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CRITICAL PRAISE FOR LYNDA CURNYN’S DEBUT NOVEL, CONFESSIONS OF AN EX-GIRLFRIEND:

“First-time novelist Curnyn pens an easy, breezy first novel that’s part Sex and the City with more heart and part Bridget Jones with less booze.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A diverse cast of engaging, occasionally offbeat characters, the hilarious sayings attributed to them, and a fast-paced style facilitated by Emma’s pithy sound-bite ‘confessions’ add to the fun in a lively Manhattan-set story…”

—Library Journal

“Readers will eagerly turn the pages…”

—Booklist

“Fabulous fun. The perfect antidote for the break-up blues.”

—Sarah Mlynowski, author of Milkrun

“…absolutely hilarious secondary characters. They alone are worth the cover price.”

—Romantic Times

“Lynda Curnyn has written a novel featuring a heroine that most people will enjoy reading about and even sympathize with her intense angst. Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend is part comedy, but mostly a serious, delightful look at people at a painful point in their lives.”

—Bookbrowser.com

“Well written, with catchy dialogue and heartfelt sincerity.”

—Rendezvous

For Alexandra and Samantha

Dream big, little girls!

Engaging Men

Lynda Curnyn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A big thank-you to all who inspired and supported me during the writing of this book:

My family, especially my wise and beautiful mother, who always knows what to say, just when I need to hear it.

My wonderful editor, Joan Marlow Golan, for her insightful editorial expertise, her amazing support and most of all, her TLC.

All the talented people behind Red Dress Ink, especially Margaret Marbury, senior editor extraordinaire and dear friend. Laura Morris, Margie Miller, Tara Kelly and RDI’s own engaging man, Craig Swinwood.

All my wonderful friends, especially Linda Guidi, for always listening (even when I don’t…). Stacey Kamel, for bringing on the laughter. Julie Ann Coney, for that fab photo of me and the facts on adoptive search. Anne Canadeo, for the Tight-Lid Theory that inspired this book, and her sage writing advice. Jennifer Bernstein, Lisa Sklar and Farrin Jacobs, for keeping me from wigging out. Sarah Mlynowski, for always telling me how fabulous I am and for, umm, lending me her boyfriend (it’s not what you think…).

Elizabeth Irene, who told me just what it takes to make it as an actor in this town. Michael Scotto di Carlo (aka Motorcycle) and Katrina Lorne for the cool Web site. Pam Spengler-Jaffee, for sharing her PR savvy, as well as margaritas and the post-book Elton and Billy serenade.

And let us not forget all the ex-boyfriends (you know who you are…) who inadvertently inspired me to write this book, by sheer virtue of the fact that none of them ever actually got around to proposing.

Contents

1 Tight lids and other theories of male behavior.

2 I’m not really a wife, but I play one on TV.

3 Welcome to Brooklyn. Population: Married

4 I just called…to SCREAM…I LOVE YOU!

5 A rose by any other name…might still do the trick.

6 Love means never having to pack an overnight bag.

7 All a girl needs is a little courage—and a hefty credit line.

8 I have seen the future (and it’s gonna cost a bundle).

9 Caution: This jar is not a toy! Please keep out of reach of children.

10 A nose is a nose is a nose….

11 When life gives you lemons, screw the lemonade. You need a real cocktail.

12 Happiness might just be a warm gun.

13 Till death (at 30,000 feet) do us part.

14 I shoulda packed the ruby slippers….

15 I’m in a New York state of…mania.

16 And you thought it was just a common house plant.

17 I’ll take a carat and a half—hold the husband.

18 Love happens. (And there really is nothing you can do about it.)

19 The heart is a hearty muscle (Thank God).

Epilogue

1
Tight lids and other theories of male behavior.

It started with a message on my answering machine.

“Guess who’s getting married?” came a voice I knew all too well.

It was Josh. My ex-boyfriend. Turned someone else’s fiancé. Not that I’d ever wanted to marry Josh, who suffered from an aversion to dental floss. “Did prehistoric man floss?” he would argue. “Is prehistoric man still around?” I argued back. We lasted only six months, then I told him I couldn’t see myself at sixty-five, making sure he took his teeth out at bedtime every night. “Okay, okay. I’ll floss,” he’d replied. But it was too late. The romance was gone.

Now he was getting married. To someone he’d met not three months after we had broken up four years ago. And he wasn’t the first ex-boyfriend to go this route. Randy, the boyfriend before Josh, was whistling “The Wedding March” a mere six weeks after we had tearfully said our goodbyes. Then there was Vincent, my first love—he’d been married for nearly a decade. According to my mother—who lived within shouting distance of his mother in Marine Park, Brooklyn, and never failed to keep me updated—Vincent and his wife were already on their third kid.

One ex gets married, a girl can laugh it off. Two begins a nervous twitter. But three? Three?

A girl starts to take it personally. I mean, what was it about me that didn’t incite men to plunk down large sums of money in the name of eternal love?

“It’s the tight-lid dilemma,” my friend Michelle said when I expressed my despair at sending another man to the altar without me.

“Tight lid?” I asked, awaiting some pearl of wisdom that might turn my world upright again. After all, in the time it had taken me to get a four-year degree in business administration that I no longer made use of, Michelle, who’d grown up three blocks away from me in Marine Park, had gotten a husband, a house and a diamond the size of New Jersey.

“You know the scenario,” she continued. “You struggle for a good while trying to open a jar and the lid won’t budge. But sure enough, the next person you hand that jar to pops the lid off, no problem. I mean, you don’t really think Jennifer Aniston, cute haircut aside, would have landed Brad Pitt without the Gwyneth factor, do you? Then there’s me and Frankie, of course,” she continued, referring to her husband of seven years, whom she had snagged soon after his devastating breakup with Rosanna Cuzio, the prom queen of our high school.

I couldn’t deny the pattern, once Michelle had laid it out so neatly before me. Clearly I had been instrumental in warming Josh, Randy and Vincent up for the next girl to come along and slap with a wedding vow. Gosh, I should have at least been maid of honor for my efforts.

Instead, I was nothing but the ex-girlfriend who might or might not get invited to the wedding, depending on how secure the bride felt about her future husband.

Suddenly I looked at Kirk, my current boyfriend, with new eyes. We had been together a year and eight months, by far the record for me since my three-year stint with Randy. We had become quite a cozy little couple, Kirk and I. I even got party invitations addressed to both of us—that’s how serious everyone thought we were. The question was: Would Kirk be inviting me to his wedding someday or…?

“Kirk…sweetie,” I said, as we lay in bed together that night, a flickering blue screen before us and the prospect of sex lingering like an unasked question in the air.

“Uh-huh,” he said, not removing his gaze from the cop show that apparently had him enraptured.

“Your last girlfriend…Susan?”

“Yeah?” he said, glancing at me with trepidation. Clearly he saw in the making one of those “relationship talks” men dread.

“You guys went out a long time, right? What was it, two years?”

“Three and a half,” he said with a shudder that made me swallow with fear. Apparently I was heading for rough waters.

Still I plunged on. “And you guys never talked, um, about…marriage?”

He laughed. “Are you kidding me? That’s what broke us up. She gave me the old ultimatum—we get married or we’re through.” He snorted. “Needless to say, I chose door number two.”

Aha. Relief filled me and I snuggled closer to Kirk, allowing him to sink back into his vegetative state as the cops on TV slapped cuffs on some unsuspecting first offender.

If Susan was the lid loosener, that could mean only one thing: I could pop this guy wide open. Hell, I could be married within the year.

The next day, I met my best friend, Grace, for a celebratory lunch, which was always an event as Grace, with her high-powered career and high-maintenance boyfriend, barely had time to get together at all anymore. As a concession to her hectic lifestyle, we met at a restaurant two blocks from her office on E. 54th Street and Park Avenue. Of course, Grace didn’t know I was celebrating until I clinked my water glass into hers and said, “Congratulate me. I’m getting married.”

“What?” Grace said, her blue-gray eyes bulging in disbelief. Her gaze immediately fell to the ring finger of my left hand, which, naturally, was bare.

“Not now. But someday.”

She rolled her eyes, sniffed and said with her usual irony, “Congratulations.”

Leave it to Grace to laugh in the face of being thirty-three without a wedding band on her finger. She is the strongest, most independent person I know. Not only does she always manage to keep a killer boyfriend on hand, she has a killer job as a product manager for Roxanne Dubrow Cosmetics. Yes, that Roxanne Dubrow. The one you have to hike all the way to Saks Fifth Avenue for. Grace briefly dated my brother Sonny when we were in junior high, but we didn’t really bond until she saved my life on the playground of Marine Park Junior High. I was about to get my head slammed into the concrete by some giant bully of a girl named Nancy, who seemed determined to hurt me just because I was a good fifty pounds lighter than she was. Grace stepped in, tall and blond and strong, and told Nancy to take a hike. Everyone, even Nancy, was afraid of Grace. I was in awe of her. Even more so when she adopted me as her new best friend, despite the fact that I was in eighth grade and she in ninth. Her posse of ninth-grade girlfriends was not happy to have me tagging along. But Grace wouldn’t have it otherwise.

And here we were, still friends. The only two from the old neighborhood who had escaped unscathed, without marrying some thick-necked thug named Sal and popping out babies on an annual basis. Of course, Grace’s parents had dragged her away from the neighborhood to Long Island when she turned sixteen, hoping suburbia would save her from the cigarettes and boys and bad behavior to which she had taken and in which I couldn’t wait to indulge, myself. But we still spent our summers together. In fact, I felt a bit like a Fresh Air Fund kid, the way my parents shipped me off come June. Then Grace moved into the city right after college, and I followed a year later. She was the sister I’d never had, and my mother had even dubbed her an honorary member of our family.

“Don’t you ever worry, Grace? That you’ll wind up alone?” I asked now, searching her face for some sign of vulnerability.

She shrugged. “A woman in this city can have everything she wants. If she plays her cards right.”

Easy for Grace to say. Tall, voluptuous, with chin-length, tousled blond hair and perfectly sculpted features, she was beautiful. While I…I had always been “little Angie DiFranco”—and still was—five foot four with a head of wavy black hair that defied all styling products, and thighs that threatened to turn into my mother’s any day now. I sighed. It suddenly occurred to me that if I didn’t marry Kirk, I didn’t know what would become of me.

“What about you and Drew?” I asked now, wondering if Grace had been contemplating her current beau as a future husband. “Do you ever think about…you know?”

“Of course,” Grace said. “Every girl thinks about it.”

I felt relieved. At least I wasn’t the only thirtysomething unmarried hysteric. And Grace and Drew had been dating barely a year—at least eight months less than Kirk and I.

“But it’s not everything,” she said with a shrug.

Grace was right, I realized the next day as I headed for work. Marriage wasn’t everything. I had so much going on right now, it was practically a nonissue. I was an actor, and at the moment a working actor, which was really something. Granted my steady gig was Rise and Shine, a children’s exercise program on cable access, but it was good experience in front of a camera, at least according to an agent I had spoken to, who refused to take me on until I had experience outside of the numerous off-off Broadway shows I’d done.

But as I slid into the yellow leotard and baby-blue tights that were my lot as the show’s co-host, I wondered, for about the hundredth time, what, exactly, my résumé would say about me, now that I had spent six months leaping and stretching with a group of six-year-olds.

“Hey, Colin,” I called out to my co-host once I entered the studio, cup of coffee firmly in grasp. One downside of this job was that it meant getting up at five in the morning to make the show’s six o’clock taping. Apparently, it was the only time the station had allotted studio space for the program, which had a solid, albeit small, audience of upper-middle-class parents and the children they hoped to mold, literally.

Colin looked up from the book he was reading, startled, before he broke out in his usual smile. Colin was the only person I knew who could smile at six in the morning. It was his nature to be cheerful, which was why he was such a fabulous host for Rise and Shine. The kids loved him, and in the six months that I had gotten to know him, I loved him, too. He was warm, generous, loving, good with children. Not to mention gorgeous, with softly chiseled features, blue eyes surrounded by thick lashes and short dark hair always cut in the most up-to-date style. Everything a woman could want in a prospective husband. In fact, I might have dated him until he married someone else—if he weren’t gay, that is.

“Whatcha reading?” I said, bending over to see the title of his book.

“Oh, this.” He smiled, looking somewhat embarrassed as he held up a well-thumbed volume of The Challenges of Child-Rearing. “Figured it might help, you know. With the show.”

I laughed at this. “Colin, we just have to keep them fit, not raise them.”

He chuckled. “I know, I know. But you’ve seen how rambunctious they can get.”

I smiled. Colin really took this job on Rise and Shine very seriously.

“You ready?” he said now.

I sighed. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

It still amazed me that I had even landed this gig—up until my audition, I hadn’t exercised a day in my life. Yet, there I was, every weekday morning, cheerfully urging a group of ten sleepy-eyed kids to stretch, jump, run and tone. Lucky for me, my baby-blue tights were thick enough to hide cellulite.

“Positions, everyone,” Rena Jones, our producer, called out with a glare in Colin’s and my direction. Well, mostly my direction. She adored Colin. And tolerated me. Mostly because she was a stickler for timeliness, while I…wasn’t.

Once Colin and I had positioned ourselves in front of the cameras, I put on my required happy face and chimed in with Colin as we gave a three-minute intro designed to inspire a demographic with probably the lowest body-fat ratio of any age group to jump, leap and stretch, in the name of good health. “Good health is all about habits,” Rena would say, whenever anyone—mostly me—alluded to the fact that most six-year-olds weren’t in need of cardiovascular training.

Still, I took a certain satisfaction in the routine, assured that once the music—a strange mixture of circus rhythms and a singer who sounded like the love child of Barney the Dinosaur and Britney Spears—began, my feet would move into the steps of the opening warm-up dance right along with Colin’s. That when we progressed into the series of stretches, squats and leg lifts, my body was not only limber enough to make all the maneuvers, but could jog, jump and shimmer across the floor while I shouted out inspiring words to the ten little tumblers before us. Children, I might add, clearly struggling to keep up under the eye of their parents, who sat on the sidelines, their faces a mixture of parental pride and paralyzing anxiety that their kid would stumble, fall and be torn too early from the six-week segment they had lobbied long and hard to get said child on.

There was also the reassurance that when the clock against the back wall hit the thirty-minute mark, I would be able to heave a silent sigh of relief (which I disguised as a healthy exhale for the sake of my tiny followers), and bow down into a final stretch before leading the happy munchkins in the applause that ended the show.

“Hanging out with Kirk tonight?” Colin asked as we headed to the small dressing area at the back of the studio. I could tell by the way he always asked that question lately that he took a certain satisfaction in the progress of my relationship. His breakup with Tom two months earlier had been hard—Colin was clearly a one-man man—but he evidently took comfort in the fact that there were others in the world out there who were living monogamously-ever-after.

“Of course,” I replied, with all the confidence a girlfriend should have at the stage Kirk and I were at in our relationship.

Later that very night, however, I realized that Kirk was at a different stage.

I was spending the evening at his place, where I spent most nights during the week. Not only because he lived on E. 27th and Third, which was somewhat closer to the studio on W. 54th than my East Village apartment was, but because we liked to spend our every waking moment together—and every sleeping moment, which was often the case, as Kirk had a tendency to nod off early.

Besides, Kirk’s doorman-building one-bedroom was a welcome respite from the cluttered two-bedroom walk-up I shared with Justin, my roommate and other best friend beside Grace. Kirk’s place was an oasis of order, his closet filled with rows of well-pressed button-downs and movie posters lining the walls with precision (yes, we both loved movies, though Kirk had an unsettling predilection for horror flicks while I liked the classics and anything with Mel Gibson). Even his medicine cabinet was a sight to behold, I thought as I scrubbed my teeth before bed that night. The toothpaste was curled up neatly next to a shiny cup containing his brush; his shaving kit (a gift from the ex that I once tried to replace with a packet of Gillettes, but to no avail) nestled sweetly next to a bottle of Chanel for men (from me, thank you very much, which he only spritzed himself with under serious duress). I also kept an antihistamine there—I had a tendency toward congestion at the slightest provocation: pollen, dust mites, mold. With a contented sigh I spit my mouthful of paste—and water—into the shiny white sink, carefully rinsing out the suds to return it to its porcelain perfection, before I returned to the bedroom, where Kirk sprawled on the bed, laptop in hand, studying the screen intently.

“Time to play,” I said, bounding onto the bed in a pair of boxers and a T-shirt (pirated from his bottom left drawer).

“Just give me a minute, sweetie,” he said, glancing up from the screen briefly to flash me a small smile of acknowledgment.

I settled in beside him, sparing a glance at the screen, which was covered in a series of incomprehensible codes, and picked up the book I kept on Kirk’s bedside table, Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and Its Double. Turning to page five, the precise place I had been the last six times I had attempted to immerse myself, I started to read. Well, not exactly read,—my gaze was too busy roaming over to Kirk’s profile.

He had the most beautiful brow line I had ever seen. Almost jet-black against creamy skin and normally smooth, though right now it was furrowed over his gray eyes as they studied the screen, almost without blinking. One of the things I had admired from the start about Kirk was his ability to concentrate against any odds. I didn’t really understand it, frankly, since I inevitably threw away any thoughts of intelligent life the minute I found myself faced with the prospect of sex. In fact, it was Kirk’s seeming lack of awareness of the opposite sex that, oddly enough, had tantalized me from the first.

We met at my “day job,” or second shift, at Lee and Laurie Catalog, where I was a part-time customer service rep to make up for all the money I didn’t get paid as an actor. At the time, Kirk had been working for Lanix, which happened to be the software that Lee and Laurie thrived on, and had come to update our systems. From the moment I saw him, studiously occupied at one of the many terminals that littered the landscape of Lee and Laurie, I was intrigued. Not only was he good-looking, with dark brown hair, intelligent gray eyes, full lips and a strong jaw, he was smart. So smart, in fact, he didn’t seem to notice anyone or anything except the scramble of codes he typed into each terminal as he bounded from cubicle to cubicle. Which was probably why I succumbed to him so quickly, at least according to Grace, whom I called repeatedly to report to on how my every effort at flirtation fell completely flat. Still, I couldn’t stop conjuring up reasons to lure Kirk to my work-station—a lazy mouse, a jammed keyboard (sesame seeds from lunch, but at least I got a smile out of him) and a surprising lack of understanding of the new software updates he’d just installed. And as he patiently wiggled my mouse, dusted my keyboard and explained the new procedures yet again, I made goofy-but-good-natured jokes, standing close enough to “accidentally” brush his arm (delightfully solid) or smile winningly up at his smooth and seemingly unruffled features.

“I’m obsessed with him,” I told Grace during the second week of failed innuendos.

“It’s the challenge,” she replied. “You can’t resist it.”

She was right, I realized later, when I finally gave in to her advice to “just ask him out, for chrissakes,” and he, to my surprise, said yes. But I was hooked good from date one. Kirk was so different from all the men who had come before. For one thing, he made enough money to actually pay for dinner. And I couldn’t help but admire his ambition when he told me his dreams of running his own software company…or his well-toned physique, when things got to that level between us, honed from four times a week at the gym.

Now, as the warmth of that lean, muscled body seeped into my consciousness, I snuggled closer, eyes intent on my book, until I felt his weight shift as he closed the computer shut and reached over to rest it on the night table.

Closing the book with a joyful snap, I thrilled to the feeling of triumph that winged through me, as it never failed to do, even almost two years into the relationship. Call me competitive, call me a nymphomaniac, I don’t give a damn—there was nothing, to me, like the sight of Kirk smiling down at me, a predatory gleam in his eye.

“Come here, you,” he said in a husky voice, as if I were the one who’d been resisting all this time.

Without hesitation, I straddled him, reveling in the discovery that he had gone from software to hardware in seconds flat, even though you could barely tell I was female beneath the roomy T-shirt I was wearing. Still, his big hands unerringly worked their way under my tee, found the somewhat meager mounds there and stroked.

I sighed, knowing what was coming. Because if there was one thing Kirk and I had down pat by now, it was sex. Like the scientist that he was, he had experimented endlessly on me to discover just what buttons to push to get me where I wanted to go. And it was never boring, despite this precision on his part, I thought, as he rolled me beneath him, did away with both of our boxers, then rested back on his heels momentarily to cover himself in latex procured from its ever-ready place in the nightstand.

I would have hated myself for being such putty in his hands, if it weren’t for the heat that inevitably overcame me as he slid inside me. My only complaint might have been that Kirk wasn’t much of a kisser during sex. In fact, he rarely brought his mouth to mine once we were joined. But that was okay, I thought, gazing up at his flushed features, his dark lashes against his cheeks, his full mouth. The view was pretty damn good from here.

Rather than revel in the view as I usually did, I closed my eyes. And just as I was settling into the rhythm, a sudden—and unexpected—image filled my mind of Kirk peeling away my clothes, lifting me into his arms and depositing me on a canopied bed I had never seen before in my life. And when, in my mind’s eye, I turned to look at the heap of cloth that had pooled at my feet as Kirk freed the last button on my— T-shirt?—I saw, to my horrified surprise, swaths and swaths of white silk. What looked to be, in my heated imagination a wedding gown?

Oh, God, I thought, as my body contracted—almost unwillingly, for it seemed way too soon—and I felt the biggest climax of my life shudder through me. My eyes flew open as the foreign sound of an earth-shattering moan left my mouth. I might even have thought it was Kirk who had cried out so freely because, unlike me, he made no bones about noisily expressing his pleasure, if I hadn’t found myself looking straight into his surprised gaze. Moments later, I felt and heard his own satisfied shudder as his body went lax on mine.

“Wow,” he said, when he lifted his head and met my gaze once more. “That was something,” he continued, a smile lighting his features as he bent to graze my surprised mouth with a kiss.

“Yeah,” I said breathlessly, studying his expression. It was something, I thought, hope beating in my breast. But did it mean something? I wondered, remembering the image of that dress in all its surprising detail. Well, clearly it did mean something, as sex between Kirk and me had always been a revelation. But this felt like a revelation of a very different kind. For me, at least, I thought, gazing into his eyes and seeking out the foreign emotions that I felt racking my own heart and mind.

I did see something shining in Kirk’s eyes, but what it was had yet to be determined. Until I heard his next words.

“I never felt you so…strongly. That must have been a big O, huh?” he said with a laugh, then leaned back with a look that told me exactly what he was feeling. Pride. The garden-variety male smugness over a sexual performance well done.

As if to punctuate my realization, he went into scientist mode once more. “What do you think it was? I mean, it was the fucking missionary position, for chrissakes. Nothing special there.” He pulled his hand away from my waist, where it had been gently massaging me, and thumped the bed. “Maybe it was this new mattress? God, had I known, I would have tipped that salesman at Sleepy’s.”

Oh brother.

I might have been thoroughly disgusted at this point, if Kirk hadn’t rolled onto his back, bringing me with him, and pulled me into that solid body of his. Maybe it was the feel of his muscled chest beneath me. Or the tenderness in his hands as they slid over my back. Maybe I just wanted to believe that, though Kirk was a guy and thus given to fits of euphoria over the technicalities of sex, he did feel something more—something he couldn’t possibly express—that made me relent, pressing my body into his in an attempt to hold on to whatever that feeling was. At least until reality set in. And it soon did.

Glancing at the clock, Kirk sat up, suddenly disentangling himself from my limbs. “Is it ten already? I gotta pack.”

“Pack?” I asked, cool air crawling over me as he leaped from the bed, pulled on a pair of boxers and headed for the closet.

“Damn, did I forget to tell you?” He turned to look at me, his expression baffled, as if he were mentally going over one of his meticulous to-do lists and realizing he’d forgotten one of the most important items on it: me.

Assuming he was going away to meet a client, I prepared to launch into a speech about how nice it would be to know these things in advance. Then I heard his next words.

“I’m going home this weekend.”

That stopped me short. Kirk was going home to Newton, Massachusetts. To visit his parents. Parents, I might add, I had yet to lay eyes on myself.

“When did you decide this?” I asked, a vague panic beginning to invade my rattled senses.

“Mmm…last week? Anyway, I just booked the ticket this morning. I was going to tell you….”

His voice faded away as my mind skittered over the facts: Kirk was going home for one of his semiannual trips, and he hadn’t invited me. Again. The memory of Josh’s taunting voice on my answering machine ran through my frazzled brain. While I was orgasming over wedding dresses, Kirk was planning a pilgrimage to the parental abode without me. Clearly I was not the woman who was about to pull the lid off this thing with Kirk. In fact, given that I was oh-for-three when you tallied up the number of times Kirk had gone home in the past year and a half and not invited me, it might even seem like his lid was still airtight.

Since I didn’t know how to broach the subject of a meet-the-parents visit, I addressed the more immediate problem: “I wish you’d told me sooner…” So I might have had a chance to rally for position of serious girlfriend, I thought but didn’t say.

“I’m sorry, Noodles,” he replied, contrite. “You know how busy I’ve been with this new client. Did I tell you that I’m designing a program for Norwood Investments? They have offices all over the country. If I land Norwood, I could have work lined up for the next few years….”

His words silenced me for the moment. Maybe it was the injection of the nickname he had given me during the early days of our relationship, when I had ventured to cook him pasta, which, all-American boy that he is, he referred to as noodles and sauce. After I had teasingly told him that my Italian mother would toss him out on his ear if he ever referred to her pasta as “noodles,” he had affectionately given me the name instead. But his warm little endearment wasn’t the only thing that shut me up. There was also his subtle reminder that he was a software designer on the rise. That the program he had created six months earlier to automate office space was the only thing on his mind, now that prestigious financial companies like Norwood Investments had taken notice. In the face of all this ambition, I somehow felt powerless to express my desire to be considered parent-worthy in Kirk’s mind.

“Hey, Noodles?” Kirk said now, pulling a pair of jeans over his boxers and donning a T-shirt. “I’m gonna run down to Duane Reade and pick up a few things for my trip. Need anything?”

Yeah, I thought: my head examined. “Um, no, I’m all right,” I replied cautiously.

“Okay, I’ll be back in fifteen, then.” He gave me a perfunctory kiss on the forehead before making his way out the front door.

The minute I heard the door slam behind him, I picked up the phone. I needed another perspective. Specifically: an ex-boyfriend’s perspective. And since pride prevented me from calling back the newly engaged Josh just yet, I dialed up Randy, whose number I still had safely tucked in my memory banks. After all, not marrying the men in your life did have its advantages. I had managed to turn at least two of my ex-boyfriends into friends.

“I didn’t think you were into all that,” Randy said, after we’d exchanged greetings and I’d inquired about why the marriage issue had never come up for us.

“Into all what?” I asked.

“You know, marriage, kids. Hey, did I tell you Cheryl and I are working on our first?”

“That’s wonderful,” I said in a daze. “What exactly do you mean I’m not into marriage, kids?”

Randy chuckled. “C’mon, Ange, you know as well as I do that your career came first. You always wanted to be the big movie star.”

“Actor. I am an actor.”

“Whatever.”

When I hung up a short while later, I began to wonder if maybe I was projecting the wrong image. True, I had long been harboring the dream of making a career of the acting talent I had been lavishly praised for all through high school and college. And though I hadn’t exactly landed my dream role in the four years since I had left a steady job in sales to pursue acting, Rise and Shine counted for something, didn’t it?

Suddenly I had to start getting realistic, if I hoped to ever get a grip on this particular lid. I was thirty-one years old. I wasn’t getting any younger, as my mother lost no opportunity of reminding me. I needed to start looking like a wife.

2
I’m not really a wife, but I play one on TV.

When I arrived home after the show the next morning and discovered Justin trying to tug a sofa through the narrow entrance foyer of our apartment, I realized that even if I didn’t look like a wife, I was quite capable of sounding like one. Big time.

“What on earth are you doing?” I cried, though I knew exactly what he was up to. Collecting other people’s castoffs. For as lovable as Justin was, he had the single worst trait you could have in a roommate: He was a pack rat.

“Hey,” he said, glancing up at me from where he stood, bent over his latest find: a turquoise-green sofa that had clearly seen better days. “Can you believe someone left this for garbage?”

Uh, yeah, I thought, studying the yellow floral trim and sunken seat cushions with renewed horror.

“It was right out front, too.”

I felt a groan rising up. A threadbare couch, circa 1975, right in front of the building. Clearly there was no way Justin could have resisted. “Justin, we already have two couches.” One of which he had promised to get rid of after he dragged home his last couch acquisition. I realized once again why inheriting your Aunt Eleanor’s spacious, rent-stabilized two-bedroom could be a curse, at least in Justin’s case. In addition to the assorted furnishings Aunt Eleanor had left behind for her favorite nephew, Justin had acquired, among other things, four television sets, three VCRs, six file cabinets and a Weber outdoor grill that I assumed he was saving for some suppressed suburban dreamhouse with a garage big enough to store Yankee Stadium, should any future mayor carry out Rudy Giuliani’s threat to tear down the current home of the Bronx Bombers. For surely if that day ever did come, Justin would feel compelled to save some part of it. In his warped little mind, Justin didn’t think he was collecting junk so much as rescuing it.

“Ange, you think you could give me a hand with this?” he said.

I sighed, realizing I would have to give in for the moment, trapped as I was in the hallway until my roommate’s monstrous new acquisition was moved.

“How did you get this up here anyway?” I asked. Though Justin was well muscled for a lanky guy, I somehow couldn’t picture him maneuvering a three-hundred-pound sofa up the two long flights to our apartment.

“David in three-B gave me a hand. And he said he had some old lamps if we were interested—”

Ack! “Justin, honey, we need to talk….” I began gently, trying to not completely douse the delighted gleam in his eyes. But just as I was about to launch into a speech about the dangers of recycling, the phone rang.

“Can you…?” I asked, gesturing toward the couch that stood between me and the rest of the apartment.

I slumped against the doorway as Justin grabbed the receiver. “Hello,” he sang into the phone, in his usual chipper voice. “Hey, Mrs. Di, how are you?”

My mother. I sat down on the edge of the sofa and waited while Justin practiced his usual charm on her. I sometimes think she called to talk to him, judging by the giddiness that was ever present in her voice whenever Justin finally handed over the phone. That was just Justin’s way, I supposed. Even I had been charmed by him from the moment we had met in an improv class four years earlier. At the time, we were both just starting out in acting, Justin having given up a career behind the camera when the feature-length film he’d directed won a lot of buzz on the festival circuit and a prestigious award but ultimately no distributor. He claimed that he wanted to expand his horizons now that he had realized just how hard it was to get a movie out there. I wondered at that, since it seemed to me that it was just as hard to get yourself out there as an actor. But Justin seemed happy enough to take a union job as a grip for a production company based out of Long Island City, which gave him the kind of flexibility he needed to pursue acting.

Our improv teacher had paired us together, me being the only student without a partner when Justin straggled in, even later to class than I had been. I was a bit scared of working with Justin, who, with his dark blond hair, green eyes and tall good looks, was just the kind of babe I avoided. After all, a good-looking man—and an actor to boot—was bound to be cocky. So you can just imagine how I felt when the instructor led us in our first theater game, which required me to stand with my back to Justin and allow myself to fall straight back into his arms. “To build trust,” the instructor had explained. And build trust it did. From the moment I felt Justin’s firm grip beneath me after those first spine-tingling moments in midair, I knew instinctively he would always be there for me. In the years that followed, he had been. Like when my old roommate threw me out of our apartment two years ago to make room for her new live-in boyfriend. Justin had opened his two-bedroom to me without batting an eye, though my mother had batted hers a bit about my having a male roommate. She got over that right after I dragged Justin home for dinner and he easily won her over. Justin and I have been living together ever since.

“This Sunday?” I heard Justin say now, “Oh, Mrs. Di, you’re torturing me. You know I’d never turn down your manicotti, but Lauren’s coming to town.”

Lauren was Justin’s girlfriend, of the past three years, though their cumulative time spent together was probably more like three months. Lauren was a stage actress who always found herself in some leading role or another, but, somehow, never in New York. Currently she was doing Ibsen in, of all places, South Florida.

“Yep, gotta do the girlfriend thing this weekend,” Justin continued with a chuckle. “But Angela’s not doing anything, as far as I know. Hang on a second, sweetie, I’ll let you talk to her. You take care, Mrs. Di,” he finished cheerfully, handing me the receiver now that he’d managed to sew up my Sunday plans.

“Hi, Ma,” I said, sliding awkwardly from the arm of the sofa onto the seat cushion and sending a poof of dust into the air.

“Angela!” my mother shouted in my ear, as if surprised to hear my voice. I honestly believe she thought it was a miracle I wasn’t gunned down on a daily basis, living as I did off of Avenue A. The only thing Ma knew about Alphabet City was the bloody battles featured in the movie of the same name, which my brother Sonny had deemed it necessary to show her, just days after I had moved in with Justin.

“What’s up, Ma? How’s Nonnie?” Nonnie is my grandmother, who lives on the lower level of my mother’s house in Brooklyn, which is as good as living with my mother, judging by the amount of time she spends in my mother’s kitchen.

“Nonnie’s fine. In fact, she’s looking forward to seeing you this Sunday for dinner. Sonny and Vanessa are going to be there!” my mother informed me, as if my arrogant brother Sonny and his obscenely pregnant wife were some kind of enticement.

I gave a silent inner groan. Once Ma got it in her head that her family was coming together for Sunday dinner, there was no excuse, short of emergency brain surgery, that could get me out of going. “Family comes first,” she was fond of saying to me and my brothers. And I knew she was right. Only it made it difficult sometimes to compete in New York City, where it often seemed as if no one had parents at all.

“You’re bringing Kirk, right?”

“Um, he’s going out of town for the weekend,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?”

I could tell by the impressed tone of her voice that she assumed it was on business. And since Kirk did make semifrequent trips to see clients, I decided not to burst her bubble just yet. After all, Kirk had met my family before. Hell, he was practically an honorary member. The creep.

“Listen, Ma, I gotta go. Justin brought home this…couch,” I said, glancing down at the worn fabric once more, “and we need to move it out of the hall.”

“A couch? I thought you just got a couch.”

“We did. Justin is starting a collection.”

She laughed, as if anything Justin did was perfectly delightful. And as I clicked off the phone and glanced over at the cradle across the room, which there was no way in hell I could reach with this monstrosity in the way, I decided to summon my perfectly delightful roommate, who had since disappeared into his bedroom, probably to watch the Yankees game.

“JUSTIN!” I bellowed loud enough for the whole floor to hear.

“What’s up?” he said, popping his head out of the bedroom, a puzzled frown on his face. As if I were disturbing him.

“What do you mean, what’s up?” I said, slapping my hand on the couch and sending another load of dust into the air.

“Sheesh, I didn’t realize that couch was so dirty,” he said to my chorus of sneezes.

“Apparently there are a lot of things you don’t realize,” I said in frustration. “Like that we already have two couches. Like that I have to schlep out to Brooklyn Sunday night and still be up at five on Monday—”

“But you never go to bed any earlier than midnight. Even when you’re home.”

“That’s not the point!” I shouted.

Startled, Justin simply stared at me. “What is the point, then?”

“The point is…the point is…” My throat seized, and suddenly I burst out with, “Kirk is going to see his family this weekend.”

“So why didn’t you tell your mother that you’re going with him?”

“Because I’m not going with him.”

“Oh,” he replied, and I could tell by his confused expression that he still wasn’t getting it.

“He didn’t ask me to go.”

“Oh,” he said, his tone implying that it all made sense to him now.

“Shouldn’t he have asked me to go?” I asked, clutching the phone receiver in my lap.

Justin seemed to consider this for a moment. “Did you want to go?”

I sighed. “That’s not the point.” Maybe men were thicker than I realized. “The point is, we have been dating almost two years and I have yet to meet his parents, despite the fact that he has been to my mother’s house in Brooklyn more times than I can count.”

“Brooklyn is a lot closer than—where’s he from again? Brookline?”

I sighed. “Newton. But the point is, he doesn’t take me seriously. Not seriously enough to introduce me to his parents. Or to…to marry me.”

Justin visibly blanched at this. “Marry you?” he said, as if the word caused a bitter taste in his mouth. What is it with men and the M word anyway?

“Yes, marry me,” I replied. “Why is it so hard to believe that Kirk would want to marry me? After all, I’ve been sleeping with him, eating with him, sharing some of my most intimate thoughts with him, for a year and eight months. Don’t you think it’s time we made some kind of commitment?”

“We eat and sleep together,” Justin said, a smile tugging at his lips, “and we’re not getting married.” Then he paused, glancing over at me with a glint of amusement in his eye. “Are we?”

“Forget it,” I said, realizing that as lovable as Justin was, he would never understand. He was, after all, a guy. And I knew about guys. I had grown up in a family full of them. “Let’s just find a place for this couch,” I said, wondering where we were going to put it until I convinced Justin of its utter worthlessness. Then I thought of Kirk’s clutter-free one-bedroom and realized there were other reasons to get married besides love. Like real estate.

I decided to take my problem to the Committee. The Committee, so named because of their unfailing ability to have an opinion about everything and everyone, consisted of the three women who filled out the other three corners of the office cubicle I shared four times a week, answering the demands of the discerning customers who shopped the Lee and Laurie, a catalog company claiming to be the purveyor of effortlessly casual style. Though I was grateful to Michelle for hooking me up with the job when I decided to give up my nine-to-five gig as a sales rep in the garment district for the actor’s life, I had learned in my short career at Lee and Laurie that there is nothing casual—to me, anyway—about paying seventy-five dollars for a T-shirt designed to look unassuming enough to, say, take out the garbage in. Still, it was a job that suited my actor’s lifestyle, with convenient three-to-ten-o’clock shifts and, believe it or not, health insurance. Lots of it. It was the just the kind of thing a girl with dreams and chronic postnasal drip craves.

It was also the mecca for the wife, judging by the number of Comfortably Marrieds who flocked to Lee and Laurie’s employ, hoping to earn some extra income once their kids were old enough to become latch-key.

Hence my decision to go to the Committee, which was composed of Michelle Delgrosso, who seemingly only worked at Lee and Laurie to be able to indulge herself in the expensive lip gloss and overpriced trims designed to keep her dark, layered shoulder-length hair smooth, shiny and enviable; Roberta Simmons, a forty-something married mother of two perfect children, and Doreen Sikorsky, who was a bit of a wild card, with an alleged divorce in her past and enough conspiracy theories to make me wary of most of the things she said.

“Hey,” I said in greeting as I approached our four-seater cubicle, which was currently occupied only by Michelle and Doreen. And since Doreen was on a call, I was glad to have Michelle’s ear. After all, Michelle was the epitome of everything my mother deemed good in this world. Brooklyn born. Married at twenty-three years old. And the owner of a three-bedroom house in Marine Park.

“Where’s Roberta?” I asked, realizing I might need a better balance of opinion. Roberta’s life was a little closer to what I aspired to, if only because she lived in Manhattan.

“She’s in the can, as usual,” Michelle said with a small smile. “I swear I don’t know what that woman eats.”

“We can’t all be bulimic, Michelle,” Doreen said, having finished her call just in time to tune in to the conversation. “Hey, DiFranco, how’s it hanging?”

I sighed. These were the kind of people you worked with when you accepted $15.50 an hour as your starting salary. Maybe I should just keep my dilemma to myself….

But then Roberta showed up, looking like her usual sane and steadying self. Maybe it was the short haircut—women with short hair always seemed smart and responsible—that framed her soft, elfin features and wide blue eyes. Or maybe it was the expensive camel trousers and well-cut black tee, compliments of the employee discount Lee and Laurie gave its devoted staff. “Hey, Angie,” she said, sitting herself down and putting her headset back on.

“Hey, Roberta,” I said, adjusting my own headset over my ears. But just as I was about to launch into my dilemma, the familiar long beep sounded in my ear, indicating that my first phone call was coming over the line. Suppressing a sigh, I launched into the introductory script that had been drilled into us during training, “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy. This is Angela. How can I help you today?”

Fortunately, I had a quick and easy call from a woman who thought the new boat-neck tee looked so clean and comfortable on the blond goddess who modeled it on page 74 that she deemed it necessary to order it in every color. Once I had inputted all the information into my computer, thanked her for her order and hit the call end button on my phone set, I swiveled around to face my cube-mates once more.

“So listen to this,” I said, as Roberta and Michelle fixed their gazes on me and Doreen rushed her customer off the phone.

“Kirk is going home to see his parents this weekend,” I continued, studying the expressions of all three women expectantly, “without me.”

“Have you ever met his parents before?” Michelle asked.

“No,” I replied, noting that Roberta’s brow had furrowed at my response.

“Break up with him,” Doreen said succinctly. I glanced toward Roberta frantically, but she had already launched into a call.

“Don’t listen to her,” Michelle said, waving a hand in Doreen’s direction dismissively before focusing her dark brown eyes on me. “Let me ask you something, Angie. How long have you two been together?”

“A year and eight months.”

“That long, huh? Hmm…” Michelle’s well-penciled eyes grew pensive and her glossy lips pursed.

“You don’t want to marry this guy. Or any guy, for that matter, trust me on this,” Doreen chimed in again. I glanced once again over at Roberta, but she was still on her phone call and would be for some time, judging by the way she was typing furiously into her keyboard. “A man like that will never give you anything you need,” Doreen continued.

“Well, that all depends on what Angie wants,” Michelle said, her face brightening as she looked at me hopefully. “What do you want from him, Angie?”

For some reason, her question filled me with a flutter of confusion. What did I want from Kirk? Looking into her face, I saw all the hopes and dreams the Comfortably Marrieds of the world felt for the Anxiously Single. Then I remembered that wedding gown—and my amazing climax. Clearly, marriage was something I had been craving. And why wouldn’t I want it? I loved the idea of coming home to someone night after night, someone I knew would be there for me during the rough patches. I wanted to share my life with a man, not just some two-to-four-year interval we would later laugh about over drinks, as I often found myself doing with Josh and even Randy.

And as my eyes roamed over Michelle’s well-groomed coif and expensive jeans, I realized I wanted something else: a dual income. Could you blame me? Living in New York City was no cakewalk on the measly salary I gleaned from a part-time job and my illustrious role at Rise and Shine. This is not to say I didn’t love Kirk. I did. All the more reason for us to combine incomes, phone bills and, even more important, rent, I thought, remembering the sofa-laden flat I shared with Justin.

“I want to marry him, of course,” I said, as if the answer were self-evident.

And to Michelle, who had, from age eighteen, plotted and planned her wedding to Frankie Delgrosso, co-owner (with his dad, course) of Kings County Cadillac in Brooklyn, this was not only self-evident but cause for celebration. “Angela is getting married!” she practically shouted before moving seamlessly into “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy….”

“Married?” Roberta said, now done with her call and swiveling to confront me. “To Kirk?”

“Of course to Kirk!” I replied with a laugh. “Who else?” Beep. “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy. This is Angela. How may I help you today?”

Turning away from Roberta’s somewhat confused expression, I attempted to focus on the customer’s question, which had to do with sizing on the slim-cut trousers we’d just debuted in our fall collection. But as I tried to guide the poor woman toward pants that would accommodate the somewhat peculiar proportions she described, I couldn’t help but wonder what had struck Roberta as so odd about the notion of Kirk and me getting married. Frustrated after a solid four minutes of flipping through catalog pages while the customer rejected my every recommendation, I barked somewhat irritably into the phone, “Have you ever considered something with an adjustable waist?” The woman made some equally irritated reply and huffed off the phone. With a quick prayer that no one in the quality assurance department was monitoring that call, I turned to Roberta once more.

“What’s wrong with Kirk?” I asked, studying Roberta’s expression. After all, she had gotten to know Kirk somewhat during his brief time servicing Lee and Laurie. She had witnessed the flirtation between us, had seen the first fluttering of romance as we began dating, watched as we eased into coupledom. If she had an issue, I needed to know.

“Nothing’s wrong with Kirk,” she said. “In fact, I like Kirk very much.”

“So?”

“I’m just surprised, that’s all. I didn’t think you two were moving in that direction.”

“That’s just the problem,” I said. “Kirk isn’t moving in that direction.”

“Some men need a little nudge,” Michelle said, turning to face us once more. “A little lid loosening,” she continued, reminding me of her tight-lid theory. “You know, Frankie wasn’t even thinking marriage when I started leading him into jewelry stores to look at rings. I think he had his credit card out before he even knew what hit him,” she added with a gleeful little giggle.

“Oh, brother,” Doreen said, with a roll of the eyes.

“What’s got you moving in that direction?” Roberta asked now.

Her question filled my face with heat. I couldn’t even confess my wedding-fantasy orgasm to Grace, much less to these women. “I’m thirty-one years old—shouldn’t I at least be thinking about it?”

“Ah,” Roberta said with a knowing smile. “It’s the old biological clock, isn’t it? I guess that makes sense. When I turned thirty, all I could think about was having my first child.”

Oh, God. Who said anything about kids? I mean, they’re cute and all, but one thing at a time…. “It’s not that, really. I just want to be taken seriously,” I said, realizing that Roberta wasn’t listening as she launched into a story she’d already told us countless times, about her struggle to potty-train her daughter, who had just now turned thirteen and I’m sure wouldn’t appreciate the fact that her mother still dwelled on this part of her history. Fortunately, another call came in just before Roberta got into the particulars. Clearly she was going to be no help, I realized, as Michelle clicked off her call and faced me once more.

“You want to be taken seriously?” she asked. “I’ll tell you how.” Then she leaned in low, and whispered, “Go on break.”

“I just got here. I can’t go on break,” I whispered back.

“The call volume is pretty slow,” Michelle said. “Go on break.” Then she leaned back in her chair. “Gee, Roberta, all that time you spend in the can is putting ideas in my head. Now I have to go to the bathroom.” She put her phone on standby and took off her headset, giving me a meaningful look.

I clicked my phone onto standby mode. “I have to go, too,” I said, sliding off my own handset.

“You can’t both go on break!” Doreen began to protest before her cries were cut off by her own rather curt “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog…”

Though I felt guilty leaving Doreen and Roberta to juggle all the calls that came into the phone cue for our unit, I was desperate for help. And I was sure Michelle was going to be able to provide it, judging by the confident sway of her Calvin Kleins as she headed through the office, out the double doors which closed off customer service from the rest of the world that was Lee and Laurie Catalog and to the elevator bank.

“Let’s go outside a minute. So I can smoke a butt.”

I sighed. Clearly I was at Michelle’s mercy now, I thought, feeling even more guilty as we got on the elevator and headed down eleven floors and outside into the cloying summer heat.

The moment we stepped onto the concrete out in front of the building, Michelle had already lit up a Virginia Slims and was puffing steadily. “Want one?” she asked, holding out the pack with one well-manicured hand.

“All right,” I said, taking a cigarette though I had given up the habit, for the most part, shortly after my father died from cancer four years ago. Some things, however, still required nicotine.

After she had lit me up and I had taken one heady drag, Michelle started in. “Getting married is a game. You want to do it, you gotta play the fucking game.”

“Game?” I said, grimacing at the all-too-frequent swear-words that flew out of Michelle’s mouth, especially when she was on her favorite subject: men.

“You know, getting the lid loose. It doesn’t happen overnight—”

“This tight-lid theory is bullshit,” I said, taking another acrid puff of the cigarette before I dropped it to the ground.

“Bullshit? I’ll give you bullshit. You remember who Frankie was dating before I hooked up with him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah. Rosanna Cuzio. But that was high school. No one marries their high school sweetheart anymore—”

“But Rosanna Cuzio was the prom queen. The fucking prom queen, Angie. She and Frankie went out for four fucking years. Then, just about the time she’s picking out china patterns, he dumps her. Dumps her!” Her eyebrows shot up and she took another drag of her cigarette. “So a few months later, Frankie and I start going out. Within two years, whammo,” she said, holding up her left hand, which was covered in gold rings, one of which sported a one-and-a-half carat emerald-cut.

I have to say, the sight of that ring was about to convert me once more. Until I remembered Susan, Kirk’s ex. No, she wasn’t the prom queen, but with a degree in engineering from MIT, she was a pretty strong contender for a lid-loosener of the very best kind. “Kirk’s last girlfriend gave him the old ultimatum. But I don’t see him shopping for rings with me anytime soon. He didn’t even invite me to meet his parents, for chrissakes. Does that indicate a man who is about to pop the question?”

Michelle shook her head, blowing out another blast of smoke. “You’re not fucking getting it,” she said. “The lid is loose, but it’s not off. You have to apply a little pressure. You have to play the game. In fact, it’s really only a matter of three steps.”

“Steps?”

“Yeah, to get him to pop the fucking question. The first one is deprivation.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “And what, exactly, does that entail?”

“Just don’t be so available. When he calls up to make plans, tell him you’re busy.”

Maybe that was what I was doing wrong, I thought, remembering the look of pure longing I’d seen in Justin’s eyes at the thought of Lauren coming home after three months. Hmm…

“And whatever you do, do not have sex with him.”

“What?” This particular step would be a lot harder on me. After all, sex was one of the best things in Kirk’s and my relationship.

“I know it sounds crazy, but all that shit about getting the milk for free is true,” she said, blowing out a last puff of smoke and crushing the butt beneath one three-inch heel.

“I don’t know, Michelle, it sounds kind of…manipulative.” I wanted a proposal that was genuine—that came from Kirk and Kirk alone. “That’s just not me,” I continued. “I’m not a game player.”