women because it is such a bad day for them. On Sundays couples sleep in late, wake up and have missionary morning sex, and then brunch before heading to Home Depot to pick out new blinds or area rugs for the apartment they just moved into together. For singles, Sunday is waking up with a hangover, maybe a strange man in your bed, figuring out how to get said strange man out of your bed, and then sending a dozen text messages to your other still-single friends to see who wants to have brunch with you somewhere they have unlimited Bloody Marys because, one, you’re footing the bill; two, you need to get a little drunk to erase the pain of not having someone to go to Home Depot with; and, three, you woke up with a strange man in your bed and you are already bummed that he didn’t want to have brunch and hasn’t texted you.
We didn’t invite Joe to the meeting. We thought it would be strange to have a guy there even though we never specifically said that LAA was for women only. Men nurse broken hearts too. But still, they do it in a different way than women. At least that’s what I thought at the time.
Come Saturday night I was cooking dinner for Annie and me. She had pretty much moved into one of the spare bedrooms in my grandmother’s house and had turned over her duties at the bar to her assistant manager, Fredo. We were a de facto sexless couple. I would cook. She would complain. I would clean. She would make things messy. It was like most hetero relationships after about a year. But even Annie couldn’t listen to me talk about Eric anymore. When I began recounting his day with Floozy from memory and asking her what she thought it all meant for maybe the hundredth time, she calmly strode across the kitchen.
“Put down the spoon, Sophie.” She nodded to the utensil I had been using to smash potatoes.
“They’re almost smashed,” I replied. “So then I think they went to the High Line with his sister and her two kids because Floozy took an Instagram … OUCH!”
Annie had slapped me. She used her open palm to slap me across the face. I had never been hit before. My first instinct to lunge at her was quickly replaced by an urge to cry and feel horrible for myself, but Annie wasn’t giving me the opportunity to have those kinds of feelings.
“I need you to shut the fuck up about Eric and Floozy Mc— WHAT THE FUCK IS HER REAL NAME?” Annie bellowed. “You need to shut the fuck up.”
I squared my shoulders and rolled my eyes to the ceiling before responding to her.
“I’m going to try. I want to try.”
Annie was already at the freezer searching for a bag of something frozen to put on my face.
“Will a Skinny Cow work?” She calmly offered me a low-calorie ice cream treat. I took it without saying anything.
She breathed deeply. “I want the old Sophie back. You have become a crazy person who is fixated on a single thing, a thing, I might add, that is poisonous for you. I understand the irony of the alcoholic in the room saying that. Yes, this may be the pot calling the kettle an addict, but I just want my friend back.”
I didn’t have anything to say. She was right. I gave her a nod and headed upstairs to my room.
In bed that night, thinking about the LAA meeting, I was nervous and my face stung. What if no one showed? Megan told me a lot of women said it sounded like a good idea, but New York ladies are naturally flaky. They love everything in theory, but trying to get them to do anything that doesn’t involve booze and men and does involve trains and New Jersey is hard. I sat awake until three in the morning, wondering if we would have an empty house on Sunday. I was pegging this meeting to lifting my spirits and giving me something to focus on besides my horrible, no good, very bad love life. I really didn’t want Annie to hit me again, but more than that I didn’t want Annie to hate me. I was starting to hate me a little. I understood the irony of all this planning. Lifting my spirits
We didn’t invite Joe to the meeting. We thought it would be strange to have a guy there even though we never specifically said that LAA was for women only. Men nurse broken hearts too. But still, they do it in a different way than women. At least that’s what I thought at the time.
Come Saturday night I was cooking dinner for Annie and me. She had pretty much moved into one of the spare bedrooms in my grandmother’s house and had turned over her duties at the bar to her assistant manager, Fredo. We were a de facto sexless couple. I would cook. She would complain. I would clean. She would make things messy. It was like most hetero relationships after about a year. But even Annie couldn’t listen to me talk about Eric anymore. When I began recounting his day with Floozy from memory and asking her what she thought it all meant for maybe the hundredth time, she calmly strode across the kitchen.
“Put down the spoon, Sophie.” She nodded to the utensil I had been using to smash potatoes.
“They’re almost smashed,” I replied. “So then I think they went to the High Line with his sister and her two kids because Floozy took an Instagram … OUCH!”
Annie had slapped me. She used her open palm to slap me across the face. I had never been hit before. My first instinct to lunge at her was quickly replaced by an urge to cry and feel horrible for myself, but Annie wasn’t giving me the opportunity to have those kinds of feelings.
“I need you to shut the fuck up about Eric and Floozy Mc— WHAT THE FUCK IS HER REAL NAME?” Annie bellowed. “You need to shut the fuck up.”
I squared my shoulders and rolled my eyes to the ceiling before responding to her.
“I’m going to try. I want to try.”
Annie was already at the freezer searching for a bag of something frozen to put on my face.
“Will a Skinny Cow work?” She calmly offered me a low-calorie ice cream treat. I took it without saying anything.
She breathed deeply. “I want the old Sophie back. You have become a crazy person who is fixated on a single thing, a thing, I might add, that is poisonous for you. I understand the irony of the alcoholic in the room saying that. Yes, this may be the pot calling the kettle an addict, but I just want my friend back.”
I didn’t have anything to say. She was right. I gave her a nod and headed upstairs to my room.
In bed that night, thinking about the LAA meeting, I was nervous and my face stung. What if no one showed? Megan told me a lot of women said it sounded like a good idea, but New York ladies are naturally flaky. They love everything in theory, but trying to get them to do anything that doesn’t involve booze and men and does involve trains and New Jersey is hard. I sat awake until three in the morning, wondering if we would have an empty house on Sunday. I was pegging this meeting to lifting my spirits and giving me something to focus on besides my horrible, no good, very bad love life. I really didn’t want Annie to hit me again, but more than that I didn’t want Annie to hate me. I was starting to hate me a little. I understood the irony of all this planning. Lifting my spirits
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