The Lies That Bind(6)

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I call Scottie back as soon as I get home.

“Give me the scoop, ho!” he shouts into the phone.

“I’m not a ho.” I laugh. “Nothing happened. Not like that anyway.”

    “Some guy spent the night and nothing happened?” Scottie says.

“I swear,” I say, walking over to my sofa and collapsing onto it. “We didn’t even kiss.”

“But you said he was cute?”

“He is cute. He’s more than that….He’s beautiful…a tall, dark, and handsome cliché. Your type, actually,” I say, thinking that I usually go for blue eyes and blond hair. Like Matthew has.

“Who would be his celebrity doppelg?nger?” Scottie asks, one of his favorite questions.

“Umm…That’s hard….I’ll go with…Goran Vi?nji?.”

“Goran who?”

“You know…the hot Croatian doctor on ER.”

“Ohh. Damn.” He whistles. “You mean Dr. Luka Kova??”

“Yeah. Him,” I say. “They both have that brooding thing going on.”

“Then why in the world didn’t you hook up with him?” Scottie says.

“It just wasn’t like that,” I say, trying to articulate the mysterious thing that transpired between us without sounding completely cheesy. “It was…I don’t know…deep.”

“Deep?” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yet at the same time…really simple and sweet. I don’t know. It’s hard to describe….Like, we barely said anything to each other at the bar. We just sat there together. It was really comfortable and nice. But also exciting. And then he ended up walking me home…and then we just got in bed and went to sleep. Like we’d been in bed together a hundred times before.”

“So are you not attracted to him?”

“I am very attracted to him.”

“Like, butterflies and fireworks kind of attraction?”

“Yes. All of that,” I say, getting those feelings just thinking about him.

“More than you were to Matthew in the beginning?”

    “Totally different. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say totally different. You know I liked Matthew a lot in the beginning, too,” I say, struggling to explain, thinking of the night Matthew and I met. We were at a rooftop party thrown by some trust fund kid who worked at my paper and also went to high school with Matthew. So there were mutual friends—and context—whereas last night had no frame of reference. Grant and I were both alone. It was the middle of the night. We were just…existing beside each other. I babble some of this to Scottie now and then say, “Honestly, my mind is a little bit blown.”

“Okay. I’m going to need to look this guy up on the Internet,” he says. “Full name, please.”

“Grant Smith,” I say, glancing over at my unmade bed, remembering the moment he told me his name.

“Ugh! Smith?” Scottie says. “That’s going to be tough. What’s his number? I’ll try a reverse phone number look-up….”

“Um…well…I didn’t get his number…” I say, bracing myself.

Sure enough, Scottie unleashes a mini tizzy. “Wait, what?” he says. “Have I taught you nothing?”

“He has my number—”

“But you’re supposed to get his number. Then make him wait. Remember?”

“Yeah, yeah…I know…but I don’t want to play games this time,” I say, remembering those endless courtship maneuvers with Matthew, culminating with my tacit ultimatum, also masterminded by Scottie.

“Fine. But what if he’s playing games of his own? I mean, don’t you think it’s a tad shady that he didn’t give you his phone number? After you spent the night with him?”

“Shady how?” I say.

“Player shady.”

“He’s not a player, Scottie.”

    “How do you know?”

“Because he didn’t even try to kiss me.”

“It’s called the long game.”

I laugh and say, “No. It’s not a long game or a short game. Because there are no games.”

“Okay,” he says. “If you say so….It’s still a little strange, though….Wait! Could he be gay?”

“No,” I say, nipping Scottie’s everyone’s-on-the-sexuality-spectrum tangent right in the bud.

“And you’re sure he’s into you, too?” Scottie asks, as only a best friend can.

“Yes,” I say, getting an intense flashback to Grant’s voice and hands and eyes. “Pretty darn sure.”

“Well,” Scottie says. “This is quite the development.”

“Yep,” I say, letting it all sink in a little more.

“So does this mean you’re over Matthew?”

I let out a long sigh because I’ve actually been thinking about this on and off since I left Grant at his station. “I don’t know…maybe….Does that make me shallow?” I ask, feeling a strange combination of uneasy and liberated.