Cheating on Myself (12 page)

“I’m walking away before you blow it. Get my number from Lily,” I said, tipping my cowboy hat at him. I could feel myself getting drunker by the second, and I was a little worried about what I might do in front of all my friends. Getting drunk was one thing, but getting drunk in the company of a hot guy who had called me beautiful and knew how to mix drinks was another thing altogether.

“I’ll call you,” he promised. Then we went our separate ways for the rest of the party. I seriously doubted he actually would call. But even through my drunken haze, I realized I really hoped he would.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Almost a week went by, and I heard nothing from Joe.

“He’s an ass,” Lily declared when we met up for drinks the next Friday. “He did ask me for your number, then… nada? Obviously an ass.”

“A player,” Cat agreed.

“But also hot,” Anders said, and we all looked at him. “What? I’ve had to listen to Stella talking about him all week. Don’t give me that look—straight guys can analyze other guys without wanting to sleep with them.”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said sullenly, chewing at my pizza crust. We’d decided to try out a new wood-fired pizza place downtown, and I ordered an extra pizza and an order of shallots “for the table” when Lily had offered to pay. I was still bitter about my reduction to eighty-percent at work, and I was going to milk Lily for all she was worth as long as she was still full-time and high powered. It was childish of me, but I knew she could afford it. “He’s not the kind of guy who’s going to call when he says he will. He’s a musician, for God’s sake, and he smirked too much, and all the moms say he’s a player, right?”

Cat nodded ruefully. “True dat.”

I groaned. “All of that’s bad.” But Joe also smelled like cinnamon, and made delicious drinks, and made me feel a little giddy and silly and attractive and fun. “I’m not looking for a player. I don’t need a player. I need husband-material.”

They all sighed.

“You need to have some fun,” Lily said, waving the waiter over to order another bottle of wine. It had been another saturated week, where Anders and I had spent many nights drinking too much wine and looking through online profiles. We’d formed a little tradition in the last few weeks—he was teaching me about new varieties of red, and I was happily drinking everything he put in front of me. “Transport yourself back to college and focus on just having a good time.”

“I didn’t do that in college,” I said. “I spent college studying or looking for a husband.”

“You didn’t have any regrettable one-night stands?” Lily asked. “No mornings where you woke up and thought, ‘oh shit, that guy Vic from my cultural anthropology lecture is half-naked in my bed?’”

“Um, no. Did you?”

“More than a few times. Everyone did.” I looked around the table. Cat, Anders, and Lily were all nodding.

“You all had meaningless one-night stands in college?”

“That’s the whole point of college,” Cat said primly. “You get it out of your system.”

“You don’t get it out of your system,” Lily protested. “College is a practice round, where you get all of your worst
performances
out of your system. But things are supposed to get a whole lot better once you leave the twenty-year-old premature ejaculation boys behind.” She took a sip of her wine and looked around the restaurant. “Unfortunately, some thirty-year-olds are just as guilty of bad performance as the younger boys. The only difference is, the big boys are always pretty confident about their quality.”

“Women are just as responsible as men are when two people are in bed together.” Anders stared Lily down.

As they discussed the merits of good sex and the flaws of bad sex, I thought about my own experience. Apparently, I was a sexual pariah. I’d made it through college with a 3.8 GPA and a total of three boyfriends, none of whom had attempted anything more significant than quick, missionary sex with me. In comparison, Erik had seemed like a sexual deviant with his new positions and ability to help me figure out how to have an orgasm. He really was pretty great in bed. Neither of us was ever up for anything risky or crazy, but that was normal. You didn’t need a secret pair of handcuffs to have great sex.

I was still thinking about sex with Erik when I felt Lily jab me under the table with her fork.

“Oof!”

“Sorry, sweetie, but look who’s here—” She gestured across the room to where the hostess was seating the object of my only decent sexual memories and some dumb-looking blonde. “Who’s the bitch?”

I stared at Erik and the blonde. I could feel Cat squirming in her seat next to me. I’d just seen him last week. He’d told me he wanted me back. And now he was at dinner, at a new restaurant, with a new girl? My stomach made its way up my throat, and nearly emptied its contents onto the partial pizza sitting on my plate. It hadn’t felt so weird that I was dating, but seeing Erik with another woman made me sick.

“I’m leaving,” I said, hastily dabbing a fresh coat of lipstick over my lips. “I’m not going to sit here and watch his date. I understand if he wants to have one, but I don’t have to be mature enough to sit within spitting distance of it.”

“Don’t leave,” Cat urged. “I’m sure it’s not a date. He hasn’t said anything about dating—honestly, he only talks about you.”

I kissed her, leaving a dull pink print on her smooth cheek. “I appreciate that.” I smiled and shook my head as Anders moved to put on his coat. “I’m leaving alone. Seriously. I just need to get out of here. I’m not freaking out or anything—there’s no reason for me to be freaking out.” Obviously, I was freaking out. The blonde was pretty. I hated her.

“I’ll drive you home.” Anders stood. “Please.”

Erik still hadn’t seen us, and I was eager to get out of there. “Sit down. I’m thirty-four years old. If I want to leave alone, I get to leave alone. I promise I can handle it.” I stuck my chin out, stubborn, and dared them to disagree. “All righty then. Lil, thanks for the meal.”

I’d be lying if I said I walked proudly out of the restaurant. What I actually did is skulk. I skulked timidly past the tables that ran alongside the outer edge of the restaurant, and kept my head dipped low. I was not going to be a cliché. I refused to have my ex see me ducking out of a restaurant because he’d suddenly appeared with a date. I had made a choice and I was proud enough to stick to it. I had to know he’d be out with other women and Minneapolis was a small enough town that it would happen soon, and it would happen often.

In my obsessive pre-sleep hours over the past few weeks, I’d already fretted about our first run-in at Target or Kowalski’s. I’d inevitably be eating a bag of Goldfish crackers from the dollar section and he’d catch me with my mouth full of crumbs. I don’t know why I was so opposed to seeing him tonight, since I actually looked good. I was out with friends, pleasantly buzzed, and wearing a new sweater that hadn’t yet stretched out in all the wrong places.

But I was also feeling vulnerable. I was waiting for Joe to call, I’d yet to find a normal person online, and I was having serious doubts about letting go of the guy that had been perfectly
fine
to love. I didn’t want to see Erik now. I didn’t want him to reject
me
—I wanted to keep the memory of him telling me he missed me in my mind, and pretend the blonde had never happened.

I stepped out onto the sidewalk, and realized why Anders had been so insistent about giving me a ride home—I didn’t have a car, and he was my ride. Feeling stupid, I walked into the street and looked for a cab. But this was Minneapolis, and cabs didn’t just dart up and down quiet neighborhoods like the one I was in. It was cold, I was stranded, and if I walked a block in either direction I’d run into strip clubs and perverts. When a bus pulled up in front of me and the doors sighed open, I stepped up and in. It was an escape route, and I just needed to escape.

I slipped a five into the cash slot, irritated I had to pay a mini-fortune to take the bus just because I didn’t have small bills.

“I’m paying for this guy, too,” I said, gesturing blindly at the man stepping up and into the bus behind me.

“Thanks,” he said, giving me a funny look. “But I have a bus pass.”

“They don’t give change. I don’t want to pay five bucks for only me.”

The man ignored me and walked toward the back of the bus. I watched him as I waited for the driver to give me my transfer. I didn’t even know how to get home on the bus, so my plan was to keep requesting transfers and switching buses until I ended up somewhere near home. I’d done this with my roommate in college a few times, and had always thought it was fun to take the bus wherever it led. Now, tonight, I hated the uncertainty of it. I just wanted to know where I was going, and
get there
already.

“Oh, God,” I said aloud. “This bus is a metaphor for my life.”

The driver lifted his eyebrows at me. “You need to step back behind the line, ma’am. Please take a seat.”

I muttered incoherently as I wandered toward the back of the bus. A woman sitting in one of the handicapped seats looked pointedly at me, challenging me to sit next to her. She gave me a look, like “sit here, bitch, and I’ll knock the crazy out of you.” I had become
that
woman. I resolved to stop muttering to myself.

Plunking down into one of the seats across from my bus-fare-partner, I pulled my phone out of my purse and plugged headphones in. Even though my new friend was pretending to read a magazine, I could tell he was keeping a close eye on me. Was it so weird to try to pay for someone’s bus ride? What happened to good old-fashioned chivalry and the courtesy of strangers?
Don’t worry, buster,
I thought, smiling to myself.
I’m not nuts. I’m perfectly respectable.

My Pandora station pulled up a random Neil Diamond song, and I closed my eyes, letting the lurching of the bus lull me into an Erik-free trance. As Neil Diamond hummed his way out of the song, I peeked my eyes open and saw we were driving through the center of downtown. The lights of the empty office buildings shone bright, and the sounds of teenagers shouting at each other outside shot through the bus door every time it eased open to let people in and out. I could feel the last glass of wine soaking its way into my system, and when the next song came pouring through my headphones, I was pleasantly drunk and feeling good.

Oh hey!
I thought, reveling in my buzz as I stared out at the bright lights and busy streets.
Pandora is playing that Journey song!
It was the one that made me think of baseball games, since they played it between innings for the sing-along. I never sang along, but I liked watching other people make fools of themselves.

Just a small town girl, livin’ in a lonely world.
She took the midnight train going anywhere.

Oh crap, was Journey singing about me?
I
was going anywhere!
I
was a small town girl! This bus really was my metaphorical destiny.
I
was living in a lonely world—well, not really, since I had my friends and the girls and all, but I’d go with it—letting the fates take me where they might. It was beautifully symbolic. My eyes popped open and I looked around the bus. I felt so free, listening to Journey as I journeyed.

A bald man, the woman wearing three scarves, two kids fighting over the fourth McDonald’s apple pie… these were the people who were witnessing my big awakening! I was in a musical of my life.

Just a city boy, born and raised in South Detroit. He took the midnight train going anywhere.

“Excuse me,” I said, startling my bus friend. He looked up from his magazine. “Are you from Detroit, by any chance?”

He shook his head slightly, then rolled the magazine, grabbed his man-purse, and moved to the front of the bus. So this guy wasn’t my city boy—frankly, that was a relief since I wasn’t big on blondes. Besides, this specific one was wearing a tan trench coat and they always made me think of lawyers and flashers. Both yucky and unappealing.

I began to sing along, quietly, under my breath.

She took the midnight train going anywhere…

“Girl, this is a bus.” The lady wearing three scarves said,
tsk
-ing at me. “And we’re going to uptown. You need some help?”

I grinned at her and stared out the window, watching everything go by.

Strangers, waiting, up and down the boulevard. Shadows, searching in the night… People, living just to find emotion. Hiding somewhere in the night!

I was being inspired by Journey!

Fuck Erik!

Fuck the blonde.

And fuck Joe—there were a million wannabe rock stars out there. I didn’t need him to call. I would make my own happiness, la di da!

Don’t stop believing…

I wouldn’t stop believing! Hallelujah—I was being saved by Journey!

I popped up and rang the bell to stop the bus. We were on the outskirts of downtown now, near First Avenue, and I was suddenly inspired to walk to find my emotion hiding in the night. I practically pranced down the steps at the back of the bus and walked out into the dark, chilly night. The fresh air hit me hard, like the sight of James Davis in yoga pants, and suddenly my buzz was a lot less powerful. I realized I was still singing along to Journey, and calling the wrong kind of attention to myself. I grinned sheepishly at the cluster of punk kids slouched on the wall outside First Ave. “Who’s playing tonight?” I asked, trying to look like someone who might be interested in that sort of thing.

They eyed me suspiciously. One of them muttered the name of some band I’d obviously never heard of.

“Oh, cool. They’re awesome.”

“Right, lady.
Awesome
.”

I cringed, realizing how uncool they thought I was. If they had seen or heard me singing Journey a few seconds earlier, they probably would have realized I was truly rad. Choice. Coolio. Or any other phat words that made me seem totally not awesome and old. I skulked around the corner onto First Avenue—my second time skulking that night!—and ran into one of the concert-goers. “Oh! I’m so sorry!” I stumbled and pulled at my headphones, trying to tug them out of my ears. Kenny Rogers was now singing through the wires, which really upped my cool factor.