The Scenic Route Read Free

typed in a headline for a new blog post: “Mandy’s Manstrosity #37.”
    Then she hesitated. Was Tad really a “manstrosity”? There was no doubt about #36 (the astrophysicist with the fidelity of a neutron), but Tad was more clueless than cavalier. She had known from the start that she had no business dating a musician. Especially one who was younger than she. He was only twenty-five, which in musician years was like thirteen.
    She’d been surprised when Tad contacted her on OkCupid. She hadn’t responded to his first two e-mail messages, despite the allure of the pale-skinned boy with overgrown sideburns. (He appealed to the Team Edward girl inside her, not that she’d ever admit to having seen a
Twilight
movie.) He told her he was attracted to older women, which had made her feel like a cougar, and she was too young to be a cougar. At least she hoped she was. She had canceled on him the first two times they were supposed to meet. Yet he had persevered, sending her virtual flowers to celebrate Latvia’s Independence Day. He was goofy, and he was sweet. Disarmingly so.
    Now she was mooning over him like some hormonal undergrad. Even though he had been the one pursuing her. It was so unfair. Maybe she had played too hard to get. Or maybe he only wanted her when she wasn’t interested. Or maybe she shouldn’t have had sex with him on the first date.
    Anastasia sashayed back over to the male posse, and Dimitri moved in on her again. She hissed and screamed, which must have confused him, given that she had chosen to come back and proffer her ripe parts in his face. Mandy wondered, How was a male chimp supposed to know when “no” really meant no? She was typing the query into her notes file when her cell phone rang. It was Tad. It was insulting that he had waited until after ten. And it was stupid, because there was no way she was answering. Well, not until the fourth ring.
    â€œWhat’s up?” she asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
    â€œNot much,” he said, doing nonchalant much better than she could ever aspire to. “I was going to call you earlier,” he said, “but I fell asleep while studying.”
    She tried not to be offended. She tried to focus on the positive: he was studying. Tad was pursuing a master’s in trumpet performance, which seemed a rather impractical degree. But people in monkey houses shouldn’t throw stones.
    â€œHow’s work?” he asked.
    â€œJust watching monkey porn,” she quipped. She wanted to shoot herself.
    â€œMe too,” he snickered. Now she wanted to shoot him. No, she wanted to kiss him. She wanted to do several things to him that required opposable thumbs.
    Who was she kidding? It didn’t matter what time he called. She couldn’t get his lopsided smile out of her mind. Or his unfairly long eyelashes. She was pining for him. Pining in places she rarely pined. She watched Anastasia and Dimitri bump and grind, noting that Anastasia wasn’t asking Dimitri to make a long-term commitment. She didn’t even seem to like him.
    Mandy decided that there was no point in holding out for more than Tad was willing to offer. If her choice was between a booty call and going home alone to watch an
SNL
rerun, she was going with the booty call. At least for tonight. And if she felt differently tomorrow, well, that’s what therapy was for.
    â€œAre you making progress on your dissertation?” Tad asked.
    No, they weren’t going to chitchat. And they definitely weren’t going to chitchat about a subject that was stressing her out. They were going to pick a time and location, and she was going to type it into her phone calendar, same as a gynecologist appointment. Mandy could handle having sex without a relationship, but she couldn’t handle pretending it was something more if it wasn’t.
    â€œCan’t really talk right now, Tad,” she said. “I’ve got a