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Just being around her made me smarter… and happier.
Not today, though. Today, I felt dumb, miserable, and wretched.
Gary seemed to love her to pieces, and Sarah glowed in his presence. I had a feeling this was the real deal, even though Sarah was still somewhat cautious about her expectations.
I wished I’d adopted that trait several years ago… but nooo. I jumped in with both feet, ready for true love, and ended up sinking to the bottom of the murky pool… alone.
“And let’s not forget a pretty face. Mike had a truly pretty face,” I reminded her, as I stuck my hand down into the bag of cheese popcorn that she’d just opened to lure me into eating. Not only had she opened the popcorn, but she also opened a bag of cheese puffs, Hawaiian chips, and spicy blue-corn tortilla chips. All my favorite junk food surrounded me, waiting for me to dive in. Every bag had been purposely opened, with the tops folded over to showcase the contents, to entice me into partaking in their high-calorie, high-carb debauchery.
“He was a gorgeous man, no denying, but all the more reason to be wary,” she said, after she opened the final bag of caramel corn and strategically placed it next to me on my disheveled bed. She knew how I liked sweet with my salt.
The woman knew all my most basic cravings.
Nothing brought me out of my misery like great junk food.
All I needed now was a thin-crust pizza with pineapples, olives, and anchovies. The absolute best pizza in the entire world… especially when I was in this crushing state. If I added a pint of dark beer, I could withstand anything.
Even a breakup with my supposed soul mate.
“That wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t so close to Christmas. I thought for sure I’d have a date, especially since I decided to stay put this year. We were going to spend it with his family, at least that was the lie he’d floated. Now I was alone, and he was spending the holidays with his wife.Oh my God, I’m such a loser!”
The waterworks hadn’t truly subsided for any notable length of time since he dumped me two nights ago right after we’d had sex in his essentially unfurnished Tudor mansion only three blocks from campus, in one of the prettiest and most sought-after neighborhoods in the town.
We were coming down from, well… coming, when his phone buzzed on the nightstand. I was surprised when he took the call, sat up and, as soon as he disconnected, he handed me my clothes and stripped the sheets off the bed, telling me I had to leave because his wife had returned a week early to surprise him. He literally dumped me when he pulled the sheets out from under me, and I rolled off the bed and hit the wooden floor with a resoundingthunk.
“You’re not a loser. He is, and I have an idea of how to get you through these holidays,” she said, all smiles.
“What? Go home and never come back again?” I asked, wiping my tears, then blowing my drippy nose. I was a total mess. I hadn’t even changed out of the jeans and red sweater I’d worn when Mike had sent me packing. Oh yeah, a complete loser.
“There’s that, but if you went home now and stayed there, you wouldn’t get the degree you’ve been chasing for the last year and a half. Not to mention how much I’d miss you,” Sarah said, as she pulled out a handful of caramel corn, her fave.
“You’re right. I’m not going home. I refuse to spend another Christmas with my family when I’m the only single one left, and I’m not even the baby of the family! Even my nineteen-year-old sister is dating someone. How could I come from a family of six kids, and they’re all either married with children, in a serious relationship or engaged? What happened to me? Am I destined to go through life alone? Is that it? My grandmama was right. She’d wanted one of us to either be a priest or a nun. I should’ve heeded the call right from the start. Is it too late for me to join a convent? Do they care if I’d already had sex… I mean, a lot of sex… with three-men-at-once kind of sex?”
Sarah’s face brightened. “You had sex with three guys at the same time?”
“Yes, and it wassooohot,” I told her, reflecting on that crazy time during freshman year before she added some stability to my life by moving in with me.
“Why don’t I know this?”
I shrugged, then buried my hand deep into the cheese puffs bag and came out with a whole handful of cheesy goodness. “You never asked.”
“How would I even know to ask? That’s so out of the mainstream.”
The cheese puffs helped. Next, I tried a handful of caramel corn.
“Yeah, I know… but it wassodirty andsomuch fun.”
When I knocked off most of the cheese puffs, I went in for a deep dive on the tortilla chips.
“You realize you stopped crying when you talked about dating other people. And you look much happier.”
“It’s the junk food, not the conversation,” I assured her as I stuffed my face with yummy goodness.
“Still, do you remember that dating app you registered with a few months ago, before the Professor Mike lust fest?” she asked, reminding me of another low point during this last year. I’d gotten onto the app due to my childhood BFF Jenna Parks, who did the PR for Perfect Matchup4U. Jenna was almost two years older and lived the life I wanted or thought I’d wanted until Mike shattered my world. I wanted that high-flying, high-paying PR position with a company exactly like Perfect Matchup4U. It was my dream job or at least it used to be. I didn’t know what I wanted now, other than more junk food.
The way Jenna had hyped the app, I promised I would try it, but secretly I’d known I was already dating my soul mate. No way would I go on a dating app, but I promised to fill in the forms and hold them just in case I might need them in the future… which at the time, I thought was a ridiculous waste of my mental effort.
Not anymore.
