Page 1 of My Super Sexy Spy
1
Beth
There’sa reason why Paris is known as the city of love. It’s how it makes you feel. As if you’ve seen someone for the first time and you’re instantly attracted. All you want to do is get to know them more. And the more you get to know them, the more you fall in love.
A Lover’s Guide to Travel
* * *
“So, what I’m trying to say…what I’ve been trying to say this whole time is that I think you’re great. I do. I just see us heading in different directions. You know what I’m saying?”
I looked at my boyfriend of two years. TWO YEARS! And blinked. Because I couldn’t possibly be hearing what was coming out of his mouth. Because what was coming out of his mouth sounded a lot like he was breaking up with me.
Which was ridiculous. Who would be my boyfriend if he broke up with me?
I reached for the glass of wine in front of me and took a sip. Then a deep breath.
“Jared, are you breaking up with me?”
He let out of whoosh of breath, then wiped his hands over his face. “Beth! I’ve been…we’ve been talking about this for almost thirty minutes. And you’re just now understanding what I’m telling you?”
I glanced at the tables around us in the restaurant. It was a Saturday night, our typical date night. Luigi’s, our typical restaurant. With our typical waitress, Cindy. People here knew us. If not by name, certainly by our faces.
The single guy wearing a Phillies baseball hat sitting at the table next to us glanced over at our table. I knew he’d heard Jared’s raised voice. He’d probably seen the writing on the wall way before I had.
Holy shit, this was embarrassing. Because I think Jared was actually breaking up with me.
“I don’t understand. Nothing has changed between us,” I told him.
He had his place in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. I had mine in the city. We’d once talked about moving in together, but we both worked from home. He was a programmer and I was a blog writer. So, living together, working together in the same space had always seemed like too much…togetherness.
“That’s my point, Beth.Nothinghas changed. We’re not growing as a couple.”
Growing as a couple?Was he serious? Jared wasn’t the type of guy whogrew. He was sweet and simple and as happy to have a girlfriend as I was to have a boyfriend. At least that’s how he’d always seemed.
We were perfectly content! Only clearly not so much.
I started to think about what might have happened to him recently that he’d even question us as a couple.
“Is this because of that hippy dippy class you’ve been taking?”
“It’s yoga therapy, it’s not hippy dippy,” he snapped. “Just because I’m trying to expand my horizons and think outside of the box doesn’t mean I’m not cool.”
It was a hippy dippy yoga class.
I didn’t say that though. I thought about what he’d told me about the class. How the instructor gave direction related to yoga poses while also helping people to work through their emotional bottlenecks. That’s what Jared said she’d called them.
What emotional bottlenecks did Jared have?
He grew up in a fancy, rich suburb in southern New Jersey. He had both parents, not divorced, who worshiped him as their only son. He’d gone to the University of Pennsylvania, without student loans, and he’d gotten a job right out of college doing programming.
He was shy and a little nerdy—what programmer wasn’t—but decent looking with his light brown hair and hazel eyes.
That night at the bar two years ago, I’d spotted him with his friends in the back. I could see he was conservative with his pressed jeans and button-down, white shirt and I’d thoughthim.That guy was a serious person. That guy wasn’t someone who’d been through a lot of drama. That guy could give me what I wanted.
So, I’d tucked up my nose ring so that it was invisible and approached him.
I was right, too. Jared had grown up with everything I never had, and dating him felt like plugging into that world. As if somehow, through him, I could be the only thing I’d ever wanted to be…which was normal.
