broken up yet,” Seema admonishes.
“What? You’re going to tell her to forgive the chode and marry him?” Scott argues.
“Of course I’m not going to tell her to marry the chode,” Seema counters. “But there’s a time for venting and a time for constructive advice. Check your watch.”
“Excuse me,” I say quietly. “What’s a chode?”
“Chode,” Scott repeats. “He’s a dick, a knob, a prick—”
“Thank you for the anatomy lesson,” Seema interrupts, cutting him off.
“He’s also an asshole,” Scott can’t help but add.
Seema throws down her hand on her coffee table as she asks firmly. “Will you stop that?”
Scott ignores her. Asks me with complete sincerity, “Do you want me to go beat the crap out of him? Because I am so there.”
Seema tries a different approach. “Scott, can you go get us some drinks please?”
“She hasn’t answered my question.”
“She doesn’t want you to beat him up,” Seema insists. “How is landing yourself in jail going to help her?”
“Actually, I would kind of like him to beat Fred up,” I admit to Seema.
She looks mildly horrified.
“I didn’t say I was actually going to have Scott do it,” I tell Seema. “I know that would be wrong.” Then I turn to Scott. “That is so sweet of you to offer, though.”
Scott looks a bit disappointed.
Seema takes my hand gently. “What do you want?”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” I tell her. “I want to find a way to get past this. I want it to have never happened.”
Seema doesn’t say anything— just nods her head knowingly. She gets what I’m saying. She pulls me into a hug, and we just sit there in silence.
Which is broken by the unlikeliest of heroes. “Nooooo!” Scott booms in his masculine voice. He gets up and begins pacing around. “I don’t get women sometimes.” He flips around to me. “Aren’t you pissed?!”
Scott’s clear green eyes stare right at me. I take a moment to collect my thoughts. “I . . . well, of course I am. I mean—”
“No, no,” Scott interrupts. “That’s not the sound of an angry woman. That’s the sound of a woman who thinks this is somehow her fault.”
I think about that for a moment, then admit aloud, “Well, you got me there.”
Seema’s jaw drops. I try to explain myself to her. “I keep trying to figure out what I could have done differently to make Fred not cheat on me. Maybe if I had gone to the gym more. I’m a runner, but I never lift weights. Or maybe if I had had that nose job— he always teased me about my nose. Or if I had just stayed on a diet—”
Scott interrupts my thoughts. “Jesus— do you realize how ridiculous you sound? You have a smoking body . . .” He turns to Seema. “Wait, I’m allowed to say that, right?”
Seema and I look at each other. “Um . . .” Seema debates. “Can he say that?”
Duh. I nod my head yes.
Scott continues, “Don’t be sad. Get angry!” He walks out of the living room and into Seema’s office, where he yells, “Sweetheart, where do you keep your note pads?”
“Top right drawer,” Seema yells back. Then she looks at me. “Can I get you something? Something with sugar in it? Something with booze in it?”
“Actually,” I say, “I would kill for a peach Bellini the size of a small horse.”
Seema pats me on the knee, then heads to her kitchen as Scott walks out of her office carrying a legal pad. “Here’s what I want you to do,” he says, handing me the pad. “I want you to write down one hundred things that you hate most about him.”
Seema emerges with a champagne flute just as Scott clarifies his assignment to me. “Not things that are going to make you blame yourself. You can write, ‘Number one, he won’t marry me.’ But only if you realize that that’s his fault— not yours. Only if the statement means, ‘He’s an asshole!’ Not, ‘What could have I have changed about myself?’ Personally, I would start with ‘He likes Nagel.’ And not as an ironic or a kitschy eighties thing; he actually likes him.” Scott stops talking as he notices Seema carefully pouring peach puree into the flute. “What the Hell are you doing?”
She looks up at him. “I’m making Mel a drink.”
“Are you out of your mind, woman? You’re going to give her a bridal shower drink on the day she finds out her boyfriend cheated on her? My God, it’s amazing we ever breed with you people. You make no sense.”
Scott walks out of the room and into her kitchen. I lean in to Seema. “Where’s he going?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she sighs. “But I’m sure he’s making some testosterone point.” She then whispers to me, “Why do I like this guy? He’s a total freak.”
Scott reappears with a bottle of Gentleman Jack and a shot glass. He opens the bottle, pours a shot, and hands it to me. “Here. Drink this.”
I hate whiskey. I look at Scott. “I’m not really a . . .”
“Drink it,” he says, in a low, commanding voice.
What the hell?— I drink the shot.
“Well?” Scott asks.
“It’s dreadful,” I sputter. “Like drinking broken glass.”
“For the next hour, if you want a drink, promise me you won’t drink overly sweet girlie drinks that will get you drunk, make you cry, and make you long for weddings, true love, or Fred. Drink a man’s drink— a hideous drink, if you will. Use it to get angry.”
He scribbles Why Fred is a Chode on the top of the note pad, then underlines it. “Okay, what’s your number one?”
I suddenly feel put on the spot. I have spent the last six years cultivating an image of Fred for all of the world to see. A happy image. A loving image.
An image that might not necessarily have been completely 100 percent true.
I mean, it was true when we met. Fred really was amazing. He was still in law school, and I had just started teaching, and we were both wildly in love, and absolutely sure about what we wanted in life.
Then, somehow, life got in the way.
It wasn’t just his high salary and seventy-hour workweeks crashing against my small salary and wanting to keep my summers off. Although certainly not agreeing on how much money and free time you can live
