The next morning, a Saturday, Chris sat across the table from Will Bachman at Jitters, each of them with a mug of hot coffee. The coffeehouse was buzzing with tourists gawking over the charm of the place, locals with little dogs in their arms or in their purses, and the usual crowd of senior citizen bicyclists who’d stopped in after their morning ride. The room smelled like fresh-ground espresso beans and warm scones.
Will, a professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, had been Chris’s roommate at Stanford when they were both undergrads. Later, Will had worked as a caretaker at Cooper House while he’d studied for his doctorate. Their friendship had almost ended over a woman, but the woman in question had been out of the picture for some time.
Since then, Will had enjoyed considerable success in romance, having married the woman he loved. Chris hoped he might have some helpful insights to share.
“Do you know Martina Russo?” he asked.
“A little.” Will sipped his latte. “I know Patrick Connelly, who’s engaged to Martina’s sister.”
“Okay.” Chris nodded. “Okay, good.”
“What’s this about?”
Chris hesitated. How to describe his exact issue and impress upon Will his urgent need to fix it?
“I went out with Martina last night, and I acted like an ass,” he said. “And I want to stop acting like an ass, and ... I think ass might be my only mode when it comes to women.” There. That put it all on the table. Now they’d see what they could do with it.
“Well, that is a problem,” Will acknowledged.
Chris nodded, and they both sat with that information for a while as the noise of the coffeehouse buzzed around them.
“Maybe if you told me the actual nature of the asslike behavior,” Will prompted him.
So Chris told him about the date: Martina’s initial attempt to set him up with Benny; Benny’s double-cross of Martina; the delightful evening that had followed; their mutual admission that they didn’t find each other revolting; and the drive home, loaded with expectation and longing that he assumed was mutual.
“So then what happened?”
“Then … I didn’t do anything,” Chris shook his head in exasperation at his own ineptness. “I didn’t kiss her, even though she was standing there clearly expecting me to. And then I patted her and left.”
“You patted her.”
“You know, like …” Chris reached out and gave Will a companionable pat on the shoulder to illustrate.
“Oh, boy.” Will’s voice was full of dread.
“Yes.”
Will sipped his coffee and looked thoughtful. “I don’t get it. You’ve never seemed to have problems with women before. There was Alexis, and Juliette, and before that, Melanie …” Will winced at the mention of the ex-girlfriend the two men had in common.
“Yeah. And look how all of those turned out,” Chris reminded him.
“Well, not all of those breakups were your fault.”
“Sure,” Chris agreed, “but I’m the common denominator, aren’t I?”
It all came down to that. You could break down the issues of who had done what to whom, or who had failed to do what for whom. But in the end, if you were analyzing the relationships, how they’d ended, and what they all had in common, it pointed back to him. He was the one element all of those scenarios had shared.
“Has it ever occurred to you …” Will stopped himself, seeming to think better of whatever it was he’d been about to say.
“Go on,” Chris prompted him. “Has what ever occurred to me?”
“Well … just … has it ever occurred to you that before Martina, you kept choosing the same type of woman?”
Yes. It had. Chris had met most of the women at the social functions he attended—usually high-priced fundraisers or parties held for the purpose of professional networking. The women had all either been from wealth or were closely associated with it.
These were women who made personal maintenance a full-time job, spending their time being professionally dressed, styled, and waxed until they looked like they’d been run through a selfie filter—even in person. They were poreless, flawless—no cellulite, no patches of dry skin, no bad hair days, no awkward clothing choices, no skin blemishes, not even a freckle or a stray chin hair. He had to admit, with some embarrassment, he’d been proud of the way they’d looked on his arm—and in his Instagram feed.
Not only had he worked hard to keep these women from leaving him, he’d worked equally hard to keep them from revealing things about themselves that might prompt him to leave them. He’d actively avoided getting to know them.
At some point, he’d convinced himself the appearance of happiness was more important than the real thing, and he’d paid dearly for it.
Will was watching him carefully. “Chris … look. I didn’t mean—”
“No. It’s okay. You’re right. I do choose the same type of woman for all the wrong reasons. I was just thinking about that. About why I do that.”
“Martina Russo isn’t that same kind of woman,” Will pointed out.
Maybe that was why he’d lost his nerve when it had been time to kiss her. And maybe that was why it all seemed to matter so much more than it ever had before.
“She’s different,” Chris said. “She’s real.”
“Well, she doesn’t seem to be half constructed of silicone,” Will conceded.
Chris let out a barking laugh. “Okay, I deserve that. But you dated Melinda, too, so …”
“I know. It wasn’t one of my better decisions. Live and learn.”
That was what Chris wanted, wasn’t it? Not just to live, but to learn. To do better. To grow and to avoid the old mistakes he’d made over and over again.
“So, what do I do now? I like Martina. And it’s got to be a step in the right direction that she’s not like the others. But … I don’t know how to be with someone like her. I don’t know what to do.”
Will gave him a wry look. “Listen to yourself. You just told me you don’t know how to act around a real, genuine woman who might possibly like you for yourself. You might take some time thinking about how it got to this point. I mean, I would get it if you’d always been wealthy. But you used to be one of the little people, just like the rest of us.”
The time when he’d been like everyone else had been only about fifteen years before. A blink of an eye, really. But it seemed so distant it might have happened to someone else.
“Things change, don’t they?” he said.
“They sure as hell do,” Will agreed.