Page 25 of Certified Heartthrob

I plopped down on the couch and stared at my phone. No calls or messages from Camille, though I wasn’t expecting her to reach out. Our business was finished. She’d accomplished what she set out to do by tracking me down, and now she was done with me.

But the nagging feeling in my gut wouldn’t go away. I was feeling more confused than ever. I couldn’t seem to resist her, and she appeared to be in the same spot. Maybe now that she had gotten what she wanted, she would find it easier to stay away from me. Maybe that had been her only motivation the whole time.

But something in her had to feel for me. Why else would she have slept with me twice? A woman like her would sooner let her brother’s fancy lawyers get the job done than have sex with me just to get her way. She was too proud and stubborn for that, which only made me like her more.

I was terrified of getting hurt all over again, but then I started thinking about the things she had said. About how I was hurting others in my quest not to get hurt again. I had hurt her, or maybe I still was hurting her. She was right about one thing: I was terrified of what would happen if a date actually worked out. My certainty that it could only end in tears and heartache had given me a sort of strange comfort. I didn’t know what it looked like for it to end any other way, but the prospect of it...was terrifying.

She was right about a number of things, actually...I realized with a sigh as I leaned back on the couch, feeling weighed down by the heavy silence of my apartment. Maybe it was time for me to give someone a fair chance.

But out of all the women I had met and chased off, none of them had compared to Camille. Was that a sign? Was she the one who deserved the fair chance? But after everything, would she even want it?

I clenched my phone in my hand for a moment, debating whether or not I should message her. What would I even say? I opted to toss the phone down onto the coffee table and pick up the remote instead. In my search for something to watch to get my mind off things, I was flooded with an endless stream of rom com previews.

I rolled my eyes and sat through more than I should have. Highlight reels of men having their grand epiphanies and racing off with ideas of big romantic gestures to win over the women they loved. My epiphany didn’t feel so inspiring. All I knew was that I was terrified and lonely...and more than a little pathetic.

By the tenth time the same scene had played out with the same dramatic music blaring in the background, I decided I couldn’t settle for being pathetic. I didn’t let fear stop me in any other area of my life—why should my love life be different?

My own highlight reel played in my mind...The first time Camille showed up on my doorstep. Kissing her in the street. Making love to her on the couch. Even when she was mad at me, I thought she was the sexiest woman alive. Maybe that was just enough to see us through whatever obstacles came our way.

13

Camille

After sleeping with a man, waking up naked and alone on your couch isn’t exactly how you dream of the next morning playing out. Though in Mark’s case, I told myself it was for the best. For the rest of the day, I kept my phone in my hand...always feeling seconds away from firing off a text or calling. But I didn’t know what to say. What was there to say?

He was supposed to leave us alone now. He was going to leave me alone, too. That was that.

But that fact did little to comfort me in the coming days. I was restless and struggling to focus on work. Every time Joe walked down the hall, I perked up—hoping he would pop in to tell me our troll had struck again. At least then I’d have an excuse to go see him again, even if it was just to yell at him. Historically, me yelling at him had always spiraled into something more enticing.

But Joe never came in. My brothers, along with Jack, congratulated me on handling the whole thing without legal intervention. My life had gone back to the way it was before. So, why did I still feel like something was missing?

Jada convinced me to try out some new hobbies with her. We’d both decided we needed to spend more time together and find non-work activities to fill our lives. I saw it as the first step to a shared apartment as two little, wrinkled spinsters growing old together, but I didn’t tell her that.

On Friday night, she dragged me off to a pottery class. After trying our hands at the wheel to mold our own pots, which we both failed miserably at, we decided to clean up and try painting finished pieces instead.

I stared at the perfectly formed pot on the table in front of me and frowned. “Why didn’t it look like that when we tried it?”

She swirled a brush around in her palette of glazes. “I have no idea, but painting these things is a lot easier than trying to make them.”

“Agreed.”

“You never told me how you did it,” she said, after we had been painting a while.

“Did what?”

“Got rid of the troll,” she replied.

“Oh.” I couldn’t hide my discomfort in being reminded of him. Going there was supposed to help me avoid that very thing. “I didn’t do anything really, other than annoy him until he caved. But in the end, he was the one who agreed to stop.”

“It’s almost a pity. He was cute.”

“Why a pity? And what difference does it make if he’s cute? I’m not saying he is,” I lied, “but if someone’s attacking us online, I don’t care what they look like while they’re doing it.”

“I only meant it’s a shame that all the good-looking single guys have something wrong with them,” she told me.

“Oh, well, I’m not losing any sleep over it,” I lied again.

An hour later, we had left our painted pottery pieces at the shop to be fired and bundled up to find a cab.

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