Frenemies by Megan Crane Page A

of time to consider my feelings for Henry in detail during the long years of Georgia’s obsession with him. There was no way I could admit that after years spent pointing out his numerous character flaws, all the ways in which he could never be worthy of Georgia, and the simple fact of his apparent disinterest in women over ninety pounds, I had accidentally slept with him. I wouldn’t know how to begin to broach the subject. It was far better to pretend it had never happened.
    Jack Daniel’s had a lot to answer for.
    Besides which, I knew perfectly well that Nate had a
thing
about Henry. You might even call it
jealousy.
If he found out, it wouldn’t be pretty.
    I braced myself against another rush of cold wind. Linus was oblivious to the temperature as he romped around the frozen ground with another creature of indeterminate breed. The sky looked like snow, all sullen and metallic, which only added to my unpleasant mood. Nothing like a New England winter to beat the will to live right out of you.
    I smiled at the other dog owner, and whistled for Linus when I could no longer feel my toes. He surprised me by obeying immediately. (It was
really
cold.) We trudged back to the sidewalk, where I clipped his leash to the metal ring on his collar and tugged him with me across the street.
    Back in the steamy warmth of my cozy little hovel, I collapsed on my couch (liberated from my parents’ garage years ago, it boasted that black-and-white zigzag pattern that was now almost delightfully retro) and kicked at the blueberry dress. I’d left it crumpled in the middle of my puny living room when I’d arrived home last night. The blueberry pumps had gone to their maker via a quiet death in the garbage chute.
    When the phone rang, I was so busy continuing to justify my hate-on for Henry that I didn’t glance at the caller ID.
    That was proving to be a costly mistake.
    “Gus,” Helen purred at me. “I took a chance that you’d be home. I’d love to see you, just for a quick chat. Would you mind if I dropped by?”
    “Um …”
    “Excellent!” she cried. “I’ll be about a half hour.”
    Which was how the enemy found her way into my home.

chapter nine
    F irst, though, I threw myself into one of those whirlwind cleaning frenzies, the sort you could only summon the energy to perform when someone was about to enter your house for the first time in years. (Or when your mother called to announce she was dropping by, but that was a whole different level of panic.) Having lived with me when I was eighteen, Helen knew that I had once been lackadaisical about housework, to the point of outright slovenliness from time to time. The fact that this was still true over ten years later was irrelevant. I just couldn’t allow her to assume I was still my eighteen-year-old self, based on my continuing lack of housekeeping skills.
    Helen, I was sure, would take one look at the dust bunnies cavorting about in the corners and assume they were stand-ins for deep-seated character flaws she’d long suspected lurked within me. Dust bunnies were
representational
, as every woman with a subscription to
Real Simple
knew full well. I refused to let Helen think she had some kind of shortcut into my psyche based on my inability to wield a Swiffer.
    It wasn’t only my house that needed cleaning, either. When you’ve had the bad luck to spend an evening with a collection of your nemeses in a Royal Blueberry Bridesmaid’s Gown (with matching bag and shoes), you’ll find that you
cannot bear
to let your number-one nemesis see you in all your Saturday morning glory. It wasn’t just that I suspected I looked bad. It was that looking bad in front of Helen would
prove
that Nate had been right to dump me for her. That I deserved it because I was fat, ugly, and unlovable.
    Sure, it was pathological. Welcome to neurotic womanhood. It wasn’t like I was alone.
    Every woman I knew had
specific
complaints about
that thing
that rendered her ugly and unlovable.