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Ethan shakes his head and chuckles.
“Not a joke, brotha. Not a joke. If I could find a way to do it without the headache of a woman wantin’ to make me hers, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“Don’t lead with that on your next date. Everything looked good with the ESPN contract, by the way. Are you signing?”
“Not sure yet.”
“You thinking about going back to Oklahoma?”
“Nah…my home’s here now.” That’s close enough to the truth. I raise my glass. “Time for a toast. Here’s to the lady sayin’ yes. And here’s to me not lookin’ for a new manager.”
Chapter Three
Stella
“Gross. Someone farted,” I whisper-hiss.
I really hate hot yoga. I really do. The dripping sweat. The odors. The strong urge to bathe in a vat of bleach afterward. The things we do in the name of friendship.
In a moment of weakness, I allowed my best friend to talk me into buying a ridiculously expensive package of classes for the yoga studio every New Yorker is flocking to like flies to dog poop, The Bend. “It’s the guy next to me. I’ve gotta get out of here or I’m going to barf.”
The friend in question is currently glaring at me, her dark eyes two slits communicating her lack of sympathy for my predicament. Nothing new for Delia, sympathy is not a dominant trait in her bloodline.
“Suck it up.”
“You suck it up. I’m leaving.” Ungracefully uncurling my body from its pretzel-like state, I grab my hand towel and place it over my mouth and nose. “Are you coming?” I inquire, the sound muffled by Egyptian cotton.
“Wimp.”
Delia stretches her full five-foot-ten-inch length out of king pigeon pose. While we quietly gather our stuff, the yoga instructor scolds us with an eyebrow, if an eyebrow can be scolding, which in this case it can. Then we head for the exit.
Cordelia Lawrence, aka Delia Law, as she’s known to her throng of fans. Dels is a best-selling author of over twenty paranormal romance books. She’s also my best friend. Has been since my freshman year at Princeton when she walked up to my table at the Starbucks close to campus and said, “Can I sit here, or are you a total asshole?”
There was no good answer to that.
Heavily immersed in my economics textbook, I had no idea the question was directed at me. It didn’t register because no one ever spoke to me. Mostly because I never spoke to anybody. A loud rap of knuckles on the table startled me out of my reading zone.
“What?” I snapped. Needless to say, there are only a handful of things I despise more than people interrupting me while I’m reading.
A pair of toe-tapping Doc Martens lace-up boots moved into my line of sight. My eyes climbed up the leopard print tights attached to those boots, to a faux fur shaggy black coat. They kept climbing until they reached wild red hair and an obnoxious glare.
“I said––”
“I know what you said,” I interrupted, projecting all the irritation I was feeling. “Why are you saying it to me?”
“Because those two are assholes––” she reiterated, jerking her chin at the only other tables with available chairs. “King of the douchebags over yonder needs the chair to rest his million-dollar leg. And the bonehead at the table next to his is being stood up for her blind date and refuses to accept it.”
At one table sat the captain of the soccer team. I only knew who he was because everyone in the history of Princeton knew who he was. And at the other, a mousy blonde sat across an empty chair looking around furtively. I wasn’t sure about the blind date. However, it must be said that she was wearing way-too-much makeup for the four o’clock Starbucks crowd.
“I can’t go back to my room, man,” the angry giant whined. “My roommate’s having a sexathon with her new dude and I can’t listen to her scream ‘fuck me harder, Daddy’ one more time. I just can’t do it.” She exhaled raggedly, her desperation coming through loud and clear. At my unsympathetic expression she seemed to lose some of her spine. “Can I sit here, please?”
“Fine,” I answered with great reluctance.
It was the relief on her face that got to me. She didn’t seem to be winning any popularity contests either, and I knew what it felt like to be marginalized. The difference was I had stopped caring long ago, whereas this bizarrely dressed, tall stranger still cared. It was easy to conclude that the bluster was all an act.
Her face lit up. She pulled out the chair with gusto, scraping the floor loud enough to raise the dead, and sat. “Sorry,” she whisper-hissed. “I’m Delia.”
“No talking.”
“Gotcha.”
“I mean it. I have an advanced econ exam tomorrow.”
“My lips are buttoned.”
For obvious reasons, I didn’t believe her; the mere existence of her was loud. After a warning glance, I buried my gaze in my econ textbook. “Get all the stuff you need out of your bag now because I don’t want to hear you rummaging.”
When my instructions were met with silence, I looked up to find her staring back at me. She smirked. No smile was forthcoming from my side of the table, and none would be. I had scholarships to worry about and an impossibly high GPA to maintain.
“Hoorah,” she sang, adding a jaunty salute.
She had me at hoorah. Against my best attempt to stop it, I smiled.
“Stella.”
That definitively unquiet afternoon marked the beginning of an epic friendship.
It’s uncommonly hot for May. Spring seems to have sprung into summer early, the sidewalks of SoHo congested with overly pale people seeking a bit of sunshine.
“Balthazar’s for steak frites?” I suggest with a guilty expression.
The minute we stepped out of that humid pit of stink my stomach started rumbling. Another reason I hate hot yoga. What’s the point of suffering through all that if the second I get done I feel like dive-bombing into a gallon tub of ice cream?
“You’re the worst influence,” Delia returns.
I’m usually on my best behavior around her. Food is a major trigger she’s been struggling to control her whole life, and I one hundred percent support her, but today I can’t muster the requisite self-control. Ten minutes later we’re shown to one of the outdoor tables.
“How’s the search going?”
Her question has an immediate effect on my mood. As in it is now wallowing in the pits. “Jeff finally called me back.” Delia has always hated Jeff, which is why the disgusted look she gives me is no surprise. Swiping a French fry from the middle of the table, I angry-chew. “He started to laugh before I made it halfway through my bullet points.”
Jeff, my one and only serious relationship. If you can call having semi-regular sex and catching a movie every other week a relationship. We dated for two years while he was attending Harvard Law and I was getting my MBA.
At the time, it worked. Mostly because we were equally busy, consumed by our studies and our soon-to-be careers. Was he my one true love? No. And I never assumed I was his. Then, the day of his graduation, he proposed.
To say I was surprised is putting it lightly. I was bli
ndsided. He knew how I felt about marriage. I told him repeatedly. Did he listen? Of course not. And made me out to be the bad guy.
Although I’d received offers from a number of financial institutions based in New York, I hadn’t accepted one yet. He, however, had already accepted a position at one of San Francisco’s most prestigious law firms and had assumed the little wifey––the little wifey being yours truly––would dutifully follow him to California.
If I had serious reservations about marriage before that moment, then afterward I had none. The last proverbial nail drilled into the coffin, marriage was officially dead to me––may it rest in peace.
“He said I was too closed off to be a mother. His exact words. This is the same man that when I asked him why he wanted to marry me, he said quote because we make a killer team unquote. Never mentioned love once.”
“Swoony. It’s a mystery how he’s still single.” Delia stares at my French fries with ambivalence. I stop chewing. “Should I ask them to take these away?”
“No,” she practically barks. “I’m made of tougher stuff than that. Give me some credit.”
“You’re such a masochist.”
“I do love a good, hard spanking once in a while.”
“I thought you weren’t into that.”
“Tastes change,” she says, with a one-shoulder shrug. “I like to dish it out. I should be able to take it.”
No surprise. Delia has always been the type to experiment whereas I like to pick a lane and stay there. “Back to Jeff. He’s not that bad. He’s just…Jeff.”
“Exactly. Who’s left on your spreadsheet?” She shovels lettuce in her mouth and makes a face.
“How do you know I have a spreadsheet?”
Her brown eyes slowly tear away from the bread she’s eyeballing with intent to destroy and meet mine, a knowing smirk already forming. “You put everything on a spreadsheet.”
“I do not.”
“You’re the only nutter I know that puts her monthly on a spreadsheet.”
