“When Tracey first started running, she showed up wearing a fanny pack!” McKenzie said as she scrolled through her phone.
The salesperson looked up from where she was measuring my foot and cocked her head to the side. “Aw, that’s sweet.”
“Will you shut up?” I shot at McKenzie.
“What? You did,” she said. “Look, I took some pictures of you while you did your test run. I’ll text them to you.”
“Fine,” I said.
“Happy New Year, Bitches!”
I looked at the Facebook message on my phone, placed it back on the nightstand and then rolled over, pulling a pillow over my head. It was Friday, January 2nd and I was starting the first weekend of the New Year celebrating with a nap with The Cat.
The phone pinged again and I wearily reached over to pick it up. I looked at the screen.
“When do we start running?!”
I groaned, and was about to set it aside again when:
“Helllooooooooo!”
Two seconds later:
“Tracey? McKenzie?”
“Guys??????”
I sighed in exasperation. I turned off the phone and went back to my nap. When I woke up later, there were two more Facebook messages and two threatening texts:
“TRACEY. ANSWER ME. NOW.”
“WE ARE GOING RUNNING.”
Oh god.
It was Lux.
I don’t really know what turned things around for My Ex. Actually, that’s not true, I do know. But that is not my story to tell, so I won’t. But I will say this. Ever since that call in July, he has never wavered. Not even once. There was no back and forth or indecision.
But as we’ve all seen, I’m not the easiest person to “date.” I can be insecure, needy. I can get paranoid, I can drink too much. Sometimes all those things at once. In the beginning of the three months before his visit, I was so nervous he would change his mind that I would regularly get hysterical and freak out and and accuse him of ‘playing me’ and shriek things like, “I won’t tolerate this! I won’t!!”
Then, the next morning I would call him up and say in a meek voice, “I’m sorry.” And then in an even meeker voice, “Are you still coming?”
And his response was always the same: “I’m still coming, Tracey.”
“Okay. So it’ll start like this: ‘You know those movies, those movies you can watch over and over and never get sick of? They might not be particularly good but for whatever reason they strike something in you and they become your go-to movies whenever you can’t figure out what to watch. I have three. In no particular order, they are: ‘Rock Star,’ which I love because the music reminds me of high school and it makes me nostalgic for my hometown’s illicit parties when parents were out of town. We’d lift our beers together and scream out Motley Crue and make out on porches and it honestly felt like life couldn’t get any better. The next is ’17 Again.’ I love this one because Zac Efron is brilliantly hysterical in it. No really, he is – ‘”
“No really, he is.” Marlie said nodding and took a sip of her coffee. We were wrapping up our Sunday-After-New-Year’s-Brunch at Park Avenue Winter and I was telling her about my next post. Continue reading 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, 99 Bottles of Beer. Take One Down, Pass It Around…(Well, you know the rest).
When I was 16, I was an exchange student to Japan. There were a lot of incredible things that transpired on that trip, such as – I lived with a Buddhist Priest and his family in a house attached to the temple, got to attend a Japanese high school and, since my small fishing town did not get a lot of visitors, people took my picture everywhere I went, chanted my name when I entered a room and strangers gave me presents. It was like I was Britney Spears. Continue reading Beware of the Wordsmith. Part Three.
Zeke let me cry into his shoulder for awhile on the couch. Then, after I’d wiped my nose on his sleeve, he’d gotten up to find me some Advil. “So, what’s going on Trace?” he asked, as he rifled around in the medicine cabinet.
“He doesn’t love me anymore!” I wailed. I flopped into the couch and buried my face in a pillow.
“Well, yeah,” he replied. “That’s what happens with breakups.”
“You don’t understand,” I said. But he couldn’t really hear me. Continue reading Zeke Comes to Visit. Part Two.
Not Quite A Cougar 