CHAPTER ELEVEN
Juliana
By Sunday afternoon, I felt like the biggest loser that had ever walked the Earth. Loser, with a capital L.
Despite what I’d been taught all my life, I didn’t let my mother get me down. No, thoughts of my night with Zachary were enough to bouy me. I’d spent all Saturday doing what felt good, instead of what was good. Screw my mother. I finished binge watching Stranger Things, ate takeout vegetable lo mein, and stayed up late without even thinking about my presentation for the open forum. It felt devilishly good to be bad.
But by Sunday morning, I had a stomachache, a headache, and I still had twelve more slides to compile for the presentation. A sour feeling had settled over me, and I wondered if going against everything my mother had instilled in me since I was born was going to wind up biting me in the ass again.
Also, I hadn’t even heard a peep out of Zachary.
That was the worst of it.
I kept my phone pasted to my side all weekend, expecting, then hoping, then cursing the damn thing for mattering so much. I mean, I’d never gelled with anyone like that. The Agatha Christie. The Met Museum. The Marvin Gaye. And a thousand other things. Even though we shouldn’t have anything in common, considering he was probably a bazillionaire, we did. He just got me.
Then, we’d had that amazing night of mind-blowing sex. At least, it had been mind-blowing for me. He’d brought me to orgasm, not just once, which was a feat in itself, but again and again. We just seemed so perfectly in sync, I didn’t even question whether he’d call or text me the next day. I expected it.
Stupid me.
Leah would’ve told me to get a grip. Forget him. Easy for her to say. She had an army of men at her disposal, all desperately fighting for her attention.
Maybe a call was too much to expect. After my first experience with sex, I’d felt like we’d been in sync too. But back then, being “in sync” just meant him liking me, which hadn’t happened before, ever. Stupidly, I’d thought that him taking me to the back of his truck after a party and putting his cock inside me meant that we were going out.
Back then, I’d expected a phone call or text the next day too, telling me what a great time he’d had. Instead, he ignored me, unless he was laughing at me with a group of his jock friends. He told everyone in school that not only was I a heifer, I was a slut. For the rest of high school, people called me the cowslut, heiferwhore, and various combinations thereof.
Memories of that trickled in as I lie there Sunday morning, and I felt worse than ever.
Who knew? Maybe I was destined to have men treat me that way my whole life. Zachary had seemed too good to be true, after all, a fairy tale, and fairy tales weren’t real. I knew that.
But now, I was no longer the girl I’d been in high school. Yes, those old wounds ran deep, but I’d overcome that desperation, that feeling that I needed a man to make myself feel complete. I’d gotten myself together, lost the weight, started a successful career that I loved. I was not that chubby girl that everyone made fun of.
Not on the outside, at least.
Determined not to make this a waste of a weekend after all, I opened up my computer and found the presentation I’d started. I read over the first few slides, trying to psych myself up to deliver that presentation. I told myself that this was a noble cause, far beyond a dumb guy dumping me. I told myself that unlike my stupid blind date, this mattered, this would make a difference for girls everywhere who deserved better.
But as hard as I tried, I couldn’t get Zachary out of my mind.
That and the feeling that I was a complete and total sucker.
Two hours later, I’d written plenty of words, but then I’d gone and deleted all of them. I couldn’t bring myself to concentrate.
Why hadn’t he called?
I picked up my phone and stared at the display. Empty of any messages, it taunted me.
Then I opened up a message to Leah. My fingers hovered over the keys as I wondered whether to text her. She’d texted me before, but I’d put off returning her texts. I wasn’t sure why. I wanted her advice. Maybe because I knew she’d want to know the blow-by-blow, and deep down, I’d expected Zachary to turn out to be another Colton. I groaned inwardly now at the thought of telling her that he’d blown me off. But maybe she’d talked to her brother and could shed some light on the mystery.
The need to solve this mystery trumped my dignity. I quickly jabbed in a message. Hey.
Two minutes later, I got the text. Thought you got run over by a taxi too. How has your weekend been?
I stared at the message. Run over by a taxi too? I had no idea what she meant by that. I typed back. Not so good.
Aw, sweetie. I have just the thing for you. I’m coming right over.
I could have bet on the fact that Leah would bring something alcoholic, and I was right. Leah might have been healthy, but she had one vice: wine. She constantly touted the health benefits of drinking it, but even she had to admit that she was probably pushing the limits with the amount that was healthy. She lived only a few blocks away and showed up at my doorstep not ten minutes later with a box of the cheap pinot grigio, my favorite.
I wasn’t the hoity-toity type to drink expensive champagne. The cheap stuff worked just fine for me.
“Cheers!” she shouted as I opened the door, and then her smile melted from her face. “What the hell happened to you?”
Leah always looked good. Today, she was wearing workout clothes but had on a full face of makeup, and her blonde hair was without a flyaway, per usual. I knew I was a sight of utter ruin. After the bubble bath and towel drying my hair the day before, I hadn’t run a brush through it. I was wearing boxers and a t-shirt with lo mein grease on it. I probably smelled like day-old Chinese food. And since I’d thrown away my mother’s pills and hadn’t gotten good sleep, I probably had the dullest skin in the free world.
I went inside and shook my head, then slumped on a kitchen stool. “When do you leave for Vegas?”
“Tomorrow,” she said.
“Has that guy texted you?”
She pretended to inspect her fingernails, then breathed on them and buffed them on her shirt. “You mean Brock. Secret Agent? Of course. Who do you think you’re talking to? He’s been texting me nonstop.”
I swallowed. Must be nice to have an actual human male sending you messages and not completely forgetting your name the second they pull out.
“It’s borderline stalker, how much he’s been texting. I’m still trying to figure him out, whether he’s desperate and creepy, or just super interested. There’s a fine line. But I’m going by my normal rule: For every five texts he sends me, I send only one. And I always make it four words or less.”
“Four words?” This was another little Leah nugget I’d never thought of before.
She nodded. “The last thing you want to do is be chatty on text. Chatty is a death sentence. It implies you don’t have anything better to do.”
“Oh.”
“Speaking of better things to do…” Her eyes trailed to my computer. “How is your obesity conquering going?”
I looked at her sheepishly. “I can’t even think about this presentation, I’m so frazzled. It’s this Friday, and a thousand people are going to be tuning in and I know I’m going to make a freaking fool of myself if I can’t even get the words down on PowerPoint.”
“But you knew everything so well when you were talking to me about it the other day.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Wait. Does this have to do with Friday night?”
I nodded, blushing. Leah appraised me like an alien from the planet Moron. She threw men away like used tissues because they meant about as much to her. Yes, leave it to your borderline Only Cares Deeply friend to make this much of a fuss over a stupid guy she barely knows.
She sighed. Then she flounced past me and made herself comfortable in my kitchenette. She might as well have lived here, considering how well she knew the place, and exactly where to get the stemless wine glasses I kept. She brought them down from the cabinet, popped that box open and poured two extra full glasses, handing me one. “Cheers, bitch.”
“Cheers.” I took a gulp, knowing that if I wanted the clarity to finish my presentation, drinking a shitload of wine wasn’t going to deliver. But I was desperate to deaden that gnawing feeling inside.
“What you need is exercise,” she said when we’d finished our drinks.
Right. Exercise. Once upon a time, that had been my answer for everything.
Now, it just seemed so… inadequate compared to a good, toe-curling, mind-numbing orgasm.
I’d already started to mellow from the wine, though, and deep down, I knew she was right. Exercise had worked wonders for me before. Yesterday’s laziness had taken its toll on me, and no wonder I felt so bad now. I needed to get out and shake these doldrums off with some good old heart-racing activity. “All right. Let’s go to Central Park.”
Central Park was our go-to place for weekend exercise. I got myself changed into a t-shirt and workout capris, grabbed a bottle of water, and we headed out to the subway. Turned out, it was a gorgeous day, in the mid-seventies, so when we got to the park, it was packed, unlike how it had been during my walk through it with Zachary on Friday night. I groaned as we reached the Alice in Wonderland statue, retracing the same path we’d walked then. I’d been to Central Park a billion times. I wondered if now, whenever I came here, the memory of Zachary would taint this place. I hated him being in my head.
“What’s that look about?” she asked as we power-walked around the fountain.
“I’m concentrating on my fitness level,” I lied, pretending to be super interested in my Fitbit.
“Okay,” she said dismissively, “but, for reals, what are you doing? You look constipated.”
I sighed. Leah knew me all too well. “Okay, okay,” I sighed, ready to come to the point, as desperate as I might seem. “It’s Zachary.”
She stuck her lip out in a sympathy pout. “Aw, honey. You were really looking forward to that date, weren’t you?”
“No, honestly. I’d been really nervous. But I got over that quickly. He seemed really nice, and…” I threw up my hands. “I just don’t get it. Do you?”
She shook her head. “Sometimes crappy things happen. But don’t worry. In another few months, maybe you can try again.”
I stopped and stared at her. “Why? So that he can blow me off again?”
If this had been a cartoon, she would have had a question mark appear over her head. She frowned, jamming her fists on her hips. “Come on, he didn’t blow you off. You make it seem like he did it on purpose.”
“Didn’t he?” A bunch of runners were coming, so I wandered off to the side of the path, into a shaded area. She followed. “I mean, what do you call it? I felt like everything was great, we were connecting, dancing like we were born to dance together. I mean, he even loved Marvin Gaye! And then boom! He just never calls afterward? You know, Leah, I’ve never believed in love at first sight, but that was pretty damn close to it. It was definitely lust, with a whole bunch of mutual respect thrown in there.”
She was squinting at me, holding out her hands for me to slow down. “Wait. Wait. Wait. What do you mean, he never called afterward? After what, exactly?”
“Um. After our date.” What the hell did she think I was talking about?
“Okay, back up here,” she said. She pointed at a bench. “I think you need to sit down. Get some oxygen in your brain. Are you… have you ever had a history of hallucinations, Jule?”
She was eyeing me with such concern that it scared me. I didn’t really want to sit, but I did, falling onto the bench with a thud as she held my hands tightly. “What? Hallucinations? No. Why?”
She sat beside me. “Because, well… didn’t you get the text from my brother?”
Her brother? Her brother didn’t even have my phone number. “No… why would he…”
“You had to have. He sent it to your number and mine.” She fished out her phone and paged through her messages. I read the number she’d given him. She had typed in my last four digits as 6678.
I shook my head. “My number is 6687.”
She slammed a hand to her mouth. “I switched the digits. Oh, my gosh. I gave him the wrong number. You’re on my speed dial so I just completely must have spaced on it.”
I scooched to the edge of the bench and tried to see her phone. “What the hell are you talking about, Leah?”
She was busy smacking her forehead. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand.”
“Well, explain it to me. Why would your brother be trying to text me?”
“Okay. Listen to me. After you texted me and told me that he hadn’t showed up, I texted my brother and asked him to find out where he was. Since I was going in the shower, and you know how long my showers are, I gave him your number — or at least I thought I did — so he could text you directly.”
“But he never…”
She gave me a sorry face. “Right. Because I gave him the wrong number.”
“All right. But what difference does it make? He showed up, and…” I trailed off when I realized that Leah was just shaking her head, a shell-shocked look on her face. “Um… wait. He didn’t show up?”
She nodded, a very slow up and down.
She had to be pulling my leg. I might have been delusional now and again, but I’d never hallucinated so vividly as to achieve six of the most toe-curling orgasms ever. I stared at her, willing her to explain.
She took a deep breath. “Zachary, my brother’s roommate’s cousin, your blind date, had an accident on the way over to meet you. He got hit by a taxi, Jule. I mean, he’s okay, but he’s not going to be dancing anytime soon.”
I opened my mouth, but no words came out for at least a minute. Finally, I managed. “What? That’s not true. I met him right after you texted. He was cute, no, hot… hotter than Chris Pratt, even. And I didn’t hallucinate my entire Friday night, Leah, give me a break.”
“Okay, okay. I always thought you were quirky, but not that quirky. But the fact still remains… whoever you were with was not my brother’s roommate’s cousin, Zachary. It had to be someone else.”
“But he said his name was Zach,” I said. “Zachary Vaughn.”
“Zachary… Vaughn? The Zach I was setting you up with was Zach Brown.” She clamped her hand over her mouth. “Oh my fucking god. So who was he?”
I sat there, dumbfounded, as reality hit me like a ton of bricks. Zachary Vaughn, rich, powerful, successful owner of a toilet paper factory who swept me off my feet to a gala at the Met. No wonder Leah had no idea about the gala, or his wealth, or that he was, without a doubt, her type. He was every woman’s type.
He was the wrong Zachary.
So, was I the wrong Juliana?
“I…” I started, still not fully believing this. He was a man who’d taken me on the most thrilling adventure of my life, and then just walked out of it. Very much like a hallucination. If I couldn’t still feel the pressure of his lips on mine, the way his hands molded the curves of my body, his tongue exploring my core, I almost could’ve believed it was just a product of my imagination. “I don’t know. But I’ve never had a night like that.”
A grin spread across her face. “Really, girl? Spill!”
So I did, eagerly. Turned out, I’d been wanting to recount the entire story to someone, so I could convince myself it hadn’t all been in my head. I told her how he’d been wearing a tuxedo like a second skin, how he’d bought me an outrageously expensive outfit from Valentino, and how we’d twirled around the dance floor at the Met like Prince Charming and Cinderella. All the while, her eyes grew wider and wider.
“Fucking hell,” she breathed when I paused for breath. “That sounds like a dream date. I’m sorry, but you need to find this man. Stat.”
I shook my head miserably. “No. I told you. He blew me off. After we… you know, I gave him my number, and he never called.”
“After you…?” she repeated. Her jaw dropped. “You had sex with him?”
I nodded.
“And it was…?”
I blushed. “Unspeakably incredibly indescribably fan-fucking-tastic. All night long, without fail. He played Marvin Gaye.”
She squealed. “It’s not the biggest deal in the world that he hasn’t called yet. First of all, it’s only been two days. And second, a guy has never lost a phone number? Please. It happens.”
“If I meant that much to him, he’d have taken very good care of that number. And…” I sighed. “He thought I was someone else too. He must have had a blind date and mistaken me for her. For all I know, he realized his mistake and is now with the woman he’d been fixed up with.”
“But you just said that you guys had a lot in common.”
I nodded, feeling miserable.
“So, so what if you were both supposed to meet other people? As fate would have it, you met each other. Fate can be a bitch, but maybe she knows a thing or two.” She smiled and started to whip out her phone. “If you know his last name, I bet you can find him.”
I stiffened. It was one thing for him to call me. But me calling him?
Oh, god, no. Hell no.
I suddenly flashed back to my high school self, huddled over my home phone in my kitchen in Fort Lee, the school directory balanced on my knees, pressing in a call to Colton. When he hadn’t called me all weekend, I’d decided to give him a call on Sunday night.
Back then, I thought his not calling had to be a mistake. I thought that maybe he’d lost my number too.
I could still remember saying, “H-hello, Colton?” when I got on the phone, the receiver sweaty in my grip.
“Who’s this?” he’d said.
I closed my eyes, remembering how I’d announced my name proudly, knowing he’d be happy to talk to me, his girlfriend.
But then there was a pause. And right after that, a dial tone.
That memory buzzing in my ears, I put my hand over the display of Leah’s cell phone. At least I knew why he hadn’t called — I wasn’t the Juliana he wanted to meet. Somehow, his rejection didn’t sting as bad now. Oh, it still hurt like a bitch, but it felt like closure. And I really liked the idea of letting things go, putting them in the hands of fate.
If he found that number, if he called me, then maybe it was meant to be. Until then…
“Please. I’m not going to stalk him. If he calls, he calls. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t.” I stood up and started to power walk. “Come on. I want to do another mile.”