Stuck with You (The STEMinist Novellas, #2)(10)
Then I was more or less fine.
Seriously, considering that Oscar and I had been together for almost a decade, my reaction to being one-sidedly broken up with was nothing short of miraculous. I aced all my classes and my lab work, spent the summer touring Europe by train with Mara and Hannah, and a couple of months later I found myself shocked to realize that I hadn’t checked Oscar’s girlfriend’s Twitter in weeks. Huh.
“Could it be that it wasn’t real love?” I found myself asking my friends over Midori sours (sans mango sherbet; I had regained my dignity by then).
“I think that there are lots of kinds of love,” Hannah said. She was nestled next to me at our favorite booth at Joe’s, the grad student bar closest to our apartment. “Maybe yours with Oscar was closer to the sibling variety than to anything resembling a passionate affair between soul mates? And you’re still in touch. You know that you still love each other as friends, so your brain knows that there’s no need to mourn him.”
“But initially I was really, really devastated.”
“Well, I don’t want to armchair-psychologize you . . .”
“You totally want to armchair-psychologize me.”
Hannah smiled, pleased. “Okay, if you insist. I wonder if maybe you were more devastated at the idea of losing your safe harbor—the person who was there for you since you were kids and promised to be there for you forever—than at the idea of losing Oscar himself. Could it be that he was a crutch of sorts?”
“I don’t know.” I poked at my garnish cherry. “I liked being his girlfriend. He was so . . . there, you know? And when we were apart I missed him, but not too much. It was . . . easy, I guess.”
“Could it be that it was too easy?” Mara asked before stealing my lime.
I’ve been pondering her question ever since.
But there hasn’t been anyone after Oscar. Which means that he still technically retains the title of Love of My Life, even if two months ago I got an invite to his wedding—pretty glaring clue that I’m not the Love of His. I could have gotten out more, I guess, especially in grad school. I could have tried harder. “When one door shuts, another opens,” Hannah and Mara would say. “Now you can date around. You missed out on so many hot dudes in the past few years—remember the guy we met in Tucson? Or the one who always asks you out at conferences? Oh my God, the guy in fluid dynamics who was clearly in love with you? You should hit him up!”
Of course, whenever the topic of my love life comes up, and because dragging is a sacrosanct part of the covenant of friendship, I never hesitate to point out that even though both Hannah and Mara have been mostly single ever since starting grad school, they barely take advantage of their amazing dating opportunities. It usually ends with Mara defensively muttering that she’s busy, and Hannah rebutting that she’s on a break from hooking up with people, because her last two fuck buddies were Can I Jizz in Your Hair and Human Skull on the Nightstand Girl, and they would put anyone off sex. It usually ends with us collectively deciding that no relationship could ever compete with our jobs, guinea pigs, or . . . Netflix, maybe? If the idea of staring at blueprints is more appealing to me than hitting the club (whatever that even means; what even is a club, really?) then maybe I should just hang out with the blueprints. Not that things cannot change, since Mara is now embarrassingly, fantastically in love with her Formerly Asshole Roommate.
Maybe the blueprints and I will common law–tie the knot. Who’s to say?
Anyhoo. All of this to say: I haven’t really dated a whole lot, which is the sole reason I haven’t developed weird, ritualist habits around the process. Or, I hadn’t. Till right now.
Because I am about fifteen minutes into the night, and I’m thinking that I’ll have to keep these black jeans for the rest of my life. The lightweight green sweater I put on? Can’t throw it away. Ever. This is now my lucky-date outfit. Because the second we sit down at the bistro, where everything smells delicious and our narrow window table has the cutest little succulent in its center, Erik’s phone pings.
“Sorry. I’ll mute it.” He does, but not before rolling his eyes. Which is such a far cry from his usual stoic, nonplussed vibe, I cannot help but burst into laughter. “Please, do not mock my pain,” he deadpans, taking the seat across from mine. I’m not sure how, but I know that he’s joking. Maybe I’m developing telepathic powers.
“Work?” I ask.
“I wish.” He shakes his head, resigned. “Way more important stuff.”
Oh. Maybe he wasn’t joking. “Is everything okay?”
“No.” He slides his phone in his pocket and leans back in his seat. “My brother texted that my football team just traded one of our best players. We’re never going to win a game again.”
I smile into my water. I never really got into American football. It seems kind of boring—a bunch of overgrown dudes standing around in ’80s shoulder pads and bashing their heads toward chronic traumatic encephalopathy—but I’m way too soccer mad to judge fans of other sports. Maybe Erik used to play. He’s big enough, I guess. “Then they should really invest in lucky underwear.”
He gives me a lingering look. “Purple.”
“Lavender.”
“Right. Yes.” He glances away, and I think that this is nice. I’m sitting across from someone who’s not Oscar, and I’m not feeling too nervous, or too much weirder than usual. For all that he’s a blond steely mountain of muscles, Erik is surprisingly easy to be around.