“You heard Alice,” Caitlyn said. “There are no good men left.”
Alice’s red head popped up from behind the concession stand. “I did not say that! I just said that good dates were hard to find.”
Jake cut in. “Alice has a point, Cait. Most men aren’t worthy of your time.”
Caitlyn rolled her eyes, but his sweet words made her heart ache. Caitlyn caught Meg’s eye and struggled not to laugh as her friend made a face. Jake was a few years older than the rest of them and had a tendency to act like a big brother to all of Meg’s friends. Although, she and Meg joked that at times—like this one—Jake had a tendency to sound like a dad. Which, Caitlyn liked to point out, was just another sign that he was going to make an excellent father. He had lots of practice.
Ignoring their giggles, Jake added, “You know what they say—you’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs…”
“But she didn’t even get a kiss out of this one,” Alice chimed in. “And what Caitie needs isn’t a kiss. She needs to get laid.”
Caitlyn’s cheeks burned. Her friend was teasing, of course, but the words scraped her nerves more than she cared to admit.
“Here, here,” Marc said.
“Amen to that,” Jake called out.
Caitlyn stopped her lame attempts to mop and stared at them, not sure if she should laugh or chastise her friends. She was so not the type to sleep around and they all knew it. They’d been mocking her for years for being the prude of the group. It wasn’t like she was opposed to sex or anything. She just didn’t see it as a high priority. Romance, love, partnership—that was what she needed.
Which was probably why her ex thought she was boring. He’d always teased her about being an old lady, with her knitting and her homebound ways. But over the last year or so his teasing had grown more caustic, and he’d made more than one pointed comment about her lack of enthusiasm in the bedroom.
Her friends didn’t know about that, of course. The fact that her ex thought she was frigid was too embarrassing and private to share. But for Alice and the others to think that she would throw herself into the arms of some stranger was ludicrous. Laughable. Yet somehow all she could do was gape at them, speechless.
Alice caught her open-mouthed stare. “What? Even a serial monogamist is allowed a fling or two between healthy, long-term commitments.” Alice feigned an exaggerated yawn as she trailed off, making Caitlyn laugh along with the others.
“Not all of us are looking for casual sex,” she reminded her friend.
Alice sighed melodramatically, but she was smiling when she said, “Suit yourself.”
The fact that Alice had echoed the exact words from her date was not lost on Caitlyn. You need to get laid. While Alice was clearly teasing, that jerk had been serious. More than that, he’d all but offered to be her lover. As if she would ever stoop that low.
Her traitorous brain flashed on the ruggedly handsome face, with his sharp features and the scruffy beginnings of a beard. And then there were those sexy dark eyes and that cocky smile. Too bad he had to be such a jackass. She shook her head to come back to sanity. She pulled her phone from her back pocket to check the time and moved to put away her cleaning supplies. “Much as I’d love to hear all of your thoughts on my love life—or lack thereof—I’ve got to head out of here a little early. My new subletter is showing up this afternoon and I’ve got to get the place ready.”
Meg’s head snapped up. “A new one?”
Anxiety laced her friend’s voice and Caitlyn held back a sigh. If Jake was the self-appointed dad of the group, Meg had definitely adopted the role of their mom.
“Are you sure it’s safe to have a stranger in your apartment?”
“For the hundredth time, yes.” Caitlyn gathered up her oversized purse. “The site I use verifies the candidates and does background checks. It’s totally safe.”
She glanced over to see Meg gnawing on her lip and looking pleadingly at her husband, silently begging him to appeal to Caitlyn’s good senses. Caitlyn interrupted the silent exchange with a laugh. “Meg, aren’t you the one who’s constantly telling me to do online dating? Those men aren’t verified, you know. You’re being a hypocrite.”
“Am not.” Meg crossed her arms over her big belly, her mouth pulled down in a stubborn scowl. “That’s totally different. You’re meeting those men for one evening. In public. It’s not the same thing at all.”
Exhaustion swept over Caitlyn, even though her day had just begun. They’d been over this time and again since the breakup nearly a year ago. “What do you want me to do? I can’t afford that place on my own.”
As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Caitlyn wished she could call them back. She knew the answer all of her friends were itching to give. She’d heard it more times than she could count.
They’d tell her it was time to look for a new place. Give up her home. Start fresh in a place with no memories, no ghosts of boyfriends past. As if it was that easy to let go of everything comfortable and safe. This apartment was the first true home she’d had since her parents died. The dorms didn’t count and neither did her first apartment straight out of college—a one-bedroom dump out in Queens that she’d shared with three other girls. The apartment she’d found with her ex—the ground floor apartment of a townhouse-style apartment building in a nice, quiet neighborhood—that was a true home. She’d dumped all of her money into furniture and decorations. She finally had a space of her own that was exactly the way she liked it. Losing her boyfriend was hard enough, thank you very much. She wasn’t about to let go of her home too. Her apartment was the only stable thing she had left…other than her friends and her job at the store. Not to mention—did they have any idea how hard it was to find a decent apartment in her price range?
Shouting out her good-byes, she practically ran out of the theater to avoid hearing the lecture. Besides, she had an apartment to clean.
Unfortunately being alone did little to help with her brain’s frustrating tendency to relive that night. She worked herself into a tizzy as she did laundry just thinking about the comments her date had made. Then she worked herself into a royal rage at the fact that she was still thinking about that man in the first place.
By the time she had moved on to cleaning the bathroom, she was in the midst of a sick cycle of anger. And all thanks to him. She found herself giving a silent lecture to the toilet as she scrubbed it clean. Who did he think he was? The man was a complete stranger who knew nothing about her. Cynical, rude, and crass. He was an affront to British men everywhere—particularly Cary Grant, may he rest in peace.
A jerk with a drinking problem, that’s what he was. He was in no position to pass judgment on her life or her job. The jackass wouldn’t know about artistic integrity if it smacked him upside the head. She scrubbed the toilet even harder. He was exactly the type of Manhattan, alpha-male, misogynistic a-hole she went out of her way to avoid.
He’d actually asked her what kind of car she drove within the first two minutes of meeting. She lived in Manhattan, why would she have a car? Or a driver’s license, for that matter. Of course he’d followed that up with a bragging session about his sports car—as if she’d be impressed. So you’re destroying the environment with your emissions so you can feel better about the size of your penis? Good for you. Dammit, why hadn’t she said that?
She fell back on her heels, her hand aching from the intensive scrub job. But the car comment and the derogatory remarks about her career—that wasn’t even the worst of it. She could practically hear his irritatingly sexy British accent in her head. Are you trying to come across as frigid and matronly? Because if so, you’ve succeeded.
Who the hell did he think he was? Who even said that?