Out of Grief by EA Kafkalas

while she got rid of her mother. She calls me all the time now; she says … I don’t know. I’m probably just being silly.”
     
    “The night we had dinner …did she know you were going on a date?”
     
    “Yeah. I told her all about you.”
     
    “And she still called, Nikki. What kind of friend does that?”
     
    “A needy one?”
     
    “Before you hung up, you looked like a deer in headlights, and you said, ‘ditto.’ Which anyone born before 1975 knows is a reference to Ghost and another way of saying, ‘I love you.’ Which she said to you before she hung up? Right?”
     
    “Yeah.”
     
    “She’s good. I’ll give her that. Please don’t introduce me though, because I may just want to tear her eyes out.”
     
    “So, you’re saying she totally fucked up our date on purpose?”
     
    “Well, what does the writer in you have to say about that?”
     
    She did. She totally sabotaged our date. “Fuck it.”
     
    “That ship has sailed, my friend.”
     
    “No, I meant—”
     
    “I know what you meant, Nikki.” She laughed.
     
    “Oh.” I liked Emily. Really liked her, and this was ridiculous. “How could I be so stupid? That’s why she was asking me about making sure you were … I am so sorry, Emily.”
     
    “Making sure I was what?”
     
    “Tested.”
     
    “Wow. Now I really want to take her out back.”
     
    “Take a number.”

Chapter Twenty-Four
    I didn’t answer that night when she called. I was afraid I might say something I couldn’t take back. If I was going to confront her about her feelings, I wasn’t going to do it on the phone. I needed to see her face for that conversation.
     
    There was a lot to think about after my conversation with Emily. Including my lack of ability to really identify what was right in front of me. I don’t know if Emily and I could have had a future, but I do know the more time I spent with her, the more I grew to like her. She was a good person with a good heart, and I spent my share of time dating some real jerks. I was hoping that eventually we could be good friends, if nothing else.
     
    By the following evening, Quinn had left two messages and texted several times. So I answered, deciding to let it go. There was no point. Besides, she was clearly scratching her itch, as she so delicately put it, with men.
     
    And still, I couldn’t help myself; I heard the question come out of my mouth, before I could stop it. “So no more spotting?”
     
    “You really mean, no more sex with men on the first date, don’t you?”
     
    “No. I really mean, are you having any more spotting? But thank you for that visual image,” I said, hoping to cover my misstep.
     
    “Who would you like me to have sex with, Nikki?”
     
    I bit my lip, before I could give her the honest reply. “You can have sex with anyone you want, Quinn. I have no hold over you.”
    “But you would like to, wouldn’t you?”
     
    “You want to go there, let’s go there. My feelings have never been a mystery. I told you how I felt, you told me you didn’t feel the same way, and I have respected that. None of that has changed. You, however, blur the lines, or maybe you just exploit my feelings for you. But calling in the middle of a date; that was just wrong, and you know it. And I would hate to think that you did it on purpose, because you didn’t want me to be with anyone else. That’s not why you did it, is it?” I stopped to catch my breath, and try to slow down some of the things spilling out of my mouth.
     
    “I don’t know why you’re so upset. You said you weren’t that in to her.”
     
    “I said it wasn’t love at first sight, Quinn. But she was intelligent and funny and caring and there was a chemistry. And I was …” Craving human contact. “You know what, none of that matters. Because now she’ll only look at me as a friend. I want something more than this life of solitude. I want to be out of my head and in to my body for a change. Is that too much