Catholic Guilt and the Joy of Hating Men - By Regan Wolfrom Page 0,71

not attractive.”

“What is attractive?”

“Smiling and nodding. I’ll tell you random things about my life and my cat and my favourite metal bands, nothing the least bit interesting. And you’ll pretend to like it.” She leaned in and whispered into my ear. “Then you’ll take me back to your place, we’ll have awkward but reasonably enjoyable sex and after that I’ll overstay my welcome by a couple of months.”

“Sounds good,” I said. It did sound good.

And she was pretty spot on about the sex.

Kara and Ashley stayed over for a few days. Ashley left on Sunday night after getting to know Callum well enough to make an informed decision; Kara never really left.

She did leave once, though, to bring over her cat.

After a little prodding, she borrowed my laptop to show me some of her writing. It was like nothing I’d seen before, words both beautiful and sad... it wasn’t pretentious or anything, but it was definitely deeper than I was used to, a story about the past that read as though she’d been there.

All I could say to her was that she had talent; she nodded and smiled, and I could see that my opinion didn’t really matter.

But I was still glad she’d shared it with me.

She gave me a hug and took her purse into the bathroom.

I decided to keep reading, looking for some kind of clue why she seemed as drawn to me as I was to her.

She didn’t come out for over twenty minutes, and when she did she was different, restless but relaxed, and her pupils had shrunk down until they looked like little emeralds shining back at me. She sat down on the couch and smiled at me, like she was having the best day of her life.

I think that was the first time Kara shot heroin at my place. I wasn’t happy about it but I didn’t want to send her away. She was already the best thing that had ever happened to me.

It took less than a week for Kara to bring a client home to my place. He came in and she made him take a shower, both of us waiting on the couch and not really talking about what was going on.

I was trying to be open minded.

At first I’d thought it was an attempt to spice up our week-old love life, and I was flattered if a little confused. But after he came out of the shower the guy handed me a wad of cash and Kara told me to wait in the bathroom with her cat, and I tried to figure out if the heroin use would have been the right place to draw the line.

She did let me keep some of the money.

And despite it all, that she was a metalhead heroin addict, that she usually forgot to flush the toilet even after taking a dump, that she often had sex with strangers for money... despite it all, I was pretty sure I was falling in love.

It didn’t feel like the last time, when I’d bought a ring because I thought that’s what you did after two years of living together with someone you didn’t hate most of the time. With Kara it felt like some kind of tropical disease, where I just had to be around her and know everything about her. And hopefully not the kind of disease where my organs are cooked from the inside out.

It’s funny how falling in love can feel so different the second time.

Kara and I were married three weeks later at an eco-resort on Vancouver Island. Callum had suggested we all drive out to Kootenay Lake instead, but I’m pretty sure it was just another attempt for him to show me that house built from leftover bottles of embalming fluid.

He was my best man, which was no surprise after twelve years of friendship and always having each others’ back, close enough to be honest with each other but never quite crossing the line into a devil’s threesome. I don’t think there’s anything we wouldn’t do for one another; when you find a friend like that you keep him no matter what.

Kara made Ashley maid of honor with a little less ceremony, and I had the feeling that her friend was more a placeholder than anything else. But it gave Callum and Ashley the chance for a second regrettable fling together and saved us from buying them thank you gifts.

Kara let me stick with the ring I already had from before,