Also, I will allow the statement that you were cute on a horse. Once upon a (very long) time.
PS:
Please do not touch my things again (pens, sticky notes, SUITCASE, etc.).
PPS:
It’s Ethan, not Nathan. And actually, we had wild sex all night. He had to leave for an emergency.
—M
So I lied. It wasn’t that much of a big deal. Only in Manhattan was it expected that anyone twenty-two and above should have sex after three dates. In that sense, I missed Pennsylvania.
I was going to do Chase this solid, give him his ring back, and say goodbye.
This time for good.
No more negotiations.
No more bargains.
No more heartache.
I met Ethan at a new Italian restaurant the same evening. He was twenty minutes late. For all Chase’s faults (and there were many; I could write a War and Peace–length book about all of them), he valued people’s time and never left me hanging. He wasn’t late, and on the rare times he was, he always texted with a reasonable explanation.
Chase also isn’t saving children for a living, I scolded myself inwardly. Cut a guy some slack.
I spent the time waiting reading an article about a woman who had made a dress for her upcoming wedding out of toilet paper and recycled material because she didn’t have the money to buy or rent anything fancy. I found her Facebook page, wrote her a message, and asked her for her address and dress size. I had a few dresses lying around my apartment from when I’d been a design student I could get rid of, and my Martyr Maddie instincts kicked in. I also shot Layla a quick message thanking her for letting Chase in this morning and forwarded her a picture of the Italian restaurant I was in, with the caption Maybe the perfect moment will be tonight? along with a winking emoji. It wasn’t necessarily a possibility I was excited about, but I tried to hype myself up for it. Layla’s response came after seconds.
Layla: Nothing more romantic than garlic bread and a man who is twenty minutes late.
Maddie: Be happy for me.
Layla: I’m being honest with you. That’s so much more important in a good friend.
Maddie: He could be the one.
Layla: Keeping my fingers crossed for you. But honey, don’t date him just because you’re afraid of the Chases of the world.
It bothered me that Chase and Layla were singing the same tune, but I shoved this worry to the bottom drawer of my brain.
Ethan arrived disheveled and a little sweaty, his hair sticking up everywhere. He wore casual clothes—a pair of jeans and a faded tee—not his usual doctor clothes. He kissed me on the cheek, his breath smelling uncharacteristically sweet, and took a seat in front of me, patting himself like he’d forgotten something.
“Well? How was it?” He cut straight to the Chase. Literally. He’d come to say hi to me the previous night, but that was just to lend me a book I’d pretended I wanted to read about managing infectious diseases in preschools. It occurred to me that I was making the same mistake I had with Chase back when we were dating. I was pretending to be someone who wasn’t completely me to try to appear more appealing to the person I was dating. It wasn’t so much that I was a completely different person, but I rounded the edges a little.
What Chase had told me after we’d gotten back from the Hamptons had struck a chord with me this morning, when I’d realized I had no intention or will to read a medical book just to make Ethan happy. Chase felt fooled, and as much as I wasn’t #TeamChase, I could still see where he was coming from. I decided to be completely honest with Ethan to avoid that. To show my absolute true self.
“What, the Hamptons?” I picked up my water and chugged it down to buy time. “It was understandably weird. I got trashed at the family dinner. Chase slept on the floor. We fought every waking moment his family wasn’t watching. Overall, we looked more on the brink of a bitter divorce than a blissful engagement.”
Ethan grabbed a breadstick from a basket and nibbled at it as he cooed, “Poor baby.”
“And then his cousin-brother—I’m not sure what they are to each other; biologically they are cousins, but they were raised as brothers—invited us . . . no, more like challenged us to go to dinner at his