Free There's Cake in My Future by Kim Gruenenfelder Page B

pink fuzzy bathrobe, watching bad TV, a spoon of ice cream sticking out of my mouth and my face tearstained and red.”
    Seema takes a moment to paint the picture in her mind. She shrugs. “I’ll just tell him Friday’s your self-pity night. I get Mondays, Wednesdays, and Valentine’s Day.”
    I try to laugh. It comes out more as a loud smile.
    Seema pats me on the back. “Come on. It’ll be fun. We could have your old room decorated in about a day.”
    I casually look around my old neighborhood. “It would be nice to move back in here,” I admit. “It feels safe here.”
    “Of course it does,” Seema agrees.
    Her cell beeps again. She reads the text, then smiles sheepishly.
    “What’s it say?” I ask.
    “He says that watching a woman smoking a cigar is one of the sexiest sights on the planet, and that watching two should be illegal.”
    I try to smile, but I think those muscles have atrophied. “He’s a good guy,” I tell her.
    “You think?” Seema asks me, smiling from my approval.
    “Yeah,” I say with absolute certainty. “Complete wimp in terms of what he’s going to do with you, but a really good guy otherwise.”
    “If you listen to all those self-help books, they’d say he’s not interested,” Seema tells me as she frenetically flicks her fingers over her BlackBerry’s minikeyboard.
    I shrug. “Not necessarily. You’re with someone, then he’s with someone. At some point, if it’s meant to be…”
    “Oh, God, I hate that ‘meant to be’ crap,” Seema says as she tosses her BlackBerry onto the table again. “If it were meant to be, one of us would have done something about it by now.”
    “Fair enough,” I say, not wanting to fight about it. Seema’s BlackBerry beeps again. She can’t help herself—she’s like a kitten staring at a flickering thread of yarn. She picks it up and reads as I take another puff of my cigar. “Although I must ask: if it’s not meant to be, what’s he’s doing texting you at three A.M. on a Saturday night?”
    Seema looks over at me. Gives me a I have no fucking clue look with an accompanying shrug.
    “Ah, men,” I say. “A mystery.”
    “Wrapped in sharp spikes,” Seema continues.
    “And covered in chocolate,” I finish.
    Seema reads, “He says to tell you that he’s making filet au poivre at my house Tuesday night, and that you need to tell me you’re moving in or he’s not going to make you one.”
    “He cooks?” I ask.
    “He finds it soothing.”
    “Look, if you don’t want him, can I have him?”
    “Oh, honey, I love you,” Seema tells me warmly. “But if you touch him, I’ll break you like a twig.”
    I try to laugh. It is funny. I take a big puff of cigar. “All right, you got me,” I say. “I’ll move in.”
    “Good!” she says cheerfully. “With someone chipping in for rent, I might be able to afford those filets.”

Nine
    Nicole
    Chester ripped off Penelope’s bodice. Her nipples hardened. But was that from the cold air, or the promise of his
    I drum my fingers on my desk. What’s a new word for penis?
    the promise of his shaft of love
    I actually saw that in a book once. Ick. I highlight shaft , and use my computer’s thesaurus. Rod of love, stick of love, pole of love, shank …
    Good Lord, I’m scraping bottom here.
    I highlight my passage and hit delete. So much for trying to make it as a romance novelist.
    It’s three in the morning, I can’t sleep, and I’m not getting anything done either. I throw my legs up on the desk in my home office and stare at my computer screen.
    Man, I hate writing. I mean, you know, I love being paid to be a writer. I love reading what I’ve written. I love telling people at parties that I’m a writer. I just don’t so much like the writing part.
    As a matter of fact, lately I hate all of it. Seriously—why do people ever want to become writers?
    It’s a weird thing when your job is everyone else’s hobby. Writing’s certainly not the only job like that.