Let's Try This Again Page 4

  “Oh…it’s nothing. It’s not funny,” I tried my best to pass this off and make it go away. Because my mother had a nose like a bloodhound—and this had been proven way too many times in high school. I’d come home smelling like booze, she’d wake up out of a deep sleep to ground me, and I could see her sniffing. To her, this situation would smell dangerously close to hot garbage on a New York City summer day.

  “Josie…” She had smelt it. Smelt it all over me. Like I had rolled around in said street garbage.

  So, obviously, I got defensive right away. It’s not like she really knew what was going on, and even if she knew it was Isaac she still wouldn’t really know what was going on. And I wasn’t going to explain it to her - Hey, Mom, I’m just having sex with my old boyfriend. I’m not going to marry him. And yes, this might be preventing me from meeting a man I could marry, but c’mon, let me live. That wouldn’t go over well.

  “YES, Peggy? Is there something you would like to say that you wrongly assume I’m interested in hearing?” Yeah, sometimes I’m a bitch to my mother, OKAY? Like you’ve never back-talked your mom. I’m sure it makes her feel more like she’s my friend, just one of the girls, so it’s probably thrilling to her, OKAY?

  “You’re not getting involved with anyone right now, are you?” It was a practically harmless comment, but I could hear what she was really saying. My mom was extremely supportive of me, of everything I hoped to accomplish. I had always set my sights big—fame, fortune, buying a new family once I had enough dough to fly the old one to a remote island on my private jet. I wanted to write movies; I wanted to write for television. I wanted to produce my own movies and television. And my mom had always encouraged me, even when it meant paying ridiculous amounts for art school or workshops or contests. While that was great, it also had negatives.

  It meant I was never allowed to doubt myself, ever. Like at times, I didn’t even know if this was my dream anymore or if it was hers. Sometimes I still wonder that. It meant that she was constantly butting herself into things she didn’t understand – namely writing and the brutal process that can entail. Or the things that might stand in the way of this path forward. This was where her question was really heading.

  “I’m still going to California, Mom.” I sighed heavily, trying to make it clear how fucking annoyed I was. “Of course you are. You have a lot of opportunities out there. Even still, starting up with someone new isn’t smart, Jo. It’ll only end badly at this point.” My father had left us when my brother was 3, and since then my mom has really tried everything possible to make sure Becca and I never let a guy have any sort of hold on us, hurt us, or influence us to hurt ourselves. But right now, I was getting this from all sides – my friends, now my mom. I was sick of it and looking for some shock value at this point.

  “Well good thing it’s not someone new. It’s Isaac, so this conversation is irrelevant.” I sipped my water calmly as the color drained out of her face. Shock and awe achieved, plan successful.

  “Josie! Are you lying? Is that a joke? Or something?”

  “What? That doesn’t even make sense. No, I’m not lying, we’re just talking.”

  “It’s never just talking with you two. It’s always heartbreak. You always end up eating Ben & Jerry’s for a week, watching How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days, and calling the psychic network.” She was talking faster and faster, getting herself more and more worked up.

  “Fucking Becca, she tells you everything,” I hissed.

  “Language! And yes, your sister does talk to me, unlike you! That’s why I have to go to her to know what my other daughter is thinking or feeling! But she didn’t tell me this!”

  “That’s because I didn’t tell her, which I’m sure I won’t have to now. This is no one’s business but my own. I’m a grown woman, and I can do whatever I want.” I absolutely love any moment I can go all Beyoncé during an argument. It was usually a conversation closer.

  “Josie.” My mom’s voice was quieter now. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt again. I know how much you care about him.”

  “Cared, Mom. Cared. Strong D,” I let the irony of that go. “I don’t care about him like that anymore. So you’re making a fool of yourself.”

  Moms always have this way where they can say the one thing that completely undermines any points you’ve scored over the course of your disagreement. My mom was particularly a master at this. “I will gladly make myself look like a fool every day of the week if it stops you from feeling like a fool for one second.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Night of 3 Weeks Before

  “So now you’re disappointing your mom for this “nothing’ of a fling you’ve got going on,” Molly pointed out as the bartender handed her a gin and tonic. I sipped my vodka soda, hoping this first taste would make me immediately drunk enough to not have this conversation. “You’re disappointing your mother for meaningless sex.”

  I wanted to say that no, it wasn’t for meaningless sex. Even meaningless sex had meaning with Isaac, but I couldn’t very well point that out without getting a major ass kicking from both of my friends. I just changed the subject instead.

  “You know, you two look hot tonight. Flawless, if you will.” I figured a little buttering up never hurt anybody. Besides it was true. Molly and Ellie had decided we all needed a GNO—girl’s night out, thanks Miley Cyrus—though what I suspected was that they were attempting to get me out, away from Isaac, and into the arms of another man. Ellie had even lent me (practically insisted that I wear) her tightest, hottest dress with these cute little peekaboo cutouts on the sides.

  Molly’s hair was swept up in an “I don’t care what I look like and yet I still look this hot” ponytail, with her boobs pushed up to the sky in a bandage dress. Ellie had opted for leather leggings and a crop top, showing off her perfectly sculpted, no-gym-required abs. All of our heels were no less than 5 inches tall. The higher the heel, the closer to God, amIrite ladies? Though I knew their ulterior motive, I’m never not going to want to go out looking like early 2000s era Britney Spears. So here we were at Hogans, a local downtown bar/club that usually guaranteed a sighting of at least one frenemy and, if we were lucky, a full blown enemy. At this point, the room scan had been done, and no one heinous had been spotted, but we were keeping a close eye out.

  “I have a theory,” Ellie quipped after a generous sip.

  “Go on,” Molly insisted. I sat down on a stool, propped my head on my fists and waited to be awed by the fucking theory.

  “Good luck, Chuck.”

  “Excuse me?” I shook my head.

  “It’s kind of like that movie, Good Luck Chuck. But even worse. So we’re in our twenties now. The guys we date are all at least mid-twenties. That is the time when typically people meet their future spouses. Like in the movie, Dane Cook can’t sleep with Jessica Alba because he likes her so much, and everyone he sleeps with marries the next guy they date.” Ellie drank, her eyes shining over the edge of her glass like we should be clapping or something. She finally realized we still didn’t really grasp her concept. “Okay, that movie was obviously just fake stupid magic or whatever. I’m not sure. I don’t really remember it. I think I was having sex with Nick Masters while I was watching it. Anyways. In real life, we’re at the age where anyone we break up with could potentially meet the person they’ll spend the rest of their life with. And soon. Like Isaac is what, twenty-six? If you were to let him go…move on, he moves on, blah blah…it’s not super unlikely that the next girl he’s with could become his wife. Guys find ‘the one’ when they’re ready to settle down. It could be anyone. And the late twenties are settle-down city.” Now when Ellie sipped, her stupid shining eyes made me want to punch her.

  “Really? That’s supposed to—what, make her feel better? Shit, it doesn’t even make me feel better, and I never want to get married,” said Molly. I couldn’t even respond because if I did I would’ve either agreed that yes, I’m terrified that letting Isaac go will allow him to really, fu
lly move on to his fucking wife, or I would’ve ripped the counter from the bar because now I’m scared that any man I meet will be on the rebound and marry me just because his ex-girlfriend fucked him over.

  So I just downed my vodka soda and ordered another. “Are we done talking about this? Good friends would just let me be a slut in peace.” This, at least, made them laugh; they knew as well as I did that we all had our slut moments, and best friends allowed that to slide. As long as it’s not a moment that leads you into Chlamydia, that is. Or herpes. Hey, I had done the same thing for them many times.

  Which I pointed out.

  Just as we were all finally talking about something else, moving on to the part of the night where we dance with each other, knowing full well how the guys standing around us are working up the courage to come bump their dicks against our backs, the Wicked Whore of the West blew in the front door.

  Her dyed (in her case this is a nicer word for fried), puffy, frizzy black hair clashed with her spray-painted skin. It looked as if she’d rubbed herself down with Cheeto dust before leaving her cave for the night. Her bright purple dress was way too short and way too tight, thrusting her boobs up to her chin. Thank God, too, because I really went out that night to see a lot of nipple and vaj. Especially one probably riddled with the aforementioned Chlamydia/herpes.

  Katey Kelsee. A girl with two first names and not one shred of integrity. This, so unfortunately, was the aforementioned ex-girlfriend of Isaac’s that he had kissed while we were dating. This was in the early stages of our relationship, but to this day, Katey had not given up her desire to get Isaac back. It often gave me complete serenity to picture her lying awake at night, pining after the guy lying naked next to me in bed.

  The girl had always been a problem to me. Being from neighboring towns, we had a lot of mutual acquaintances. I had never been a fan, and certainly nobody could be as big of a fan of Katey as Katey was. Katey Kelsee was someone who needed attention constantly, like Instagramming pictures obviously designed to put her boobs on display with hashtags like #girlwholovescats. There’s no cat in this picture. Your boobs have nothing to do with either liking or owning a cat. You’re not fucking fooling anyone besides the dirty old men you get to follow you. Let’s just say that if people found out she had a “Customer Parking Here” tramp stamp tattoo, no one would be shocked. She lied about getting a DUI one time just so people would talk about her. Hello, looneytoon, nobody lies about getting a DUI. Katey Kelsee was someone who wanted everyone to think she was “just one of the guys”, so that being naked around them as much as possible would be okay.

  FYI, it’s not.

  And double FYI, she is one of the guys because of her manly shoulders.

  She and Isaac had been broken up for a couple months when he and I first started talking. At this point, the girl I had only pretended to tolerate in social situations to accommodate friends we had in common, tried to become my best fucking friend. She’d tweet at me. She’d post things on my friends’ Facebook pages that were clearly lures to get me to like them. This bitch had it in her head that maybe, just maybe, if she could worm her way into a friendship with me then I wouldn’t go after Isaac. Isaac, who was a completely single, available man, who had no ties to my actual friends, and who had no interest in being with her anymore. In fact, as urban rumor had it, Katey had changed his relationship status on Facebook when he was passed out drunk…which I know in fact to be true, since I dated one half of the pair responsible for that rumor. They stayed together for a while because it was convenient, and Isaac had never broken up with anyone before. He always provoked the girl until she got the balls he needed and dumped him. That goes to show how crazy Katey Kelsee is because A) she refused to break up with him and B) she is the first girl Isaac ever had to dump. When he finally did, she stood in the middle of the road outside his house screaming that she wasn’t going anywhere for hours.

  When she found out that Isaac and I had gone out a couple times, Katey and her tribe of trolls would see me out and about and threaten to fight me. They would follow me home and scream obscenities like “cunt” out their windows. She was friends with the type of girls who have new best friends once a month, the kind that squeal out, “Oh my Godddd, you’re so prettyyyyy,” when they first meet you. It’s the forced kind of flattery that you know is just delivered so that you’ll say it back in an equally nasally, heinous tone. I am all for women complimenting other women, but do it for the right reasons, ladies. Don’t lie. And bring it down a few octaves, I beg you. Jesus H. Christ.

  Then the kiss happened. Drunkenly, stupidly, one night Isaac was out and she pounced on him. And yes, I know, I shouldn’t just blame her. A kiss is a two sided thing.

  BLAH FUCKING BLAH.

  I broke up with him for it, didn’t I? After everything I just told you about her, you wouldn’t believe she would sic herself on my boyfriend? She apologized and said things like, “I hope this doesn’t affect how you see me.” Of course it didn’t affect that because I already saw her as a psychotic, pathetic barnacle that refused to go way. Fatal Attraction. Clearly, she thought she had won. Katey started texting Isaac all the time trying to get back together. Eventually, he just started responding with “Who is this?”

  After Isaac and I were really dating, in full-on relationship mode, she would work out next to me and stare at me in the mirrors at the gym. I ignored her. She tried to dye her hair my shade of blonde, turning her dark helmet hair into a rusty orange that looked anything but natural. Thankfully, her chicken-fried-hair was back to Satan’s favorite shade of black. It was, by definition, a single, white female situation. In Katey’s case, a single, orange female forever situation.

  But hey, she’s a #girlwholovescats, so she’ll never be totally lonely.

  “Hi, Josie! Girls.” Katey wobbled her way over to us like a newborn deer on stilts. We just nodded at her. Her voice was so fucking loud and so fucking shrill. She needed everyone in the bar to hear everything she had to say. I downed my second drink. The head buzz was real, but I couldn’t be sober around this monster. “I’m surprised to see you out, it’s been a while! On a boy hunt?” She was fishing for information with a neon pole—so obvious and so pathetic.

  This was why I was madly in love with my friends. No matter how much shit they gave me about Isaac, they knew when to step in and how to handle a situation with someone like Katey Kelsee. Molly and Ellie could see what she was up to, and they sprang into action like Batman and Robin. No, Batman and Superman.

  SUPERWOMAN AND SUPERWOMAN.

  “Oh, you know, Ellie and I are definitely out hunting. Man-eaters, that’s us. The three of us should start a club.” She elbowed Katey, winking at her. Because the backhanded compliment was such a specialty of KK’s, she knew how to hold it together when faced with one herself. She just smiled, though her eyes had nothing but poison in them.

  “Josie here is probably on her way out soon. Looking like that, you know she’s got someone special waiting,” Ellie continued. “Did you ever answer Isaac’s text, Jos?”

  YES. YES, ELLIE.

  Katey froze. She clearly knew Isaac and I had broken up; there was no way we’d gotten past her stalk-dar. So seeing me out tonight, boy-less, was probably the highlight of her wretched week. Maybe her month. And now Ellie had saved the day. KK attempted a quick recovery, however.

  “Oh, you still talk to Isaac, too, Josie? I was just texting him the other day.” Katey thought she had me. She had a nasty habit of always being wrong. She had a nastier habit of underestimating the sass I could lay out when pushed into a corner by a gargoyle like herself.

  “OH! That was you! I’ll have to let Isaac know. We woke up the other morning to, like, six messages from an unknown number. He just deleted them. How funny. Did you get a new phone or something?” Molly pumped her fist in the air triumphantly behind Katey, unseen. Then, as if by the grace of God, my phone lit up on the bar between the two of us. It was Isaac. The stretched out oompa-loompa’s face went
completely blank. I couldn’t have timed it any better. “Looks like he still has my number, though.”

  She giggled half-heartedly, knowing there was nothing more to say. Katey excused herself and walked to the back of the bar where I’m sure the other creatures were dwelling.

  “That. Was. Perfect.” Molly slid into the seat next to me.

  “You guys were truly excellent. I bow down to you,” I thanked my beautiful, beautiful friends.

  “I have to say that was an amazing work of fate with the phone.” Ellie laughed. “It’s like the universe wanted to publicly shame Katey.”

  “The universe and I have a lot in common,” I observed. We all ordered another celebratory drink. I had almost forgotten the message that was waiting for me on my phone. There was a second where I wondered if the text inside could possibly be as magical as the timing it had possessed. I wasn’t sure I wanted to ruin a moment like that with whatever might be there. If it was just some stupid message, it might make me feel less satisfied in my win over Katey Kelsee.

  “What r u up to tonight?” was all it asked. Not bad, but not a declaration of undying love, which would both totally violate our current agreement and irreparably break KK into a million, orange pieces. Small victories. Small victories.

  ***

  After Molly’s eighth gin and tonic, which finally got her as drunk as Ellie’s third Cosmo had already gotten her, we left the bar. At that point, Katey had been staring at us for three hours, glaring over each of the shots she’d ordered every time I looked at my phone.

  “So wurrtonowgirls?” Ellie slurred, poking her head between the front seats.

  “I think it’s just about bedtime for you, doll.” I took my hand off the wheel to pat her head, but she had already disappeared back through the opening. She now slumped against the backseat, passed out.