★★★
The next morning, I wake after a fitful sleep that has only made me more tired than I already was. Thanks to my lack of sleep, I've started my day in a cranky mood. When Lesley calls, I snap at her even though she's done nothing to deserve it.
"What's made you so bitchy today?" she asks as I make myself a coffee. Even my kitchen is making me cranky. I've asked my landlord more than a few times to have the dishwasher fixed and he still hasn't organised it. And because I came home last night disappointed, I wasn't in the mood to clean up, so my usually immaculately clean kitchen has dirty dishes piled up in the sink and random items cluttering the cream marble counter. God, even my plant is dying.
"I'm stupid, that's what."
"Why are you stupid?" My sister is used to my irrational outbursts and probably thinks this is just another one of those, but it isn't. This time, I really mean what I say.
"I'm stupid because I'm all over the place about a guy, and I swore I wouldn't do this while I was trying to build my business. The plan was to spend a couple of years working flat out and get the business up and running before even thinking about letting a guy in again. It's just too much of a distraction. And the worst part is that he just wants fun, and I wanted nothing, but now he's made me want something, and he doesn't want anything. Argh!" I stop talking and take a deep breath.
"Jesus, Juliette! What the hell happened? You're doing that bipolar thing you do sometimes and it worries me."
"What bipolar thing?"
I hear her long sigh through the phone. "You're like this amazingly switched-on woman with everything but men. You've got your fifty-million-year plan, you're super organised with your work, your house is always an OCD person's heaven, you schedule your life to an insane level and nothing much ever seems to bother you. You're like this perfect robot. But add a guy in the mix and you turn into this crazy woman."
My first reaction is to tell her where to go, but I respect her too much to do that. I truly dislike people analysing me. I do enough of that myself. But as silence descends on our conversation, I think about what she has said for a moment.
She's right.
Shit.
I sag against the counter and rest one foot on the other. "I do, don't I?" My voice is soft. I don't want to believe I'm a crazy woman around men. All I ever wanted was someone to love me for who I am, and I'm not a crazy person at heart.
"Oh, honey, you sound so depressed. I didn't mean to make you feel that way." Lesley has always been the older sister who looked out for me, and I can hear the compassion in her voice now.
"It's okay, Les. This is stuff I have to face about myself if I want to grow, right?" Even as the words come out, and I truly believe them, I still hate the fact that life is sometimes harder than you want it to be—that you have to face those parts of yourself you might not like, and work on changing.
"It is," she agrees. "So tell me, what happened with Mr Ink? Is he a douche or are you just being crazy?"
I want to declare him a douche, and say it's all him, but I can't. "Tanner is so far from a douche. He's actually an amazing person. But he said he's not looking for a commitment and just wants to have some fun. The problem is that by the end of the date, I wanted more than just some fun. Oh, God, I annoy myself! I didn't want anything, and I was even saying that I needed some space to think, but as soon as he took a relationship off the table, I wanted it. I'm crazy, aren't I?" My insides knot with tension while I'm relaying this story to her. I want to scream at myself to get my shit together.
She chuckles. "It's what us women do, Jules. We run hot and cold half the time. The trick is to find a man who will put up with our crazy. I wonder if you were giving him mixed signals and he just said that because he thought it was what you wanted?"
"I don't think so. He doesn't strike me as the kind of man who doesn't say straight up what he wants."
"Did he ask you on another date?"
"Kind of."
"What does that mean?"
"Well, he did ask me what I was doing today but I told him I needed space to think. And then he said he'd call me today, but he hasn't."
"It's only bloody eight in the morning! You can't expect him to call this early." She's beginning to sound exasperated with me, and I don't blame her. I'm exasperated with me.
"You're right."
"Promise me you won't jump to any conclusions before you talk to him."
I don't need to talk to him; I heard him loud and clear last night, but I know she won't let this go until I agree. "Okay. Now you should go and get back to the kids. I'm going to be fine." I feel anything but fine. She, however, does not need to know this.