Our Way

Brooke and Jolie exchange looks. “All right… then put it this way: would you invite a guy over with Nathan there… in his boxer shorts, sleeping in your bed?”

“Absolutely not.” I wince. I imagine Nathan strangling some poor man for interrupting his time with me.

“But when Nathan wants to have sex with someone, he has his apartment to go to,” Jolie continues. “He has an out, Eliza. You don’t. Why can’t you see it? One day, he’s going to meet someone special and stay at his apartment with him, and he’ll never come back. Where will that leave y

ou?”

I imagine what a horrible day that would be.

Maybe the girls are onto something here. This isn’t a normal set up between him and me. The boundaries between us are blurred. As much as I adore Nathan, perhaps by spending so much time with him, I’m holding myself back from meeting someone in my future.

Shit.

If I do want to meet someone and eventually have kids, I need to do something different to what I’m doing now.

I am in a rut.

Happy, but stagnant just the same.

Brooke and Jolie raise their eyebrows. “So, you do agree that what we’re doing isn’t working?”

“I do,” I concede. “You’re right, something has to change or we’re going to end up single forever.”

“So, are we in?” Jolie asks.

“One date?” I ask. “That’s it? No strings?”

“A proper date. Sit down meal and all the trimmings. At least four hours. A kiss at the end of it,” Jolie replies.

“Can we leave the boys out of it and make it an exotic girls weekend away instead?” I ask. “I don’t want them to know about this.” Nathan will never let me live it down if he finds out.

“Of course.” Brooke smiles. “This is just the motivation I needed to wear my cute red dress tonight.”

“We start tonight?” I gasp.

“No time like the present.” Brooke clinks her wine glass against ours. “To operation rut-breaker.”

“Whoever gets the first date gets to pick where we go for our weekend away,” Jolie says.

“That’s going to be me.” I smile, and for the first time in a long time, excitement sweeps through me.

What can I wear tonight? I want to pick where we’re going away so I need to win this bet. I want to look sexy as fuck.

“You know what?” Jolie says. “I’m going to the bar right now and I’m going to talk to someone.”

“You are?” I frown in surprise.

“Yep, fuck this. I’m going to make conversation and everything.”

We all giggle, and she looks around as she searches for her unsuspecting target. “See that guy over there?”

We look over to see a cute guy sitting at the bar alone. “Yeah.”

“I’m going to go talk to him.”

“What, now?” I frown.

“Right now.”