Read Online I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway by Tracy McMillan - Free Book Online Page A

expected to succeed and not allowed to fail, simultaneously. It gives me permission to let go of my well-worn view of myself as the helpless little foster child who can’t get what she wants and fully commit to the idea of having the minnow.
    Of owning the minnow. I rent everything. Even parents. (And later, husbands.)
    I don’t know how to get what I need, much less take what I want. And the Ericsons can’t teach me—they’re much too Swedish for that sort of thing. But my dad knows how. In fact, he’s so sure he deserves what he wants that he’s even willing to steal it (which I don’t condone). In a strange way, his willingness is exactly what I’m going to need to survive the life he has, through his choices, tossed me into. It’s not that I need to be willing to steal, it’s that I need to be willing to go for it, to want something and to think I deserve it.
    “There they are!” I spot the school of minnows again and pitch myself forward, almost falling in as I bail a full jar of water out ofShingle Creek. Like a desperate forty-niner panning for gold, I hold the jar up and there, swimming contentedly in the murky water, is a tiny little minnow.
    “You got it, baby!” My dad’s jubilant. “You got one!” Freddie’s gotten a little messy in all the excitement: his green leather shoes have a ring of water damage, and there are specks of gray water spots on his polyester pants. “Bring it here. Show it to your dad.”
    He peers into the jar. “There he is! Your minnow.” He claps and takes a big swig of air that makes a deep resonant sound of glee in his throat. He obviously approves. “A good-lookin’ son of a gun, too.” Freddie laughs big. “What are you going to name him?”
    Name him? I never thought of giving him a name. But it only takes me a second to come up with something. “How about Mrs. Jones?”
    Freddie looks like he’s going to fall over with fatherly pride. From the expression on his face, I’m the smartest, most amazing girl on the planet. “Mrs. Jones it is, then,” he says, without mentioning anything about gender reassignment. He gives me the cover to the jar and I screw it on, so I can take my trophy home. June and Gene are going to be so impressed. On the way home we listen to Stevie Wonder sing about the sunshine in his life and I think to myself that I got one.
    It might be the first time in my short little life that I got one.
     
    PAUL WRITES BACK RIGHT AWAY. “Could you be more gorgeous?” That’s what he writes.
    Could.
    You.
    Be.
    More.
    Gorgeous.
    Um, yeah. I probably could be. Or at least I could have been, until this moment. Now I’m suddenly feeling pretty gorgeous. The rest ofhis note is short and sweet and to the point: “I would like to take you to coffee.”
    And so you shall. Take me to coffee.
    I meet him in the Art and Architecture stacks at Borders. His idea. Which I think is inspired, romantic, and creative. I don’t think it means he prefers fantasy over real life. It also has the added advantage of being a relatively discreet place since I’m pretty mortified to actually be hooking up with someone I met online.
    I’m careful to get there just a few minutes late. For my outfit, I’ve managed the neither-here-nor-there, not-too-much-or-too-little, not-too-sexy-or-too-prim, not-too-high-of-heels-in-case-he’s-short blind date outfit conundrum so well, I will not even remember what I was wearing a week later.
    “You’re beautiful,” he says sometime in the first minute. He’s gazing at me.
    I blush. “Really?” I think this is such a charming and vulnerable thing to say. I don’t think it’s seductive or calculating.
    “Yeah, really.” He’s still gazing. “Really,” he repeats. That awkward date feeling descends upon us, but he, thankfully, breaks the silence. “Would you like to get a cup of coffee?”
    “Sure!” I’m grateful for the distraction of being able to walk and talk.
    We head for the café, which gives me a chance