Lynda Curnyn - Engaging Men

Some consolation. Who else would Josh have told? He didn’t speak to his parents anymore (years of therapy had shown him that they had not only damaged him in the past, but would prove even more damaging to his future), and I was probably one of the few friends Josh had left now that he had thrown his whole life over for Emily.

“So what do you say to a little celebratory dinner Monday night?”

“Monday night?” I replied, realizing that, as usual, I had nothing planned other than the usual takeout-and-a-rental with Kirk. “What time?”

“Around eight?”

“That’s fine,” I said, resigned to my fate.

“Looking forward to it, Ange.”

“Yeah, uh, me, too,” I replied, hanging up the phone feeling something like dread.

But a quick glance at Kirk’s expression revived me immediately. Judging by the scowl that now creased his handsome brow, he was jealous. Jealous!

“What the hell was that about?”

Very jealous, obviously.

“Oh, nothing.” I waved a hand nonchalantly and burrowed in beside him again to watch TV. “That was Josh. You remember Josh, right?”

They had met over a year ago. I had been playing Miss Julie in an off-off-Broadway production of the play of the same name, back in the days when I believed playing obscure characters in even more obscure venues would actually get me somewhere. Though by that time Josh had given up all pretensions of having an acting career himself, he still came to see me whenever I managed to land something juicier than, say, a crowd scene in a Christmas show. Josh had been dating Emily at the time, though he hadn’t brought her for one reason or another—I suspected because it had been too soon in their budding relationship to introduce her to the ex-girlfriend. I had introduced him to Kirk as merely “a friend,” though months later, during one of those relationship talks in which you ’fess up to your past, I did let it drop that Josh and I had dated. At the time, Kirk took it in stride, but now that my ex-boyfriend had given me a midnight call, it seemed the playing field had changed….

“What did he want?”

“Oh, he wants to have dinner Monday night.” See? Not a lie.

“Don’t we usually hang out on Monday?”

“Oh, did we have plans?” I asked innocently.

That was the crux of the problem with relationships. Those presumed dates. Just because I often hung out with Kirk on Monday night, I suppose he had the right to assume I would continue to do so without any sort of prior confirmation. But, if I was practically living at Kirk’s place four out of seven days a week, didn’t I have a right to presume we would one day make that seven out of seven days? No, I was not allowed that presumption. And, therefore, Kirk would no longer be allowed his.

“So you’re going out to dinner with your ex-boyfriend,” Kirk said, his gray eyes wide with disbelief.

“Oh, I don’t think of Josh that way,” I said. “We’re just friends,” I added. “Very close friends.”

And then, before a smile of satisfaction threatened to blow my cover, I rested my cheek on Kirk’s bare chest, presumably to settle in to television once more.

But who was I kidding? My heart was racing out of my chest with the thrill of victory. Kirk was jealous! That had to mean something, didn’t it?

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