“That’s the thing though, Jo,” I say, biting my lip as my shoulders droop in defeat. “Iamover him. I mean…I think deep down I knew we weren’t right for each other.”
“I can see how you wanted it to work,” she says. “Opposites attract and all that.”
“Like that! I don’t believe that opposites attract. It doesn’t make sense. There’s no logic in it. No rationality,” I argue. “Logic and rationality are two things I very much believe in. I was a straight-A student, Josie. A science major. A mathlete! I believe in absolutes. There is nothing absolute about a relationship where a guy and a girl are like the repelling ends of two magnets. There’s no reason to believe it could have ever worked out.”
“I don’t know about all that, but I do think you’re right about you and Ben having no future together. Obviously, he needed someone more free-spirited.”
“Which I’m not,” I say as if it’s a good thing.
“Someone who drives with the windows down,” she adds.
“I would never,” I shake my head.
“Someone who pulls clean clothes out of a laundry basket because they never put them away,” she says.
“Exactly!” I point at her.
“Someone fun!”
I stop, and Josie grimaces.
“You know what I mean,” she says, and I sigh.
“I’m not fun,” I pout.
“That’s not true,” she shakes her head as she chews on an ice cube from her glass. “I always have fun with you.”
“You also think that knitting beanies on a Saturday while rewatchingYouon Netflix instead of going out is a wild time,” I point out.
“Listen, Joe Goldberg is a snack even if he does have a fetish for murdering the women he loves,” she argues. “Maybe fun isn’t the right word. You are fun, but you’re not very spontaneous.”
It still feels like an insult.
I am a checklist kind of girl.
A never hit snooze kind of girl.
A straight hair kind of girl.
Spontaneity has never been a part of my personality at all, which is why the abrupt end to my relationship with Ben stung so much.
I thought he found my introverted, bookish nature endearing. But all along he was craving adventure and unpredictability.
He found it almost instantaneously when we broke up.
He and his fiancée had their first date planned before I had my suitcase packed.
In my defense, there is a right way and a wrong way to pack a suitcase, and it’s not something a sane person should ever do in haste.
But I digress.
“You’re right,” I say with a persecuted sigh.
“All I’m saying is maybe if you did something a little wild, you’d feel better. Prove that you can stray a little from your bulleted agenda. Not for his sake, but for yours. Maybe you need to get laid.”
I nearly choke on my water at that. “That is such a cliché thing to say to a friend going through a breakup,” I half laugh, half cough.
“It’s cliché because it works,” she says.
