Free One Good Friend Deserves Another by Lisa Verge Higgins Page B

new reality show called Who the Hell Did I Marry? Can’t you just see me on it?” She morphed her voice into the drawling lilt of last night’s televised victim. “’Sixteen months I lived with him, and all that time I thought it was charming that he was so affectionate over the phone with his ‘nieces’ and ‘nephews.’”
    “Clearly,” Dhara said, “he was very good at compartmentalizing.”
    “Yeah, like the wives of those serial killers.” Kelly leaned over the table. “They never seem to notice the human remains in their freezers, you know? You’re lucky Carlos didn’t go all Sweeney Todd on you—”
    “All right, that’s it.” Wendy waltzed into the conversation, holding a drink in each hand. “You are all hereby banned from late-night TV.”
    Marta met Wendy’s wryly amused gaze, her heart swelling in gratitude that Wendy had made the long trip from Westchester to this East Village bar. After Marta had first absorbed the shock of Carlos’s betrayal, it was Wendy she’d called first. It was Wendy she’d kept abreast of all the developments in their sad detail.
    Once a freshman roommate, always a freshman roommate.
    Wendy scraped a highball glass across the table. “I asked the bartender for a good postbreakup drink,” she said, swinging into the chair next to Kelly. “He called it a Bastardo .”
    “Perfect.” Marta shoved her Cosmo aside, raised the Bastardo, and tipped it to each of them. “Cheers, ladies. Here’s to saying good-bye to one no-good cheating Cuban.”
    Dhara raised her ice tea. “Good riddance.”
    Kelly heaved her rum and coke in the air. “ Hasta la vista, baby.”
    Marta took a sip of the Bastardo and felt the bite of the bitters all the way down her throat. The taste mixed really well with the ashes of failure and the gall of being duped.
    She’d had her fill of both. Last Sunday at her mother’s house, after confessing a modified version of the bad news to her hovering gaggle of female relatives, she’d been smothered with clucking sympathy while cousins thrust their sticky babies into her lap, her aunt overfed her empanadas, and her mother casually discussed the nice young man who worked at the Home Depot. The growing miasma of unmet expectations threatened to suffocate her as she stared at the collage of pictures on her mother’s refrigerator.
    Pictures of other brides, other people’s babies.
    And now, among her friends, all she wanted to do was sink her head onto this sticky café table and collapse into a bubble of shame, remorse, and self-pity. These friends had followed her romantic misadventures with great compassion since that life-altering weekend in college. They knew better than anyone how important it was for her to keep her head on straight, to avoid getting swept away and making a dangerous misstep. She’d thought, after meeting Carlos, that she’d finally figured it all out.
    But she’d come here not to wallow, but to understand. She filled her lungs with air and summoned the memory of Coach Sammon at the regional Catholic Sports League finals, rolling his wheelchair in front of the bench at halftime when they were down twelve points, his black hair standing up from clutching his head in frustration. He’d yelled at her—bruised, heaving, and achy—to get up off her sorry ass and stop acting like a sobbing little girl.
    Start playing smart .
    Playing smart. It worked for her in basketball. It worked for her in college. It worked for her in the law firm.
    It must work for men.
    Seizing her briefcase, she riffled through the pockets and pulled out a fresh yellow legal pad. “Now that you’re all here,” she said, slapping it on the table, “it’s time to start the Marta Lauren Sanchez Arroyo love-life reclamation project.”
    “Uh-oh,” Wendy said. “Deposition time.”
    “I need some help figuring out what went wrong so I can make sure I don’t make the same mistake again.”
    Wendy arched a brow. “Can we start by trashing your