ringing again for half of a beat and then flipped over to voicemail. He shushed me! I looked at my watch – almost 8:00 P.M. now here in L.A., which meant it was close to 10:00 in Chicago – and was instantly agitated at being shushed on a Friday night.
A half minute later my phone lit up and even without sliding the bottom bar to unlock it, I could read the single line that Dustin had texted me:
Still working gonna b a long 1 will call you later if not 2 late I love you
At least he had shushed me because he was going through consulting hell on this Friday night, not because he was “otherwise occupied” or anything like that. Now the guilty feelings and remorse really started to hit me. Here I was, getting my nails done and tanning for my clandestine date with another guy tomorrow night, and my boyfriend was slaving away out in Chicago very late on a Friday night with – apparently – no end in sight for his workday. And he would still be there throughout the entire weekend, all the way through next week...
I forced the guilty feelings from my mind and concentrated on what he hadn’t typed in his text. True, he had written “I love you” but number one, those words seemed to have been grafted onto the end of his “busy, don’t bother me” message; almost as afterthought. And also, he could have added “I miss you” or “can’t wait to see you” or something along those lines... but he didn’t.
I was probably grasping at little reasons, perhaps even concocted reasons, to justify in my mind where I would be (I looked at the digital time on my cell phone) 23 hours from now. It was easy to demonize Dustin, to blame him for shortcomings he probably wasn’t even aware of, to convince myself that I was totally in the right to go to dinner with a guy I had met only one night earlier.
I shook the thoughts from my head as I started home. Even though my phone had both the ringer and the vibrate turned on, I found myself looking at the screen every fifteen seconds or so the entire walk home, waiting for either a text or call from either Dustin or Kensington. But by the time I got to the outside door to my apartment building: nada.
I microwaved myself a whole wheat tortilla with some low-fat cheese, avocado, and salsa; a light dinner, typical of what I usually ate at home by myself. You know: no muss, no fuss. I finished the tortilla in like a minute and thought about making a second one, but instead went to the freezer for some sugar-free chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. (Will the wonders of technology never cease!) I ate a bowl of about three scoops, and then another one with three more scoops. By the time I was finished it was getting close to 9:00 and I felt like doing nothing but soaking in a bath... and thinking.
I sat in the bathtub until the water was cool enough to be annoying, and by that time it was getting close to 10:00. I got out, dried off, blow-dried my hair, and put on my long ASU T-shirt that was part of my sleeping wardrobe rotation (at least when Dustin wasn’t around).
I drifted off to sleep a little bit past 11:00 watching some tearjerker movie I had seen about a zillion times before, and just before I zonked out for good I checked my cell phone for about the zillionth time.
Nothing.
Chapter 3
Saturday, September 14th
Twice on Saturday I came within a split-second of texting Zack to cancel.
The first time, around 10:00 in the morning shortly after I woke up, I had a lame excuse – I mean, a lie – all ready to go. Not feeling well; wouldn’t be very good company tonight; maybe later, but how about another happy hour this week? I figured that standing around a high-top at Cerise or another bar for an hour or two after work was “safer” for me in getting my head around where things with Zack might go; you know, a more measured pace given my relationship with Dustin, right? After all, with Dustin out of town most of the time for at least the next two months I could hold off
A half minute later my phone lit up and even without sliding the bottom bar to unlock it, I could read the single line that Dustin had texted me:
Still working gonna b a long 1 will call you later if not 2 late I love you
At least he had shushed me because he was going through consulting hell on this Friday night, not because he was “otherwise occupied” or anything like that. Now the guilty feelings and remorse really started to hit me. Here I was, getting my nails done and tanning for my clandestine date with another guy tomorrow night, and my boyfriend was slaving away out in Chicago very late on a Friday night with – apparently – no end in sight for his workday. And he would still be there throughout the entire weekend, all the way through next week...
I forced the guilty feelings from my mind and concentrated on what he hadn’t typed in his text. True, he had written “I love you” but number one, those words seemed to have been grafted onto the end of his “busy, don’t bother me” message; almost as afterthought. And also, he could have added “I miss you” or “can’t wait to see you” or something along those lines... but he didn’t.
I was probably grasping at little reasons, perhaps even concocted reasons, to justify in my mind where I would be (I looked at the digital time on my cell phone) 23 hours from now. It was easy to demonize Dustin, to blame him for shortcomings he probably wasn’t even aware of, to convince myself that I was totally in the right to go to dinner with a guy I had met only one night earlier.
I shook the thoughts from my head as I started home. Even though my phone had both the ringer and the vibrate turned on, I found myself looking at the screen every fifteen seconds or so the entire walk home, waiting for either a text or call from either Dustin or Kensington. But by the time I got to the outside door to my apartment building: nada.
I microwaved myself a whole wheat tortilla with some low-fat cheese, avocado, and salsa; a light dinner, typical of what I usually ate at home by myself. You know: no muss, no fuss. I finished the tortilla in like a minute and thought about making a second one, but instead went to the freezer for some sugar-free chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. (Will the wonders of technology never cease!) I ate a bowl of about three scoops, and then another one with three more scoops. By the time I was finished it was getting close to 9:00 and I felt like doing nothing but soaking in a bath... and thinking.
I sat in the bathtub until the water was cool enough to be annoying, and by that time it was getting close to 10:00. I got out, dried off, blow-dried my hair, and put on my long ASU T-shirt that was part of my sleeping wardrobe rotation (at least when Dustin wasn’t around).
I drifted off to sleep a little bit past 11:00 watching some tearjerker movie I had seen about a zillion times before, and just before I zonked out for good I checked my cell phone for about the zillionth time.
Nothing.
Chapter 3
Saturday, September 14th
Twice on Saturday I came within a split-second of texting Zack to cancel.
The first time, around 10:00 in the morning shortly after I woke up, I had a lame excuse – I mean, a lie – all ready to go. Not feeling well; wouldn’t be very good company tonight; maybe later, but how about another happy hour this week? I figured that standing around a high-top at Cerise or another bar for an hour or two after work was “safer” for me in getting my head around where things with Zack might go; you know, a more measured pace given my relationship with Dustin, right? After all, with Dustin out of town most of the time for at least the next two months I could hold off
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