67
Lisa
I swirl the gin and tonic in front of me as I listen to Christine sigh happily over Lover Boy.
“Oh, and then, he bought me this!” She holds her arm out so everyone can admire the emerald-encrusted bracelet on her arm. It’s beautiful, even if a bit old-fashioned for my taste, but Christine’s eyes sparkle as much as the emeralds when she adds happily, “It was made in the early 1800s for the queen of France! Can you imagine?”
I try not to roll my eyes in time with the swirling of my gin and tonic, but really, this is all getting to be a bit too much. Yeah, I want my friends to be happy, but the gushing and the gems? Can anyone say “over the top”?
We're at the Boathouse, just three friends enjoying a Sunday afternoon together, but I have to admit, my oh-so-in-love friends are mostly just spending it outdoing each other by comparing Lover Boy stories.
Ashley jumps in. Of course Ashley jumps in. She's just as bad as Christine, if not worse. “Apollo hasn’t given me anything that used to belong to the queen of France, but he did buy me a Maserati the other day. It’s so fun to drive; I should take you two out for a spin in it! One at a time, since it’s just a two-seater, of course.”
“More than the gifts,” Christine sighs, and I swear to god, this is true; she clasps her hands in front of her as she talks, like an actress from the 40s or something, “it’s the love and attention he gives me. Anders is more attentive than anyone—”
Okay, I can't help it anymore. The snort came out. It's loud and patrons three tables over turn to stare, but I just can't hold it in anymore. The love in the air is so thick, I can hardly see through it anymore.
“Are we making you ill over there?” Ashley asks, eyebrow cocked at me.
“A little,” I mumble into my suddenly-very-important-must-drink-right-now gin and tonic. When they just continue to stare at me, I shift in my seat and sigh.
“I just…” I look out over the lake as I try to pick the right words. “I haven't found anyone like that for me, you know? I wish that I liked soft guys. I want—”
“There’s nothing soft about Anders,” Christine breaks in with a naughty wiggle of her eyebrows. Ashley titters knowingly and I only barely restrain myself from rolling my eyes again.
“I want a Long Island tough kind of guy,” I say, trying to explain. “I want a man. I want a beast who'll come along and fuck me. I think all the real men died out in the 1950s and now they’re all too afraid to say what they really think. Everyone is obsessed with being politically correct.”
I listen to the gentle lap of the water against the boat deck as Ashley and Christine outdo themselves, assuring me that their new, amazing boyfriends are not soft and weak, but rather hard and ready to fuck at a moment's notice. I listen, but they don't really seem to get it. They're too in love to realize that their men aren't perfect. At least, not the kind of perfect that I want. I want the perfectly unperfect. I want a man who makes me his, and doesn't ask questions.
I don't want a polite businessman in a suit, no matter how expensive that suit is.
I pull out my iPhone and check the time. Dammit, I better hurry! I have a pedicure across town, like, now!
“Listen you two, sorry I have to run but I’m going to be late.” I throw some cash down on the table and give Ashley and Christine air kisses. “I’ll catch up with you guys later.”
I hurry out of the Boathouse and across Central Park, shoving the idea of a future Perfectly Unperfect Just For Me fantasy out of my head. I have a manicure, dammit! If I make it over to the 81st Street subway station, I might still make it on time. My fingernails are getting ragged, and there's just no way I can make it till tomorrow to have them fixed. Plus, Chaz would punish me for a week for standing him up.
I hurry down the stairs and into the subway. It's a little grimy but I do my best to ignore that. I only take trains under extreme circumstances, but even I know they won't actually kill me. I'll just have to scrub underneath my fingernails extra carefully today.
Waiting for Train 6, I pull out my iPhone again, and instantly double tap the Instagram pic of the three of us that Ashley just posted. I may roll my eyes every time I hear them sigh about how happy they are, but seriously, they are some of my closest friends. I do want them to be happy. I just don't want them to be obnoxiously happy. That’s possible, right? I flip over to Facebook to check to see if—
Someone runs into me. A small someone. My phone fumbles in my hands as I'm looking down to see a small boy running down the platform and my phone is going sideways and I'm going sideways, trying to catch it and then, I'm falling, falling...
Wham!
The breath is knocked out of me and I'm staring up at the concrete ceiling, trying to figure out what just happened. Where...
I scramble to my feet, moving awkwardly because I hurt so bad but I didn't seem to have anything broken, so that was a good sign, right?
Except...as I shove my phone back into my Coach purse, I realize—I'm on the fucking train tracks. And the platform is, like, waaayyyy tall. If I stand on my tiptoes, I can just barely see over the edge and onto the platform. A few jumps, a few times of grasping the edge of the platform and pulling, and…
I've got nothing. I never knew that pull-ups would be the difference between life and death.
So here I am, trapped, all because I hate doing pull-ups at the gym.
Oh fuck.
I can hear a train coming.