“You’re divorced.”
“Yeah. This was great and, honestly, I want to do it again, but I don’t really have it in me to do anything romantic.”
“Well, I guess you’re in luck.”
He watched her futz around the room, unable to read her tone. Was she bitter? Honest?
She dropped her clothes in a hamper and said, “My ex-boyfriend just got married. It was… I don’t know. I’m still processing how I feel about it. I thought I’d marry that guy once, but it wasn’t meant to be, and now he’s married to somebody else. So I decided I’m going to focus on myself for a bit. Relationships…end. They don’t go how you plan. And rather than deal with the frustrations of that, or with dating, which I don’t really have time for, I’m prioritizing myself. Doing what makes me happy, what fulfills me. If the right guy comes along, awesome, but if not, I’ll be okay.”
Caleb appreciated that. He was still adjusting to being on his own—he and Kara had lived together since vet school, and before that he’d had roommates, so he’d never had his own place before. He hadn’t gone as far as prioritizing himself so much as just trying to find some kind of normalcy. It seemed remarkable for someone to choose themselves; Caleb had always figured that once he’d recovered, he’d date again, even if he planned to never get married again.
He must have been staring, because Lauren stared back.
“Like, I get it,” she said. “Breakups are the worst. Can I ask what happened?”
“She cheated on me, then closed the clinic we ran together without consulting me, and then the cherry on top was her running off with the guy to another state.”
Lauren winced. “Oof. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m…making my peace with it. But, like I said, things got messy, especially when we were dividing up our business assets, and I just… I can’t put myself through all that again. I know ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ is a cliché, but it really is me.”
“But it’s me, too, is what I’m saying.” Lauren sat at the foot of the bed. “Derek getting married really threw me for a loop. He and his wife knew each other for, like, five minutes before he proposed. My friend, Lindsay, says a lot of guys just hit a certain age and are suddenly ready to settle down. So it’s not me per se. But I felt like it was me. I dunno. Sorry, you don’t need to hear all this.”
“It’s all right. I’m familiar with that feeling.”
“Bottom line is we don’t have a romantic future. And I’m okay with that.”
Caleb knew he had no business in a relationship while he still harbored so much bitterness toward Kara, but hearing Lauren state the situation so bluntly was oddly upsetting. Disappointing, even. Why would that be? Lauren was sexy and great in bed, but she was also kind of a presumptuous know-it-all cat lady who ran a business in which people sipped coffee and pet cats. They’d spent most of the time they’d known each other bickering. Even if he wasn’t still a mess over his divorce, getting involved with this woman seemed like a silly idea.
And yet.
Her robe was starting to slip off her shoulder to reveal the edge of her breast, and it was basically the sexiest thing he had ever seen. He wanted to reach into that robe and cup her just-more-than-a-handful breasts.
“Your eyes are all red,” Lauren said as she got off the bed.
“Yeah, my contacts have been in for a few hours longer than they should have been.”
“Aha. I thought I saw you wearing glasses.”
“I do a lot of the time, but dogs licking my face are occupational hazards, and it’s hard to get the smudges off sometimes.” He cleared his throat. “Even if we have no romantic future, this was nice. Just putting it out there that I’m incredibly attracted to you and would not say no if you wanted to take me back to your place and jump me again.”
“You kind of jumped me.”
He felt himself smile. He liked this woman a lot when they weren’t arguing. “It was a mutual jumping.”
“Well, I need to hop in the shower. But it’s a pretty big shower. Room for two if you want to conserve water.”
So, no romantic future, but perhaps some sexy fun in the short term. Hard to say no to that. He tossed the covers aside. “Well, if it’s to conserve water…”
Chapter 9
Lauren sat across from Evan, Paige, and Lindsay at Pop. She was bursting to talk to them about what had happened with Caleb but was worried about how all of it would look. She couldn’t just say, I slept with a guy I have no future with and who I don’t really like that much. High five!
Lindsay was an old friend from college who hopped around careers like they were hobbies; she’d recently bailed on a dead-end job as a line cook at a restaurant in Park Slope to begin a career as a restaurant reviewer for a popular urban food website. These days, she ate everything as if she were thinking of the most pretentious way to describe it. She sipped a martini now as if she were a sommelier at a wine tasting, which was especially silly given that the glass was garnished with a tuft of cotton candy on the rim.
Lauren loved her friends, but they could be a lot sometimes.
Evan narrowed his eyes at Lauren. “Something happened.”
“Well, that’s vague,” said Paige. “Of course something happened. Something happens every day. I mean, Mitch came by today to talk about the adoption event, and I think he hit on me? But it’s hard to tell because he was subtle about it.”
Lindsay frowned. “Mitch is the feral cat guy, right? The big guy?”
“Yeah,” said Paige. “You make him sound like a mountain man when you describe him that way.
