Page 17 of Unrealistic Expectations

Galvin couldn’t believe that Jessica would actually agree to something like this. It didn’t make any sense. Granted, he didn’t know her all that well, but he would never put “Will Date Someone to Save Her Image” on his bingo card.

“Are you sure?” After last night, he wanted to spend more time with her. He was attracted to her, and it felt different for him. Like, he was interested in what truly made her tick. Maybe the therapy was working, and he was becoming a better man. Or maybe she was just special—or at least had the potential to be special to him.

“I think it makes sense.” Something unsure crossed her face, and she added, “Unless you don’t think people will believe that you’re dating me.”

He didn’t know where she’d gotten the idea that she wasn’t immensely appealing, but he suspected that it had come from Luke, and it made him want to punch the guy even more than his baseline desire to punch the guy. “I’m more worried that no one will believe that you’re dating me. I’m pretty toxic right now.”

“That’s correct. You are the Three Mile Island of men right now.” He wasn’t sure that Abby was helping her case any, but okay.

“That’s true,” Galvin agreed. The publicist did have a point. “Why would anyone buy your book if you live by that philosophy and end up with a guy who publicly sucks?”

Jessica chewed on the last bit of her pastry, took a sip of the latte that was probably about three seconds from cold by now, and said, “I actually think that it works better. The book is all about advice for men. What if you contacted me a few months ago, I shared an early copy with you, and you instantly tried to reform your player ways, winning my heart? That could work.”

Abby sat back in her chair. “I think it’s brilliant.”

Jessica smiled, and that was the thing that convinced him to agree. “I guess I should probably read your book,” he said.

Abby looked at him with a grin that said she thought she’d done a great job cooking up this probably stupid scheme. “You can buy a copy at your local bookstore.” She stood, swinging her large Hermès bag over her shoulder. “Shop indie.”

CHAPTER NINE

Galvin didn’t read a lot of nonfiction. He liked mysteries and thrillers, and he’d always thought that he would make a great spy. Until he learned that spying was not all about wooing other covert agents into spilling international secrets by making them delirious with pleasure and champagne. It was probably for the best, since all of James Bond’s lovers ended up dead, but Galvin still enjoyed indulging in the fantasy once in a while.

He also supposed that his penchant for designer suits and dry martinis came from his childhood obsession with Bond films. He used to watch them with his father, and it was one of the only things they’d ever done together. Galvin had been athletic like his father, but he’d run cross-country instead of playing football. He’d been kind of scrawny as an adolescent, not filling out until he’d gone to college, and he’d always felt that his dad looked down on him because he wasn’t Mr. All-American.

Despite what people came to assume about him later, he hadn’t really dated in high school. He was always the nerdy friend girls asked for help with trigonometry homework. For prom, his friend had taped a sign to his back that said, “I need a prom date,” and Angela, one of his track teammates, had taken pity on him after three periods.

He never thought he’d been bitter about those experiences until recently. His therapist suggested that he’d taken on the role of Lothario in his romantic life because he didn’t want to risk being open and vulnerable with someone and then be rejected. He’d suggested that Galvin still felt like kind of a nerd, even though he didn’t look that way on the outside. His habit of not allowing relationships to get too deep was a defense mechanism so that no one would see him for who he truly was. The flashy suits and expensive car were a smokescreen.

Galvin resisted that. It was incredibly immature to be haunted by the specter of his high school self as he was tipping into middle age, but Jeremy, the therapist, said that it was common. People shaped their adult personalities around their childhood trauma all the time.

Once Galvin saw that, he couldn’t stop noticing it in other people. Today, he was wondering how Jessica’s life experiences had made her so unsure and careful when it came to love and romance. He wondered what had made Luke seem like a good choice, even though he was truly an arrogant, two-faced shithead.

He lay down on his plush couch in the Spanish-style bungalow that he’d purchased a few years ago, with a very dry martini next to him and an open mind.

Although he was reading Jessica’s book for research, he hoped it would serve up some insight as to why Jessica was the way she was. He also wanted to figure out if there were any clues about why he was so wildly attracted to a woman who could see right through his bullshit.

Maybe the therapy was just working, and he wasn’t as interested in easy as he was before. It had only been a couple of months, but Galvin was nothing if not a good student. But as he flipped through the pages of Jessica’s book, he was disappointed. Not in her—the prose was lively, and he could almost hear her voice recounting the anonymized experiences of clients and friends (with their express consent, of course). He was disappointed that a lot of the tips were so elementary. And there was an air of condescension about some of the advice that he didn’t feel from Jessica face-to-face.

And then he got to an anecdote he recognized—the one about him. She’d anonymized his name, but he recognized “Greg” as himself immediately. It was in the chapter entitled “Don’t Expect to Be Taken Seriously If You’ve Dated Her Friend.” And the entire chapter talked about how Greg had systematically dated his way through every sorority house on campus.

He’d actually forgotten about the time he’d studied next to Jessica in the library and tried to hit on her. As he read her recounting, the memory came back to him. He’d sat next to her because he’d seen her around and she seemed to ignore him. That was like catnip to him then, and he’d thought that he’d be up for the challenge.

How wrong he’d been. Jessica had told him that she knew at least ten girls that he’d hooked up with, and she hadn’t seemed impressed by that—in fact, she’d been disgusted. And then she’d gone back to her studies. He could feel the shame now, as though this interaction had been yesterday.

But logically, he didn’t really have anything to be ashamed about, did he? Being attractive to women was a novel experience in college. And hooking up was de rigueur. It wasn’t like any of the women he’d been with had wanted or pushed for more. At the time, he’d thought that they were all after a good time, not a long time. Except for Jessica, who’d dated her college sweetheart—he hated characterizing that fucking guy as a sweetheart—until a few days ago. But maybe none of those women were looking for a serious thing in college with him specifically once he’d hooked up with enough people.

Still, it was really sex shaming to correlate vast sexual experience with being unsuitable for a relationship. Jeremy had told him that it was important to have compassion for his own mistakes—something he hadn’t learned from his perfectionist parents—and he knew why he’d gone a little wild in college. Girls being interested in him had been novel and he’d gorged himself. Sort of like how he’d never gotten any sugary soda at home, and when he went to a party at his cousin’s house he’d had so much real Coke that he’d thrown up.

No girls had any interest in him in high school. When he arrived at college, he started working out with weights, got a good haircut, and upgraded his wardrobe. Even though he was still the same person, the outside had a new polish. In a way, he’d gone undercover as a guy that women wanted. And he’d reveled in it for over a decade.

He was starting to think that a lot of those relationships were just sugary soda, and the whole Kennedy thing was ipecac syrup—the past few months were him just throwing up and throwing out his old conceptions of himself.

Although he still didn’t agree with the subtext of Jessica’s thesis about him—that he should have embraced monogamy in college—he could see that his behavior afterward had caused people to not take him seriously as a partner. For a long time, that had worked for him, until it didn’t.

But the idea of a long-term relationship, where his partner knew everything about him and saw him for who he was, was still a scary prospect. He was afraid of rejection, even though he knew it wouldn’t kill him. But the skinny nerd who couldn’t get a prom date without a gimmick still lived inside him.

And Jessica? Would she take him seriously if he agreed to a PR relationship and tried to turn their fake relationship into a real one? Or would she judge him unworthy based on his past behavior? Was she really as judgmental as Book Jessica? Or was she the woman who threw up her hands to dance and kissed him with total abandon?

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