still fighting the urge to thrust two coffee stirrers into her eyes to gouge out the image burned onto her retinas. If she’d ever had any doubt she was strictly hetero, her response to that sight would have removed it.
“Maybe I should ask Teddy to beat him up.”
Teddy, Kate’s boyfriend, was as broad as a table, and could snap Jude like a twig. There was just one problem. “He’s more of a pacifist than I am,” Lucy said with a smile, knowing Kate had intended to make her laugh. Teddy was the sweetest guy on the planet. “Besides, we both know Jude’s not worth the trouble.”
“No, he’s not.” Then Kate grinned. “I am glad you got off a couple of good zingers, though. I still can’t believe you asked him if the store was out of birthday candles and that’s why he’d found something else that needed to be blown.”
That, she had to admit, had been a pretty good line. It was a rare occurrence; the kind of one-liner she usually would have thought of hours later, when reliving the awful experience in her mind. Though, in this instance, since she was now feeling more sad than anything else, she might have been picturing herself asking him why he’d felt the need to be so deceitful.
If he’d told her it wasn’t working out and he wanted to see other people, would she have been devastated?
No. A little disappointed, probably, but not crushed.
But to be cheated on—and to walk in on it? That rankled.
“Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to speak. I’da been busy ripping the extensions outta that ho’s head,” Kate added.
“She didn’t cheat on me, Jude did.” Then, curious, she asked, “How do you know they were extensions?”
“Honey, that carpet so didn’t match those drapes.”
Though a peal of laughter emerged from her mouth, Lucy also groaned and threw a hand over her eyes, wishing for a bleach eye-wash. “Don’t remind me!”
Funny that she could actually manage to laugh. Maybe that said a lot about where her feelings for Jude had really been. This girlfriend-gripe session wasn’t so much about Lucy’s broken heart as it was her disappointed expectations.
She’d really wanted Jude to be a nice guy. A good guy.
Face it, you just wanted someone in your life.
Maybe that was true. Seeing the former man-eater Kate so happy was inspiring. But her brother Sam’s recent engagement had also really affected her. Their tiny family unit—made even tinier when they’d been left alone in the world after the deaths of their parents—was going to change. Sam had found someone, he was forming a new family, one she’d always be welcome in but wasn’t actually a major part of.
She’d wanted something like that, too. Or at least the possibility of something like that, someday. Heck, maybe deep down she also just hadn’t wanted to haul her virginity along with her to Europe, and had been hoping she’d finally found the guy who would truly inspire her to shuck it.
Yes, that was probably why she’d let down her guard and gotten involved with Jude when she’d known he wasn’t the right one in the long run. Being totally honest, she knew she was more sad at the idea of losing the boyfriend than at losing the actual guy. Not to mention continuing to carry the virgin mantle around her neck.
“Well, at least you didn’t sleep with him!” said Kate, who’d had more lovers than Lucy had had birthdays.
“I’ll drink to that,” she said, sipping her coffee, meaning it. Because being stuck with a hymen was better than having let somebody so rotten remove it.
Something inside her must have recognized that about him, and held her back. Deep down she’d known there was something wrong about the relationship, even though he’d gone out of his way to make it seem so very right.
Maybe Lucy really was the oldest living virgin in New York—kept that way throughout high school by her bad-ass older brother’s reputation, and throughout college out of her own deep-rooted romantic streak. Whatever the reason, she’d waited this long. So, as much as she wanted to know what all the fuss was about, she hadn’t been about to leap into bed with Jude just because he’d said he liked her photography and opened the door for her when they went out, unlike most other college-aged dudes she knew.
Good thing. Because it had all been an act. The nice, patient, tender guy didn’t exist. Jude had put on that persona the way somebody else might don a Halloween costume, sliding into it to be the man she wanted, then taking it off—along with the rest of his clothes—when she wasn’t around. He shouldn’t be studying to be an attorney, an actor would be much more appropriate. God, could she have been any more gullible?
Maybe Sam was right. Maybe she really had no business living on her own in New York or, worse, going off to Europe. Perhaps she was a lamb in the midst of wolves. She should’ve just stayed in the Chicago suburb where they’d grown up, gone to community college, done first-communion portraits at Sears, married a nice local guy and gotten to work on producing cousins for Sam’s future kids. At least then she wouldn’t be sitting here all sad at being cheated on by someone she’d hoped was Prince Charming.
“More like King Creeper,” she muttered.
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Just thinking about Jude.”
Kate nodded, frowned and muttered, “Why are most men jerks? Other than Teddy, of course.”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“There have to be other decent men out there, right?”
“Sam’s one,” Lucy admitted. “And my Dad sure was.”
“Mine is, too.” Kate frowned in thought. “Your father managed a car dealership, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And your brother, Sam, is a cop. My dad’s in sales, and Teddy’s a trucker. Hmm.”
“Your point being?”
Kate tapped the tip of her finger on her mouth. “Most of the guys you’ve dated have been like Jude. Rich, future attorneys, politicians, doctors…and dick-heads, one and all.”
Lucy nodded, conceding the point.
“And that’s the type I dated, before I met Teddy.”
She started to get the picture. “Ahh.”
“So maybe you need to look for an everyday guy, who works hard for a living, hasn’t had everything handed to him.”
That sounded ideal. Unfortunately Lucy couldn’t remember the last time she’d met anyone like that. They sure didn’t seem to be on the campus of NYU.
“A guy who’s so hot he makes you stick to your chair when you watch his muscles bunch under his sweaty T-shirt as he works,” Kate said, sounding lost in thought. She was staring past Lucy, as if visualizing this blue collar stud-muffin. “Who knows what to do with his hands, and has enough self-confidence that he doesn’t have to show off in front of a woman.”
Not
