Funny You Should Ask(13)

“Well?” he asked. “Shall we continue?”





THE_JAM_DOT_COM.BLOGSPOT.COM


BREAK UP/BREAKDOWN


It’s over. The Novelist packed up his drawer last night, and this time I didn’t cry.

He’s going to move to New York where people are creative and wild and interesting. Not like the people here who only care about smoothies, exercising, and watching bad TV.

I’m pretty sure people in New York watch bad TV. They just do it in smaller apartments.

I told him I’d never move to New York. He said that was the problem. That because I wasn’t the kind of person who would move to New York with him, then I just wasn’t the kind of person he could be with.

Depending on who you ask, we’ve done this dance half a dozen times since we’ve been together, but this time I’m certain it’s going to stick.

Mostly because that’s what the Novelist said when he slammed his car door, right before he drove off.

I’m single again.

I didn’t cry but I did eat a lot of ice cream.

Heartbreak is supposed to be good for inspiration, but besides this post, I’ve managed to write absolutely nothing. All my plans, all my goals, have been swept away by this latest personal riptide.

The Novelist always said I had trouble with focus. No doubt he is sitting in front of his typewriter with his glass of gin, typing furiously away, turning this matter of personal growth (his words) into creative fertilizer (mine).

I’ll be deeply resentful if he turns this experience into a book and it becomes a bestseller.

xoChani

PS: Before all this, I wrote a piece on up-and-coming starlet Jennifer Evans. You can read it in this month’s Broad Sheets.





Chapter

3


“You know, you have something here…” Gabe said, gesturing toward his own face. “I think it’s ink.”

My skin was hot against my hand as I looked down to find that the words written on my notebook were smudged. Of course. Knowing my luck, I probably had “Bond” imprinted on my forehead.

I gave it a furious scrub.

“Jesus,” Gabe said. “Hold on.”

He took his napkin and dipped it into his water glass. I expected him to pass it over, but instead he crooked his finger in my direction. I leaned toward him, and he gently dabbed at my forehead. I did not breathe the entire time, crossing my eyes in an effort not to stare.

“There,” he said, and withdrew.

Thankfully before I could do anything else embarrassing, our food and Gabe’s third beer arrived.

In addition to his own burger, Gabe had also ordered a plain patty for the puppy, which she ate with enthusiasm punctuated with several happy snorts. As he observed her, I arranged my burger the way I liked it, dipping my fries in ketchup and laying them across the patty in a crisscross pattern.

I looked up and found Gabe watching me.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone eat a burger that way,” he said.

“I’ve done it since I was a kid,” I said.

“Huh,” he said, and then opened his burger and did the same. “Like this?”

I nodded, wordlessly, and watched as he took a bite.

“Oh yeah,” he said, a soft moan escaping. “That is fucking delicious.”

Heat spread through my body as if I had swallowed something spicy and wonderful.

I watched him eat for a moment. He savored each bite, licking his fingers, his lips, even the palm of his hand at one point. He was clearly a man who enjoyed his food.

Wow. Even when I was single-handedly torpedoing my career, I was still very, very horny for him.

“It’s going to get cold,” he said.

Not a chance, I thought.

It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about my food.

“I’ve read your articles,” Gabe said as I took a bite of my burger.

“You have?” I asked.

“Of course,” he said.

It was as if the whole slipup with his dad had never happened. Gabe Parker was clearly someone who rolled with the punches.

He dipped a French fry in ketchup.

“I like your blog.”

I choked on my drink.

It was one thing for Gabe to have read my articles—unusual, but still, those pieces were well researched, edited, and vetted. They weren’t all that dissimilar to the type of interview we were doing right now.

My blog on the other hand…

At least I now knew where he’d gotten all that information about me, like where I went to school and the fact that I hated New York. For better or for worse, my blog had become somewhat of a de facto journal these days. Mostly because I thought that no one was reading it.

“You’re funny,” Gabe said. “Your writing. It’s funny.”

My brain was going a mile a minute, trying to remember what kind of embarrassing personal shit I’d word-vomited recently.

Jeremy had read my blog once.

“Is there something worse than navel-gazing?” he’d asked during a fight. “Because that’s what it is.”

I wondered what Jeremy would think about Gabe Parker calling my writing “funny.”

“How’s the burger?” Gabe asked.

“Good,” I said. “It seems like you come here a lot.”