Page 14 of The Thing About My Rival

“You wanted to rip off his shorts,” Joyce says.

“Too much of this.” Winston taps the side of his glass.

“Definitely the last two. And I would never usually do anything like that.”

“Of course not. Exceptional circumstances,” Joyce says. “I mean, you have a chance with a man like that, you grab it with both hands.”

“And the chance,” Mona says, delighted with her dirty joke.

“I’ve taught you well, my friend.” Joyce high-fives her, then turns back to me. “Anyway, more details.”

“Well, it felt like it didn’t matter that he slept around. God knows why. It makes no sense to me now. Now, I wouldn’t touch him while wearing a full hazmat suit. Butwhen he looked at me…” A sigh comes out of me that sounds so sappy I want to punch myself in the head.

God, I’m pathetic. I fell for the same shit every woman he’s slept with fell for. And I thought I was smart. Maybe my dad’s been right all along.

“He was just generally fun and nice and danced with us. Then he put his arm around me and whispered in my ear that he’d like to get me a drink.”

“Did the whispering give you that goose-pimply thing all down your side?” Joyce shivers as a memory obviously passes through her.

“You know, it did.” Again, that was dumb. “I mean, I knew he must do that kind of thing all the time and it’s nothing to him. I knew it. But still, in that moment, having a drink with him felt like the right thing to do.”

“When you know, you know.” Mona gives me a slow nod of experience.

“So we had a couple drinks. And he was funny and charming. And we laughed a lot. And when my friends said they were going to head back to our hotel, Hugo asked me to stay and hang out for a while.”

“And youdid.” Joyce claps.

“Like a fool, I did.”

“Do we get to the sexy part now?” Joyce asks.

“Joyce, for the love of God. Maybe the poor girl doesn’t wish to share the intimate details of her life.” Winston is always the epitome of considerate.

She nudges me. “Just the general gist of it. You don’t have to do a blow-by-blow of who put what where.”

“Blow-by-blow.” Mona giggles. “I see what you did there.”

I guess I’ll just keep it to the bare essentials. Except I won’t use the word “bare” or it might set Mona off.

“We chatted for a bit. But it was hard because the music was so loud. We basically had to yell right into each other’s ears. And he sneaked a kiss. Right there, while we were standing at a bar table.”

“Did your knees wobble?” Mona asks.

“Everything wobbled.” My knees, my belly, my hands. It was the most thrilling, exciting sensation of my life.

“Again, this.” Winston points at his Sam Adams.

“Since it was so loud, he suggested we go to a quieter bar.”

“Of course he did,” Winston says. As if that’s Pickup Technique 101.

“I was a bit on the tipsy side, so it seemed to make sense.”

“Washedrunk?” Joyce asks.

“Yes. More than I realized.”

I take a sip of Guinness to ease the dryness in my throat from reliving this story.

---