“Hi, you. How are things? It feels like I haven’t spoken to you in forever,” she says cheerfully.
“Well, it’s only been two days since we spoke, but I haven’tseenyou in forever because you’ve been too busy with that hunk of a man you married.”
She giggles. “He is a hunk, isn’t he?” She muses. I can picture her lying on the sofa with her feet draped over the back. It’s how she used to lie on my sofa and talk to her brother on the phone whenever she was visiting me.
She married a Bratva king. Emmanuil Belyayev.
A man as powerful as her brother. Everything in the mafia serves some kind of purpose, and her marriage to that man created an alliance between her family and his.
One her father is pissed off about.
But I also happen to know that this particular marriage was much more than an alliance. And she’s happy, so freaking happy it makes me want to puke. I smile at myself. Maybe I’m just jealous because I also want that crazy, wild kind of passion.
I’m happy she still talks to me about all of it. I want to be there for her—even if I don’t fully understand the life she lives, I listen and support her in any way I can.
And she does the same for me.
“So…stop stalling and tell me everything,” she demands, and I roll my eyes. She messaged me this morning asking for a full report of how my date went last night. I just haven’t had a chance to reply yet.
“Bleh,” I huff.
“Oh no. Another bleh.” She sighs. “Why? Did he chew too loudly?” she teases me.
“I am notthatdifficult, you know. I just didn’t feel the need to carry on entertaining the idea of him.”
“Okay, but you’ve said that about literally every single date you’ve been on in the past few years,” Jess scolds me. “You can’t dismiss them fifteen minutes after meeting them."
“I can, actually,” I laugh.
I can feel her rolling her eyes at me.
I sit on the sofa with my feet curled beneath me, sipping my tea while she proceeds to lecture me.
“Georgie, firstly, you seem to avoid dating altogether, and then when you do finally go on a date, you start messaging me ten minutes in and telling me you want to leave already.”
“Okay, but I’ve been busy with my degree.”
“Other people in college find time to be in relationships.”
“Well, maybe that’s why I’m going to do better than they are,” I argue.
We’ve had this conversation before.
I’ve never told her the real reason why I hate dating.
Jess sighs loudly on the other end of the phone. “Well, seeing as you’ve got no juicy stories, I’ll just talk about myself,” she laughs. “My brother still won’t let me go to Phoenix. He’s such a pain in the butt. Do you want to march over to his place and kick him in the shin for me?”
My body goes tense.
There it is.
The reason I can’t date.
Kristopher.
The man whom I compare everyone to, every single date I’ve been on since we kissed. And every single guy ends up severely lacking.
“Hello, earth to Georgie. Did the line go dead?” A weird sound comes through the phone as though she’s waving it around.
