Why Girls Are Weird by Pamela Ribon Read Free Book Online Page A

move on if you wallow around in him.”
    â€œI’m not wallowing!”
    â€œAnd writing about him isn’t going to bring him back.”
    â€œI don’t want him back.”
    â€œI’m sure.” He turned away from me and gripped the sides of his bathroom sink. The room seemed strangely quiet as Dale waited for me to come to some sort of realization. But he was wrong. I wasn’t trying to win Ian back. Besides, none of it mattered because Ian was never going to find the site. And even if part of me was hoping Ian would somehow read it and it’d make him want to come back to me in some mushy, romantic, music-swelling way, it was only so I’d have a good story to tell my children someday. I didn’t want the man; I wanted the vignette.
    And the truth was I didn’t want those children just as much as I didn’t want their father. The father that didn’t exist. Those children I didn’t have. I’d even named the invisible kids that I didn’t really want. Veronica and Clay. Veronica was older and Clay was really good in sports. I went to their make-believe soccer games and their fantasy piano recitals. I hung their nonexistent finger paintings on my unpurchased refrigerator in that house I didn’t have with a husband I wasn’t looking for. I didn’t need a perfect ending; I just wanted to borrow the good moments. I wanted snippets of other people’s lives. I didn’t need the whole thing.
    Dale put his hands over his face. “I can’t believe this is on the Internet,” he moaned. He looked embarrassed for me, just as I’d been dreading.
    I tried to brush it off by sounding casual. “It’s just a webpage. There are millions of them. Look, don’t tell Shannon, okay?” If Dale was reacting this badly, Shannon’s teasing would be much worse.
    Dale was still pacing, his arms crossed firmly at his chest. “But what if Ian finds it? What if someone he knows reads it? How are you going to start seeing someone new if you’re writing every day about your last boyfriend as if he’s your current boyfriend?”
    I hadn’t heard the words put in that order before.
    â€œThey’re just stories,” I explained calmly. “Some of the stories are about Ian and some aren’t. I’m not pining or wallowing. I’m just writing.”
    My hands were trembling, and somehow I had picked up a washcloth from the edge of the tub. I was wringing it in my hands, watching Dale watch me. Seeing the range of emotions in his eyes. Confusion. Love. Pity. It was that last emotion I wanted to erase.
    â€œI wasn’t going to tell you,” he started, “but I saw him the other day.”
    â€œI don’t care, Dale.”
    â€œFine. Then I won’t say anything else.” His entire body language shifted as he said deliberately, “Oh, man. My mouth tastes like a sock.”
    Dale grabbed his toothbrush and turned on the cold-water faucet. I was exhausted at the thought of playing this game with him. Instead of being coy, pretending what Dale had to say meant nothing to me, I decided to just come right out and take it.
    â€œWhere did you see him?” I asked.
    â€œI don’t know what you’re talking about.” Apparently Dale was still interested in the game.
    I sighed. “Ian. You saw him. Where did you see him?”
    â€œI don’t want to bore you with things you don’t want to hear about. You’re right. You’re past all of this bullshit.” As he brushed his teeth he stared at himself in the mirror. I watched his blue eyes widen as he rotated his head, checking his skin for blemishes. He never had any.
    I stood up and stepped out of the tub. Taking a step toward him, I tugged the ends of his hair in my right hand. “You wouldn’t be bothering me if what you were going to say was really good, like he was crying in the middle of a field or