was pretty cool about the whole thing. Needless to say, we didn't turn up at the reception. I'm still crossing No. 8 off my list, though. I'd say we crashed a wedding, and we crashed it thoroughly.
Erin submitted the post, sat back, and smiled. After finally making it to the car and leaving the church, she and Nate had gone to Chuy's and, over muchas grandes margaritas, shared nightmare dating stories. His love life was even more screwed up than hers was, mostly because he couldn't keep it in his pants.
She slouched back in her chair and stared up at the cheap metal fixture that dangled from a chain above Sherri's breakfast table. Where it met the ceiling, a tiny fissure snaked from the pendant's base to the corner of the room. Her eyes followed it and then glazed over as she contemplated her own love life. In all her years of crappy dates and even crappier relationships, at least she'd never cheated on anybody. She'd always been the one cheated on .
From Bryan Powell, who'd made out with Hilary in seventh grade while Erin wore his basketball letter jacket across the room, to Mathew, her ex-fiancé, whom she'd started dating sophomore year of college, her relationships read like equal parts comedy and tragedy, but they always ended in tragedy. Take Mathew, for instance. She hadn't learned about his extracurricular activities until she was three months out from their post-graduation wedding date.
She was still thanking God for helping her dodge that bullet.
Then there was Noah. Ah, Noah. The one she'd really wanted to love. He'd had his head stuck so far up his ex-girlfriend's ass she'd known he was a lost cause almost from the night she'd met him. Of course, now he was fighting his own battle—that ex-girlfriend was a best-selling author with a movie deal, and he had to watch her prance around the tabloids with her pretty-boy mega-star boyfriend.
Erin wanted so badly to think, Ha-ha! Karma's a bitch , but with Noah, she couldn't muster up the vindictiveness. He was just so lost-little-puppy sad. Still, the reason he'd lost the girl in the first place was because…he couldn't keep it in his pants.
Imagine that.
Score one for the ladies. Last night was a date for the record books.
Now just twenty-eight more to go.
CHAPTER SIX
Crisis Situations
Erin took another sip of her Caffè Americano and nudged Ben's calf with a sandal-clad foot.
"Hey," she said, her voice drenched with concern. "He'll be okay. Really."
Ben looked up from his Medium Roast, his brown eyes unusually dull.
"I know." His voice didn't sound convincing.
Erin's heart ached for him. He was having some sort of existential crisis, which just wasn't like him. In the twenty-one years she'd known Ben, she could count the number of times she'd seen him this dejected on one…finger. This was it.
The previous night, he'd called her at 1:30 a.m., waking her from such a deep sleep she'd bolted upright at the clatter on her nightstand.
Ben was on his way to the hospital. His dad, an attorney at a big downtown firm, had been in an accident on his way home from a work function. Erin had managed to piece together that the function was to celebrate a colleague who'd been named partner, a position J. Michael Bertram, Esquire, had never managed to attain. She hadn't known he'd wanted to, but she'd learned from Ben, who'd learned from his mom, that his colleague's promotion had hit his dad hard.
Mike Bertram's blood alcohol level had been .09 at the time of the accident. The man had never even had a speeding ticket, as far as Erin knew, but now he had a blemish on his record that would be hard to live down. He also had three broken ribs, a concussion, and contusions on the lower part of his face.
But he was going to be okay. He'd been lucky. And the woman in the other car, who'd been at fault despite Ben's dad's inebriated state (she'd rear-ended him at a red light just inside the Arlington city limits) had walked away without a scrape.
It was Ben
Vivian Winslow
Kelly Jameson
Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
Susan Cooper
Zadie Smith
Bree Younger
Allison Lane
Laurent Gounelle
Tim Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins
Daniel L. Akin