Page 78 of Pity Parade

Faith pats her stomach. “Look out, Harvard, I’m baking you a new student.” We all grimace at her terminology, so she changes it to, “Look out, Harvard, I’m creating a brilliant new life for you to mold. Better?”

“Much,” Missy tells her. Then she looks at me and suggests, “You should fill Faith in on all the details of your social life.”

Faith looks excited, so I tell her, “Daniel went back to Chicago a few days ago.”

“Are you going to keep seeing him?” she wants to know.

“Oh, I’ll see him again,” I tell her. “I promised to help him find a girlfriend.”

“Back up,” Faith says. “The last I heard you were considering becoming his girlfriend.”

“That changed a few days ago when he kissed me.” All eyes are on me, so I explain, “We were getting along really well, and I thought it was time to find out if I was still physically attracted to him.”

“Couldn’t you already tell if you were?” Missy wants to know. “The first time I saw Jamie, it was all I could do not to throw myself at him and climb him like that rope in eighth grade gym class.”

“I wasn’t feeling anything like that when I saw Daniel again,” I confide. “I couldn’t figure out if it was because he broke up with me and I was still mad, or if I just wasn’t into him.”

“And?” Faith prompts.

“I decided to get to know him better. The weird part is that I like him as a person more than I did two years ago, but the ship of physical attraction has sailed.”

The waitress comes to clear our empty plates and when she leaves, Paige says, “Isn’t it strange that you can really be into someone at one time and then that feeling totally goes away?”

“Why do you think there are so many divorces?” Missy asks. “People turn away from each other all the time.”

“Marriage has a lot of different phases,” I tell them. “Nature makes sure you’re all hot and heavy at the beginning, so the lifecycle continues, but after that, the most important thing is to be good parents and good partners.”

“That’s so sad,” Paige says. “I plan to be hot for Tim until I’m ninety-five and put into the ground.”

“I’m not saying you don’t still share physical attraction,” I tell her. “It’s just that life gets in the way for a lot of people and that part of the relationship doesn’t always get nurtured.”

“How do you know this?” Faith asks. “Have you ever been married?”

I shake my head. “No, but I come from a long line of women who talk about absolutely everything and this seems to be a normal pattern.”

“My mom never talked about her relationship with my dad,” Missy tells me. “They got divorced, and then she got remarried. All I can say is that she is not a poster girl for a happy wife.”

Paige asks, “What’s going on with her and Howard?”

Missy looks at me and for my benefit recaps, “My mom went to Europe alone and wound up extending her stay. Her husband didn’t go because he’s a giant stick in the mud that lives to golf and little else.” She looks around the table and adds, “She hasn’t said as much, but I get the feeling she might be getting ready to go out on her own again.”

“Divorce?” Paige sounds surprised.

“I hope so,” Missy says. “Howard has treated my mom like his own personal servant since they’ve been married. I’d love for her to be alone for a while. You know, get to know herself again.” Several heads nod that that sounds like a good plan.

Faith asks me, “So if Daniel’s not an option, where do you go from here?”

“I thought maybe Nick might like to go out some time,” I tell her.

“The tennis pro at the club,” Paige reminds her.

“What about Heath?” Faith asks.

A flash of heat warms my face. “Heath left for Chicago over a week ago and no one has heard from him since.”

Faith yawns loudly before asking, “What if he comes back?”

“Then I’m going to run him over with my car,” I tell her.

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