Page 51 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me
Okay, maybe nothim. He reminded me of Dick.
I craned my neck and tried to get a better look at a cute skater boy in baggy pants and aThrasherT-shirt. Shaggy hair. Backward ball cap. Bandaged fingers. I could play nurse and he could be the rebel who calls me “babe” and fucks like a stallion.
Annika smacked my arm. My gaze swung to her just as the skater boy started making out with a girl in a hoodie and ripped denim.
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I stared at her. “Why are you even asking me that? Youknowwhy I can’t be with Gabriel.”
“I’m over him and have been for months.” She waved her hand in the air like she was swatting away a pesky fly. Just as if Gabriel hadn’t been the reason for our massive argument and her subsequent disappearing act.
“You’re scared,” she said.
I scoffed. “I’m not scared.”
“Yes, you are,” she insisted. “I know how you operate. You’re so scared of getting your heart broken that you go for guys like David and Harry and Stephen?—”
“Who’s Stephen?”
“That guy you dated in high school who was obsessed with Henry James.”
“His name was Seth and he was obsessed with Henry Miller, not Henry James.”
“Whatever,” Annika said. “My point is that you only date guys who are safe.”
“That’s not true,” I protested. “I dated Christopher. He was the opposite of safe.”
“He was a commitment-phobic playboy. The very definition of safe.”
“He was a talented artist.” At leasthethought he was. He was a narcissist straight out of a Bret Easton Ellis novel. He’d fill glass jars with candy wrappers or condoms, set the jars on a plinth and call it art. I’d call it a collection, but people paid big bucks for it so what did I know?
“Let’s look at your dating history,” Annika said.
“I’d rather not.”
Annika ignored me. “Your first boyfriend was gay?—”
“Seth wasn’t gay.”
“You dated him for six months and he never even tried to get past first base. Look at you… ” She swept her arm up and down. “He was gay. Then there was your college boyfriend. What ahugeimprovement. I’m pretty sure he was gay too.”
I rolled my eyes. “David wasn’t gay.”
“He wore socks during sex! And he always had to take a shower immediately afterwards. What’s with that? And okay, I’ll admit that he had a certain appeal. If you’re attracted to guys who look like Jeff Goldblum, which absolutely nobody is.”
I jumped in to defend David whokind oflooked like Jeff Goldblum, but Annika was on a roll, so she ignored me and proceeded to find fault with every guy I’d ever dated while simultaneously flagging down the bartender for another round.
I was already buzzed, well on my way to drunk, and Jose Cuervo had never done me any favors. But did that stop me from doing another shot?
Bottoms up.
“Which brings us to the bartender,” she said, finally wrapping up my less-than-stellar dating history.
I was only twenty-two and it sounded like I’d already been around the block with every Tom, Dick, and Hairy Harry. Not that I’d slept with all of them. But still. Ihadkissed a lot of frogs in my six years of dating.
“The bartender was cute, I’ll give you that,” Annika said. “But anyone could see that he was a dine-and-dash kind of guy. Which was exactly why you chose him. You knew it would never amount to anything.”
The bartender was my pathetic attempt to move on from Gabriel after he broke up with Annika. But until she’d rehashed my entire love life, I hadn’t really noticed the worrying trend.
