Page 3 of Dating and Other Theories
To say it hadn’t gone over well would be an understatement. Jinny had told Esther to mind her own fucking business and refused to speak to her for an entire week. The fight had only ended when Esther apologized and promised to be nicer to Stuart. It had seriously rankled to do it, but what other option did she have? Abandon Jinny to that asshole? You couldn’t tell people things they didn’t want to hear. Jinny had been too infatuated to see what kind of man he really was.
Until she’d found out he was cheating on her with one of the women he worked with. Esther had been proud of how quickly and decisively Jinny had kicked him to the curb. Only, apparently it wasn’t so decisive after all.
Jinny shook her head. “I knew you’d be mad.”
Esther took a breath and did her best to sound calm and supportive. “I’m not mad. But I do have questions. Number one: how do you sort of sleep with someone?”
Jinny’s eyes skated away, embarrassed. “You regular-sleep with them and then kind of regret it after but not totally.”
This was bad. Very, very bad. “But he cheated on you. I thought you were done with him?”
“I was. I mean, I am. I definitely am. Done with him. For good.” She bobbed her head, trying to seem convincing. Unconvincingly.
“Except for the part where you slept with him.”
Jinny turned away to examine the doughnuts. “Yeah, except for that part.”
“So again I ask, what happened?”
Jinny sighed as she picked up a chocolate-glazed. “You know how he’s been texting me?”
Esther scowled. “I told you you should have gotten a restraining order.”
“He was being all sweet and apologetic!” Jinny said around a mouthful of doughnut.
“You didn’t fall for that, did you?” Of course she had; she always fell for that. Stuart had played her like a bass guitar.
“No! I was very firm with him. But then last night his texts started getting all sexy, and we may have ended up sexting a little bit—”
Esther squeezed her eyes shut. “Gross.”
“And it got me all worked up—”
“Double gross.”
“And then he showed up at my door and—”
“Okay, fine, I get the gist. No need for further details.” Like a bass guitar. Stuart was a parasite. He’d always find a way to attach himself to his host.
Jinny stuffed the rest of her doughnut in her mouth and went to the fridge for the champagne. “Look, he can be really convincing, okay? It’s hard to say no to him.”
“But you’re going to say no the next time, right?” Esther said as she got down two champagne flutes.
“Absolutely. Grab the OJ.” Jinny shouldered the tote she kept packed with pool-day essentials—towel, sunglasses, sunscreen, and trashy magazines—and picked up the box of doughnuts.
Esther perched her sunglasses on top of her head and carried the OJ and champagne flutes out of the apartment. “If you take him back, he’ll cheat on you again. Once a cheater, always a cheater.”
Jinny followed with the champagne and doughnuts. “I know.”
Esther regarded her with a healthy dose of skepticism. Jinny was a recidivist. She’d keep going back to Stuart every time she felt lonely. If someone else didn’t come along to distract her—fast—she might very well give in and take Stuart back for real. She’d done it before, with her last boyfriend. That one had taken three tries to shake, and he hadn’t been nearly as beguiling as Stuart.
“How did you leave things with him?” Esther asked as they clomped down the stairs.
Like a lot of the older buildings in the neighborhood, the apartments were all on the second floor, arranged in a rectangle around a central courtyard. Underneath the apartments were the laundry room, mailboxes, storage, and off-street resident parking. The courtyard was by far the nicest part of Esther’s building—thanks entirely to the efforts of Mrs. Boorstein, who liked to garden and kept the beds full of attractive flowers and vegetation at no cost to their cheapskate landlord.
“I made it clear it was just a one-time thing,” Jinny said as they emerged into the courtyard.
Sunlight reflected off the surface of the pool, which was a cloudy aquamarine color today. They never actually got in the water, because the last person who’d swum in it had come down with an ear infection. Even if the two things weren’t related, Esther wasn’t taking any chances.
