Three
SORA
If love is so great, why do I have so many exes?
—SOLO FEBRUARY CHALLENGE
My ex-husband looks surprisingly fit and well put together, which means he’s got to be dating someone, because he doesn’t bother to match his socks otherwise. He’s got new glasses—oversized wire ones—and he’s grown in bushy sideburns. Ugh. That combined with the vest (seriously, a vest?) he’s wearing makes him look a little bit like a doctor on the set of an old western gunslinger movie who will be shot in the first five minutes. He’s actually wearing a shirt with a collar, an unusual choice, and it seems like he’s lost twenty pounds at least since the last time I saw him.
Asshole.
“Uh…” What do I tell the man I was married to for four brief years after college? Nice to see you? It isn’t. You look good? Even if true by Marley standards, I’m not going to dignify Marley Douchet with a compliment. He pronounces his name Dou-shay, but since our divorce, I think Douche-it is more apropos. “What…” I was about to ask what he was doing in the city, since last I heard he was living with his parents in the western burbs. But then, out of nowhere, Lululemon comes bounding up to us in all her matching yoga, kale-eating glory, and seems to be heading straight for … Marley.
“Baby? Did you get the kombucha?” she asks in a childlike voice, which she absolutely, one thousand percent, is faking.
Marley and I both turn to Lululemon at the same time, and I tighten my grip on my grocery cart. Lululemon is dating Marley? I feel like I’ve fallen into an alternate dimension designed to torture me. Or maybe I suffered a massive widow-maker back in the bacon aisle without realizing it, and this is hell. Lululemon cannot be sleeping with Marley. It would prove that he can do better than me, much better, but I am hoping he’ll die cold and lonely. I want him to understand once and for all that I am the very best he’s ever going to get, and he made the worst mistake of his life when he sent an unsolicited dick pic to Pam.
Right. I forgot to mention that’s the other reason Downstairs Pam and I don’t get along. She hates my dog for no reason, and she hates my ex-husband for good reason. Great, now everyone’s all caught up.
Lululemon eyes me with distaste. “Babe, who’s…?” The never-met-a-vegetable-she-trusted person with a cart full of salted meat and ice cream?
“This is Sora.” Marley says it while wiggling his eyebrows like he’s having a seizure or, more likely, that he’s trying to convey a secret message. Marley was never any good at subtlety.
“Sora? This is Sora?” Lululemon seems to be trying to hold in a laugh, but doesn’t bother to hide the sneer that curls her mouth into a mean, thin line. “Your ex-wife?” She seems to be unable to believe her eyes. Go on, believe it, sister. Now you know the truth: you’re dating far, far below your station.
Near me, Sexy Beardstache Baker has gone stock-still, eyes darting from me to Marley and then to Lululemon. This is not my meet-cute. I am not in a rom-com. I am in a horror movie. Some angry, stringy-haired ghost child is going to crab-crawl out of the deli counter and eat my soul.
This now ranks as my most humiliating moment of the week, and that includes having to convince Dan that my self-esteem actually isn’t so low that I’d be okay with him spending the night after I confronted him about being married.
So, I stand corrected: there is a God after all. And He/She/They most definitely hates me.
If God truly loved me, I’d be endowed with the ability to teleport to another dimension. It doesn’t even have to be a nice dimension. I’ll take a postapocalyptic hellscape. As long as Marley and Lululemon aren’t there.
“Uh … how are you?” Marley starts.
“Good. Good. Good.” Why did I say that three times?
Then the three of us stare at one another. If there’s one thing I know, from that management seminar I took once in the lobby of a Hampton Inn, it’s that if you cede territory to your rival, you might as well run home with your tail between your legs. And I wasn’t going to do that. For one, I don’t have a thigh gap. I have a thigh squish. If I put two pieces of kindling in there, I’d have a fire before I finished walking a full block. No tail was fitting in there, imaginary or otherwise. The second thing I learned in that seminar is that saying nothing can force the other people in a conversation to be uncomfortable, thereby giving you the upper hand. So, I just stare.
“You still living at the old condo?” Marley asks.
And I just stare. Marley, why would I admit that? Because I spent every last dime I had to buy you out and can’t really afford to move? Because you might want to send Pam another backlit pic of your hot dog from an angle designed to make it look larger than it is? She wasn’t impressed the first time, Marley. But I don’t say any of that. I just stare at him. Power is all mine.
“Uh … so, you’re not then? Sora?” Marley is starting to get uncomfortable. Good.
Lululemon looks confused, her feelings of superiority temporarily fading. That’s right. You, too, will feel the power of awkwardness. The three of us stew in it. Yes, okay, now, you’re right where I want you.
“Maybe she had a stroke,” Lululemon stage-whispers loud enough for everyone to hear. “Her left side is drooping a little.”
Sexy Beardstache Baker coughs, hard.
“I’m not having a stroke.” The fact that I need to say this out loud makes this moment even more humiliating now that I know that my intimidation face looks like I’m having a serious health problem. God, why can’t I just tell Marley “Douche-it” to go love himself? Why did I have to pretend I’m happy to see him and his new girlfriend? Why won’t those words roll off my tongue? Because they sure as hell are banging around in my head.
Marley glances at my cart. “Having a party?” he asks me, eyeing the bacon and tequila.
“No,” I say. And screw you, Marley.
“Oh, my gawd, are you going to … like … eat all of that? Yourself?” Lululemon’s hand flies to her mouth as if she’s just seen the murder of a kitten with a dull, number-two pencil.
“No. Of course not. I have a dog.”
Lululemon freezes, not sure if I’m joking or not.
“Of course she’s not going to eat all that by herself,” Sexy Beardstache Baker pipes in for the first time. All three of us stare at him now. “So? You going to introduce me?”
What is that sexy hunk of a man doing?
“Uh … this is…”
Oh, God. I don’t know his name.
“Jack,” Sexy Beardstache Baker says easily, rescuing me as he sticks out a beefy paw and shakes Marley’s comparably small, limp hand with enthusiasm. “Sora has told me so much about you.” I have? “Honestly, I have to thank you, man. If you two hadn’t gotten divorced, then Sora and I wouldn’t have gotten together. I owe you one.”
I don’t know who’s more stunned: me, Lululemon, or Marley.
Jack the Sexy Baker has saved me. In that moment, I want to propose to him and have his babies. As many as he wants.
Now, it’s Marley and Lululemon’s turn to gape. They glance at Jack the Sexy Baker and back to me. I step a smidgen closer to Jack.
“Want a raspberry torte?” Jack offers with a bright, beaming smile. “They have extra GMOs, non-organic saturated fat, and gluten.”
Lululemon looks as if he’s offered her a cyanide capsule. “Oh no. No, thank you.”
Marley reaches for one, but Lululemon slaps his hand. “Marley! We’re gluten-free, remember?”
Marley looks crestfallen. It becomes clear that his trade-off for screwing Lululemon is eating food that tastes like trash. I’m suddenly feeling much, much better about my life.
“Come on, Marley,” Lululemon scolds, tugging him off by his sleeve. “We’ve got to go.” She glances at me and Jack one last time. “And nice to meet you,” she cries, high-pitched and fake. The subtext in her eyes tells me she hopes I choke on bacon fat and die. I want to tell her that at least I’ll die happy. More than I can say for her if she ends up snorting kale into her sinuses.
When they’re gone, I turn to Jack, my new hero, and we both break out laughing.
“Thank you for that.”
“Oh, it’s not a problem. I hate bullies.” Jack’s eyes narrow a bit, as he watches Marley and Lululemon scamper away like roaches across a dirty linoleum floor. He glances back at me and grins. “It was my duty to even the odds. Those guys were assholes. Did you see all that kale in her cart?”
“Kale: the taste of sadness,” I say.
“Because every great story begins with ‘after I downed a few rounds of kale…’” he snaps back.
We share a conspiratorial grin.
“Another torte?”
“Definitely.” He offers the tray up and I grab one more. “If you’re going to be my fake boyfriend, why not just go the whole mile and be my fake fiancé and husband, too?” I ask, after I swallow. “I mean, are you really going to commit here? Or is this just a casual fake relationship for you?”
Playfulness lights up Jack’s puppy-dog eyes. “Fictional wedding. I like it. If it’s fake and we don’t have to pay for it, I want like, five hundred guests, and I want to wear cowboy boots and a blue tuxedo.”
“Why stop there? Llamas can be our flower girls, and the whole affair can be blessed by the Pope.”
We both chuckle some more. It feels like somehow, in another life, we were best friends who caused a helluva lot of trouble in the back of some algebra class.
“All of this is getting ahead of ourselves,” I add. “We just met.”
Jack cocks an eyebrow, surprised. “No, we didn’t.”
Now I’m confused. “What do you mean?” Is this a prank?
“You don’t remember me, do you?” Jack asks with a sly smile.
“Wait. Am I supposed to?” Since when? I rack my brain trying to figure out how I might know him. A drunken one-night stand years ago? A swipe-right date gone wrong? A neighbor in one of my old apartment buildings? No, no, and no. “We met before?”
“Yes.” He pauses dramatically. “You always carried a Polly Pocket every day of kindergarten and I think first grade, too. You’d bust it out when the teacher wasn’t looking.”
“I did do that!” He knows me. He really knows me. Jack. I realize there is something familiar about his brown eyes. Wait. Yes … I imagine Jack much younger, kid-sized, same eyes, not the same muscles. “Jack … Mann? From Dewey Elementary?” I’m so unsure my voice sounds like a wobbly whisper, like I’m afraid I’m going to accidentally set off a landmine.
Instead, a big smile spreads across Jack’s face. “Bingo,” he says.