Молли Харпер - And One Last Thing...

“Well, if I’m so lazy and immature, why did you even bother with me?”

“Because you have the potential to be this amazing person. You’re smart and you’re funny and you can be so brave. You’ve grown so much since you’ve come up here and you’re just going to give it all up.”

“Who the hell do you think you are?” I yelled. “Who appointed you the great determiner of personal growth? And stop trying to pretend that you’re mad about the newsletter thing.

When you’re really mad about Mike being here. I can’t help that he managed to remember the way.”

“This is about you, Lacey,” he said, taking my arms in his hands with just enough force to hold me in one place. “This is about you being unable to just move on and let Mike go. Stop letting it fester. It would really suck, forty years down the road, to look back on a lifetime of being petty and resentful, and think, ‘Well, at least I took him down with me.”

I jerked away from his grip. “I don’t have to stand here and listen to this.”

“Right, because I don’t get a say. I mean, it’s not like we’re in a relationship or anything. You’ve made it loud and clear we’re just two people having friendly sex, right? Fuck buddies?”

“Don’t,” I growled stalking toward my door. And damned if he didn’t follow me, his voice growing louder and angrier with every step.

‘I mean, I guess I should be grateful that some divorcée just wants to jump me and then walk away like I’m some anatomicaly correct prop. But somehow it hurts my feelings a little bit. I’m not stupid, Lacey. I see you pull back at every chance you get I know how much this freaks you out. You made it pretty clear when you turned into Howard freaking Hughes after you met my parents. I just don’t understand why. We’re good together. I’ve made it clear how much I care about you. You know I wouldn’t hurt you. Why are you working so hard to keep from calling this what it is?”

“And what is it, exactly?” I asked, fighting the tears flooding the corners of my eyes. “Are we going steady? Are you going to give me an ID bracelet and a box of conversation hearts? Do you want to get married? Because I’ve been there, done that, and I don’t know if I’m ever going to be ready to do it again. So what’s the point, Monroe?”

“The point is that I love you. And it really pisses me off that you don’t want to hear that.”

“Because it’s got to be on your terms!” I yelled. “It’s got to be on your timetable, your way. You know, maybe it’s not that I don’t want to be in a relationship, maybe it’s that I don’t want to be in a relationship with you. You’re always pushing and judging and trying to make me change into the person that - I don’t know - is worthy of you? I mean, you wouldn’t even talk to we until I proved that I was low-maintenance enough for you. I don’t want to be your pet project. I’ve already tried living with a man whose standards I couldn’t meet and I’m not going to do it again.”

“Stop making this about Mike. I am not your husband.”

“You’re right, you’re not.”

“Grow up, Lacey.”

“Fuck you, Monroe.”

When everything imploded with Mike, I prided myself on the fact that I hadn’t shown up at anyone’s door crying hysterically and looking for a sympathetic ear, despite the fact that such a juicy piece of gossip would have made me welcome in any home in town.

After my fight with Monroe, I felt that I was due.

“Honey, what happened?” Emmett cried, opening the door to find me tearstained and disheveled.

“Monroe… fight… labels!” I sobbed as he took my suitcase.

“She had a fight over Marilyn Monroe and labels?” a low voice sounded from the dining room.

I opened my eyes and realized that there were three men sitting at Emmett’s dining room table, sipping wine and staring at me like I had an extra head. The table was sumptuously spread with dim sum, rice noodles, and a couple of Asian vegetables I didn’t recognize.

“Em, I’m so sorry!” I gasped. “I didn’t know you had company.”

“Oh, sweetie, you just made a rather bland evening that much more interesting,” he whispered, tucking his hand through my elbow. “Seriously, Kirk just finished his fourth retelling of his entire cruise to Alaska … with his mother. Can you imagine? I mean if he’d gone somewhere interesting, that would be one thing. But he spent fifteen minutes describing whales surfacing. You’ve saved us all.”

He wrapped his arm around me and said in a much louder voice, “Now come in and have a good cry, and we’ll sympathize.”

“I’m sorry about this,” I said to the guests, only one of whom I recognized - Emmett’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Peter. Emmett made the introductions. The guys stood and helped me to my chair as if I were the walking wounded. Thomas, a whippet-thin man with three earrings and a healthy head of silver-blond hair, poured me a glass of white wine and patted my head.

“Emmett told us all about you,” Kirk gushed. He seemed very young and still had a bit of the baby-fat look around his chin. “You are so brave. I just don’t know if I could ever hold my head up if something like that happened to me -”

Thomas cleared his throat and shook his head. “So what’s got you so upset, Lacey? Emmett told us you were doing so well.”

“Post-divorce stress disorder?” Peter suggested. “I know I only met Mike once or twice, Lace, but I just did not like that man. It’s okay to be uptight and it’s okay to be boring, but not at the same time.”

“No.” I sniffed. “Mike had nothing to do with it, really, even though he technically started the fight and then ran off, as usual. Monroe was just being such an asshole, telling me how great I could be if I would just change. I’m really tired of people telling me what about my personality needs fixing.”

“So we’re not talking about Marilyn Monroe, then,” Thomas said speculatively.

“Monroe’s my… I don’t know what to call him, which was part of the problem, really. He’s upset with me because I refuse to put a label on us.”

Peter nodded. “That makes more sense than what I had in mind.”

“It’s her neighbor up at Chez Divorcée. You should see this guy,” Emmett said. “Legs that go on forever, biceps the size of my head, and his ass -”

I frowned. “Let’s just say he’s doable and move on.”

“Sooo doable.” He sighed. When he saw my face, he flinched. “Crossing a line?” I nodded. “Sorry.”

“So how long did you two date?” Will asked, seeming nonplussed by our “do-ability” sidebar.

“We didn’t really date so much as just hang out all the time, talk, and make each other meals.”

“Sounds sort of perfect,” Thomas said, tilting his head.

“It was. It was kind of perfect. I mean, I was fortunate to have two functioning brain cells after the e-mail thing, although I suspect those cells spend most their time arguing. And I met this guy, and he was all prickly and mysterious, but I dug that.”

“Prickly could work,” Peter conceded. “As long as it was paired with hot, prickly could work.”

“We ignored each other completely for a while, or at least Iignored him, while he tried to figure out why I was ignoring him. And then he just started being nice to me. We became friends. We hung out, talked about stuff we were interested in. We had athletic, spontaneous, no-strings-attached sex.”

“Baby’s first booty call. I am so proud,” Emmett said, wiping a mock tear from his eye.

“We continued to have the friendship. Then I met his family, he met my ex, and everything got weird.”