“His cousin.” She sighed heavily, giving Carolyn a helpless look. “But there was always something like that. Something he had to pick that damn thing up for—maybe something valid, maybe not—but either way, he’d look and then he’d get sucked into it and poof! He’d be gone.”
“What do you mean, he’d be gone? He leaves?”
“Mentally!” Macy picked up her water glass. The agitation was beginning again. She took a few quick swallows. “You know, I spent months feeling like it must be me. That I must be boring. So I upped the chatter, tried to engage him, felt bad about myself and why he couldn’t seem to focus on me for more than five minutes at a time. And you know what I finally realized?”
Carolyn looked at her, probably surprised by the heat in her voice. “What?”
“That I was bored. Me! Not him. For the longest time I was sure that I was the problem, that if I were smarter, prettier, more interesting, he’d put the damn phone down. But no. The problem wasn’t me, it was him. Sitting at a table watching someone look at their phone is boring. So one day I’d just had enough. See ya!” She flipped a hand and shrugged, letting her gaze slip past Carolyn so she couldn’t read the hurt in it.
Carolyn nodded. “Yeah, okay. I can see that.”
The waiter arrived and took their orders. When he was gone, Macy added, “Besides, my life coach says it’s inefficient to spend time with people you’re hoping will change, that it’s a surefire way to derail your future.”
“Life coach.” Carolyn snorted.
“Stop it, I told you how much he’s helped me. I’m focused now. I’m clearing my life of anything that doesn’t serve my goals, and it’s working. The fact is, if love is not adding value to my life, it has no place in it. Letting things without value take up space in your life drains your energy for fulfilling yourself with what’s really important.”
Carolyn frowned for a long moment, then, as if she hadn’t even heard what Macy had just said, asked, “But couldn’t you have talked about it? Did you tell him the phone thing was a problem? You know, relationships are hard work. It’s a cliché, but everybody says it for a reason. Not everything’s going to be perfect right—”
Macy held up a hand. “Carolyn, I love you. But if you continue down that conversational path my head will explode. C’mon, I’m not an idiot. I’m twenty-nine years old. I know a relationship takes work.”
“Okay, sorry.”
“I did talk to him. First I joked about it. Then a couple of times I asked him to put the phone away.”
“And did he?”
“Of course. But the thing was, the next time we were out it was the same problem. And I don’t want to be that woman, the one who’s always nagging about not getting any attention. If he isn’t into me enough now, at seven months in, to keep the phone holstered, what’ll he be like in five years? Ten?” She poked listlessly at the tablecloth with her fork. “God forbid I’m ever in one of those dead relationships.”
She spoke with assurance, but inside that knot was forming again, the one that tightened every time she thought about Jeremy. There’d been so many things right about him . . . except for the one very wrong fact that he wasn’t into her enough.
That was what it came down to, every time. And it was that which caused the doors of her heart to slam closed. She’d rather be alone than be with someone who loved her less than she loved him.
“Well, all I know is I don’t want to be the one to tell Luther Serafini his baby sister’s on the prowl again.” Carolyn shook her head as she loosed her silverware from its rolled-up napkin.
Macy jerked her eyes to Carolyn. “On the prowl!” she protested.
“Before you met Jeremy you were using a spreadsheet to keep track of your dates, remember?”
Her face went hot. “There was a reason for that!”
“Of course there was.” Carolyn laughed.
“Look,” she said, leaning forward, “here’s the thing. My life coach had me make a life plan, which was great, because it’s only when you know where you’re going that you can make the right decisions to get you there. But I felt like, until I found the right guy I couldn’t get the rest of my life in order. I know, I know, I don’t need a guy to be whole and all that. And I don’t! But I want a guy, I want the right guy. But until I find him I can’t get the whole rest of the show on the road. Do you know what I mean?”
Carolyn looked at her like she had three heads. “The whole rest of the show?”
“Yeah, you know, making sure I’m in the right job, the one with the best benefits, maternity leave and career track. Planning exactly where I want to be on that track when I decide to have children, so I won’t lose ground. Then I can start looking at neighborhoods, think about buying a house, calculate the down payment needed and the payments we can afford. I can research new cars that would be family friendly and could be paid for by the time we have to start contributing to college savings accounts, figure out how to adjust our retirement savings, stuff like that, you know? Just make sure my priorities reflect my goals, the future I’m going to manifest for myself.”
Carolyn was quiet a long moment, fingering one earring, a grave look on her face. “And you say you broke up with Jeremy? Not the other way around?”
She knew she shouldn’t have confided all that. “What?”
“You just scared the crap out of me, and I’m not even dating you. So, that little speech? Save that for the losers, because it’s the perfect formula to make a guy run screaming.”
“Not the right guy. Not a practical guy.”
“Not a boring guy.”
Macy sat back, conviction warring with confusion. “But that’s who I am, Carolyn. I’m a planner, you know that.”
“Honey,” Carolyn continued, “there’s planning, and there’s crafting a prison sentence. In your plan, the guy doesn’t seem to matter much, beyond setting that whole unbelievably dull-sounding machinery in motion.”
“Of course the guy matters! He’s at the crux of the whole thing!” She bunched her hands together illustratively. Then she looked up. “What do you mean, dull? You’re married, you’ve got kids, you must have thought about all this stuff.”
“Yeah, right.” Carolyn rolled her eyes. “We got together in high school, remember? Back when planning was Hey, who’s getting the keg for this weekend?”
“Huh. You were lucky. You got the whole thing settled early. My trouble is I keep meeting guys who don’t live up to their billing. They seem great on the outside, and they can maintain that facade for a few dates—or, like in Jeremy’s case, a few months—but then, inevitably, the Problem shows up.” She leaned back. “There’s always a Problem. With Jeremy it was the freaking phone. I mean, who wants to look across the table at the top of someone’s head for the rest of their life?”
“If you’re lucky, it’ll have hair on it.”
“Oh, it’ll have hair. I require pictures of parents and grandparents on the second date.”
Carolyn closed her mouth, gathered her napkin and rose from the table.
Macy laughed. “Carolyn, stop! I was kidding!”