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“Yeah. And it was nice, but not toe-curling nice.”
“Maybe your expectations are too high for a second date. I mean, how many guys have actually made you feel that way so soon after meeting them?” Esther could count the number of men who’d made her feel that way on one hand. On one finger, actually.
“Stuart did.”
“Okay, but—”
“I know, Stuart cheated on me. I’m not going back to him, so you can stop worrying about it.”
Esther blew out a long breath. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear that.” Sally rolled over, snuggling up against her thigh, and Esther scratched her neck for her.
“You were right, I needed to rebound. Now that I’ve put myself out there again, I have a better idea of what I want, and it’s not Stuart or Jonathan. Like Vilma said, life’s too short to waste on cheap shoes.”
“You’re saying Jonathan’s cheap shoes?” Oof. That was rough on the poor guy. Especially when he was out there thinking the date had gone really well. Just like he’d thought his awful screenplay was some kind of cinematic masterpiece. Poor dude. It was kind of the theme of his life.
Esther could practically hear Jinny’s shrug. “He’s fine. He’ll make a perfectly nice boyfriend for someone else. But he’s not what I’m looking for. My days of settling for Payless shoes are over. I’m saving up for a pair of Manolos.”
Okay, then. But… “He told me you were going out again next weekend.”
“You talked to him?” Jinny sounded surprised.
“Yeah…I ran into him earlier.” By appointment, but Jinny didn’t need to know about that part.
“I sort of agreed to go to that new Ethiopian place with him next Friday.”
“Why would you do that if you don’t like him?”
Jinny huffed out an annoyed-sounding breath. “I don’t know, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He asked me right after we’d done all that making out, and it seemed unnecessarily cruel to say no at that point. And I hadn’t totally made up my mind about him yet. But the more I thought about it today, the more sure I was that he’s not the Manolos I’m looking for.”
Esther leaned forward to snag her beer off the coffee table. “So are you still going through with the date on Friday?”
“Yeah, I guess. I don’t want to break it off over the phone. I’ll tell him at the end of dinner. I’ll pick up the check, and then before we leave I’ll tell him.”
Esther shook her head, wincing. He wouldn’t even see it coming. “Poor guy.”
“He’ll be fine. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t like me that much either.”
“I wouldn’t be too sure of that,” Esther said, biting her lip.
“Why? What’d he say?”
“Nothing. He just seemed happy to be going out with you again is all. Just…try to be gentle, okay?”
“You know me,” Jinny said. “I’m always nice. It’ll be as gentle a rejection as a rejection can be.”
Guilt settled in the pit of Esther’s stomach. First she’d gotten Jonathan to like Jinny, then she’d decimated his ego by tearing apart his script, and now Jinny was probably going to crush what was left of his self-esteem when she dumped him on Friday.
The guy was having a majorly bad week—and it was pretty much all thanks to Esther.
She didn’t see or hear from Jonathan on Monday. Or Tuesday. Every time she walked past his apartment, she slowed her steps, listening for sounds of habitation inside, but it was dark and silent. The blinds were shut tight—which wasn’t unusual for him—but there were no lights on inside. She couldn’t blame him for avoiding her. Maybe he’d gone out of town. Or he was staying with a friend so he didn’t have to risk running into her.
She thought about texting him, just to check on him, but was afraid that might make things worse. It wasn’t that she was worried about him, exactly, it was just that he’d looked so crushed after she’d eviscerated his script. Like a kid who’d been shoved off his bike and had his lunch money stolen. She didn’t like feeling like a bully.
Apparently he wasn’t used to criticism. Really though, he needed to develop a thicker skin if he was going to be a writer. Criticism was critical to improvement. You couldn’t get better at anything if you weren’t willing to learn from your mistakes.
Wasn’t the whole point of graduate school to further your education in order to master your chosen field? If his fragile ego was going to dissolve every time he got a little constructive feedback, he might as well stop wasting money on tuition and go be a barista or something.
Okay, so maybe she was a little worried about him. He didn’t strike her as the type to do something drastic, but you never knew, right? When it came down to it, she didn’t really know anything about him. Other than the fact that he wasn’t very good at the one thing he’d apparently centered his entire identity around being.
