“What? You? A temper? Never!” The sarcasm is so heavy, I can practically see it dripping from the corners of his mouth.
“Okay, okay. Settle down, now, Se?or Realtor.” I roll my eyes and bite back the smile I didn’t think would be possible while telling this story. “We wouldn’t want to let people know you have a sense of humor and ruin your reputation.”
“Excuse me!” He rests his hands on his hips and I don’t want to admit it, but he is giving big zaddy energy in those khakis. “I’ll have you know that Mrs. Morris thinks I’m hilarious. She spends the majority of our walks in stitches.”
“That’s not the defense you think it is,” I tell him. “But yeah, if there was a right way to handle this situation, I did the opposite of that. I grabbed the unopened bottle of two-hundred-dollar champagne and left.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” he says.
“Well, after I left, I knocked on all of my neighbors’ doors on the way out screaming, ‘He thinks I’m overreacting! He hasn’t even begun to see overreacting.’ And I may or may not have still been wearing the high heels and silk robe I put on for the later part of our celebration.” I admit it wasn’t one of my finer moments. But rage can make you do some wild things.
Like run for HOA president . . .
“Oh. Okay, yeah.” He nods and I get the feeling he wishes he had another glass of wine right about now. “That’s not good.”
“Nope,” I agree. “And it doesn’t end there.”
This is the part I have nightmares about. If I would’ve stopped here, gathered my thoughts, and gone back to the apartment to cry my eyes out and call Ruby to plan out proper revenge, I think I’d still be in LA. But I was running on pure emotion and I wasn’t thinking straight. Some people （Kim and Anderson） would argue that I wasn’t thinking at all.
“I went into the parking lot and his car was just right there.” The sun was setting and I swear a single ray illuminated his bright red BMW. It called to me. “He always parked right outside of our window. I shouted his name, and when he came to the patio, I shook the bottle of champagne and aimed the cork straight at his windshield. It was the first time my aim was right on. The spiderweb crack exploded in the glass. Then, in my spike heels, I climbed on his hood, dancing around as I drank the champagne and screamed, ‘How’s this for overreacting?’ And then also maybe started belting some TLC songs using the bottle as my microphone.”
What?
If you’re having a meltdown over your scumbag, thieving boyfriend and the legendary Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes doesn’t immediately pop into your mind, what are you even doing?
“The only problem here was—”
“The only problem?” Nate cuts me off.
“Yes. The only problem”—I stress the words, repeating them once more—“was that the neighbor who kept shouting things like ‘Yes, queen! Men are trash! You can do better!’ was shouting this while she was simultaneously recording me. Then she posted my little . . . outburst . . . to the internet before I even got my ass off the car.”
“Oh no.” While the lighting in his living room isn’t the best, it’s still easy to see the exact moment realization dawns and he figures out how bad it really was.
“Oh yes.” I plaster a fake smile on my face. “In my robe, dancing on my now ex’s car, I went viral. So viral in fact, they songified it. I lost my day job when my boss saw it. My agent dumped me and because Peter is now a bigwig in the television world, I’ve essentially been blacklisted from the entire industry. The show I thought would launch my career is what ended it. How’s that for irony?”
And not Alanis Morissette ironic; actually, terribly, unforgivably ironic.
It’s not a bop.
Nate doesn’t say anything. He stares at me, unmoving for what feels like centuries, before he pulls his wallet out of his pocket and hands me a twenty.
“We only bet ten.” I take it anyway, folding it up and tucking it inside my bra.
“Ten wasn’t enough,” he says.
As the person who experienced it firsthand, I must agree.
“So that’s my story.” I shrug and notice that some of the tension in my shoulders doesn’t feel quite as bad. “Now I’m back in freaking Ohio and running for the HOA . . . or at least I’m trying to, if the person I’m running against doesn’t get me thrown out on a boring technicality.”
“That was probably before your opponent knew you were capable of breaking windshields and dancing on cars if wronged.”
A very unattractive snort falls out of my mouth before I can stop it. “Shut up!”
I shove his shoulder and he turns on the drama, rubbing the spot before holding both hands in front of him. “I’m sorry! Please don’t attack me with a champagne bottle and your terrible singing!”
“Oh my god.” I cringe remembering watching the video and hearing my voice set to bad autotune. “I’m such a bad singer! One of the comments on the video said that I might be tone-deaf and have violent tendencies, but I had great legs and they’d still ask for my number. I really appreciated that.”
Listen, when you’re brought as low as I was, you accept the wins wherever you can find them.
“Elizabeth’s maid of honor told me that my tux was a good look on me and I should consider still taking wedding pictures to document it.”
“What is wrong with people?” I swear, staying in my room until a meteor hits or the world floods sounds more and more appealing with every passing day.
The smile on his face fades a little and I watch as his eyes flicker toward the upside-down frame on the bookshelf. “I wish I knew.”
I glance down at my watch and see that it’s actually really late.
“Oh shit. It’s almost midnight!” I say, happy my mom’s not around to scold me for my language for once.
“Really?” He pulls out his phone and double-checks in case I don’t know how to read the time on my digital watch. “Wow. How’d that happen?”
“You know what they say: time flies when you’re immersed in somebody else’s trauma.” It’s a weak attempt at a joke, but I feel completely drained all of a sudden and it’s all I can come up with. “But you wanted to talk about something?”
He hesitates for a moment.
Tonight was full of surprises, but the biggest of them all was how comfortable it felt confiding in him. I don’t think I’ll ever admit it again, but I missed this. I missed him. And even though I’m tired, part of me isn’t ready for it to end.
Part of me wants him to put on a pot of coffee and for us to stay up talking for the rest of the night.
But of course that’s not what happens.
“It’s not important,” he says instead. “We can talk about it another day.”
Another day.
“Yeah, that’d be nice.”
Unlike when I walked into his home earlier, this time when he smiles at me, it reaches his eyes.
Returning to Ohio and running for the HOA was never in my plan, but maybe there’s a chance it won’t all be so bad after all.