Correction, I tell myself. He didn’t embarrass you. Your fantasies about him make you ashamed. Not the same thing.
Sometime later on, I’ll find Jonah among the other partygoers. I’ll say something simple and stupid. Basic party chatter. Great song, huh? That kind of thing. Then I’ll thank him again, and it won’t be weird anymore. After that I can walk away from this man for good.
Right now, though, I need to catch my breath.
Shay gets me sangria and grabs herself a ginger ale, and starts going on about how she wants to paint the nursery green, but Arturo prefers yellow. I’m excited about the baby and everything, but there’s only so much nursery talk I can take. So I basically zone out, saying “Yeah” and “Of course” whenever she pauses for a moment.
Almost against my will, I steal glances across the room at Jonah Marks.
He’s even more attractive than I remembered. Not beautiful, or gorgeous—any of the adjectives that would apply to a Ralph Lauren model or a boy-band star. Jonah’s features are too rugged for that. Too stark. He looks like the work of a sculptor who didn’t believe in polishing rough edges, who wanted you to see exactly where the chisel had struck. In some ways, he’s aggressively masculine: the dark red henley he’s wearing is tight enough to reveal the powerful muscles of his arms. But in others, Jonah looks strangely vulnerable. His waist is narrow, and his neck is longer than most men’s. His whole body looks as though someone took the macho ideal of a masculine form and brought it almost to the breaking point. Strong—and yet strained, beneath the surface.
This is a man who could be broken, I think. But he’d be more likely to break you first.
Jonah moves deeper into the crowd, until I can’t see him any longer. At first I wonder if I could extricate myself from Shay’s nursery-decoration talk to find him; then I wonder why I feel like I need to do that this second.
Maybe I shouldn’t seek Jonah out at all, if he shakes me up like this. Besides, what would I say? It was incredibly nice of you to help me out the other night. Remember how I treated you like you were probably a serial killer? Yeah, guys love that.
Then distraction arrives, in the form of Geordie Hilton, aka my ex-boyfriend.
“Vivienne!” Geordie’s smile is absolutely genuine. In his eyes there’s only the slightest flicker of doubt. He’s glad to see me, but he’s not sure I’ll feel the same.
To my surprise, I do. “Hey, you. Come here.”
We hug each other, the one-armed friendly hug that clearly says We’re not fucking anymore. I’m aware of Shay studying us, and other people too; the first meeting of the exes is always an attention-getter. Right now they’re looking at us half in relief (no fight), half in disappointment (no fight?). Shay sidles away, giving us as much space as this crowded party allows.
He says, “Did you have a good summer? You never post to Facebook, you know.” Geordie is the kind of hyper-extrovert who considers avoiding social media nearly criminal.
“I had a quiet summer, which is exactly what I needed. You?”
“Brilliant.” Geordie lived in Inverness until he was sixteen, and occasionally his accent and slang give him away. “The internship went great. Seriously, beyond my wildest expectations. We won amnesty for four immigrants in danger of exportation to home countries where they’d have been killed, either for political protests or sexual orientation. Four in three months! The wheels of justice rarely spin so fast.”
Most young attorneys who return to law school for an LLM do it to make even more money; Geordie’s getting his LLM so he can better help people. I don’t regret breaking up with him, but it’s good to be reminded of what I liked about the guy in the first place.
Plenty of the eyes watching us are female. More than one woman at this party hopes to make sure I’m out of the picture with Geordie, so she’ll have a shot at climbing into the frame. He’s handsome—okay, adorable—with floppy brown hair, puppy-dog eyes, and a smile that can be warm, or sly, or both at once. With his white oxford shirt unbuttoned at the neck, sleeves rolled up, his frame looks less skinny, more wiry. He’s the ideal hero of a romantic comedy.
But my life isn’t a rom-com, and it never will be. That ship sailed long before Geordie came along.
Besides, standing within arm’s length of Geordie does less for me than just glancing across the room at Jonah Marks.
Again I look toward the corner where I saw Jonah last, but he’s not there. Did he leave the party already?
If he did, I ought to feel relieved. I don’t.