Slightly Single. Wendy MarkhamЧитать онлайн книгу.
I’m just aghast at this news, now that I’m positive he’s not teasing me.
I take another huge gulp of my beer, trying to digest the bombshell.
Physically, I’m still reeling from the kiss. I mean, he’s a great kisser. Great. And I realize how long it’s been since I’ve been kissed like that. Will and I never really kiss anymore. We just have sex—and like I said, even that doesn’t happen very often these days, and when it does, there’s no kissing involved and it’s blah.
Oh, hell. Will.
“I have a boyfriend,” I tell Buckley, plunking my beer bottle on the round paper coaster with a thud.
“You do? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t think to. It didn’t occur to me that you thought we were on a date.”
A date.
It’s just so incredible how the whole situation could’ve blown right by me. I guess I was so distracted by what’s going on with Will that I wasn’t paying enough attention to what was going on with Buckley. Rather, to what Buckley thought was going on.
I’ve cheated on Will. Completely by accident, but still, it’s cheating. And right here in his own neighborhood, in a bar that we sometimes come to together. What if someone had seen me here with Buckley? Kissing Buckley?
Again, I scan the bar to make sure nobody’s here besides the bartender, who isn’t paying the least bit of attention to us. The place is definitely deserted.
So I wasn’t caught cheating.
Will never has to know.
Still, I’m mortified.
I look at Buckley. He doesn’t look mortified. He looks amused. And maybe a little disappointed.
“So you have a boyfriend?” he says. “For how long?”
For a second, I don’t get the question. For a second, I think that what he’s asking me is how much longer do I expect to have a boyfriend. I bristle, thinking he just assumes Will and I are going to break up after being separated this summer.
Then I remember that he doesn’t know about that. His true meaning sinks in, and I inform him, “I’ve been with Will for three years.”
“That long? So it’s serious, then.”
Naturally, I’m all, “Yeah. Absolutely. Very serious.”
Well, it is.
“You know what?” I hop off my stool. “I just remembered something I have to do.”
“Really?”
No. But I’m too humiliated to stay here with him any longer. Besides, that kiss really threw me.
Basically, what it did was turn me on, and I can’t go around being turned on by other men. I’m supposed to be with Will, and only Will.
I pull on my raincoat and fumble in my pocket for money. I throw a twenty on the bar.
“You’re really leaving? Just like that?”
“I just…I have to run. I can’t believe I forgot all about this thing….”
The thing being Will.
“Well, at least give me your number. We can still get together. I can always use another female pal.” He grabs a napkin and takes a pen out of his pocket.
Yes, he has a pen in his pocket. Dammit. How convenient for him.
“What’s the number?” he asks.
I rattle it off.
“Got it,” he says, scribbling it on the napkin.
No, he doesn’t. I just gave him my grandparents’ number with a Manhattan area code.
“Take this back,” he says, shoving the twenty at me. “This is on me. You’re not even going to get to eat any of the skins.”
“That’s okay. I’m not that hungry after all.”
He’s still holding the twenty in his outstretched hand, and I’m looking down at it like it’s some kind of bug.
“Take it,” he says.
“No, that’s okay. I can’t let you pay.”
“Why not? Really, I won’t think it’s a date if I pay,” he says with a grin.
That does it. I’m getting out of here.
He shoves the twenty into my pocket and I take off for the door, rushing out into the rain with my slicker open and my hood down.
I’m drenched before I get to the corner.
My first instinct is to rush right over to Will’s.
If I were in my right mind, I would stop, reconsider and go with my second instinct, which is to slink home on the subway, take a hot shower and crawl into bed—rather, futon.
Instead, I go with my first instinct.
In the lobby of Will’s building, I buzz his apartment.
Nerissa’s hollow voice comes over the intercom.
“It’s me,” I say. “Tracey.”
“Hi, Tracey,” says Miss Brit in her polished accent. “Will’s not here.”
He’s not?
But he’s supposed to be here. Packing.
Well, maybe she’s lying.
No, that doesn’t make sense.
Maybe he had to run out for more strapping tape or a new marker.
“Do you know where he is?” I ask her.
“No, I don’t. I just got back from rehearsal. I’ll tell him you stopped by.”
No offer to let me come up and wait for him, I notice. Well, the apartment is pretty minuscule, and she probably doesn’t feel like hanging out with me until Will comes back from wherever he is.
But still, I have a right to be there if I feel like waiting for him. More right than she does, since Will’s name is on the lease, I think irrationally.
“See you later, Tracey,” she says breezily. Her later comes out “light-ah,” heavy on the “t.” Tracey is “trice-ee.”
“Yeah. Cheerio.”
I stalk back out into the pouring rain.
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