Sad Desk Salad by Jessica Grose

Author:Jessica Grose
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins

“Oh, hi,” I say before I can think of something more clever.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” I say, and unfortunately I mean it. I have to admit, he looks amazing. He’s wearing a vintage Wrangler shirt that I bought him three years ago, which hugs his lean, muscular torso. His blond five o’clock shadow gives his face depth that it doesn’t have when he’s clean-shaven. His hair is perfectly mussed. My solar plexus is already jumping, like there are small frogs hopping inside me. Why does he still have this effect on me?

“You look great,” he says. “That outfit looks like something from Soul Train.”

As usual I can’t tell if this is a compliment or an insult. He was smirking when he said it, but he’s always smirking.

“Thanks?” I say. Feeling off-kilter, I quickly add, “I was just going to get a drink,” hoping he’ll take the hint and leave me alone.

To my dismay, he says, “Me, too. I’ll pour one for you.” We walk over to the table and he pours us Jim Beam out of a plastic bottle into two red keg cups. “I don’t think there’s any ice,” he says, handing me one.

“That’s okay,” I tell him.

I take a sip of bourbon. I don’t know what else to say, because I don’t know how to behave. As unsupportive and dickish as Caleb was toward me, there was always a certain electricity coming off his limbs that I can still feel, a certain cockiness that I have to admire. I know that I should just walk away from the booze and from him. But I can’t help it. I don’t know what to think about Peter right now—maybe he’s just as selfish as Caleb is, but he hides it better. Perhaps that’s worse in the end. At least with Caleb, what you see is what you get.

Besides, Caleb would never get on some high horse about my publishing the Rebecca West video. He doesn’t believe in privacy in the first place. I know because one night early on in our relationship the condom broke. I wasn’t that worried about it until three weeks later, when my period was late. I marched, crying, over to a Duane Reade on Seventh Avenue near my apartment and bought the most expensive pregnancy test they had. That was when I was making $10 an hour at Rev, but my theory was—and still is—you don’t skimp on pregnancy tests or tattoo artists. I learned that the hard way.

Caleb held my hand, which I had stuck outside the door of his tiny bathroom, while I took the test (which, thank God, was negative). Two weeks later, I visited him at his studio and saw a digital C print of my discarded pregnancy test on glossy paper. In old-fashioned printer’s-block letters the words ALEX IS NEGATIVE were written at the bottom of the print. I was furious—partly for the invasion of my privacy, and partly for the

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