Page 3 of If Books Could Kill
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AS SOON ASI waddle my puffer-coated self into my beloved craphole of a studio apartment, my phone pings with back-to-back messages. One from each of my parents, who are undoubtedly texting from opposite corners of the same house right now.
From my dad: a screenshot of the two Six Flags season passes he just bought us, captionedfor the real ones onlywith several prayer-hands emojis.
From my mom:the wedding planner is on. channel 413. true love! why aren’t more men like matthew mcdonahey? XO.
I don’t have the heart to point out for the thousandth time that I don’t have cable, nor that it’s McConaughey, nor thattruemaybe isn’t the best word for a Hollywood rom-com. I pour myself a generous glass of cheap wine and send my parents three emojis each (roller coasters for Dad, pink hearts for Mom), ignoring the subtle digs they’ve made at each other.
At the end of the day, my parents are two of my favorite people in the world.
They’re also two of the least compatible people I’ve ever met.
It’s always been beyond me how they got together in the first place—Mom, the bleeding-heart romantic, and Dad, the adrenaline junkie. Never quite understanding each other or feeling understood.
Until I came along, anyway. They each found a kindred spirit in me, or maybe raised me that way on purpose for lack of like-minded company. Now my dad never has to sit next to a stranger on the Wicked Cyclone, and my mom knows who to call when Hallmark starts rolling out movies with titles likeAn Autumn Sweater SweetheartorMy Royal ChristmasorA Royal Sweater for Autumn Christmas.
And so it is that I end up on my thrifted couch, streamingThe Wedding Plannerwhile I eat cold pizza and research bungee jumping excursions for when my temp contract ends next week. Comfy, content, and perfectly at ease with all my life choices.
See, this is the common misconception about romance fans: that we’re all lovelorn and miserable, desperately trying to make up for something we lack. No one spins a penchant for other genres into some soul-defining dissatisfaction with life. Imagine if we looked at every Civil War nonfiction–reading dad and went,How sad that he’ll never know the thrill of being a sepia-toned man in a kepi hat, writing letters to Dearest Martha before dying of gangrene in a soggy field. He must be so unfulfilled.Or told the die-hard fantasy fans,You’re just bitter because you wishyoucould be lording over all those rings, or whatever.
The point is, some of us consider our genre of choice simply a happy supplement to real life, a little escapist treat at the end of a long day. Some of us don’t need anything more than that and are perfectly capable of maintaining healthy boundaries between fiction and reality. Like me.
When I’m sober, anyway.
When I’m a few glasses of wine deep and Matthew McConaughey has just left his fiancée for Jennifer Lopez, all bets are off.
he just wants to dance with her, I text my mom, with a crying emoji.
She responds with cartoonish tears, too, but of the laughing variety. So I decide not to disclose that I’m sitting here with actual tears streaming down my face while the credits roll, clutching my empty wine glass to my chest as I cry-sing along to “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” a baffling song choice that has nothing to do with the movie’s theme but somehow has me deeply emotional anyway.
This is the downside to a strictly vicarious love life. Romance novels and rom-coms are enough, until, for a brief, stark, usually alcohol-fueled moment, they aren’t.
It is in these moments—when I’m alone and haven’t been kissed in forever and the Two-Buck Chuck has probably stained my teeth vaguely maroon—that my good sense abandons me and I make the horrible decision to re-download my dating apps.
Normally, I only use them if I’m out of town. Preferably out of country. It’s a great way to get a free tour guide (or a tour guide with benefits) in a new city. My romantic history reads like a list ofFriendsepisodes—The One Who Taught Scuba Diving, The One with the Mid-Zip Line Make-Out, The One at the Mall of America—and I like it that way. There is simply no room on that list for The One Who Lives in My City and Might Want Something More than a Fling.
But sometimes, in rare moments of inebriated desperation, I temporarily forget that. I ask myself, what’s the harm in striking up a conversation with a nice local man? Maybe I could give real dating a try. It might be different this time.
And then, inevitably, I regain my mental faculties and, with them, a sharp-edged sense of dread that won’t subside until I tell the guy I’m chatting withsorry, something came upand delete everything all over again.
Mercifully, this time the process only lasts about ten minutes.That’s because I’m looking for a rom-com hero, and what I’ve found instead is Brett, a management consultant who is a hero only for those longing to see his genitals.
The fact that I don’t immediately open my window and chuck my phone into the Charles is not so much a testament to my restraint as it is to the fact that I can’t afford to live within a phone’s throw of the river. I settle instead for shoving it under a cushion and grumbling as I fall back onto the couch, where I eventually pass out in front ofThe Golden Girls.
This is how it should be: no apps, no Bretts, no one getting under my skin. It’s better this way. I need to remember that.
CHAPTER TWO
Iwake up keenly aware of two things: One, that there’s something I’m forgetting. A dream, maybe, or a fading memory, a word on the tip of my tongue. The harder I try to retrieve it, the further into my subconscious it burrows.
And two, that I slept on the TV remote and it is now embedded into my face.
It’s early, and the bright white of a late-winter morning barges through my gauzy curtains while a lone bird screams shrill wake-up songs outside. My ability to be a morning person is directly correlated to the fun of the day ahead, and today I’m facing down a headache and eight hours of temping at HillCare Health.
I make the rookie mistake of trying to ease into consciousness by scrolling through my phone. (This is a mistake I make every morning.) I don’t know what I hope to find there—maybe an email informing me that my office building has burned down, or a news article announcing that whipped cream straight from the can is actually good for you. Instead it’s allPEOPLE IN POWER ARE DOING BAD THINGSandTHERE ARE MURDERERS IN YOUR CITYandYOU STILL HAVE TO GO TO WORK TODAY, ROXIE.
Although I know my sunlit adventuring days are paid for bymy fluorescent-lit grunt-work ones, it’s easy to wish my day-to-day were a bit more my speed than keyboard clacking and corporate jargon. But that would come with its own drawbacks. A job I cared about would be a job I couldn’t easily leave. This way, everything may be boring and beige and stuffy, but it’s only boring and beige and stuffy for a few weeks or months at a time. Then I finish a temping contract, and the world is my oyster once again. It’s easy to disregard the drudgery as soon as a chance to cliff dive or swim with sharks comes calling.
