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It wasn’t until late that night, after my sister and Dex had left and Rafa had taken off for another hookup, that I pulled out my phone again.
Oscar
Happy birthday, friend. You deserve the very best. I hope this year is the one when all your dreams come true.
Instead of answering, I slid the phone under my pillow, closed my eyes, and fell asleep wishing the same.
* * *
By the end of May, I’d been seeing Louis regularly for a few months, and things were looking good. He’d taken me to dinner at restaurants with no prices on the menu and a multitude of forks on the table. We’d gone to his favorite wine bar so often we had a “usual table.” And he’d already begun talking about splurging on a private jet for a luxury weekend golf trip to Scotland to celebrate our six-month anniversary this fall, which seemed a little over-the-top, even to a die-hard romantic like me, especially since I didn’t play golf, but I was here for it… mostly because it showed how much Louis was here for it.
Unfortunately, his first meeting with Abby and Dex had been a little awkward—Louis hadn’t spoken much—but Abby had chalked that up to nerves, and I was pretty sure she was right. When we were alone, things were different. Louis and I spent hours talking about his friends and family, his hobbies and interests, and… divorce. Good lord, did we talk about divorce. I figured this came with the territory when you were dating a divorce attorney though, and I told myself it was easy enough to overlook since Louis was always so supportive of my work, even offering to spend a few summer evenings strolling through the park in search of people to interview for my Real Life HEAs TikTok account.
It wasn’t until the end of June that I learned the truth.
During a late-night editing session, I messaged a guy from one of the HEA videos to ask if he wanted me to try and edit out his work name badge, and he came back to me with attitude.
“You know, I thought your platform was cool. I thought it was a cute thing you were doing. But I gotta say, bringing a divorce attorney along to pitch us his services after the interview? Pretty fucking uncool, man.”
“What?” I wrote back as fast as my fingers could move. “He did that?!”
The guy sent me a pic of Louis’s business card with a message scrawled on the back in his familiar handwriting. “If your HEA turns into a WTF.”
I stared at it in shock.
After offering prolonged, embarrassing apologies to him and every other client I could remember Louis meeting—because of course, it hadn’t been a onetime thing—my hands were shaking. Unfortunately, Oscar was on the other side of the world and would most likely be in the middle of his important meeting in Macau, so I couldn’t bother him with something so trivial. Instead, I sent a text to Rafa.
Hugh
Louis fucked with my HEA reputation. What do I do?
Even though Rafa was supposed to be working a corporate happy-hour event, he called me immediately. “Tell me everything.”
After blurting it out in one long run-on sentence, I heaved in a breath. “What do I say to him?”
“Two words: Fuck. Off. That’s what we say to men who toy with our hearts, Hugh. We don’t let them get away with it.”
Rafa knew that wasn’t my style, so I had to wonder whether he was projecting a little bit. I hadn’t heard his telltale Grindr notifications going off in a long while, but when I’d asked about it, he’d been remarkably close-lipped. “Okay, I think I’m going to sleep on it.”
“Better idea: sleep on it with vodka.”
I rolled my eyes. Rafa knew I tried not to drink during the spring and summer wedding rush. There was nothing worse than trying to work late hours while sweating your balls off when you’d started the day already dehydrated and hungover.
“Sure,” I joked. “Solid plan.”
“I’m serious. Get some clothes on. I’ll be home in forty minutes, and we’re going out. Tonight, we’re drinking to forget.”
I groaned, but I knew better than to argue. Rafa hadn’t liked Louis to begin with, so he was itching to spend several hours saying I told you so without actually saying “I told you so,” while also reminding me that the world was full of men who weren’t assholes, so maybe I should consider finding one.
But I knew plenty of non-assholes. Guys who were smart and charming, who made me laugh and sent me birthday bacon. The trouble was, none of them were ever interested in a lifelong commitment… at least not with me.
And sometimes, like right then, I honestly didn’t know what to do about that.
Continuing to put myself out there constantly, actively searching and never finding, seemed a little bit… well, pathetic. But the alternative—giving up my dream, building defensive walls around myself so wide and thick that love couldn’t find me with a GPS tracker—seemed downright impossible. I wasn’t choosing to want love any more than I chose to breathe oxygen. I simply didn’t know any other way to be.
That didn’t mean I didn’t feel like a total fool for getting my hopes up yet again though. It didn’t mean I wasn’t scared that I might spend my whole life dreaming about love—making it my literal job, for god’s sake—and never find it for myself. It didn’t mean I wasn’t hurt.
So I did what I swore I wouldn’t do and got absolutely, horrendously shitfaced. Drunker than I’d been in a very long time. Drunk enough that I called Louis from the bar and broke up with him immediately, while I was still incoherent enough to ignore all of his excuses.
