Love the One You're With Read Free Page B

bagel. It is tasteless—only texture—but I keep chewing and swallowing, remembering to sip my coffee along the way. I do not allow myself another glance in the mirror. I will not apply a fresh coat of lip gloss or even check my teeth for food. Let there be a poppy seed wedged between my front teeth. I have nothing to prove to him. And nothing to prove to myself.
    That is my last thought before I see his face through the rain-streaked door of the diner. My heart starts pounding again and my leg bounces up and down. I think how nice it would be to have one of Andy’s beta blockers—harmless pills he takes before court appearances to keep his mouth from getting dry, his voice from shaking. He insists that he’s not really nervous, but that somehow his physical symptoms indicate otherwise. I tell myself that I am not nervous either. My body is simply betraying my head and heart. It happens.
    I watch Leo give his umbrella a quick shake as he glances around the diner, past Annie who is mopping the floor underneath a booth. He doesn’t see me at first, and for some reason, this gives me a vague sense of power.
    But that is gone in an instant when his eyes find mine. He gives me a small, quick smile, then lowers his head and strides toward me. Seconds later, he is standing beside my table, shedding his black leather coat that I remember well. My stomach rises, falls, rises. I am fearful that he will bend down and kiss my cheek. But no, that is not his style. Andy kisses my cheek. Leo never did. True to his old form, he skips niceties and slides into the booth across from me, shaking his head, once, twice. He looks exactly as I remember, but a little older, and somehow bolder and more vivid—his hair darker, his build bulkier, his jaw stronger. A stark contrast to Andy’s fine features, long limbs, light coloring. Andy is easier on the eyes, I think. Andy is easier period . The same way a walk on the beach is easy. A Sunday nap. A round peg in a round hole.
    “Ellen Dempsey,” he finally says, looking into my eyes.
    I couldn’t have scripted a better opening line. I embrace it, staring back into his brown eyes, banded by black rims. “Ellen Graham, ” I announce proudly.
    Leo furrows his brow, as if trying to place my new last name, which he should have been able to instantly trace to Margot, my roommate when we were together. But he can’t seem to make the connection. This should not surprise me. Leo never cared to learn much about my friends—and never cared for Margot at all. The feeling was mutual. After my first big fight with Leo, one that reduced me to a sniveling, Girl, Interrupted– worthy mess, Margot took the only pictures I had of him at the time, a strip of black-and-white candids from a photo booth, and ripped them in a neat line, straight down a row of his foreheads, noses, lips, leaving my grinning faces unscathed.
    “See how much better you look now?” Margot said. “Without that asshole?”
    That’s a friend, I remember thinking, even as I located a roll of tape and carefully put Leo back together again. I thought the same thing about Margot again when Leo and I broke up for good and she bought me a congratulations card and a bottle of Dom Pérignon. I saved the cork, wrapping the strip of photos around it with a rubber band and stowing it in my jewelry box—until Margot discovered it years later when returning a pair of gold hoop earrings she had borrowed from me.
    “What’s this all about?” she said, rolling the cork between her fingers.
    “Um … you got me that champagne,” I said, chagrinned. “After Leo. Remember?”
    “You saved the cork? And these pictures?”
    I stammered that I viewed the cork as a token of my friendship with her, nothing else—although the truth was, I couldn’t bear to part with anything that had anything to do with Leo.
    Margot raised her brows, but dropped the subject, the way she dropped most controversial things. It seemed to be the Southern way. Or at