Read Online 51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life by Kristen McGuiness - Free Book Online

throat and says, “Yeah, I was reading in there about corporate titans. I guess you forget what it’s like to stand at the head of a business. You know, to really have that responsibility.”
     
    There is a strange pause, and I am beginning to feel like two actors who have incredible on-screen chemistry, but the minute the director yells “cut,” have nothing to say to each other.
     
    I shrug, “Yeah, it’s not all about power and greed.”
     
    “I guess not.” He sounds disappointed, but I have faith that it’s simply a matter of settling into this thing, of finding the spaces where we do meet, like on the dance floor and in his bed. I put out my cigarette. I don’t really know what else to say. I stand up, and Jimmy grabs me from behind, and that type of conversation is far more comfortable.
     
    We sleep in our underwear. His strong arms wrap around me. My hands flit through his hair. And he smells so good that any awkward conversations are soon lost in this impossibly lovely thing that happens when the cameras are rolling. He drives me home the next morning, and I go to work. As I drive to pick up pastries for my boss’s morning meeting, I realize that I am not in The Way We Were . Though this recent romance feels like it has broken open my year of peace and quiet and paid bills and boring meals, I have to remember that my life is real. And as Jimmy goes off to his day as an electrician, and I go off to mine as a secretary, I try to let go of these Robert Redford romances of the way we are, or one day, might be.
     

9
     
    Date Nine: Cowboys and Peter Pan
     
    Two days after my slumber party with Jimmy Voltage, he calls me at 7:50 a.m. on a Friday morning.
     
    “What are you doing later?” Jimmy asks, and though I am still slightly asleep, his enthusiasm brings me to life.
     
    “I don’t know. I’m not even awake.”
     
    “You wanna go shoot some guns tonight?” I am groggy, but I like shooting guns, and I like Jimmy, and together it sounds dreamy.
     
    Last year my mom bought me a book called Cowgirls in English Saddles , and if I had a band that would totally be its name. Because I got back into horses about a year ago. And guns? Well, I fell in love with guns in 2005.
     
    I was visiting my uncle Vic in Florida and had about three months sober. Though I was living in Dallas as that point, my family decided, since I had managed to not get myself into trouble for ninety days, that I would be the perfect person to go save my uncle. My uncle Vic had always played a special role in my life. Gay, short, with a penchant for leather pants and fancy antiques, he taught me that it was beautiful to be different. But over the last few years, he has been going through a slow financial and psychological breakdown that I am sad to say still isn’t over. Because we’re Sicilian and Hungarian, I think there’s an inherent “you’re blood, go do something” policy that isn’t always effective. So though I was in my own worst life crisis, and though I had recently gone through my own financial and psychological breakdown, off I went to Ft. Lauderdale to save the day.
     
    I spent the next week on the Master Cleanse because I figured, if nothing else, I might as well lose weight while I was there. But after four days of sitting with my uncle in his flower shop (yes, he owned a flower shop), I had begun to get a little bored. I had been doing nothing but chain-smoking, drinking cayenne lemonade, and helping my uncle find naked men on manhunt.com . His shop was right next to a shooting range so one afternoon I decided to go shoot my first gun. And that’s when I found out: I’m kind of a cowgirl. Maybe it’s just an easy rush when my old easy rushes are no longer an option, but, man, do I love pulling that trigger. Feeling that blast. Watching as my awkward aim rips a hole in the target.
     
    So when this new cowboy in my life invites me out for a night of shooting guns, I could not be happier. Someone