What Lovers Do

“Sophie, it’s time to let Hercules free. Little button noses like you don’t need to live with snakes.”

I’m a magnet for charming men who just … flip. Unravel. Lose their way. I honestly don’t know what to call it. I’ve been burned, taken to the cleaners, hoodwinked, duped … more times than I care to admit.

I’m in love with the idea of love.

After my last boyfriend stole my purse and my car, I promised my family and friends that I would be more discerning. I would not rush into my next relationship. I would not open my door to the next sexy guy who needed to “crash at my place for a few nights.”

And when I let Jimmy move in with me, and my family and friends wanted to bitch slap me fifty times, I promised … promised he was different.

Fuck my life.

He’s not different.

“What do you mean?” Jimmy furrows his brow.

Yeah, he was definitely smarter when I met him. The mind is not exempt from the “If You Don’t Use It, You Lose It” law. Jimmy is decomposing in my house, but he’s not actually dead. He needs more than a bedding of newspapers, a dish of water, and an endless supply of guppies.

I might have to kill him, put him down. It’s the humane thing to do.

Where’d I set that butcher knife?

“You need to get a job. And I fear you won’t do that if I let you keep living here with me. If I keep paying for your food. Your clothes. Your condoms.”

“Our condoms, babe. Really, they’re more for you than me. I don’t like the damn things. It never feels as good.”

I nod slowly. “Our condoms …” I whisper, trailing off with my thoughts as I struggle to remember what was going through my mind when I decided he was magically different than the others. Really, where will I dispose of his body if he doesn’t move out soon?

“It’s going to be pretty hard for me to move out if I don’t have a job. And right now I can’t find anything that pays better than my current unemployment check which I need because we didn’t clear that much after selling my mom’s house. And you know that assisted living facility is stupid expensive.”

We are not married. Why is this my problem?

“Jimmy, I’m breaking up with you.” I adjust my pink-framed glasses on my nose and tip my chin up. A direct and confident approach is best. Rip off the Band-Aid.

“Bye, Hercules. You’ll be fine. You no longer need me.”

His greasy head and unshaven face jut backward, blue eyes narrowed. “What? No. I don’t accept your breakup proposal.”

Again, I mentally thumb back through the pages of my life and look for the scene where I suggested Jimmy move in with me. Was I intoxicated? Where was the intervention?

Oh, that’s right … I didn’t tell anyone until it was too late. And that’s when I swore on a stack of Bibles and my grandparents’ graves that Jimmy was different. He took care of his mom. He would get back on his feet quickly. Find a place of his own. Go back to school and make something of himself.

We would marry.

Have a few kids.

And my dreamy love story would be a big fat “I told you so” to the naysayers who had lost all faith in my judgment.

It bears repeating … fuck my life.

“Breakup proposal?” I chuckle. “I don’t even know what that is. It’s not a suggestion. It’s a statement. A declaration. I just broke up with you. Now you move out. Your acceptance, or lack thereof, doesn’t change reality. I’m—” I catch my words and swallow them back down. I was about to say, “I’m sorry” again, but why? I didn’t screw up and get myself fired. I didn’t lose every ounce of ambition because someone offered me shelter and an unemployment check.

He brushes past me and plops his ass onto the sofa in the exact same spot it’s been residing for the past two months. There’s an actual divot, the outline of his ass. I’m going to need a new sofa after he moves out of here.

“Why don’t you wait until you’re done with your next cycle, and we’ll revisit this conversation?”

Cersei, my poodle, jumps up next to him.

“My cycle? Cycle of what?”

Jimmy turns on the TV and flips the channel, making me dizzy with his incessant surfing. “Your period.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

He lands on some sci-fi show. “You start in two days. You’re hormonal and impulsive. I don’t want you to regret the things you say today that are clearly just your hormones talking.”

I plant myself between him and the television. “You keep track of my cycle?”

He lifts one shoulder in a shrug just before leaning to the far right to see past me. “Of course.”