“Don’t try to make excuses, Jen,” he warn
s
, though gently. “You said that stuff, not Olivia.”
“I know,” I sa
y
, a bit defensively. “I’m getting to that, okay? I did say those things and for that, I’m truly sorry. I just wanted you to know that, in all this time, I should’ve appreciated the one thing in my life that was truly real.”
He blink
s
at me for a moment, saying nothing.
“You, Noah. None of that other stuff was real at all, but you always were. You might’ve had your reasons for meeting me, but I’m lucky that you did. Because of that, we found something together. And even though I didn’t see it at the time, I do now. I’m sorry.”
I gi
ve it a moment, letting the words echo in the empty gym around us. But eventually, I just c
a
n’t st
and the silence anymore. I need
to hear somethin
g from him, anything, even if it’s not positive
.
Finally,
I look
over
to him and f
i
nd a thoughtful gaze, but nothing behind those eyes that I c
an interpret as good. I decide
to save my dignity then
and I walk
out
, not daring to look behind me
.
I just turn on those spiky heels and walk
my little butt right out of that awkward situation.
Outside and alone,
I
really regret
not tak
ing
a
cab down here, not because I’m
too tired to
walk home but because my feet a
re ready to stage an anarchy at any moment.
Conscious that
Noah might still be watching me as I toddle my way across the parking lot, I le
ave
the shoes on my aching feet, forcing myself to practice Claire’s walk all the way out of his line of sight.
In my head, I’m
singing a chorus of ouches with ever
y single step, and still I roll
slowly from my heel to my toe, heel to toe, heel to toe. Sashaying, swaying, each step deliberate.
If I were Claire, I’d
instead
be counting d
own in my head to the moment I
hear Noah call out my n
ame and tell me to stop. But I’m Jennifer, and although I have
newfound
self-esteem
, I’m
not about to start acting like I ke
e
p men on
a leash behind me. Noah can do what’
s right for Noah, what he fe
e
l
s
in his heart. I’
ve
said my piece and now I just have
to wait for him to make up his mind.
He’ll
find me when he kn
o
w
s
what he want
s
… provided I
’m
even
what he want
s
.
Somewhere around my
twenty-fifth
step away f
rom Tom’s Workout World, I hear
th
e door clang shut. That door does
n’t
normally
make any noise when it shut
s
, unless someone pushe
s
it closed
, wanting me to hear it. I turn
and there he
i
s, his hands on his hips.
“I promised you I’d make you hear
every word,” he says
, practically yelling. “And I’ll make you hear every noise too, if that’s what it takes.”
With two car lengths between us, I want
to run to him. Two things ho
ld me back: my dignity and these stupid, stupid shoes. Instead, I t
a
k
e
my well-practiced steps
back in his direction. He walks
out to meet me halfway.
“Noah—”
I sa
y
, out of breath with anticipation.
“No, it’s my turn now,” he sa
ys
, in a more commanding tone than I’
ve
ever heard him use on the gym floor with a stubborn clien
t. It commands attention. It’
s totally sexy. “Of course it was wrong of me to approach you for the reasons I did. You’re not someone to be stared at and mocked, as you seem to think. Whatever happened to you in school, with other kids, none of that matters anymore, Jen. You’re a beautiful woman, smart and funny, with
a slight disa
dvantage
that you have more than overcome. It shouldn’t matter to you what got my attention in the first place, not when I feel the way I do about you now.”
I sniffle, wiping a rogue tear from my cheek. I d
o
n’t want to cry, so I bit
e
down on my tongue and look him straight in the eye.
“I love you, Jen.” He brushe
s
the back of his hand along my cheek. “And I don’t love you because of
or despite
one stupid detail. I love you just as you are.”
When he lean
s
down
to kiss
me, the pain in my feet suddenly vanishe
s
. My stomach d
oes
a back-flip inside my tensed body. I d
o
n’t know what to say or do, aside from letting him continue to kiss me. His gentle lips release mine, kiss me sw
eetly once more, and then move away
from me.
“I
’ve been such an idiot,” I sigh
, wrapping my arms around his neck.
“Nah,” he laugh
s
lightly. “You’re just too thick-skulled for your own good.”
“Have you been talking to my mothe
r?” I chuckle
.
“Nice shoes, by the way,” he sa
ys
, craning his neck around to see them. “Nice and high.”
“You like that?”
“It means I could do this more easily.” He kisse
s
me again, more deeply this time. I decide
that I too prefer
the added height and
shall
invest in a small army of such shoes just for occasions like this. His slow kiss gr
o
w
s
more passionate, turning into a fury of short kisses up and down my neck. His hot lips sen
d
a chill across my skin, lighting that fire all over again. Like we ha
ve
n’t missed a step at all.
Noah’s hands press me against him and
I respond
to his every touch, thrilled beyond words. As he start
s
to pull me towards his car, the only one in the emptied parking lot, I cat
ch
the glint in his eye. The naughty teenager out on a date, scouting out the perfect spot for a “parking” encounter. I let him lead me there, just as turned on by the idea as he seem
s
to be, but then something stop
s
me just as he open
s
the back door to his sedan.
“Wait,” I s
ay
, pushing away from him. “I didn’t… I have to…”
He raise
s
an eyebrow.
“I love you, too,
”
I grin up at him.
Noah’s answering smile quickly bec
o
me
s
another round of kisses and, eventually, we f
i
nd our way into that back seat after all.
EPILOGUE
My name is Jennifer Smith, but my friends and family just call me Jen. You can friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, or read my blog
Confessions of an Alter-Ego
, but you won’t be able to learn all there is to know about me there. Not unless you spend the time to get to know me in person.
See, online, you’d never know that I have a Master’s degree in Sociology with a focus on modern communication, or that I’d spent the better part of a year being two people at the same time. Or that I’d recently been two points in a complicated love square. That’s right:
two
points.
And while my relationship status on Facebook might reveal that I am “in a relationship” with Noah Wayland, it won’t tell you how totally and completely in love we are. Or that we’re planning to secretly elope next month to the Bahamas with just our closest loved ones. Facebook doesn’t even know about it… because then it wouldn’t be very secret at all, would it?
It
will
tell you that I have a sister named Claire, but not
how much
we mean to each other. I’m not sure that I can even put that into words, come to think of it. But after a brief time
of not speaking to each other
, I’m happy to report that Claire will be serving as my maid of honor next month. And she’ll also be bringing along a very special guy as her date—a man named David whom she met through an online dating service and who fell in love with her before ever laying eyes on her. Give them a little time, and they’ll be walking down the aisle themselves before you know it.
Facebook also can’t tell you how much I’ve learned about myself and humanity in general, thanks to this little experiment. People like Olivia, Tom, and Sean really do exist. They’re out there. And when you do meet them, you may think they’re as cool and as perfect as any people can be. The truth is, you never know who they
really
are inside, not when they’re putting on such a good show. And if you let yourself get swept away by one of them (or by something like a soul-crushing sociological experiment), you’re only hurting yourself in the end.
So yeah… I might have the world’s plainest, most boring name. I might not be scorching hot like my sister. I might have to wear hearing aids just to function like “normal” people. And I might not exactly have lost that last ten pounds… yet.
But I know who I am and I love that person. I wouldn’t trade being Jennifer for anything in the world.
###
About the Author
Stephanie Haddad is a full-time mom by day and a writer by naptime.
She lives in the Boston area with her loving husband, precocious toddler, and cuddly dog... with a new baby on the way!
Visit her website
www.stephaniehaddad.com
for more information on her other titles or to learn about forthcoming titles.
Discover other titles by
Stephanie Haddad
at Smashwords.com.
###
Read on for an excerpt from
THIRTY OR BUST
, the next novel by Stephanie Haddad!
Coming
Spring 2013
to
eBook
and paperback wherever books are sold online!
An excerpt from
THIRTY OR BUST
by Stephanie Haddad
Coming Spring 2013
Chapter One – Cecile’s Big Idea
When we were children, the sixteen minutes between our birth times was my sister’s time to gloat. Sophie was once proud to be the first-born twin—eternally older and wiser, as she often reminded me. Now that our childhood has become a distant memory, however, those minutes between our births are all mine.
“So what’s it like, Sophie?”
“Don’t,” she says through gritted teeth. Our private night out has been clearly wearing on her all evening. Not one of the Cosmopolitans I’ve been putting in front of her has touched her edginess.
“What? Remind you how old you are?” I bat my eyelashes at her across the tabletop then clink my glass against hers. Bad mood or no, I have a civic duty to uphold. “I just want you to scope out twenty-nine and let me know how it is.”
She checks her watch, avoiding my eyes. “Well, Cecile, you have exactly ten minutes and forty-two seconds until you find out for yourself.”
“All right, you win,” I slump into my high-backed chair. “This isn’t any fun when you’re being an old fart.”
“Not funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny, Soph. I’m serious. You’re the worst birthday girl there ever was.” I check the wall clock above the bar counter, careful to avoid the eyes of the sketchy guy who’s been watching us since Sophie was twenty-eight and mostly sober. I still have over eight minutes to be the nagging kid sister, so I stick out my tongue at her.
“Well, what exactly do I have to be celebrating?” Sophie gestures widely about, her arms precise with her usual controlled frenzy. “There’s no party. There’s no one wishing us a happy birthday. It’s just me and you, still cramped together like we were in the womb. Nowhere to go, nothing to do.”
“That’s not fair. We have jobs. We have Brent!”
“Who ditched us to pick up some guy he met at Best Buy. Honestly, Cec, we can do better than this.”
Midnight hits and it’s now
my
birthday—yes, we’re a pair of the lucky twins born on separate days so we each have our own birthday. With six minutes to go until I turn twenty-nine myself, I need to take drastic action now or else listen to this pity party for the rest of the night. I slam my hand on the table, startling my sister and sending her drink splashing against the side of her martini glass.
“That’s it! I officially declare this sticky bar table a whine-free zone.” Sophie looks at me, mouth agape. I clearly have her attention for the first time in weeks. “If you’re going to complain, you’re going to come up with solutions. Got it?”
She nods silently, holding her forgotten drink a few inches from her mouth.
“So we’ve got one year to thirty, right? A whole new decade. A whole new
us
.”
“Don’t be cliché, moron. Everyone does this—makes a promise to themselves to check off some stupid bucket list before their life begins again at thirty. How many of them actually do half of that stuff?” Her voice has reset to its snarky default tone. She’s right, of course, but I’ve got to make this the last birthday we spend trapped at a bar table, fending off men who’ve just been released from prison.
“So we’ll do our own thing. Let’s make a bet, you old fart. In these, my final few moments of twenty-eight, I would like to make a wager.” I pause for dramatic effect. Radio silence. “We fix it. All of it.” Excited, I’ve sprung from my seat and now lean across the table, inches from her face. “We have one year before a brand new decade. A decade where we’ll
live
life instead of watching it go by.”
“You’re insane.”
“Listen to me. Fix your job, your relationship status, pick out a new eye shadow—I don’t care what it is as long as it moves you toward a life you enjoy. We promise each other right now this is the last pathetic year of our lives.”
“Okay…” Skepticism oozes from her narrow lips. “And what if I take you up on this? This lame wager? What happens if we turn our lives around?”
Frozen, I stutter. This is my one and only chance, I have her attention. My eyes roam the room, searching for the answer, and land on my sister’s frumpy cable knit sweater. It hangs loosely around her tooth-pick frame, a too-big option leftover from her pre-weight-loss days.
“Remember when you had boobs?” Inspiration has struck and I am truly a genius.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what we’ll do. The loser buys the winner a boob job.”
She stares at me for a moment, swirling her Cosmo around for dramatic effect. “Fine. I’ll do it.” We clink our glasses together, then I gesture for refills to the bartender. “And by the way, Cecile?”
“Yeah?”
“Happy birthday, you old fart.”
****
“That is
sooooo
tacky.” Brent sits in the chair he pulled up to our high-top table, judging us over a shaken martini. As he considers my sister’s grimace, he sucks the olive from his toothpick.
“And ditching your friends on their birthday isn’t tacky?” she responds, long since immune to Brent’s bitchy streak.
“Well, excuse me if I think this little vehicle we have here needs a forth wheel, my pet,” he grins, swallows his olive, and sighs. “And anyway, I came back, didn’t I?”
“Like a bad hemorrhoid.”
“He’s not that bad, Soph,” I cut in, not looking forward to another battle of wills this evening.
“But he
can
hear you.”
“Yes, Brent,” I sigh. “Not the point. Will you help us with this thing or not? I only told you about it to get you onboard, not to listen to your personal feelings on the matter.” Talking to Brent is an art form, but sometimes you just have to give it to him straight.
He pauses, sweeps the bar one more time with his eyes, then lands them on me. “Fine. I’ll help. Nothing else exciting going on here tonight anyhow.”
“You’re a great friend, Brent,” says Sophie with a generous serving of sarcasm.
“Yes, I know I am. After all, I am about to get us another round of drinks.” He springs up from the chair and bounces toward the bar, leaving Sophie and I to wonder how we’ve managed to let him live this long.
Eternally on the same mental page as me, Sophie exhales slowly and says, “You should’ve let me smother him in your Popple sleeping bag when I had the chance.”