Page 4 of Ghosted
“Thank you for the wine,” I say, taking my glass out of her hand.
“Thank yourself. You bought it.” She slides my credit card across the table to me and sits down. I don’t even want to know how she got my card. I work to clamp my mouth shut against the retort that I’ve paid for dinner the last three times we’ve gone out, and she promised to pay this time. After all, I want to know about Damien, and she won’t tell me if I force the subject.
I shove my credit card in my bra to prevent her sticky fingers from finding it again and ask, “What happened with Damien?”
She chews on a leftover basil cracker, takes a sip of wine,and reaches for a piece of cheese when I yank the whole charcuterie board towards me and glare at her.
She sighs and sits back against her chair. “Okay. Fine.” She takes a moment to glower at me, and I am, once again, thankful that her Gift doesn’t extend to actual magic because I’m sure I’d have been incinerated on the spot a million times over by now. “The date was going fine at first. He was nice, he paid for my drinks, and when we got back to my apartment, he didn’t push me into anything. We watched a movie, and just when things started to get interesting…” she trails off.
I squint at her, waiting for her to continue. When she still doesn’t say anything, the older sister in me opens her eyes like an ancient beast. “What did he do?” I ask, already planning the ways I can track him down and relieve him of his favorite appendage.
Her eyes widen, and she says quickly, “No, Rae. Seriously, nothing like that. It’s just… He started crying.”
I shake my head in confusion. My sister can be mean, but not usually mean to the point of causing tears. “Crying?”
“Crying,” she confirms with a curt nod. “I literally had my ankles up by my ears, and his tears started splattering on my chest.” I clap my hand over my mouth to conceal the giggle bubbling out of my mouth. Her scowl twitches into a smile for a nanosecond before she continues, “Obviously, I asked him what was wrong, and—while still inside me—he proceeds to tell me that this is the first time he’s been with anyone since his girlfriend broke up with him a few months ago.”
“Oh. My. God.” I cover my mouth with my hand.
“Yeah.”
After a beat, I can’t help but ask behind my hand, “Did you guys keep going?”
“No! Are you insane? I politely asked him to get off me and leave. He agreed, still sobbing, and got all his stuff together. Before he left, he kept apologizing and saying that he had a great time, but maybe it was too soon for him to move on. I had to physically lead him out of my apartment.” She drains the rest of her glass and sets it down with a loudclink.
I suck my lips in a futile attempt to prevent my smile. Wren isn’t fooled, though, judging from the thunderous look on her face. “So glad you find my misery amusing,” she spits.
I raise my hands in surrender. “I’m sorry, but you know if the roles were reversed, you’d be cackling loud enough to get us kicked out of here.”
She tilts her head to the side, making her hair fall over her shoulder. “Okay, true. Still, how humiliating. I love the idea of making men cry, but in such a compromising position?” She grimaces as though the mere memory left a foul taste in her mouth.
As much as I want to laugh because this is the type of shit that only happens to us, I feel for Wren. She may put up a front of being a prickly little cactus, but her heart is marshmallow soft. She just wants to find someone who likes her brand of weird, and apparently, someone who doesn’t cry during sex. God, the bar istrulyin hell.
She brushes off these failed dates, but I know they bother her. She’s always been a romantic at heart, even if she does hide it behind a heavy armor of standoffishness and scowling.
“What can I do to cheer you up?” I ask.
When her mouth curves in a chilling impression of Jim Carrey’sGrinchsmile,I immediately regret asking. “Well, youcouldrevive your dating profile again. Maybe finding you a date would help get my mindoff it.”
“What, so I can have my own sobbing sex story? No, thank you.” I shake my head emphatically.
“Come on, Rae. It’s been almost a year since you went on a date. You’re approaching spinsterhood.”
“Hey!” I exclaim. “I thought it was cool to be a spinster. Imagine all the cats I could have. Besides, I’m only twenty-nine,” I sniff.
“You’re allergic to cats,” Wren replies with exasperation. “And your thirtieth birthday is only a few months away.”
“Kill joy.”
“Hag.”
I glare at her for a minute and then sigh. “Fine.” Her moody expression immediately transforms into something girlish and twinkling.
She extends her hand, fingers armed with deadly stiletto nails. I tap my own long ruby nail on the table a few times before relinquishing my phone. Despite how much we bicker, I trust her with my life. While we love to laugh at each other, neither of us would ever do something truly hurtful. We’ve always been inseparable; our mom jokes that we’re twins at heart.
“You don’t even have the app downloaded on your phone?” Wren asks, shaking her head in disapproval. After a few minutes, she says, “Oh, good. It saved all your data. Let’s just take a new profile photo, because your last one is from when you chopped your hair off.”
“Right now? No, Leonard woke me up at an ungodly hour. I probably look like the Grudge.” I hold a hand up to shield my face, and I swear she growls.
