Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98992 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 495(@200wpm)___ 396(@250wpm)___ 330(@300wpm)
Giggling uncontrollably is the only response I can muster up.
“Our first session will be tonight. Just us. I’ll reserve a backroom at La Perfection, you know you love their baguettes.”
“Really all breadsticks to be precise.”
“Dinner’s on me, of course. See you in an hour?”
I nod my acknowledgement, and she taps the counter pleased to get her way.
Reliving my past isn’t really the way I wanna spend the night, but it beats going home to run a bath, play solitaire on my phone, and crawl into bed next to someone who barely registers I’ve even walked in the room unless he needs help finding something. At least walking down memory lane might spark momentary excitement into the mundane existence I find myself falling further and further into.
**
There’s something about restaurants with more white than colors in them that makes me grateful I work somewhere filled with so much life. The crispness of it all is quite mocking. It’s a bleak reminder of how easy it is to become something someone looks at but never touches. Admires yet only from afar. Boasts about having; however, can’t recall the acquisition with a reminder. It’s the dreaded Trophy Curse. And my love life has become exactly that. I honestly don’t know when or how or if it was my fault or if I initiated the transition from girlfriend worth doting on to girlfriend worth doting on to everyone else except said girlfriend. I don’t know when I got wedged into this glass case where I wear the too tight cocktail dresses and the pearls and pretend not to be grossed out by the gin and tonics being poured. And while knowing the when is important, knowing the why I can’t convince myself to use the key that’s literally sitting in the palm of my hand to get out of this box of bullshit is much more crucial.
The waiter pours the champagne Katherine prefers, the bubbles being the liveliest thing at the table. “Okay, darling, we’re just going to jump right in. Headfirst.”
“That’s how people get concussions.”
“The first topic I wanna discuss with you is the theory that love could be considered an addiction.”
Perplexity pushes my eyebrows upward. “And you’re sure you wanna use me for this Katherine? In the five years you’ve known me, I’ve been with the same guy. I haven’t been on the dating scene. I haven’t been falling over and over and over again. Maybe you should use someone like Keri. Maybe Nel?”
“No, I don’t want to demonstrate that slutting around is an addiction. There are plenty of thesis on that already.”
“Oh! Oh! What about using Nasim! She like just started dating again for the first time since her divorce! She would be a great example! You know, single-mother, finding her way into romance again. That would sell. I mean I’m no marketing guru but-”
She raises a hand to demand my silence prior to pushing the record button on her phone. “I’m using you, now let’s move on.”
Uncomfortableness stirs a craving to soothe it with something on the table.
“Remember that one time when we were at Shaken, Not Stirred, gushing over Pretty Woman, which we had just finished watching, and you told me that super romantic story about a guy who you kissed in the rain?”
The description alone is enough to send every taste bud on my tongue into a mutiny.
“When you told that story, there was something in your eyes that I’ve never seen since.”
“An eyelash?”
Katherine ignores my poor attempt at humor. “You wouldn’t talk more about him after that-”
“There wasn’t more to say.”
“There’s an entire narrative there that I only got a snapshot of,” she quickly declares. “And I wanna hear it. I wanna hear the whole beautiful, ugly, raw accounting of that person and that experience. Something tells me it has had effects on you that are so deep you probably don’t consciously realize they’re there. I want to bring those shadows, those memories that go bump in dark, into the light.”
“Can we have something to start?” Dropping my attention down to the menu, which hadn’t looked at all appetizing moments before, suddenly looks like the perfect mirage to a dying woman aimlessly wandering through the desert. “More bread maybe? I don’t think this is going to be enough. We could try their Blackberry-Glazed Beef Crostini or maybe the Goat Cheese Mousse Crostini? Not totally sure the definition of Crostini but pretty sure that’s just crispy bread. And bread is always a good thing.”
“When did your bread/cracker obsession begin?”
“Um…I wouldn’t call a high appreciation for bread or crackers an obsession.”
“I would when you use it as a tool to deal – or more accurately not deal – with your emotions.”
At a lower volume, I weakly defend, “I don’t…I don’t…do that…”
“You and Xander fight – or whatever we’re going to call those ten minute tiffs of word exchange – and you immediately grab something to munch on afterward. Wheat Thins. Cheez-Its. Saltines. I’ve seen it firsthand and heard it over the phone. You chew like a starving goat.”