The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Men I've Dated by Shane Bolks

Author:Shane Bolks [Shane Bolks]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061744495
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2006-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Despite the injuries my fitness-challenged body sustained at the gym, I don’t crawl into bed for a few hours of much-needed recovery time when I get home. Hunter is coming over tomorrow and I’m full of nervous energy, so I do the logical thing—clean my apartment. With the focus of a Jedi Knight and the velocity of the Millennium Falcon zipping through the galaxy at light speed, I scrub, scour, and swab every corner and crevice (even the baseboards!).

Three hours later, when I plop on the couch and flip on the TV, hoping to catch an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, I still haven’t washed away the guilt I feel over not helping Stormy tomorrow.

TNG isn’t on. Perfect. I’ve got access to two hundred channels, and TNG isn’t on even one of them. Five stations are playing reruns of Full House, but I don’t think that’s going to help. I need Whoopi Goldberg and her words of wisdom—dispensed with synthetic alcohol and dry wit in The Enterprise’s Ten-Forward. A rerun of Buffy the Vampire Slayer flashes on the screen, so I settle for that instead. Buffy is not as wise as Guinan, Whoopi’s TNG character, but she’ll do. So while Buffy and Angel work out their dating dilemmas—arguably a bit more complicated than mine—I obsess about Sunday with Hunter versus Sunday with Sunshine and the gang.

I am a dreadful person for neglecting my family. I should make up with Stormy, not blow her off. Surely she’d excuse me for delaying our reconciliation if she knew the reason.

I sigh. No, she wouldn’t. She’d never put a man before her friends or family. I’m a bad, bad person.

Buffy is just about to kick the butt of a nasty night crawler when the phone rings. I jump at the noise, sending my bowl of popcorn airborne. So much for my thorough vacuum job. Now I’ll have to haul out the monster Oreck again, and won’t Mrs. Wobowski below me just love hearing that at quarter to nine in the evening.

Swearing and gathering as much stray popcorn as I can, I glance at the caller ID. Then I swear again because the number on the screen is Tom’s cell.

Blast it! I’d blissfully forgotten about Tom for the past oh, sixteen or twenty-four hours, and I’m not ready to be reminded. I may never be ready to be reminded. The phone rings for the third time, and I glare at it. Maybe this is it. Maybe I need to quit procrastinating, pick up the phone, and just get it over with.

I drop the loose kernels of popcorn clutched in my fists and grab the receiver before the answering machine can pick up. “Hello?” I say, not bothering to keep the annoyance from my voice.

“Rory? Where are you?”

I frown. Isn’t that obvious? “You’re calling me, Tom. Clearly I’m at home.” A sense of determination settles over me.

“Oh-kay,” he says, drawing the word out. “I guess the question is why. I thought we had plans.

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