Rewriting the Ex-Factor

I spit chocolate caramel latte into the face of a man I thought I would never see again. He grabs a napkin from my table and wipes at his honey-colored skin, catching the latte before it drips from his chin and onto his charcoal Armani suit.

“I knew it was you,” he says with lips I remember traipsing along my neck. Toothpaste-perfected teeth gleam at me.

In one whole second, I manage to go from a nervous woman who hopes her blind lunch date will be the man of her dreams, to a dribbling mute who believes she must have dated every man in New York—and consequently forgotten them—in order to get back to Chuck, the ex-love of her life.

Let me back track. About four years ago, at the age of 25, I was in love. I gave up my job as an assistant editor in order to follow Chuck across the globe. You see, he couldn’t stand to be without me, and he made more than enough to support us. I cut my hair short because he felt women wore their hair long to compensate for some outer flaw. In his opinion, I was flawless. So, off with the hair. I took up biking and running and died through four marathons for Chuck. I stopped calling my mother weekly, for Chuck. Calling more than once a month showed dependency. He didn’t like dependency, unless it was to him. It was my dependency that moved him to another woman—Sarah, my used-to-be friend—while we were still together. If you fast forward three years, ten months, and two days—not that I’m counting, you will find a voluptuous and highly opinionated woman sitting at a table, with her mouth still open and a dash of whipped cream on her chin, watching as Chuck Peterson reenters her life and sits down at her table, all without removing his bright smile.

To read the rest, head to my new personal website, ChickLitGurrl.com, and then bounce back over here and tell me what you think! 🙂