“No, no, I just mean—damn. So, how does this work? What the hell happened with the firefighter?”
“He’s married. Or has a girlfriend.” Josie’s face fell, shifting from eager curiosity to self-righteous anger on Laura’s behalf. What a great friend. Laura almost laughed at how bulldoggish Josie looked.
“How do you know?”
“Because I woke up in his bed at three in the morning and there were pictures of her everywhere. It wasn’t hard to figure out.”
“Maybe it was his sister?” Josie asked, her voice going up high, as if hopeful and as if there was a snowball’s chance in hell it was true.
“In a bikini at the beach? Being kissed by him? Uh, no. Unless she’s Angelina Jolie and he routinely tongue-kisses his sister—”
“OK, ewww. Point taken. So the guy is a slimeball and took you home while his girlfriend’s out of town. Fucker.” She rubbed Laura’s shoulder. “How did you handle it?”
“I woke up, saw the pictures, freaked out on the inside but stayed quiet, got dressed and almost cried in the cab.” Laura gulped a hot mouthful of coffee down.
“So you sneak home after ditching a guy in his bed, after sleeping with him within what? Three hours, four—OK, four hours of knowing him. You find out he has a girlfriend, with pictures of her plastered all over his room, so you decide you’re going to come home and write him off and...now you have a date with another guy?” Josie’s expression was, to say the least, comical. It was like a graphic of a “what the fuck” emoticon.
Only in real life.
“It is pretty freaking amazing,” Laura agreed, nodding absentmindedly as she added two spoons of sugar to her coffee. She hadn’t consumed coffee with sugar since tenth grade. Since returning home from her date, though, she’d been doing a lot of out-of-character things, including dating two men on the same day.
“Spill it.”
“I woke up, was about to shower, and this guy IM’d me on the dating site. I had just blocked Dylan, actually, and made sure he wasn’t in my ‘Favorites’ anymore. So then Mike—”
“Suddenly some guy pops up in the chat window on this website and asks you out?”
“Yes.”
“Worth it?” That was code for whether he was attractive.
“He looks like that actor who played Thor in the movie.”
Josie’s jaw dropped. “Not fair! When do I get Captain America hitting on me?”
Laura laughed and dumped her coffee, pouring a fresh cup. She started to tremble inside, the urge uncontrollable. It was all too much, too intense, and spelling it out for her best friend was making it all too real.
“What’s he do for a living?”
“Ski instructor,” Laura mumbled as she hurried to fill her mouth with more coffee and delay the interrogation. Josie rolled her eyes.
Her friend poured herself another cup of coffee, glanced at the clock and said, “Oh shit, I’m late for work, but I don’t care, this is, this is—this is awesome! Way, way better than any movie. Plus I have a front seat view!” They both winced at each other and Josie added, “Uh, you know what I mean. Not literally.” She shuddered.
“I’m so glad that I’m meeting your entertainment needs.”
“Come on, what kind of life do I have? I haven’t had sex in seven months. I have to live vicariously through you.”
Laura snorted, “Well, it serves you right after all the years I lived vicariously through you having sex. It’s only fair.”
Josie hung her head in mock shame. “Well, yeah, OK, fair enough, but lay off the years comment. I haven’t gone through that many men.”
“I beg to dif—”
“Shut your whore mouth!” Josie threw half an English muffin at Laura’s head and, with catlike precision, she dodged it, both women howling with laughter.
Laura paused, thought for a moment, and said, “You know, you can open your own profile and see what pops up. To solve that seven month problem you’ve got going on there.” She gestured vaguely at Josie’s torso.
“Oh, I’ve seen what pops up. You know the phrase, ‘shit floats’?”
Laura just laughed. Ouch. Then again, Josie’s last date had been from an online dating site. Turned out to be a sixty-year-old neocon Tea Party activist who used a Groupon for dinner and made Josie pay her half before the coupon. Capitalism at its best—he’d made money off their date. And all Josie had to remind her was a lovely restraining order when the guy wouldn’t leave her alone.
“So when is the date?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Well yeah, right after work. Mike says there’s enough daylight to make the climb in ninety minutes.”
“The climb?”
“We’re hiking. One of those hills at the state park outside of town.” If Josie rolled her eyes any harder they’d pop out and wander down the hallway out into the street.
“He hikes, too?”
“He’s a triathlete.” Laura coughed, the unveiling increasingly ridiculous. Was any of this really happening?
“So wait a minute, Mr. Ski Instructor Gorgeous Triathlete Thor Lookalike chats with you for a couple minutes this morning and already tonight, you,” Josie looked her up and down as if surveying her from hair down to toes, “who are about as athletic as a slug, are going on a hike to the top of one of the biggest hills outside of the city where you will eaten to death by mosquitoes, you will become sweaty and ridiculously tired and then...”
“You’re so flattering,” Laura muttered.
“What? You’re gonna what? Climb a mountain, Laura? You have a heart attack when you can’t find the remote and have to actually stand up to change the channel.” That gave Laura a reason to pause. What the hell was she going to do? By the time she met up with Mike it’d be six at night. He said it was a ninety minute climb to the top. Granted, it was summer so there was plenty of sunlight until nine or so. But what had she gotten herself into? Did she even own hiking boots?
Josie continued, “Do you even have any shoes that are going to work with any kind of an outfit for climbing a mountain?”
Laura just stared at her as if she’d been reading her mind. “I guess I’ll have to figure that out. All I know is I’m kind of in a super-emotional state right now, Josie. I got an unsolicited chat yesterday morning from a hot firefighter. Went out with him to one of the trendiest restaurants in town and ended up in his bed. When I woke up, I was surrounded with pictures of a woman who looked like she was a combination of a beach volleyball player and a surfer. Which I’m not. Ever. At all. It will take me four lifetimes to ever be like that. I slumped out of there and then— boom!— I come home and there’s a chat from another guy. I, I don’t even have time to think. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to think. All I know is I’m just saying yes to it all. I’m saying yes to life, I’m saying no to doubt and I’m just grabbing the brass ring and—”
Josie interrupted her. “And you’re throwing out the clichés, like you’re talking a mile a minute, you won’t throw out the baby with the bath water, you aren’t going to count your chickens before they’ve hatched, like you’re ...”
“Oh, shut up.”
Josie stopped and put her hand on Laura’s arm. “Just be careful.”
“Oh, no, it’s fine. I’ve got condoms.”
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. You...I just don’t want your heart broken again. You deserve— you deserve everything that’s going on right now. You certainly deserve to be able to f**k two hot guys in twenty-four hours.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Well,” Josie wiggled her eyebrows, “I would.”
“Yeah, I know you would.”
“But I’m not you, Laura. And I’m just saying, be careful with that heart of yours. You—you know what I mean.”
Laura sighed. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” She squared her shoulders, took in a deep breath, let it out. A nice cleansing breath. “I’m saying yes. I’m saying yes.”
“Great. Will you buy coffee this time on our way to work? I really need a triple latte.”
“What?” Laura shook her head as if clearing it. What was Josie talking about?
“You said you’re saying yes. Say yes to buying me an overpriced coffee. Say yessssssssss.....”
She waved Josie off and got out of the chat window and did what every woman does in the twenty-first century after being contacted by a guy from an online dating website. She Googled him, just as she had Googled Dylan.
“Wow. What a strange set of results, Josie. Check this out.” Her friend craned over Laura’s shoulder to see the screen. Mike’s name appeared over and over, followed by a bunch of numbers. Some sort of times, like a race? Wait. The Tri-state Marathon. The Sunshine Regional Triathlon. Oh, my God. He wasn’t kidding.
He really was a triathlete. More than that—he was a steady, longtime triathlete. This wasn’t some guy who did it once for bragging rights.
She knew that guys could shine her on, that people lied in online dating sites and they often talked about being athletic—which was code for I watch TV on Sundays when the football game is on as an excuse to eat wings.
