Why I Love Singlehood: by Elisa Lorello, Sarah Girrell

my plate of half-eaten grilled salmon. “What’s wrong with me…” I said again, my voice trailing off.
    “How’d your last relationship end?” he asked.
    “My lover decided that he wasn’t in love with me after all,” I answered, wanting to ask Caleb to bring me another glass of wine and a Taser.
    “How come? What, did you pressure him to get married or somethin’?”
    Strike four.
    “Hardly. Actually, I have no idea why.”
    “I guess he just wasn’t that into you.”
    “Guess not.”
    If I could, I would’ve fired lasers out of my eye sockets and exploded his head. Thankfully, Caleb returned with the check.
    “So, where’ve you been, Professor? I never see you around campus anymore.”
    “Oh, don’t you know? I left teaching. I own a coffee shop now.”
    “Really? How come? Is it near school?”
    “Here,” I said as I reached into my purse and pulled out a business card. “That’s good for a free coffee on your first visit.”
    “Oh, I know this place. I’ve never been there, though. Cool,” he said, avoiding Nick’s invasive eyes. “I’ll definitely stop by sometime.”
    Caleb left the table again, and I wished I could follow him.
    “So why’d you leave teaching?” Nick asked me.
    “I wasn’t really interested in the academic conversations and all the responsibility that came with tenure—you know, that whole publish-or-perish thing.”
    “What’s ‘publish-or-perish’?”
    “It’s an expression. If you don’t publish scholarly articles—or for me, another novel—you could lose your chances of getting tenure or grant funding or whatever else they can lord over you. I liked being in the classroom with the students, but I was more interested in telling my stories and reading theirs than I was in grading them.”
    “So how long have you been at The Grounds?” asked Nick.
    I froze. Never in our communications did I mention my business by name.
    “I already Googled you and scoped out your shop,” he said. Then he added, slightly agitated, “Relax—I’m not gonna camp out in front of it or anything like that.”
    Google: the stalker’s best friend. Strike five.
    Nick picked up the tab while I left a cash tip for Caleb amounting to fifty percent of the bill. Once outside the restaurant, Nick and I looked at each other, paused in the awkward moment.
    “So, Eva.” He mispronounced it again.
    Please don’t kiss me, please don’t kiss me, please don’t kiss me…
    “Yes?” I said.
    “Thank you for an enjoyable evening.”
    “Same here.” I extended my hand, and he took it and folded it into his own for a brief, damp-palmed minute before returning it to me.
    “I won’t be seeing you again, will I.”
    “No, you won’t.”
    “How come?” he asked.
    The words of Louis Armstrong in response to a reporter’s question “What is jazz?” came to me: Man, if ya hassta ask…
    “I don’t like when women are referred to as ‘bitches,’” I said. “Regardless of how your wife treated you, she doesn’t deserve that, even if her behavior was reprehensible.”
    “Fair enough,” he said. “May I walk you to your car?”
    “I’m all set, thanks.”
    When I got home, I flung off my heels, slipped out of my outfit, threw on a T-shirt, and flopped into my reading chair in my bedroom, taking in a deep breath and exhaling deliberately.
    I love my reading chair. I had purchased it from a furniture showroom in Port Jefferson on Long Island years ago. I maxed out a credit card for it. Its cream-colored suede is soft as butter. Its firm wood legs don’t make a sound when you sit in it. Its cushion is like sitting on a cloud. It’s roomy enough to either sit upright or curled up. I can fall asleep in that chair for a full eight hours and wake up without a crick in my neck or stiffness in my lower back. Reading has always been my reward after a long day, even after grading drafts of short stories or freshman compositions. I’ve escaped to many worlds of books in that chair.