Chapter Three

Erin

“I told you to watch out for him.” Natalie sipped her tea and raised an eyebrow at me over the rim of her cup. She seemed a tad judgy this morning for someone who’d just admitted she’d gone to third base with the guy who’d bought her at the bachelorette auction. Apparently her thing was “better” because the two of them had made vague plans to see each other again, while Ian and I had not.

“Yes, you did, and I heeded your warning.” Now it was my turn to sip tea as if to prove a point. I’d gone out for brunch with Nat and my sister, Katie, a mere hour after Ian had left my house. Okay, after I’d kicked him out. After I’d literally pushed him into the hall and slammed the door in his face. I shuddered from guilt.

I could’ve been nicer. I could’ve offered him coffee. But he wouldn’t have accepted, and then I would’ve been the one who’d tried to keep the night going, and I couldn’t be that person. I couldn’t. I’d made a promise to myself—one ride and goodbye. (Okay more than one ride. Three rides. Three glorious rides.)

“You slept with him,” Nat said.

“I did.” I bit my cheek to stifle a creeping grin.

“How does that constitute ‘heeding my warning’?”

“Well.” I popped a grape into my mouth. “I knew exactly what I was getting into, thanks to you.”

“This dude obliterated Dirk in the hotness department.” Katie participated in the conversation while tapping away on her phone. My sister was only twenty-five. My parents had adopted her as a baby from Korea back when I was fifteen. I felt more like her aunt than her big sister most of the time. We had zero shared childhood experiences, because we grew up in two totally different generations. She glanced up from her phone, shaking her long, thick curls off her shoulders. “Kudos.”

“Thank you.” I’d had sex—thrice!—with a random hot dude and the world hadn’t stopped turning. In fact, the world looked pretty good right now. Colors seemed brighter. I could pick out subtle notes of caramel and sarsaparilla in my tea. Boning a stranger didn’t trump climbing Mount Everest or anything, but I was pretty proud of myself.

Nat narrowed her eyes. “I don’t buy it.”

“You don’t buy what?”

She waved her hand up and down to indicate me. “This. There’s no way you’re not feeling a little twinge of something—guilt, regret, wistfulness?”

“You want me to feel guilty? What the hell, Nat?” I’d never done anything remotely like this before. I deserved a little credit, not shame.

“I don’t want you to feel guilty,” she said. “I’m just shocked you’re not the teensiest bit regretful. I know you. I know us.” She waved a hand to indicate herself, me, and Katie. “We fall in love hard and fast.”

Katie, eyes still on her phone, nodded in agreement. She’d just gotten out of her first-ever relationship. She and the guy met the week she moved back to Chicago after college. They’d moved in together by the end of summer, and they were engaged two weeks after that. Now she was a twenty-five-year-old divorcée with no job and no apartment, which was why she currently lived with me.

“I’m trying to break the cycle,” I said, about to voice for the first time the decision I’d come to last night. “I’m gonna stay single for a while.”

“What’s ‘a while’?” Nat asked.

“A year. At least.” I rapped on the table as punctuation. I’d come up with the goal in the shower. As an administrator, I always encouraged my employees to devise SMART goals—specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely—which I was now doing with my personal life. I hadn’t stayed single for more than a month since I was fifteen. For the next year, I’d adopt Ian’s rules for love as my own: no sleepovers, no second dates, no strings.

“That’s ridiculous,” Nat said. “You’re forty.” She tapped on her watch. Time was ticking.

My eyes stung. Like I didn’t fucking know that. Dirk and I had been “trying” to have a baby for years, but I only had one ovary and he had sluggish sperm—plus, we weren’t doing it all that much, to be honest. By the time I’d finally convinced him to look into fertility treatments with me, he’d already fallen “in love” with the nurse at my old school. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t have the best track record when it comes to guys. My entire life, I’ve settled for Mr. Right in Front of Me instead of waiting for Mr. Right,” I said. “I’ve dated pompous ass after pompous ass, and I’m done with it. I’m gonna take some time to figure out who I am without a guy.”

“But you want to be a mom.”

“About that,” I said, “I’ve decided I’m okay either way. I came to terms years ago with the fact that having a baby the ‘traditional’ way might not happen for me. But now that I’m single and getting my own shit together, the world’s my oyster. I could adopt or foster or go to a sperm bank…”

Nat shook her head. “This is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“It’s not sad.” I pounded my fist on the table, and my spoon jumped about two inches, startling Katie. “It’s great. It’s reality. It’s me finally being an adult about the fact that I can’t count on men for anything.” Except maybe the occasional orgasm…or three.

“You can count on me.” Katie put her phone down, so I knew she was serious.

“Thank you,” I said. “And you can count on me.” I’d promised to help her find a job now that she, too, was on her own. “I got you on the list of substitutes at the Academy. And they said you could work as my assistant on the days you’re not teaching.”

Katie gave me a thumbs-up. “Thanks, sis.” Look at us women, working together to better our lives—penis-free! Or, well, relatively penis-free. The penis had now become a bonus, not a necessity.

“And you know what?” I said. “The Ian thing? It was the healthiest thing I’d done in a long time. Last night I proved to myself that not every interaction I have with a guy requires a fairytale ending. Sometimes one night is enough. And if it means I avoid falling for a prince who ends up being a royal asshole, all the better.”

“I don’t want to spoil the ending for you,” Nat said, “but Ian’s King of the Assholes. Wait around long enough and you’ll see.”

“That’s the point, though, Nat. I’m not waiting around. Our story is over.” I wiped my hands. Finished. “Besides, I think you’ve grossly overestimated Ian’s asshole-ishness. He’s not a jerk. He’s a guy who knows what he wants, and what he wants is to get laid—no strings. I’m one of the few women who took him at his word, and that’s why things ended so well for us this morning. We were on the same page.” I tried to scrub the forlorn look on his face as I slammed the door from my mind. I had simply been keeping up my end of the bargain. I did not have to feel bad about that.

“You’re absolutely, one hundred percent sure you don’t have feelings for him?” Nat said.

I’d been flashing back to my night with Ian all day. The sex was…a revelation. I’d never been so free like that before, so unselfconscious. But I had only been able do that, really let loose, because the situation with Ian was a one-night event. There’d be no tomorrow, no fretting over whether or not he’d call, whether I was too loud or too eager or not eager enough. I’d been able to lay it all on the line because the line had an end point. That was the beauty of the fling. It was what I’d missed out on in all my previous relationships. “I have no feelings for him,” I told the girls. “We went into last night in full agreement—no strings, no phone numbers, no expectations. I’m good with that. Really good.” I blushed, thinking about his full, sweet lips trailing kisses from my abdomen down, down, down—

“You might want to try a fling, Nat, I mean it.” I looked her up and down. Her last relationship hadn’t ended in the same hellfire mine had, but tears had flowed. Feelings had been hurt. She had been hoping for a ring, but instead he gave her jumper cables, which cued her to move on. “Or even better, a year of flings.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve already met someone who wants what I do. Chris and I are utterly on the same page.”

One night and one hand job later, and the two of them were already “Chris and I.”

“I’m just saying, maybe give it a shot. See who you are, sans a man. It might open your eyes.” After one night, I’d become one of those zealots who’d discovered something new and had to tell everyone about it—like that time three years ago when I did the whole “hug all your belongings and get rid of the ones that don’t spark joy.” I still lived that tidy life today. It had been one of the best things I’d ever done for myself. And this would be, too.

Katie rested her chin in her hand and gazed into the middle distance. “I think this is good. I’m in.”

“You’re in?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’m a divorced substitute teacher who lives in her sister’s guest room. I need to figure out who I am alone, before I figure out who I am with someone else. A year of no-strings sounds like the right play for me.”

I touched my nose. She got it. Good for her, figuring this out in her twenties instead of waiting until forty, like me.

“In fact,” she said, “I think we should make a pact to stay single for two years. We could do a year in our sleep.”

“Says the twenty-five-year-old.” Nat downed her mimosa. “Why not just stay single for the rest of your mortal lives?”

“One is plenty,” I said. Nat wasn’t wrong. I wasn’t getting any younger.

“This is a lot of talk,” Nat said, “but neither of you has any skin in the game. What’s going to keep you from falling head over heels for the first guy you meet?”

“This isn’t about reward or punishment,” I said. “It’s about bettering our lives, about being okay on our own.”

Natalie downed the rest of her tea. “You two will be engaged by January.”

I leaned across the table. She looked really smug over there with her tea and her third-base boyfriend. “Let’s make it interesting. If I make it the whole year without breaking my rules—no sleepovers, no second dates, no strings—you have to teach that after-school elementary science program I’ve been begging you to do…for free.”

“For free?” She scrunched up her nose.

“Out of the goodness of your heart.”

“Okay, then. If your new single-and-loving-it life flames out in less than twelve months—as I predict it will—you have to buy me that ginormous interactive SMARTboard for my classroom.”

“It costs way too much money. We don’t have it in the budget.”

“Well, either you’ll have to find the money—pilfer some cash from athletics or something—or not fall in love until next November.”

Katie set her phone on the table. “What about me? I need some motivation.”

Nat scratched her chin. “If you lose, you have to wash my car for a year.”

Katie nodded. “I can do that.”

“Wax it, undercarriage, the whole thing.”

“Got it.”

“And if she wins…” I say.

“You pay for my gym membership for an entire year, plus specialty classes, plus three smoothies a week.”

“You’re on.” Nat pulled out her phone and started typing.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Just looking up all the cool things I’ll be able to do with my new SMARTboard.” She glanced up at me and winked.

…

Ian

Scott met me at the elevator on Monday. “Prepare yourself.” He sipped the beverage from his Starbucks cup. He told everyone he drank black coffee, but only I knew the truth. Scott, Mr. On-Trend, knocked back white chocolate raspberry mochas on the daily. He started every single morning with a sugar bomb that had been passé, flavor-wise, more than ten years ago. It was the most uncool thing about him, and I adored him for it.

“For what? Why am I preparing myself?” I peered past him toward our office space. Everyone stood huddled in front of the reception desk.

“To vomit.” Scott started walking and I fell into step with him. “Tommy’s back from paternity leave and he has pictures.” Scott rolled his eyes at the word “pictures.”

“Babies are cute.” I nudged Scott in the side. “As long as they’re not mine.”

“One benefit of being gay,” he said, “is not having to worry about some twenty-two-year-old I met one hot weekend showing up later with a blue stick he peed on.”

I patted his shoulder. “You’re living the dream.”

“You know it.”

I sidled up to Tommy, who had captured the full attention of every woman in the office as he proudly flipped through about a million photos on his phone. “Welcome back, man.” I clapped him on the back.

“Hey!” Tommy scrolled through his photos and landed on one. He shoved the phone toward me. A picture of an amorphous, bald blob, basically swimming in one of those baby bodysuits, filled the screen. “Here’s Maeve in the ‘Little Rambler’ onesie you gave her.”

I nodded. “Nice.” Tommy, Scott, and I had been best friends since grade school. After college, we started our little business—buying and selling real estate commodities and investing in small businesses. The details were boring, but the money kicked ass. I pointed to my office and Tommy waved me off as the women huddled around him again, cooing. They used to coo like that around Tommy for a totally different reason.

I found Scott waiting for me in my desk chair. He swiveled around like Dr. Evil, all ten of his fingertips touching. “You got out of there fast.”

“Give Tommy a break,” I said, dropping my briefcase on my desk. “He’s just excited.”

“He’s so domestic all of a sudden. It won’t last. He’ll snap sooner or later.”

“No, he won’t.” I motioned for him to vacate my seat, which he did, but not before stealing a pencil from the Holy Cross mug on my desk. I plopped down on my chair. Scott’s ass had warmed the leather. Thanks, pal. “What were you expecting? He got married. He had a kid. It happens.”

“Not to me. Not to us,” Scott said, an almost imperceptible tinge of sadness in his voice. Unlike me, Scott had wanted those things, once upon a time. He stared out the window, which looked down—way down—on Canal Street. Our office sat near the top of the Ogilvie building. My corner space gave me a view of the river, the opera house, and the train tracks headed north. During his down time, Scott liked to hang out in here and watch trains come and go at all hours of the day. “Speaking of…” Scott spun around, a too-big grin on his face. “I had a very fun, unmarried experience this weekend with that waiter from the bachelorette auction.”

“Congrats.” I flipped through the envelopes in my in-box.

“How about you? Did you visit Minnesota?” He winked.

“You know I didn’t.” I tossed my mail back onto the desk. This was our usual Monday morning conversation, but I was not in the mood today. “I visited no lands, foreign or domestic, this weekend.”

Scott narrowed his eyes. “Bullshit. I can tell you had sex. Who was she? The mayor’s daughter? The coat-check girl?” His hand went to his mouth. “Oh my God, did you fuck Dr. Sharpe?! Please tell me you did. Ian banged the school principal!”

Rolling my eyes, I picked up the envelopes I’d just sorted through. I needed time. Scott and I always talked about our weekends. We spared no details. Tommy and I had golf. What bonded Scott and I was recreational sex. But I’d decided to keep all the mortifying Erin-related details to myself. “I didn’t bang anyone. I wasn’t feeling so hot after dinner and went right home. I think I ate some bad shellfish.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Guilt pinged in my gut. I never lied to Scott or Tommy. Never, ever, ever.

“You’re telling me that you—Ian Donovan—did not get laid over the weekend.” Scott stood nose to nose with me now, fingertips planted on top of my desk, trying to suss out the truth. He was pulling a Larry David on Curb, staring into my eyes, searching for the lie.

“That’s what I’m telling you,” I said. “I was sick.”

That night with Erin existed just for me and her. That’s what I’d decided, at least. It had been a fun night, an amazing night, but it was different from when I hooked up with other girls. I’d slept over. She’d been the one who’d kicked me out, which embarrassed the shit out of me. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how she just hopped out of bed naked in the morning like it was no big deal. I hadn’t had an experience like that in…well, ever.

I didn’t do feelings or emotions. I didn’t do the sad walk of shame. But Erin had been the one who slammed the door on me.

And it bummed me the fuck out.

I’d love to pretend it didn’t, but it did.

Between her and Maria Minnesota, I was on the verge of becoming a romantic or something. My game had slipped.

I had to pretend the night didn’t happen and move on, learn from my mistakes—like I did during a round of golf. If I bogeyed one hole, I didn’t take that disappointment to the next one. I shook it off. And now I was shaking off the most recent mistakes of my sex life. There’d be no more staying overnight, no more second dates, and no expectations. The thing with Erin had been a blip. It had reaffirmed that my original guiding principles were correct. I had put those rules in place for a reason, and I needed to heed them.

I looked up and nodded toward the door. “I’ve got to check messages.”

Scott took the hint and left, and I pressed play on my voicemail. A small, annoying part of me hoped to hear Erin’s voice through the speaker, though I had no idea why I would.

No dice.

Which was fine. Which was the point. Erin was living up to her end of our bargain. I didn’t want to hear from her or anything. I was done with her, just as she, apparently, was done with me.

All proceeding as planned.

I shook my shoulders, dislodging Erin from my mind.

The first two messages were from my friend Isamu in Tokyo, one of the partners at Fumetsu Enterprises, who’d given me the inside track. His company was in the process of developing a completely indestructible cell phone, among other things, and they were playing really, really hard to get. Something I knew a bit about. I made a note to schedule another trip out there ASAP.

The third had come from some woman named Liz Barton, an alumna from my high school who had started her own VC group in town and wanted to pick my brain. I’d ask my assistant to set something up.

My mom had left the fourth message. “Hi, honey! Just checking in. Call me when you get a chance. If you misplaced my number, it’s—”

I deleted the voicemail, like I deleted all my mom’s voicemails. I hadn’t spoken to her since, well, probably the holidays last year. She was my cautionary tale, my reason to remain attachment-free, and I’d do well to remember that right now.

I pressed the intercom button on my phone and called Scott’s office. “Hey, buddy. You up for going out tonight? I could use some fun.”

After work, Scott, Tommy, and I hopped over to The Bizzee Sygnal, which had been Scott’s choice. He loved watching the sloppy women from the ’burbs falling all over the guys who’d just gotten off work. We let him pick, even though he’d informed us he wasn’t in it for the long haul this evening because he had to go up to Winnetka to visit his mom.

Tommy and I followed Scott downstairs to the “oldies” room, where the DJ played tunes from the ’80s and ’90s, which never ceased to make me feel like an ancient grandpa. Scott hopped up on stage with some thirtysomething women and started dancing to “Forever Your Girl” by Paula Abdul, while Tommy and I grabbed two seats at the bar and ordered beers.

“You’re not dancing?” I asked. Unlike me, Tommy had no qualms about bopping around to cheesy music.

He shook his head. “Maybe later.”

I nudged him in the side. “Give me the real scoop, man. How’s being a dad?” This whole concept was so foreign to me. I had some friends who were parents, but I barely saw most of them anymore. We lived totally different lives, which in and of itself created distance between us. While I was rolling in from the bar at four in the morning, they were getting up to feed their kid or change its diaper. Tommy was my first ride-or-die to take the parenting plunge. Yeah, part of me worried about how that’d change our relationship, but, really, things had already been different since he and Susie got together and he stopped going out as much. For years now, it had mostly been Scott and me alone on the weekends or after work.

“Being a dad is great.” Tommy sipped his beer. “Susie’s great. Maeve’s great.”

He was hiding something. I narrowed my eyes and forced him to look at me. “So everything’s perfect?”

“One hundred percent.” Now he downed half his drink.

“Bullshit,” I said. “You’re telling me there’s not one negative to taking care of a kid—not the diapers or the crying or having to get out of bed in the middle of the night?”

“My mother-in-law is visiting and she’s thinking about moving in with us.”

“That’s a bingo!” I touched my glass to his.

“It’s a good thing. She does so much to help Susie. I’m grateful to have her around.” Tommy sounded like a pod person. He gazed around the bar as if seeing it for the first time. My friend had morphed into an alien being.

“You’re glad to be out tonight, though?”

He shook his head. “I miss my girls.” Again with the alien monotone.

I punched him in the arm. “You sap.”

Tommy grinned, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. I glanced over at Scott, who’d wrapped his arms around two middle-aged women with big hair. He’d always questioned whether or not Tommy could handle life as a husband and father. This was the first time I’d ever questioned it as well.

“There something else going on?” I asked. “You can tell me anything, bud. You know that.” Tommy and I had been through absolutely everything together—his dad dying, my mom leaving, his relationships ending.

He hit me with a watery grin. “Just thinking about old times.” Now he smiled with his eyes. I relaxed a bit. Same old Tommy. “Remember when we switched identities?”

I shook my head in disbelief. I’d completely forgotten about that. For some reason we’d decided it would be fun. “Oh my God, that was…why the hell did we do that again?”

“Because we were bored or something.” He shook his head. “I really leaned into the whole ‘being you’ thing that night. I fed the girls all your stories about jet-setting around the globe.” Tommy was our CFO, and he mostly stayed in Chicago. He didn’t rack up the miles like Scott and I did, which was probably a big part of the reason why he could handle being in a relationship and we couldn’t. He raised his eyebrows. “I went home with two women that night.”

Chuckling, I patted his hand. “And no one can ever take that memory away from you.”

“True.” He downed the rest of his drink, as Scott made his way back over to us. “At least I’ll always have that.”

I was about to ask him to elaborate, to get down to the real reason why he was acting so off tonight, when Scott said, “I’ve got to hit the road.”

Tommy threw a few bills down on the bar. That was it. No more talking. Our guys’ night out had ended in a whimper. “Me, too. Can we share a ride to the train station?”

Scott nodded. “You coming, too, Ian?”

I glanced around. The bar had started to fill up. This would be the perfect opportunity for me to reaffirm my guiding principles, maybe use a couple of those traveling-the-globe stories Tommy had mentioned. “I’m going to ride it out here,” I said.

After the guys left, I finished my first beer and ordered another, trying to psych myself up to make a move. I was Ian Fucking Donovan—a rich, attractive dude with a good personality. I could get any woman in this club. Heck, I could get two women, if I wanted to.

A group of bubbly twentysomethings had gathered at the end of the bar.

Fish in a barrel.

I pointed to the TV, where the Bulls game had been playing earlier. “Did you see the score?” I asked the woman nearest to me, a blonde. I didn’t care about the score. I barely cared about sports, other than golf.

She shook her head. “Sorry.”

“I’m Ian.” I held out my hand in greeting.

She giggled. “And I’m young enough to be your daughter.”

Her friends swarmed around her, laughing, and then a group of guys who were much closer to her age came over and sidled up. I wasn’t old enough to be their dad. Their uncle, maybe. Their cool uncle who bought them beer when they were underage. “That’s Ian,” the girl told her friends, giggling. I was a joke to them, an old man who’d lived past his prime.

One of the other girls, a brunette, pulled away from the group. “Don’t listen to them. I’m Paris.” Paris grinned—nice smile, white teeth. She sported a dress with a cutout over the stomach. Standard fare these days.

“Want to buy me a drink?” She shook her long brown hair over her shoulders, still flashing me that grin.

“I—” I checked my watch. Still early, but, honestly, the idea of chatting up someone whose name I wouldn’t remember in a day or two exhausted me. Tonight, just knowing I could’ve scored was enough. “You know what? I would, but I’ve got somewhere to be.” I raised my glass to her and downed my beer.

Then I opened my ride app, typed in my own address, and went home alone to watch Black Mirror.