1
CELEBRATING
Ovulatingin your thirties is violent, feral, and unfortunate when you don’t have a partner to alleviate the unbelievable ache of wanting to get fucked within an inch of your life.
Not that I really know what that feels like anymore.
I sigh, glancing down at my manicured nails wrapped around a martini glass. I don’t even have a tan line where my wedding ring used to be anymore.
My plan wasn’t to be thirty-three, divorced, and trying to figure out what I wanted in life. But here I am, at my own divorce party with my two best friends, who happen to also be my co-workers, and truly the only two people I can count on in the world.
This bar is the hottest new place in Tampa. It’s set right outside of a marina. A row of party boats lightly rock in the late night breeze off the bay. If it wasn’t for the music and other bar-goers talking over one another, it would be peaceful, serene even.
The place is packed, my best friends are here, but I still feel alone.
I don’t want a relationship, far from it. I know I’ll never marry someone again, and truthfully, I’m rather disgusted that I both hate men currently and still want to mount one so desperately right now.
Savannah bumps my shoulder, nudging me out of my thoughts, and making me spill a bit of my drink over my knuckles in the process.
“Come on, Kate, we’re celebrating. You’re finally free from that tool,” she says, holding up her own martini.
I give her a smile and take a sip of my drink.
“Is celebrating the right word?” Chelsea asks, her dark brows furrowed.
These two women are my everything. All three of us met at our teaching jobs at the University of Tampa. The one major thing we had in common was too much education and still, apparently, too little sense.
“‘Celebrate’ is definitely the right word. I mean, hell, when was the last time you came out with us, Kate?” Savannah asks.
I have to think long and hard about the last time we did something together and I’m filled with guilt. I’ve been a shitty friend, too caught up in my own failing marriage to do much of anything besides mope and mourn.
“I’m sorry?—”
“Hey. I didn’t say that to guilt trip you. We just missed you is all,” Savannah says, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and squeezing.
“You deserve better,” Chelsea says.
I take another sip of my drink, letting the vodka coat my throat. I know I deserved better than what Will did to me, but it still hurt. We’d been together since sophomore year of high school. He was all I knew, the only man I’d ever slept with. While he was with his mistress turned fiancée and their newborn, here I was, at thirty-three, figuring out what I was going to do next.
I had a job, a decent one, though I don’t need the money. I’d gotten mostly everything in the divorce since it was my money that paid for everything.
There was this tangible sadness over this idea that I missed out on so much, that I hadn’t truly lived. I gave all my best years to a man who stopped seeing me at some point, and I embarrassingly held on to him for dear life, even though he didn't want to be kept—at least not by me. In retrospect, I didn’t want to be kept either, I just don’t think I knew that at the time. I’m still trying to figure out what it is that I want.
“Kate,” Chelsea says, reeling me out of my thoughts as she grabs both sides of my face. She’s never been one to mince words and she doesn’t now. “You gave too many years to that man for him to do what he did to you. You two haven’t lived together for a year now; the divorce is final. You deserve to live it up, do all the things you wanted to for years but never did because you thought you had to be this perfect little wife. It’s time to live for you. I mean, that’s what you want right? You don’t still have feelings for him do you?”
I look into her deep brown eyes. My beautiful friend, who only has my best interests at heart and knows me better than everyone else.
“I’m not still in love with him. In fact, I think I hate him. I’m just not sure what I want,” I say, though I have some ideas.
Ideas I never even shared the true depths of with the man I was with for nearly eighteen years. Those ideas were hidden away in the dark for moments when I was alone with my phone and the web browser in incognito mode. I didn’t want to date, but I wanted to have fun.
Fun that I’ve denied myself for far too long.
“At least we’re all in agreement on that,” Savannah says, holding up her glass, and Chelsea and I follow. “To Will, we wishyou well…in hell,” she says cackling and we clink our glasses together.
“Alright, so are you wanting to date again?” Chelsea asks and I crinkle my nose. “Okay, no dating. What about some fun?”
“Isn’t it weird for me to be in my thirties trolling for one-night stands?”
