Free Engaging Men by Lynda Curnyn

look like I’m doing?” I replied, defensive. Sometimes the ease of Justin’s life annoyed me, I have to admit.
    He ignored my irritated reply, plopping down next to me on the couch.
    “Where’s Kirk?” he asked. Even Justin realized my life was so intimately entwined with Kirk’s that my being home on a weeknight meant something.
    “Don’t know. Home, I guess,” I said, picking up the remote and surfing through, hoping my expression showed my indifference. I didn’t really want anyone to know what I was up to, especially not Justin. It was downright…humiliating. But utterly necessary.
    Then the phone rang and I was completely unmasked. “If it’s Kirk, I’m, I’m…not home,” I blurted as Justin reached for the receiver.
    He turned to look at me, one eyebrow raised, as he spoke into the phone.“Hello? Hey, Kirk, my man, what’s up?” he continued, his voice belying the suspicion in his eyes as he gazed at me. “Angie? Naw, she’s not home. But then I didn’t check under the rug…”
    I glared at him, despite my humiliation.
    “Okay, I’ll tell her you called,” he said. “Take it easy.” After he hung up, he turned to stare at me full in the face.
    I ignored him, lost in my own quagmire. “What the hell is he calling me for anyway? I told him I was busy.”
    Justin’s eyes widened. “What are you up to?”
    “Nothing!”
    “God, Ange, don’t tell me you’re playing games,” he said. “I didn’t think you were like that…”
    “I’m not!” I insisted. But suddenly it seemed glaringly apparent that I was one of those women I despised.
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Chapter 5

     

Arose by any other name…might still do the trick.
    I would have despised myself even more for shamelessly avoiding Kirk if I didn’t come off the Saturday shift at Lee and Laurie to find him waiting out in front of the building for me.
    “Hey,” he said, a smile lighting up his features as I came out the front doors.
    “Kirk!” I said, surprised, realizing that he hadn’t done anything so spontaneous, so…romantic, since the early days of our relationship. “What are you doing here?”
    “Looking for you, stranger,” he said, putting his arms around me and tugging me close. “I missed you.” Then he kissed me so tenderly I felt a rush of warmth toward him.
    Now I ask you, can you blame me for playing these stupid games? Especially when Kirk led me back to his apartment and made love to me like it was our last night on earth together.
    Two simultaneous orgasms later, I was a goner.
    Which is probably why I found myself sitting across from Michelle at a tiny table in the back of a bar by our office on Tuesday night, plying her with drinks while I smoked cigarette after
    cigarette from her pack, reveling in my relationship revival and anxiously awaiting advice on my next maneuver.
    Hanging out with Michelle after hours was a peculiar enough event as it was, because we hadn’t really been social since high school—specifically, since just after Grace moved to Long Island and I had moved on to my first serious boyfriend, Vincent. At the time, Michelle had been dating Vincent’s cousin Eddie, and we bonded simply because it was always useful to have a girlfriend around all those nights we roamed the streets with the guys, restlessly searching for adventure and usually winding up at a diner or the movies, blowing what little money we had. Though Michelle was a bit of a fair-weather friend (or a fair-man friend—we parted ways when she moved on to Frankie, who ran with a different crowd), at least for a while I had someone around to tell me whether I had lipstick on my teeth or if some cheerleader had been spotted at school that day flirting a little too hard with Vincent. In truth, Michelle and I wouldn’t even be friends now, except that when I gave up my job in the garment district four years ago, my mother had told the whole neighborhood (including Michelle’s mother, whom she’d run into at the supermarket) that I