Dumping Billy Read Free Page A

she regarded her work as a kind of vocation. It was one thing she never made light of, and she often found it hard to leave her work behind at the end of the day. But tonight she had to, to help Bina prepare for her big night and then, later, to introduce Michael to Elliot and Brice at dinner.
    She waited just inside Elliot’s classroom as he chucked the offending lunch sack in a bin and started messing about in his untidy desk.
    “You know, it’s very hard not to keep thinking about Brian. He’s so adorable, and has had a really difficult time. And I think the disappointment when his magic doesn’t work, which of course it won’t, could cause real problems later.” Kate sighed. “Boys are just so much more fragile than girls.”
    “Tell me about it.” Elliot sighed deeply, too. “I’m still getting over the time Phyllis Bellusico told me I smelled.”
    “Did you?” Kate asked, ready to be either his straight man or his audience. She was used to Elliot’s shticks. Since college they had been amusing each other with dark humor from their childhoods.
    “Well, yes,” Elliot admitted reluctantly, “but I smelled
good.
I should have. I’d dumped an entire bottle of my mother’s White Shoulders into my underpants.”
    “Pee-yuw,” Kate said, imitating any one of her school “clients.” “Maybe Brian has a point. I’d have to agree with Phyllis. And this happened . . . ?”
    “In third grade, but with a little more therapy and Brice’s love and support, I expect to get over it in the next decade.”
    Kate loved it when Elliot got going. She had to laugh. “Boys. They always break the thing they love.”
    “Not if they can kill it,” Elliot replied bitterly. He had been tormented by kids in school. After a moment he said, “I have to go to Dean and DeLuca to get rice for our dinner tonight. Brice is making his world-famous risotto. You can tell Michael it’s your recipe. The way to a man’s heart . . .”
    Kate looked up with a suspicious glance. “Yeah, and please be on your best behavior. Elliot,” she began, “can’t you just—”
    “No,” Elliot retorted, “I can’t just anything.” He walked over to her and gave her a quick hug. “I don’t want to discourage or criticize you. I just want to make sure you know what you’re doing.”
    “Oh, God! Who knows what they’re doing when they try to find a soul mate?”
    “Well, you have a point there. But I don’t want you to be hurt again, Kate.” He paused.
    Kate knew where he was going, and she didn’t want him to. Her last entanglement had ended so badly that she didn’t know how she would have gotten through it without Elliot. She had invested a lot of time and emotion in Steven Kaplan, all of it worse than wasted. It had left her more suspicious and distrusting of men than she liked to admit. One of the good things about Michael was that she could trust him completely. He might not have Steven’s banter and easy charm, but he had substance and achievement and sincerity. At least she thought so.
    “That’s why you’re meeting Michael.”
    “Ever since Steven, I get to meet your
new
boyfriends. I’d like you to just find the right one and make him an
old
boyfriend.”
    “He’s thirty-four. Old enough?”
    Elliot rolled his eyes. “I worry about you.”
    Kate looked directly at Elliot. “This one is different. He’s got his doctorate in anthropology, and he’s very promising.”
    “Promising what? You always think they’re different, and you always think they’re promising, until they bore you, and then—”
    “Oh, stop,” Kate interrupted. “I know: I won’t pick losers on account of my father, and I won’t pick winners on account of my father. Yadda, yadda, yadda.”
    “Don’t leave out your fear of commitment, yadda.”
    “I’ll have you committed if you bring that up one more time. How come for thirty-one years you’re allowed to be a gay bachelor—in both respects of the phrase—and then one day you