Snap

RAE

Why is it that when people say it isn’t what it looks like, it’s always exactly what it looks like?

Take last night for example. Jake, the man I’ve been in love with for two years, sat on a barstool at Del Mar, playing tonsil hockey with a stunningly beautiful woman. I stare. I drop my drink, and then I stare some more.

I stare for a long time, unable to believe my eyes. If they were actually playing hockey, they would have been in overtime by the time I scooped an ice cube off the floor and chucked it at his head.

In what was quickly becoming a pattern, Jake’s glass shatters to the ground when he sees me. He literally flinches as if he’s seen a horror movie, not his girlfriend.

“R-Rae?” he stammers.

I grab another ice cube.

That’s when he tells me it isn’t what it looks like and that I need to let him explain.

Before he could, his make-out partner screeches, “You have a girlfriend?!” and turns a shade of green that would have been nasty on anyone except her.

“I, uh…”

So much for letting him explain.

Liquor gives me the courage to say what sober me would never dare to. I cross my arms and snap, “Yeah, he does.”

She dumps her drink on his head with trembling hands. Then, the glass slips out of her fingers, the bartender groans, and I half-laugh, half-sob.

“Rae, please. Let me explain,” Jake begs as cranberry juice and Tito’s drips from his now-drenched, once-neatly combed chocolate hair.

And because I’m me, I let him.

More than anything, I wanted to hear a valid reason as to why my boyfriend was at the shitty club near my apartment and not at his parents’ house in Park City, which is where he said he was spending the weekend.

“Explain,” I order.

“I swear, I wasn’t…,” he trails off.

Zoe decides that was an appropriate time to sock him in the temple.

He tells me he wanted to see other people while the bouncers less-than-gently escorted Zoe and me outside. He doesn’t even say he’s sorry. He just…walks off.

That’s part one of How Rae Ends Up in a Stranger’s Bed.

It’s a trilogy.