by J. D. Robb
The waiter arrived and took their orders. When he was gone, Macy added, “Besides, my life coach says it’s inefficient to spend time with people you’re hoping will change, that it’s a surefire way to derail your future.”
“Life coach.” Carolyn snorted.
“Stop it, I told you how much he’s helped me. I’m focused now. I’m clearing my life of anything that doesn’t serve my goals, and it’s working. The fact is, if love is not adding value to my life, it has no place in it. Letting things without value take up space in your life drains your energy for fulfilling yourself with what’s really important.”
Carolyn frowned for a long moment, then, as if she hadn’t even heard what Macy had just said, asked, “But couldn’t you have talked about it? Did you tell him the phone thing was a problem? You know, relationships are hard work. It’s a cliché, but everybody says it for a reason. Not everything’s going to be perfect right—”
Macy held up a hand. “Carolyn, I love you. But if you continue down that conversational path my head will explode. C’mon, I’m not an idiot. I’m twenty-nine years old. I know a relationship takes work.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“I did talk to him. First I joked about it. Then a couple of times I asked him to put the phone away.”
“And did he?”
“Of course. But the thing was, the next time we were out it was the same problem. And I don’t want to be that woman, the one who’s always nagging about not getting any attention. If he isn’t into me enough now, at seven months in, to keep the phone holstered, what’ll he be like in five years? Ten?” She poked listlessly at the tablecloth with her fork. “God forbid I’m ever in one of those dead relationships.”
She spoke with assurance, but inside that knot was forming again, the one that tightened every time she thought about Jeremy. There’d been so many things right about him . . . except for the one very wrong fact that he wasn’t into her enough.
That was what it came down to, every time. And it was that which caused the doors of her heart to slam closed. She’d rather be alone than be with someone who loved her less than she loved him.
“Well, all I know is I don’t want to be the one to tell Luther Serafini his baby sister’s on the prowl again.” Carolyn shook her head as she loosed her silverware from its rolled-up napkin.
Macy jerked her eyes to Carolyn. “On the prowl!” she protested.
“Before you met Jeremy you were using a spreadsheet to keep track of your dates, remember?”
Her face went hot. “There was a reason for that!”
“Of course there was.” Carolyn laughed.
“Look,” she said, leaning forward, “here’s the thing. My life coach had me make a life plan, which was great, because it’s only when you know where you’re going that you can make the right decisions to get you there. But I felt like, until I found the right guy I couldn’t get the rest of my life in order. I know, I know, I don’t need a guy to be whole and all that. And I don’t! But I want a guy, I want the right guy. But until I find him I can’t get the whole rest of the show on the road. Do you know what I mean?”
Carolyn looked at her like she had three heads. “The whole rest of the show?”
“Yeah, you know, making sure I’m in the right job, the one with the best benefits, maternity leave and career track. Planning exactly where I want to be on that track when I decide to have children, so I won’t lose ground. Then I can start looking at neighborhoods, think about buying a house, calculate the down payment needed and the payments we can afford. I can research new cars that would be family friendly and could be paid for by the time we have to start contributing to college savings accounts, figure out how to adjust our retirement savings, stuff like that, you know? Just make sure my priorities reflect my goals, the future I’m going to manifest for myself.”
Carolyn was quiet a long moment, fingering one earring, a grave look on her face. “And you say you broke up with Jeremy? Not the other way around?”
She knew she shouldn’t have confided all that. “What?”
“You just scared the crap out of me, and I’m not even dating you. So, that little speech? Save that for the losers, because it’s the perfect formula to make a guy run screaming.”
“Not the right guy. Not a practical guy.”
“Not a boring guy.”
Macy sat back, conviction warring with confusion. “But that’s who I am, Carolyn. I’m a planner, you know that.”
“Honey,” Carolyn continued, “there’s planning, and there’s crafting a prison sentence. In your plan, the guy doesn’t seem to matter much, beyond setting that whole unbelievably dull-sounding machinery in motion.”
“Of course the guy matters! He’s at the crux of the whole thing!” She bunched her hands together illustratively. Then she looked up. “What do you mean, dull? You’re married, you’ve got kids, you must have thought about all this stuff.”
“Yeah, right.” Carolyn rolled her eyes. “We got together in high school, remember? Back when planning was Hey, who’s getting the keg for this weekend?”
“Huh. You were lucky. You got the whole thing settled early. My trouble is I keep meeting guys who don’t live up to their billing. They seem great on the outside, and they can maintain that facade for a few dates—or, like in Jeremy’s case, a few months—but then, inevitably, the Problem shows up.” She leaned back. “There’s always a Problem. With Jeremy it was the freaking phone. I mean, who wants to look across the table at the top of someone’s head for the rest of their life?”
“If you’re lucky, it’ll have hair on it.”
“Oh, it’ll have hair. I require pictures of parents and grandparents on the second date.”
Carolyn closed her mouth, gathered her napkin and rose from the table.
Macy laughed. “Carolyn, stop! I was kidding!”
“I’ll be right back. I have to think about an adequate response to all that”—she rolled a hand—“stuff.” She walked off.
Chuckling, Macy pulled her phone from her purse, thinking, See? It’s okay when someone leaves the table to check the phone. There is proper cell phone etiquette, and there is cell phone rudeness. A sigh escaped her as she slid her finger across the screen, entered her passcode and saw that nobody had emailed or texted. She’d sort of expected something from Jeremy, a What’s going on? or Can’t we talk about this? But there was nothing. He must have agreed with her decision . . .
She gazed at the familiar checkerboard of apps. Familiar, that was, except for one yellow icon in the lower right corner that seemed to be throbbing.
She looked closer. iLove, it read underneath it. Inside the box was a red heart, surrounded by a bright yellow sun, which was the thing that seemed to be pulsating. She put her finger to the icon and the app burst into a bright full-screen sun, and then up popped what looked like a dating website. Find a Guy, Contact a Guy, See the Guys Looking at You—all with little red heart icons.
Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t downloaded that. What, were apps just self-installing now? That’ll be the day, she thought, when she used a dating website. It was scary enough going out with someone you’d already laid eyes on. Setting yourself up on a blind date was an idea beyond horrifying.
She closed the application and deleted it.
CHAPTER THREE
Macy’s phone rang again and she nearly threw it against the wall. All day the phone had been ringing, and not once had it been Jeremy.
“Macy Serafini.” She tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear, identified the caller and pulled up the account file on her computer. She was nodding over the client’s points when her coworker April appeared in her doorway. She held up a finger.
“Yes,” she said, nodding, “yes. We can try that.” She waved April in. “Let me put something together on that and I’ll email you Monday, how’s that?”
> April settled herself in the armchair across from Macy’s desk and began examining her fingernails.
Macy leaned her head back on her chair and gave a silent scream as the client droned on about things they had discussed multiple times already.
Bud Forester, she mouthed to April, identifying the client who drove them all crazy. April smirked.
If StockSolutions weren’t such an important client, she’d hand the account off to her assistant.
As usual, the conversation went on way too long. Also as usual, he finished by asking her out—even though she’d told him multiple times she was seeing someone. The fact that she wasn’t anymore was something she didn’t even consider telling him.
“I’m sorry, Bud, but I have plans with my boyfriend this weekend. Let me know how the concert is, though, okay?”
He took the news as he always did—with cheerful resignation—and they hung up.
April drew her long blonde hair around her shoulder and twisted it with one hand. “Didn’t you break up with your boyfriend?”
“Yes.” Macy frowned at the phone. “And it seems to have stuck.”
April dropped her hair. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. I thought I’d hear from him.” She swiveled her chair and put her hand on the computer mouse, opening up her work email.
“Why?”
She glanced at the list of impersonal messages, not one of them from Jeremy. “Well, because I was kind of abrupt about it.”
“No kidding.” Deadpan.
Macy grimaced and closed the program. “I know, it’s stupid. I just thought he might call. God knows he’s never very far from a phone!”
“What, to chat about the breakup?”
“No. But you’d think he’d want to know what brought me to that point, since it obviously took him by surprise. Why wouldn’t he want to know that? Did he really not care?”
“So you dump the guy out of the blue and you’re upset because he hasn’t called you. Isn’t that considered having your cake and eating it too? Why don’t you call him, if you’ve got something you want to explain?”
Macy shook her head, rested her elbows on her desk and put her chin in her hands. She felt so tired. It was exhausting not thinking about Jeremy, and she’d been at it for a week now. “No, don’t you see? That would defeat the purpose. I was going for shock and awe, but he didn’t even notice.”
“I understand. You were going for the quick fix. Don’t you know you should never break up with a guy unless you really mean it? Otherwise, karma makes it so that the next time you see him he’s with some ridiculously hot chick.”
Macy’s throat closed at the thought. She picked up a pen and tapped it on the desk blotter. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. Jeremy’s perfect when he’s paying attention. Unfortunately that’s only about forty percent of the time. The other sixty you spend watching him look at his phone.”
“That might be enough for some women.”
At the mention of cell phones Macy picked hers up, slid her thumb across the screen to look for texts or messages, and found nothing yet again. Yep, Jeremy was just fine with the breakup.
“And yeah, I see what you mean,” April said drily.
Macy put her phone aside. “Sorry. I was just checking . . . See, if he’d called me it would mean he’d woken up to the problem, or would be open to hearing what the problem was. But if I call him it’ll just be me telling him one more time that his constant distraction bothers me. And that hasn’t worked.”
“Which means it was a good thing you broke up with him. If this is all the notice he’s taken of it he was probably done anyway, right?”
The blunt words struck her hard, and she picked up her phone again. She looked at it blindly a moment before something penetrated. “What the heck? I thought I deleted this.”
“What?” April leaned forward.
The pulsating yellow icon was back in the bottom right corner of her screen—iLove. She pressed the icon and held it with the intention of deleting it, then changed her mind.
“Wait a minute.” She cancelled the delete function. “Have you ever heard of a dating site called iLove?”
April shook her head. “It must be new, because I’ve heard of all the dating sites.” She got up and came around the desk, leaning over Macy’s shoulder. “Jeez, is that suggestive or what? Look at it, it’s throbbing, for god’s sake. Open it!”
Macy tapped the icon and the app sprang to life. Find a Guy, Contact a Guy, See the Guys Looking at You . . .
“‘See the Guys Looking at You,’” Macy read. “How stalkery is that?”
“Go up, go up, go up.” April pointed, moving her finger like it was on the screen. “Go to Find a Guy. Let’s just see who they’ve got. How have I not seen this site?”
Macy tapped the red heart, which was also throbbing, and up came a screen that read What Are You Looking For?
“Ooh, this is fun.” April straightened, grabbed the chair placed against the wall and dragged it over. “Let’s join.”
“April!” Macy laughed. “No way. Besides, look at the time. I have to get some work done today, you know.”
“It’ll only take a minute. Besides, it’s Friday.”
“Your point being? You actually think I’m going to find a guy for tonight?” Macy scoffed.
April shot her a raised eyebrow. “My point being that you can work all weekend since you’re not seeing anybody anymore.”
She scrolled down the page, scanning the questions.
Your guy is:
Tall
Short
Either, as long as he’s taller than me
Size doesn’t matter
Your guy likes:
Books
Movies
Museums
Artsy-fartsy stuff nobody understands
An NCIS marathon on his big-ass TV
“I notice they don’t say ‘anything happening on the two-by-five screen in his palm,’” Macy quipped.
“Quiet. We’re getting to the essay portion.” April took the phone from her hand and held it so they both could see while she scrolled faster. “What are you going to tell them about you? ‘Hates technology. Wants undivided attention. Will dump you at the drop of a hat.’”
April laughed, but Macy folded her arms. “Hey. That’s not fair. I don’t think it’s too much to ask to not play second fiddle to an electronic device.”
April rolled her eyes. “Enough with the cell phone stuff. There had to be other stuff wrong with Jeremy or you wouldn’t have dumped him, right?”
Macy paused, considering for the hundredth time that she might have been hasty. Then she recalled the feeling of sitting there while he searched for someone or something more interesting than her to interact with.
“Right?” April insisted, suddenly looking appalled.
“Of course! The phone was indicative of so many things. It meant . . .” She didn’t want to put it into words.
“It meant . . . ?” April insisted.
“Well, that he couldn’t sustain a conversation. That he didn’t understand proper etiquette. That he was inconsiderate, rude, oblivious.”
“He didn’t understand proper etiquette?” April’s brows were at her hairline. “You’re kidding, right?”
Macy paused, feeling the words back up in her throat. “All right, here it is. He couldn’t stop going for his phone because he wasn’t interested in me. Okay? You said it yourself before. The fact that he hasn’t called means he was done too.”
She took the phone back, moving her thumb up and down on the screen and once again fighting the urge to cry. She couldn’t remember ever feeling this upset over a breakup. They were usually a relief. Where was the relief?
“Hey, careful, you’re going to lose our place.” April took
the phone from her again, smiling gently when Macy looked at her. “We can do this like an interview, okay? I’ll ask questions and you answer them, and I’ll put them in. What the heck, it could be fun. And you never know. You lost a guy because of a phone—who’s to say you can’t find a guy because of one too?”
* * *
Jeremy retreated to his cubicle, pondering Mrs. Hartz’s response to his question. If you don’t pay attention, nothing happens. True enough, in general.
He sank down into his office chair, wondering if it was supposed to be a meaningful message, like something that should be helpful. He gazed at his screens. Was sitting in this box surrounded by his virtual life considered paying attention? The others all seemed to think so.
It was good in one way. He could contact people, maintain his work, make sure people didn’t think he was dead so his life wouldn’t be a total mess if he ever got out of here and back to it. Which would be when? How long could he have purely virtual relationships before his real life started breaking down? He couldn’t even consider the question without freaking.
Had Macy really done this to him?
Okay, he was crazy. Macy couldn’t have done this to him, because it was clearly some psychotic episode going on inside his brain. It couldn’t be real. And if it wasn’t real then Macy couldn’t have done it. Not that he believed she would have even if she could.
But she could have been the reason for his psychotic break. How could he have gotten things so wrong? He’d thought they were . . . falling in love.
What a sap he was for getting choked up. He stood up and bounced on the balls of his feet a few times, then brought his hands up to boxing position and jabbed at the air, once, twice, threefourfive. Get a grip. Be strong. You can get over this—over her. And hopefully that’ll get you back to reality.
He reached for his phone again, then rolled his eyes at how slow he was to break the habit when he knew it wasn’t there. It was like constantly flipping light switches when the power was out.
He decided to leave his cubicle—Mrs. Hartz be damned—and, on a whim, started to jog. He sprinted for ten cubicles and slowed for ten, going back and forth between the two while keeping an eye on what was inside each cube as he passed. Which was still one hypnotized person after another. But the exercise was invigorating, made him feel more like himself, so he continued running.