Confessions of an Ex-Girlfriend Read Online Free Page A

computer. Couldn’t even bring myself to gather up the hand-wash, for fear of the memories it might conjure up. Instead I curled up on the bed, fetus-style, contemplating the night ahead of me.
    I had already called Alyssa and learned that she and Richard were going to Richard’s sister’s house for dinner, confirming that I was, indeed, alone for the evening, without even friends to call. There was always my office pal, Rebecca, but she and I have never ventured into weekend territory together. Then there was Sebastian, my hairdresser and sometimes friend—that is, when Fire Island or some handsome new man didn’t beckon him away. But I hadn’t spoken to Sebastian in a while and felt like a fraud calling him up now, expecting him to be there for me when I hadn’t been much of a friend to him lately.
    â€œDo something for yourself,” Alyssa had said when we spoke on the phone, “take a hot bath, do one of those home facials, curl up with a good book.” I knew she was right. That was what I should have done. It was, in fact, what was advised by every woman’s magazine and every relationship self-help book—not that I’d read any, but my mother always reads enough for both of us.
    Instead I gorged myself on a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough, overplucked my eyebrows and proceeded topore over old photos of Derrick and me on vacation last summer in East Hampton, where we had rented a house with some of his friends. I studied that face I loved so much, saw the happiness in his eyes as we stood, arms entwined, tanned, rested and utterly in love. Or so I thought.
    What had gone so wrong? I wondered now.
    The phone rang, shattering the gloomy silence of my apartment. I picked it up, then remembered—too late—that I should be screening on this first Saturday night alone.
    â€œEmma! You’re home! I didn’t think I’d catch you—”
    â€œHi, Mom.” There I was, caught by my mother, home on a Saturday night. “Yeah, well, figured I’d stay in tonight, catch up on a few things. How are you?”
    â€œFine, fine. Clark just went out to get some milk and eggs for the morning and I just thought I’d try you, see if you were around.”
    Clark was my mother’s current boyfriend, and despite the fact that they had been together close to three years, I didn’t trust things to last. It wasn’t that Clark wasn’t the greatest guy in the world for my mother, it was that my mother didn’t have the best luck with men. I was starting to wonder if it was hereditary.
    â€œSo how’s everything with Derrick?” my mother asked. This question was a fairly routine one, occurring as it does at least once during our weekly phone calls. There was a subtext to it, which my mother will firmly deny if challenged: Is everything progressing normally? Will there be an engagement announcement soon? Am I ever going to see a grandchild?
    I tended to ignore the subtext and answer with a cheerful “Everything’s fine.” And somehow, despite the fact that my mother would more than likely never see that grandchild now that her thirty-one-year-old daughter’s last chance had just up and left for L.A., putting that daughter—who had an average rate of two years between boyfriends, with one in three of those boyfriends actually being tolerable enough to consider propagating with—pretty much out of the running for motherhood. Despite all of that, I stuck to my faithful reply: “Everything’s fine. Derrick is fine. We’re fine.”
    I don’t know why I lied. Maybe I didn’t want to get into it. I knew I would tell her. Eventually. I just didn’t want to hear how I had failed while my insides were still aching with the loss of him.
    As it turned out, my mother had other things she wanted to talk about anyway.
    After babbling on for a few minutes about her job as office