“I met a guy.”
I think Thad might have a heart attack. “No. No. No. You don’t meet guys. My little cousin/sister doesn’t meet a guy, she gets swept off of her feet by a prince. What happened?” He opens his car door and gets into the driver’s seat.
Now I don’t want to say anything, because he’s right. He’s always wanted me to date the best man on Earth.
“Nothing will come of it,” I add quickly. “It was ... just for a moment. A mistake, really.”
“Okay, so tell me about him. What’s his name, where does he work? How did you meet? If you drop a bomb, I need all the deets.”
“I got upgraded to first class and he sat next to me. We flirted and um ... stuff.” I know I sound like a loopy teen. I look at him and bite my lip and I know I’m about to get ripped to pieces. “All I have is a name.”
I shouldn’t have said anything.
“Oh, no, no, no. Put my hotspot on,” he hands me his phone. “And you surf while I drive, I need to know what the hell is going on here.” He’s suddenly very serious, though he is still sort of joking.
“Marcel Dubois,” I say, and I’ve actually been too afraid to look him up because I sort of don’t want to know who he is in real life. I’m fairly certain he’s going to be someone I’m either going to pine for or despise.
“Okay, start surfin’” Thad waves at me and I press ‘search’ after typing his name into Google.
I get thousands of results and my stomach drops. I think I might actually pass out. His name brings up page after page and an AI summary of one of the world’s richest and most elusive bachelors.
“Ugh,” I huff.
“What, what is it? Serial killer? Married? What did you find?” Thad is way too invested in this.
“Multi-billionaire real estate investor, ruthless, notorious for bulldozing communities without a second thought. Elusive, cold, and cruel,” I say in a monotone because that is not the man I met on my first class flight; the one and only I’ll ever take.
Fuck, really? Is Marcel a monster?
Thad shakes his head and groans. “You dodged a bullet letting that POS go. He’s a shark.”
The words sting even though I know he’s right. I feel dirty and slutty, like a girl who threw herself at a stranger and let him take her virginity like a needy little tramp. I’m now feeling completely down.
“Don’t worry about it, Jules. You’ll meet an amazing guy one day and when you do, you are going to make the prettiest little babies with him.”
I can’t believe Thad sometimes. “Oh my gosh, maybe I don’t even want children.” Of course Thad knows this is a lie.
“Please, you’re you. And don’t feel too bad, I met a guy on a train to Baltimore once ... let’s just say there was a lot more steam in the observation car than the train’s engine.” He gave me a Devilish glance.
“You did it in public?” Oh my gosh, I don’t feel so bad now.
“I mean it was like three in the morning, but um ... yeah. He had a sleeper car; it was cramped as fuck. We did it fast and dirty. It was fun, but when he got off the train we parted ways and voila, fun time over.
“It’s a rite of passage. Welcome to the world, Jules. Did y’all join the mile high club?”
I don’t feel like I want to say much more at this point because I’m too disappointed in myself. “He’s a card-carrying member,” I say, trying to play it off.
“Oh I bet he is.” He snarks like a grandma in church.
The drive to Rhode Island, on slick roads is a little treacherous so Thad cranks up the music and we car-dance the rest of the way. We sing every song we know at the top of our lungs, very off-key, laughing so hard we’re both out of breath. For two hours, I forget Marcel Dubois exists. Gran greets us with warm hugs and the smell of fresh-baked cookies. She has a dinner of chicken and dumplings ready and has a portion set out for me of dumplings and creamy vegetable soup made with coconut milk. Though I’ve only been a vegan for three years, I’ve always been lactose intolerant and have never liked meat. I just didn’t enjoy the taste and the fact that we had to kill animals to have a meal.
I take my suitcase upstairs into the attic which was my childhood bedroom with pink walls and huge purple flowers painted everywhere—even on the slanted ceiling. At the far end of the room is the window I used to climb out of to the roof. Though it’s freezing, I crawl out of the window to see the nightsky spread above me with stars peeking through the storm clouds.
“Dear whoever is out there,” I start as I always have. “Please, ugh … oh, I don’t know. I guess, please help me forget him. And maybe while you’re at it, teach the Grinch how to be nice and care about people, even if it’s never going to be me. I mean he cared about me on the plane. He’s got it in him,” I say as I hear Gran downstairs.
“Juliet, dinner.”
“Oh, and whoever ... please don’t let me be pregnant, that would be, ugh ... that would be really horrible. I guess.”
