  We worked for five minutes without talking. I wasn’t sure if she’d finished everything she wanted to say or just needed a break. Either way, the busy work felt comforting.

  “You haven’t said anything,” Lane finally stated, turning to face me fully.

  I surveyed her defensive stance. She was expecting me to disappoint her like I assumed her friends had, which explained why the “friends” hadn’t shown up to help her when she was opening this place. There was no one best way to respond to a situation like this. Counselors knew a lot of techniques, but no one universal comment to make it sound like you’re on her side no matter what. I was certain she’d heard, “I’m sorry,” or, “How terrible,” too many times before those same people got consumed with their own lives and lost the appropriate amount of compassion.

  “You’ve been through something no one should ever have to go through.” I paused to gauge her reaction. The folded arms dropped to her sides as her head tilted a few degrees. “And you’ve come through the other side.”

  She scoffed and resumed the defensive stance.

  “You have. You’re too close to see it, but I’m still new here. I see what I see.”

  “What’s that?” Brown eyes slit to half closed, afraid of what I might say.

  “You’re sharp, you’re strong, you’re funny, you’re caring and genuine. You’re a worthy person. You own a thriving bar and have a dedicated staff. More importantly, you have a best friend who would die for you. You’re on the other side. Some days it might not feel like it, but that’s what you show people.” I gave her my most definitive stare. “I’m a journalist. My career is dependent on how accurately I can observe people and situations.”

  A tiny smile stretched her lips. “And you’ve got a successful career.”

  “That I do, and a great place to further that career, thanks to an amazing friend, who is kind enough to let me camp out in her bar.”

  Her smile widened, and some of that hesitancy I’d always seen with her dropped away.

  29 |

  Eleven a.m. on Thursday morning, I came to a stop on a borrowed bike at the tennis courts. We hadn’t texted or called or anything since I’d been back. This was the scene of the bad kissing crime. Well, not really the scene, but the catalyst to the kissing incident. Would she show up?

  The foursome from last week was loudly banging balls around, warming up on one court. Two teenagers were on another, a middle-aged pair of guys beside them. A few singles were sitting on benches by courts waiting for their partners. My eyes swept the area before going back to one of the singles. Long, toned legs showed past a mid-thigh pair of soccer shorts that hugged the tight backend of a woman leaning over her tennis bag. Not that I’d spent a lot of time staring at Iris’s ass, but it was pretty unmistakable.

  “Hey,” I said to her backside until she swung upright and around.

  “Hey,” she replied, shooting a glance at my mouth, before focusing back on my eyes. “Good trip?”

  “More work and for longer.”

  Her eyebrows shot up as she continued our shorthand way of speaking, “Good thing or no?”

  I studied her. She’d shown up for our standing tennis date when it was possible she would have ditched because of the unexpected move she made and how badly it had gone. She’d shown up and smiled like she usually did and didn’t act like she was at all uncomfortable. “It’s a very good thing.”

  “Saw your last post. Thanks for mentioning the bar again.”

  I shrugged as we separated and went to opposite ends of the court. “I told Lane it benefited me just as much. Several people have already responded to tell me they’d be in the area and want to share their story.”

  “Out of towners?”

  “So they’ve said. It’ll keep me from having to hit more cities just to get the interview quota.”

  “Definitely a good thing.”

  We played as if nothing had happened between us the last time. As much as I appreciated the forget-it-ever-happened attitude when it came to something really uncomfortable, I couldn’t forget. How could I forget the worst kiss of my life?

  “New bike?” Iris asked after I’d thrashed her on the court, making all right with the world again. We stood beside the bike as I tried to remember Helen’s four digit code on the lock.

  “It’s Helen’s. I have to go car shopping after an interview today.” My new place didn’t have the same walkability score as the executive rental, not if I wanted to keep going to the bar and hanging out with Iris and Lane. Daily rental cars weren’t practical, so it was car shopping for me. Or car shopping for Joe, who was salivating at the chance to pick out something for me. This would be my first car in six years. I was happy for the help. Even considered taking Riley up on her offer, but she couldn’t get away till the weekend.

  A smile slid across Iris’s face.

  “What?” I tried not to focus on how the smile made her lips look so inviting. My brain didn’t remember that those lips and mine didn’t match up well enough for another invitation.

  “You’re really sticking around.” She nodded. “Yeah, you are, and it makes me happy.”

  That was a good sign. Meant the bad kissing didn’t color her attitude toward me. “Me, too.”

  “I thought you might be tempted to stay in DC after your meeting.” A faint flush crawled up her neck. Not the same flush that came during tennis matches. It was the kind of flush that could cause flutters if it weren’t for our combined ghastly lip skills.

  “I worked for a different paper there before and had enough of it.” The city was fine to live in, but having to report on political maneuvers every day got old quickly. “I’m trying something new.”

  “This is good for new.” Some of the flush retreated. “Are you settled into the new digs?”

  “Yep. I’ve arranged for my storage locker to ship out the rest of my stuff from Chicago. Not that there’s much, but some stuff to make it feel like a home.”

  “What about furniture?” Her mouth drew into a line.

  “It was furnished for visitors.” Lots of visitors, apparently. Helen kept expressing how pleased she was that I had taken over the apartment. “I bought a new desk chair and mattress, but the other stuff will hold until I’m ready to go shopping for replacements.”

  “I never got the whole story on how this place was miraculously available.”

  It did seem miraculous after all the apartments we’d looked at. The next stop for us would have been someplace called Shoreline since Northgate hadn’t panned out. I was overjoyed not to have to spend more mornings looking at yet another tiny space that depressed me.

  “A friend of theirs used to own it, but she moved. Since then, it’s been a vacation place for her sister’s friends. Helen got sick of them knocking on her door to play tour guide.”

  “You’re getting to be good friends?”

  “We are, and Joe. He’s the one taking me car shopping.” I gave a carefree flick of my hand, still not believing my luck. “I guess she figures if I start to bug her, she doesn’t have to renew my lease.”

  “I’m just glad it worked out. Having you in Shoreline would have sucked.”

  “Out of the radius, huh?”


  She stared at me, all mirth leaving. “I would have made an exception.”

  I felt some of her flush transfer to me. “Good to know.”

  The ladies foursome passed us and loudly clambered into their cars, two of them checking Iris out before finally starting their cars and pulling away. They’d briefly flicked their eyes over me, but Iris’s muscle tone and flirtatious ways drew most of their attention.

  “I kissed you,” Iris blurted.

  My eyes snapped back to hers. Yes. She did, and it was bad, but I couldn’t say that, could I? What if she didn’t think it was bad?

  “It was…” she trailed off, watching their cars disappear from the parking lot.

  Wrong? Shouldn’t have happened? Horrible mistake? A grimace pinched her features as she struggled for the right words. I threw out my own guess before I could stop my faulty kissing lips. “Bad?”

  She laughed, surprise hiking her brow up. “It was, wasn’t it? Colossally bad. I think I chipped a tooth.”

  I joined the laughter. “Teeth really shouldn’t be involved in kissing unless it’s intentional, in case you needed a refresher on the subject.”

  “Oh, you’re giving me lessons, now? You were half of that bad kissing display.”

  She was being kind about the percentage of blame, but I still had to make a crack. “The surprised half.”

  Her eyes flashed with mischief. “Since the invention of the kiss—”

  “Really? The Princess Bride?”

  She shrugged without apology. “Great movie.”

  “Even better book,” I interjected.

  “As I was saying before you interrupted me with movie footnotes—”

  “Footnotes are critical.”

  She pushed at my shoulder to stop the teasing gibes. “Since kissing was invented, the rating for that kiss—”

  “Ours, you mean? The one that was a complete surprise to me?”

  “That very one would have rated just above the horrid display in Dumb and Dumber.”

  My whole body cringed as the kissing clip from that movie flashed through my head. Yeah, that was a bad kiss. Far worse than the one Iris had given me. “You just felt like you had to kiss someone and any surprised mouth would do? Hadn’t had your quota of kissing for the day?”

  Her eyes skimmed over me. “Lane talked to you.”

  I stepped back, surprised by the change of topic. The very serious topic. A nod was all I could manage.

  “I’m glad. She hasn’t talked to many people. Just her mom and me, that’s it. It’s good she could tell you.”

  “Her friends suck.” I spoke the thought that had been running through my mind since the other night.

  “A lot of them were my friends, too, and I couldn’t agree more. It didn’t take long for them to become gossipy, judgmental assholes.”

  On top of everything Lane had gone through, to find out her friends weren’t who she thought they were must have been devastating. “Some people can’t deal with anything heavy. She may not know it, but she’s better for dropping those friends.”

  “She knows that now.” Iris slid a hand down my arm and squeezed my hand. “Thanks for being different.”

  “I like Lane.”

  “Simple as that?”

  “Yes.” I shrugged because it was a simple code that not many people understood. I’d always thought of friendship as quiet joy. In a life filled with complications and difficulties, quiet joy wasn’t easy to find.

  “That’s why I had to kiss you.”

  I swallowed, accepting that she got my simple code. “Because I’m different?” She nodded, but I couldn’t help one final tease. “Yeah, bad kissers are pretty different. Even teenagers often get it right.”

  That got a laugh. “Half my fault.”

  She didn’t seem as distressed by her kissing performance as I’d been by mine. Maybe she knew something I didn’t. Maybe she was willing to overlook my terrifically horrible, dreadfully awful performance because I was different and good to her and her friend. Come to think of it, being good to someone and her friend, when they needed good friends, compensated for any and all lousy mouth sucking techniques.

  30 | Hayden & Billie

  Stubby fingers kept sweeping the bob haircut behind the ears of the woman directly across from me. At first I thought she was just anxious that her hair might appear scraggly after she’d walked in from the windy evening outside. After almost an hour of constant hair sweeping, she clearly had a nervous habit. Her partner didn’t appear to notice, when it was stole my whole focus. I wanted to reach across the table and trap her arms by her sides to stop the incessant fidgeting.

  “At first, you think you’ll be an hour late. That blows, but it can’t be avoided. No reason to yell at the gate attendant. Then, as all the flights start switching over to delayed, you think, damn, it might be a few hours.” Billie swept only one side of her hair behind her ears. The other was still tucked in safely, as it had been during the last ten sweeps.

  “After a few hours, we started getting antsy.” Hayden gave her spouse a fond look. She left her own lighter brown hair completely alone.

  “I was a nervous wreck,” Billie admitted. Sweep, sweep. “My job depended on me getting to San Diego to land that account. My boss basically told me that if I didn’t come back with a signed contract, I shouldn’t come back.” Double sweep again.

  “Yikes.” Deadline pressure paled in comparison to career ultimatums. “Did you have the same stressor, Hayden?”

  “God, no. I was glad to have less family time. Everyone was going there for my brother’s wedding. Being stuck in an airport was a great excuse.”

  “After five hours waiting, you did start to freak a little,” Billie said with a momentary pause in the hair sweeping to snake an arm around Hayden.

  “I did, when it looked like we might not get out of there in time for the ceremony. It’s one thing to skip out on all the family drama before the wedding, but to actually miss it? Mama would have roasted me and served me for dinner.”

  “By the time we figured out we weren’t going anywhere that night, all the hotels were booked up. I was going to rent a car and drive the rest of the way.” Billie pushed her fingers through her hair three times to indicate how seriously she meant to get the hell out of that airport.

  “There was fourteen feet of snow out there.” Hayden’s voice pitched up to a near screech.

  Fourteen feet of snow didn’t dump in less than three hours. Not in Denver, and what the hell were they doing choosing a flight path from New Orleans to San Diego that put them through Denver in the middle of December? First, it’s not on the way. Second, it’s Denver in December. There’s bound to be weather.

  “You convinced her to sit tight, I take it?” I asked Hayden.

  “I did. I’d noticed her, of course, who wouldn’t?” She batted her eyes at the less than noticeable Billie. In baggie jeans and a tank top under a plaid shirt, she looked identical to a third of the women in Lane’s bar tonight. Other than the constant motion of her arms to tuck her hair back, nothing really stood out about her. At a crowded gate, someone wouldn’t pick her out as the most noticeable. Now, Hayden was a different story. Curvy and pretty, she wore a patterned summer dress that flattered her well-proportioned, plump frame. Many of the women in here had given her the look.

  “You saw her making a break for it and did what?” I prompted.

  “She practically vibrated in her seat with tension. I gave up my prime location next to an electrical outlet and went over to sit next to her.”

  “She tried to be funny.”

  “I was funny!” Hayden slapped Billie’s hand as it came down from a hair sweep.

  “She thinks she’s funny,” Billie corrected.

  “That right there is what hooked me,” Hayden told me. “Her sense of humor. That’s always been number one on my list of things I needed in a girlfriend.”

  I bit back a long suffering sigh. Even before this series of interviews, I’d grown
tired of friends saying their number one requirement in a mate was a sense of humor. Everyone has a sense of humor. Everyone. They may not be funny, but that doesn’t mean they can’t sense what makes them laugh. Most people think they want someone who’s funny, but seriously funny people often use humor to mask whatever pain they’ve gone through. I’ll stick with someone who amuses me because we have similar senses of humor over someone who is constantly trying to make me and everyone around us laugh.

  “Your attempt at humor captivated Billie enough to ditch the plan to drive to San Diego?” I got back on track.

  “Through fourteen feet of snow,” Hayden piped up.

  “No cars were left either.” Billie’s hair sweep hitched at the admission of checking on cars first before resigning herself to enjoy Hayden’s humor.

  “Truly stranded in the airport?” I made a note: Stranded. At least it wasn’t on a deserted island, then I’d know they were LARPing a lesbian romance novel.

  “It was pretty awful,” Billie said, one-sided sweep again. She looked at Hayden and added, “But pretty wonderful, too. Who knew you could fall in love between a Cinnabon and an Orange Julius?”

  “Oh, God, Cinnabon,” Hayden moaned. “We need to hit a mall soon and grab one, sweetie.”

  Billie laughed and slung her arm around Hayden again, severely limiting her ability to double sweep the hair. “Anything you want, ladybug.”

  “How long were you stranded?” I tried not to make air quotes around the word. Stranded implies going for days without any luxuries. Cinnabon may not be luxurious dining, but it’s still available food.

  “Until noon the next day.”

  “Did you make it to the wedding?” I asked Hayden.

  “I came in right at the end.”

  “Did you get your contract?” I asked Billie.

  She shot an affectionate look at her spouse and proceeded to swipe first one side of her hair, then the next with the hand not around Hayden. “I went with her to the wedding.”