Secondhand Boyfriends (2 page)

“Spill it, sweets. Come. Sit down. Tell me all.” Claudia muted the television and patted the seat next to her on the sofa.

It drove me wild how easy going Claudia could be about things. But then again, Claudia was always there for me, though her advice was hardly worth taking. It always seemed too logical to be of any use to my irrational monkey brain.

“Remember Sam?” I began.

“Yeah, what about him?”

“You know Ayla Giovanni?”

“The Channel 6 news anchor whose style you always try to copy?”

“What? Yes. Her.” I never copied her style; I merely paid homage to it.

“What about her?”

“They’re getting married,” I regretfully informed her, though the regret was all mine.

“You say that like you’re sad or something,” Claudia said. “Good for him.”

I tilted my head back as I felt a rush of tears coming on. I had held these tears in since 11:00 that morning when the engagement announcement form first landed in my inbox. I immediately felt sick to my stomach, just like I had then. “I need some Pepto.”

“Funny,” Claudia stared off. She was clearly not as surprised by this news as I was.

“That’s all you can say?” I wiped my tears on the back of my hand. “I don’t find it funny.”

“Okay, so they‘re slightly mismatched. Happens all the time anymore. It’s the new thing.”

“Mismatched doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’ve written thousands upon thousands of engagement and wedding announcements, but never in a million years did I think that Sam would be getting married so soon. And before me. And to an insanely beautiful girl. She’s practically a local celebrity. I didn’t think Sam was into girls like her.”

The truth was I didn’t think girls like her were into guys like Sam.

“Do I even need to remind you that you broke up with him?” Claudia rolled her eyes when she thought I wasn‘t looking. “Why are you upset? You crushed that little guy like a bug. I heard he was so distraught he didn’t shower for two weeks afterwards. You should, at the very least, be happy for him.

“Besides, Ayla Giovanni is not ‘insanely beautiful’. Do you realize how much makeup they have to wear for the camera?”

“No. She’s gorgeous. I saw her in person.”

“In person? You never mentioned that.”

“Through a peephole. It’s a long story. I think I’m going to go to bed,” I said.

“It’s not even ten o’clock,” Claudia objected. “Our show is on soon.”

“I’m not in the mood for it,” I sulked as I drug my feet down the hall to the bathroom.

“I think my cousin used to date Ayla Giovanni in college. I’m sure I could find some dirt on her,” Claudia yelled back down the hall.

The following day, I did everything I could to prolong actually sitting at my desk. I got to work right on time instead of fifteen minutes early as I usually did. I spent an extra fifteen minutes shooting the breeze with Mike, our one and only Harrisville Tribune Movie Critic, and I took my sweet time preparing the most perfect cup of coffee from the employee break room.

“So that’s why I liked the original Star Wars better than the remakes,” Michael explained. “You really need to go to some movies with me. I get in free everywhere.”

“I would hope so, being a movie critic and all,” I replied. “I’m not big on movies. They always end up depressing me somehow.”

“Even loves stories?” Michael enquired.

“Especially love stories. They remind me how pathetic my own love life is,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee as we walked slowly towards my cubicle.

Michael looked like his dog had just been run over. “Olivia, I never knew that about you.”

“What? Do you think I have a date every night of the week or something?”

“No, of course not,” he said. Then he added with all seriousness, “I meant I never knew that you didn’t like movies.”

Before I even had time to be offended, my boss, Julianne, walked in on our idle chit-chat.

“Everyone keeping busy this morning?” Julianne asked. She was onto us.

“Yeah, gearing up for wedding season all right,” I said with a nervous chuckle as I glanced into her cup of coffee. It was almost empty, and I knew she’d probably been in the office for at least a solid hour already. She always made me feel like I was doing something wrong, even if I knew I wasn’t. “I can definitely tell by the stack of requests on my desk every morning.”

“That reminds me,” Julianne started. “My stepdaughter is getting married early next year. You should be getting their announcement any day now.”

“Congratulations!” I forced a huge smile.

Julianne walked off with her cup of coffee and left me realizing I didn’t know as much about my boss as I thought I did. I tried to imagine Julianne being maternal, but it was just too hard. Over the last three years, she had not once mentioned any children or stepchildren. The only reason I knew she was married was because she dragged her husband to every charity event and work function we ever had. He was always the bald, chubby man in the corner, trying to chat up the wait staff because they were “easier to talk to”, or so he always told Julianne. He gave me the creeps, so I always steered clear of him.

By 8:45, I trudged off the elevator to my desk in the corner where a stack of printed announcements awaited my arrival. I liked to print them out from my email so I could easily sort, stack, and file them. I had cabinets upon cabinets of old announcements behind me, drawers full of love and hope.

On the bottom of the stack of was the request to announce the imminent nuptials of Sam and Ayla.

The handwriting was obviously Sam’s. He had written out her name so carefully and neatly, yet everything else was scribbled.

Attached to the submission was an engagement picture I had printed. Sam’s arms were wrapped around Ayla’s tiny waist as they faced each other and Sam’s back was resting against a giant redwood tree. He wore khaki pants and a navy sweater vest over a white button down shirt; very Sam. Ayla wore one of her signature Tory Burch dresses, but in shades of blue as to coordinate with Sam’s sweater.

It was sickeningly cute. Ayla’s pearly whites were blindingly bright in comparison to Sam’s coffee-stained smile.

Ayla Giovanni was a young, buoyant news anchor on the most widely watched news station in the tri-city area. Everything about her was long: her hair, her eyelashes, and especially her legs. She was arguably a glamazon in her own right. She was downright gorgeous. Rumor had it that her mother was a Brazilian supermodel in the 1980s.

Many a local twenty-something young woman would watch the news if only to see what Ayla was wearing so they could go out the next day and buy the same thing. Okay, so I may have been one of the local twenty-somethings who dissected what she wore on a near daily basis.

Sam was a different story. His hair was thin and mousy. His teeth were stained and misaligned. He was short and his shoulders sloped from his days as a wrestler at Cartersville University. His persistent acne outbreaks combined with his receding hair and dry, flaky skin would make for Queer Eye makeover heaven. His eyes were a serene shade of sea green though, and I always found comfort in them. Sometimes I really missed them.

Aside from his lack of desirable physical attributes, Sam Fisher was one of the nicest guys any girl could want to date. He was entirely too nice, which unfortunately turned me off more than on.

At lunch, I met up with my good friend Amaya. She was Miss Independent if there ever was one. Claudia always called her a “Man Hater”, but I think Amaya simply got sick of being treated like crap by all men and one day up and decided she wasn’t going to take any of their crap any longer.

“What you need is a distraction,” Amaya said, taking a huge bite of salad and washing it down with a swig of imported mineral water. She was about to start lecturing. I could see it in her eyes.

“Like another guy?”

“Exactly. But one you’re not going to get attached to. Keep him around until he fulfills his purpose and then cut him loose.”

“Easier said than done,” I said.

“What about that Bennett guy you just told me about? He would be a prime candidate.”

“Okay, that was just a weird thing, plus I don’t even have his number.”

“But you know where he lives,” Amaya said. She was going to fight me on this.

Sometimes I needed Amaya to shake the truth into me, but usually she just scared me. I often found myself too terrified to not take her advice.

“Olivia, you are going to go back to that man’s apartment, march your pretty little feet up those steps and knock on his door. And then you’re going to ask him out on a date,” Amaya ordered. Her big brown eyes shot daggers into mine.

“What if he says no? Or he has a girlfriend?”

“What if, what if, what if. Do it.” Amaya looked annoyed at my concerns. “If I have to hide in the bushes to make sure you do it, then I will. What? You don’t believe me?”

I got back to work and immediately Googled “Bennett Townsend”. According to various internet sites, there was absolutely no dirt on anyone with his name. He had no virtual presence of any kind. So much for that. He probably gave me a fake name, anyway.

Immediately after work, I mustered the courage to march down to the Dewberry Apartments on Vine to see if maybe, just maybe, I could run into him. I figured if I saw him, that would be a sign. I wasn’t going to knock on his door and ask him out, though. I wasn’t that desperate.

It was so unlike me that the entire time I was walking and thinking about what I was going to say, I had completely spaced off any of my all-consuming Sam and Ayla thoughts.

“Olivia?”

I looked up. It was Sam. I looked to my left. There was Bennett’s apartment.

“Oh, hey.” I tried my hardest to act natural. I couldn’t figure out what to do with my hands, so I just crossed my arms. My tote slid down my arm and swung at my waist. I never said I was smooth.

“What brings you over here?”

“Just visiting someone. You?”
      

“I live here.”

It was quiet for a minute. There was so much I wanted to ask, but I couldn’t find the right combination of words to say how I felt at that moment. I looked at him. Really looked at him. He seemed so good. So honest. So kind. So unlike every other guy I had ever dated before and since him. How do you tell someone that they’re everything you ever wanted and you never completely got over them, but you don’t want to be with them unless you can’t have them? How do you explain that on a busy street at five o’clock when you weren’t expecting to see them in the first place?

His eyes were surveying me, taking me in like it was the last time he’d ever see me. He didn’t look at me the way he used to, though. He looked like a man who was in love, but not with me.

“So, it was good seeing you,” he said. Sam gave a fake half-smile and pushed past me to walk into his building.

“We should get coffee sometime, Sam,” I said as I called after him. “I’d love to catch up.”

The fact that he blew me off made me want to talk to him all the more.

Sam looked completely caught off-guard. “Sure. You have my number.” With that, he was already inside the door.

Actually, I had deleted his number a long time ago. Shit.

Not wanting to seem like a stalker, I couldn’t make myself go into the building after Sam. I also couldn’t risk him hearing or seeing me ask another guy out on a date. I wished at that moment I could become Dorothy Gale and click my heels and be home, but instead I turned around and made my way ten blocks in the opposite direction, bringing a new thought with each step. I knew that Amaya was going to be very upset with me. I kept expecting her to jump out of random bushes on my walk home.

I finally made it back to my apartment. The minute Claudia heard my keys in the door, she came running. “Did you get my message?”

“I haven’t looked at my phone all day.”

“Liar. I left you a message. We’re doing dinner tonight with my cousin Ridley. He went to Columbia with Ayla Giovanni. How great is that? We’re going to get some inside scoop for you. Hurry up and get ready. We’re meeting him in twenty minutes at Graze.”

Gathered around the table at Graze sat Claudia, Ridley, myself and Ridley’s pitifully insecure girlfriend, Amber, who would not stop checking her teeth all night in her little black MAC compact and checking her iPhone every two and a half seconds for new text messages.

“So, Ridley, didn’t you go to school with Ayla Giovanni?” Claudia finally interjected halfway through dinner. It was about damn time.

“Who?” Ridley acted completely clueless.

I shot Claudia a look of death. She promised me scoop. I wanted scoop, damn it.

“Remember? The newscaster for Channel 6?”

“Oh!” Ridley looked as though a light bulb had gone off. The waitress walked by. “Excuse me, miss. Can I get another glass of red? Thanks.”

He pointed to his empty wine glass.

Amber whispered something in his ear. He whispered back. Amber looked bored as she checked her phone again. She then got up and pranced to the bathroom, her almost-too-short skirt swaying behind her.

“Oh, yeah, I definitely remember Ayla. We lived in the same dorm freshman year. She dated my roommate, Eric, all four years. She was so in love with him.” Ridley dished up a huge fork full of spaghetti. I figured four years at Columbia would provide him with some kind of manners, but I guess not.

“That’s the best dirt you’ve got on her?” I asked.

“Olivia.” Claudia shot me a look. She didn’t frighten me. I was on a mission.

“Anything else I have probably wouldn’t be appropriate for the dinner table,” Ridley said. “Plus, Amber’s coming back. Let’s just say, she loved to love and she loved attention.”

“Loved to love?” I mouthed to Claudia across the table. She looked just as confused as me.

Why do some people get a kick out of encrypting their gossip?

The rest of the dinner I spent racking my brain on what Ridley meant about loving and attention. Was she a textbook college whore? Did she cheat on poor, defenseless Eric? Was she constantly trying to be the center of attention, or just Eric’s center of attention? I didn’t like her already. She wasn’t good enough for Sam. She was just going to crush him like I did, I knew it.