“You’re a woman who doesn’t understand why her ass**le ex did what he did,” Amy soothes.
“And a weirdo,” Amanda adds.
“That was last year. That was Steve. How can this happen to me again. How? Something is wrong with me. I’m damaged somehow. Invisibly damaged. I’m doomed to never understand why men flee from me. Why I’m not good enough. What the fatal flaw inside me is that drives men away.”
“It might be the lack of showers,” Amanda says softly.
I throw Chuckles at her and walk away.
“That was not supportive,” Amy hisses.
“I was about to shove Vicks VapoRub up my nostrils.”
“So it wasn’t just me?” Amy sounds relieved.
“I CAN HEAR YOU!”
“Then go shower!” they say in unison.
“A few more emails,” I mutter. A batch of new mystery shopper applications has come in. I routinely process them. It’s a formality, just a series of emails I have to open and read because—
“Marie Jacoby?” I shout. Does one of the emails really say my mother’s name on it?
Amanda presses her lips together to hide a smirk.
“Mom is now a registered mystery shopper with Consolidated Evalu-shop? What the hell?”
“She wanted to do the marital aid shops, and some others, so I walked her through the steps for certification.” In order to get the really good mystery shopping jobs, you have to take an online certification course. It’s not hard, but it’s no cake walk, either.
Pay a fee and boom—certified for a year.
“Mom did all that? It’s bad enough Carol does some of my shops, but MOM?”
“She said that if the company’s paying for her to try out new warming gels, sign her up.”
“I refuse to be her supervisor,” I say flatly.
Amanda looks alarmed, and then we both find the answer. “Josh!”
“Josh is a techie,” Amy says.
“He handles overflow,” I explain.
“Josh is so cute.”
“He’s g*y.”
“I know!”
“So Josh can take over with Mom,” I say, forwarding her info to him. There is no way in hell I am mystery shopping nipple clamps with my mother. The sad part is, she’d be better at those shops than anyone else I know.
Sad.
“Quit stalling and get in the shower.” Amanda takes the laptop from me and shuts it firmly.
“I showered regularly for Declan!” I protest. “That’s not why he dumped me.” The steam rises from the shower head as I strip down. Amy and Amanda are in the threshold, like I’m on some sort of watch I don’t know about. Are they worried I’ll harm myself? The worst damage I could inflict would be eating two entire packaged of peanut-butter-stuffed Oreos, and if they think their presence will prevent that, well…
Too late.
“Jessica Coffin has some blame here,” Amy says in an ominous voice. “Poking him on Twitter.”
“He never cared about Twitter,” I call out. The rhythm and flow of cleansing myself helps. Lather, rinse, lather, rinse, conditioner, leave it on. Soap and clean the filth off me. Rinse. It’s a ritual cleansing. Normally I’d cry in the shower, but my sister and best friend are outside sharing theories about Why Declan Dumped Shannon, and while there’s plenty of fodder for material, the way they’re talking is such a relief.
Because they’re just as perplexed as I am.
The lesbian thing? He knows I’m not. His fury at thinking I’d been using him to climb the corporate ladder and land a big client? C’mon. Couldn’t he tell by how my body, my heart, my lips, and hands responded to him that I was—am—sincerely falling for him?
Is he a commitmentphobe? Am I just a fat chick he decided to bone because he could? Does he harbor the same snotty pretense that Steve has about wanting a more refined woman? Did my bee allergy turn him off? What what what?
My mind is my own worst enemy, looping frantically through every possible scenario to understand what my heart already knows:
He’s gone.
But why?
And if I can’t have him back, then how can I get through the minutes that become hours, the hours that become days, and the days that roll out and on and on without sharing a look with him? A hug or a kiss, or a casual wink that holds so much promise?
Who else on the planet could I meet with my hands down a toilet and have them ask me out on a date?
(One without a toilet fetish, I mean. There are 588 people on FetLife looking for women who put their hands in toilets. That’s not an imaginary number—I checked.)
I turn on the waterproof radio Amy uses when she showers. “Ain’t No Sunshine” pours loud and proud through the tiny bathroom, and that?
That gives me permission to cry in the shower. Big, fat, ugly tears of pain and abandon. Of promises that just died, of hope that was murdered, of the sound of his name rushing in to fill all the cracks in my mind.
Declan.
How do you drive away the very thing you once welcomed so eagerly just weeks ago?
You start by letting it leak out through your eyes.
I hear the door close quietly and I cry under the hot water for as long as I have tears. My mouth is so dry it should have sand in it. Maybe this is how I try to block out the last few days: death by intentional dehydration via tears.
A soft knock on the door shocks me. “What? You don’t barge in on me anymore? Oh, dear sweet Jesus, am I that bad off that you’re walking on eggshells around me?”
“Mom called,” Amy says.
“And?” I shout, turning the water off.
“She wants you to go to her yoga class tonight, after you’re done with work. Says it will be good for you.”
As I dry off, I groan. “All those old ladies will ask where Declan is!”
“Think of it as a Golden Girls gripefest.”
“That’s not helping.”
“Mom will take you out for ice cream afterwards.”
“Not helping either.” I am sliding my underwear on over my h*ps and it appears they have shrunk.
“It’s really bad,” Amy says to Amanda.
“I can hear you through the door, you know! Those cheap hollow core pieces of crap Dad’s always complaining about are about as effective at hiding your comments as Mom is at being tactful.”
“Yoga. 7:15. That’s the message.”
“Fine!” I choke out, talking to the steam. “I’ll meet her! But I’m getting toffee allllll over my double chocolate chip ice cream and she has to tolerate the crunching!” I shout.