The Girlfriend Experience

Chapter 15: The ugly truth [Part 2]

 Ethan

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I don’t ask Rhiannon why she’s stranded on route 51 about a mile away from the mall.

I don’t ask her where her friends are.

I don’t ask her is she’s okay because she obviously isn’t.

I just get out of the car and open the passenger door for her to get in. After climbing back in I ask her where she wants to go and she states her address and I put into the GPS.

“Thank-you,” she smiles.

Her smile disarms me. I don’t think I’m ever really going to be able to have control over myself when I’m around her. What she does to me is beyond comprehension.

“I didn’t ruin your afternoon, did I?” she asks as I head down 51 to make a U-turn under the light.

“No,” I reply. If she hadn’t call I would still be getting the in depth lesson on Kissing 101 from Matt and Aaron.

“Good,” she says and sighs. I want to ask her what’s wrong so I can at least try to fix it. It’s probably a Brandon related issue which probably means that I can’t fix it. Everything the guy does is unfixable. He’s like this machine going around breaking things apart. I hate him.

“So….” I begin then my brain gets all muddy because I don’t know what to say after that. It’s not like she’s paying any attention to me anyway, her mind is clearly wandering on something else.

We come to a stop light. The time to fill the gap has gone by and I’m tapping my fingers on the steering wheel anxiously. I really want to know what she’s thinking right about now. Whatever’s on her mind I know I won’t be able to get her to spill it. She’s still looking away when I resume driving so I keep quiet and drive the rest of the way silently.

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Rhiannon’s house is nice, it’s warm and welcoming. The best adjective to describe it is cozy. As we make our way inside I can see that the rooms have that live-in-comfort look, the walls are painted in a warm neutral palette, and the furniture’s are overstuffed in that less than perfect appeal and accessories that display their lives as a family.

I get a sense of history as I look around.

There are houses and there are homes and this place is a home unlike my living quarters where everything feels structured and untouchable. Sometimes I feel like reside in a constitution with my neat freak of a mother and dictator father.

“Can you wait here a sec?” She asks as we stop in what appears to be the family room. “I’m going to run upstairs real quick.”

“Yeah, sure,” I nod.

Once she’s out of the room my imagination starts to run wild. I want to touch everything. I start with the magazines on the rustic coffee table. I flip through an issue of Vogue, my Mother prescribes to that it’s always the same old boring shit. I move to the next one, then the next one and it’s all the same boring crap then finally I find the recent issue of Cosmopolitan buried deep under all the other magazines and I grab it. As I flip through it I land on a page that’s been dog-eared. The article on top of the page reads: 10 WAYS TO GET OVER A BREAKUP NOW!

Number one says, get a makeover with a little description under it. I skim down to number three because it’s circled. It says, throw away the memories and the word “done” is written besides it. The next thing that catches my attention is number 6 and it says, get under someone else. It’s not circled but right below the description, in the same hand writing it says, “working on it.”