Page 60 of The Work Boyfriend

“Boyfriend—let me remind you, I have a boyfriend. A serious boyfriend. We’ve been together for years. We own property together.”

“I know, I know.” He laughed. “Can you blame me for trying? Look at how spectacular your legs look in that dress.”

“Go get yourself a drink. There are plenty of people here who will be more than happy to entertain your bad one-liners.”

“Bam!” he said. “That’s another shot straight through to the heart. Oh, ugh, I can’t take it—rejection, it makes me feel like a mere mortal.”

“Back down to earth, Superman, back down to earth. That’ll be my role in your life. I’ll consistently bring you back down to earth.”

Evan slipped to the other side of me to try to catch the bartender’s attention. When he came back with two domestic beers (that surprised me), I gladly accepted one and took a sip. When I looked up, Rob was standing at the other side of the room. The surprise must have shown, because Evan said, “What’s the matter?”

“There he is.”

“Who?”

“Boyfriend.”

“Current?”

“Yes.”

“In person?”

I laughed. “Actually, I think it would be better to describe him as the man I am most certainly not going to marry.”

“What?”

“Another long story. Hey, thanks for coming. I’d better go, at least talk to him. Anyway, it is nice to see you, you’re funny. I’ve enjoyed that.”

“But not my winking or my conversation.”

“No, neither of those things.”

And then I winked.

* * *

Rob looked tired, drawn, and more than a little drunk. He wasn’t swaying but he was having some trouble holding up his own frame. Steadying him, I said, “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so, so sorry.”

“Aren’t you always sorry, Kelly? Isn’t sorry, like, your natural state or something?”

“Come, come over here and let’s sit down where we’re not in the middle of the party.”

“What, you don’t want me toembarrassyou? At this job that you care so much about?”

I pulled at his arm until he stumbled toward me and brought him to the same booth where Garrett and I had been sitting just a little while ago. The ghost of that conversation still lingered. It was like a shared seat on public transit, that awkward feeling of participating in someone else’s body heat a strangely intimate thing.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” I said. “But I’m glad you did. I’m happy to see you, to talk to you.”

He spat out the words. “Where’s Garrett?”

“On his way to the airport,” I said.

“Well, good for him.”

“It is good for him. I’m crushed that it took that horrible night at our place for me to understand it all, to understand myself, how I’ve been acting. I’m sorry that it was all so awful, but I’m not sorry to know what I know.”

“What is it that you claim to know, Kelly? That you’ve been stringing me along like a proper gold digger for the last, oh, I don’t know, umpteen years, shaming me into thinking that if I just hung on long enough you’d change and come around to it all?”

---