Page 1 of Drunk Dialing My Enemy

CHAPTER 1

KATIE

“Hello?”

Against my better judgement, I’ve somehow found myself on the phone with Darren. As in my ex-crush, Darren. My first love, Darren.

A man that I now hate.

His deep voice sounds thick with sleep. Despite the inconvenient hour, he doesn’t sound annoyed to be speaking with me.

Which is weird. Normally, he’s always annoyed to be speaking with me.

See, as much as I hate Darren, he hates me right back. Why we ever kissed, I will never know.

Sometimes I wonder if the kiss was a dare. You know, dare ya to kiss the fat girl and make her think you like her. Ha ha!

It’s the kind of thing that high school jocks would do. But not something I ever thought Darren would do.

I used to think he was different.

The single tequila shot that I had hours ago seems to be working overtime tonight. That’s how I found myself on the phone with Darren at all. That, and Heather’s taunting.

“When are you going to have a bachelorette party of your own? You’re always the bridesmaid at these things. Pretty sure you’ll be the last single girl left!”

After she said this, I had to get up and hide in the bathroom.

Her comment only hurt me so bad because it felt true. Not only am I one of the only singles left in our group of friends — though, I’m not so sure that Heather is a true friend — I haven’t even had sex yet.

Yeah. That’s right. I’m a twenty-four year old virgin. Between this and the fact that I’m plus sized, not a conventionally thin hourglass shape, sometimes I feel a pariah in the dating scene.

And the only man I’ve ever loved, acts like I don’t exist. And when he’s not acting like I don’t exist, he’s being an asshole to me.

“Katie? Are you still there?”

My name sounds weird on his lips. I stare at the stall door. The bathrooms in this bar are wallpapered with old country music posters. A young Reba McEntire is currently grinning at me, oblivious to my situation. I stare at her poofy hair. It’s absolutely gigantic, teased and permed to be nearly double the size of her head.

Once upon a time,thatwas the standard of beauty. Just like centuries ago, my rolls and cellulite would have been depicted in oil paintings, an homage to the ideal feminine form.

Shit just isn’t fair.

“Katie?”

“Why are you not growling at me?” I ask him. My tongue feels buzzy in my mouth.

“Growling?”

“Yeah. Normally when we talk, you’re all like -” I lower my voice, doing my best impression of Darren’s grumpy growl. “-Hey Katie. You’ve had a stack of packages on the porch for overthree hours. That’s unacceptable. And tell your customers to stop parking in the grass. They’re ruining the sod.”

“That supposed to be me?”

“You couldn’t tell?”

”Sounds more like a constipated Oscar the Grouch.”

My worst enemy just made a joke. A funny one. The laugh escapes my lips before I can stop it.

Damn. This isn’t how this call was supposed to go. Darren was supposed to pick up the phone and be mad at me for waking him up at this hour. After he got all mad about that, I was going to tell him to go to hell.

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