Regrets Only by M. J. Pullen Page B

might help narrow it down.”
    “Fine,”
Suzanne said. Marci seemed to enjoy her role as junior detective a little too
much. “He talked about himself too much. His vocabulary was atrocious. He was…sort
of barbaric, I guess.”
    “Barbaric…vocabulary…,”
Marci muttered as she wrote. “Got it. Okay, what’s he doing now?”
    “He’s
in sales, and he travels all over the state. I don’t know whether he’s dating
anyone. He—he had to mail me my underwear.”
    “Underwear…,”
Marci repeated, writing. Suzanne waited for the inevitable joke but none came.
“Okay, before that was Damian. Pro basketball player, dated three months—hey,
that was pretty good, Suze!”
    “He
was out of town a lot,” Suzanne answered drily.
    “Broke
up because…?”
    “We’ve
been over this. He was too young for me. He always had girls trying to follow
him back to his hotel room. I couldn’t compete with that.”
    “So
he cheated on you?”
    “No,
I don’t think so,” Suzanne said thoughtfully. “But it was only a matter of
time, right?”
    “Riiiiight,”
Marci said, with no small amount of sarcasm. “Any chance it could be him?”
    “Doubt
it,” Suzanne said. “He’s busy all the time, and he wasn’t really too upset when
I ended it. Besides, he’s not here that often. He has an apartment here during
the season but his family is all in Chicago, so he spends most of his time
there.”
    “Hmm…not
upset. Are you sure?”
    “Well,
he sent me some free tickets the other day with a nice little note. I have them
here somewhere. I was planning to give them to Jake but in all the excitement I
forgot.”
     “Sent…free…tickets…,”
Marci repeated and made a contemplative noise. Suddenly she was Columbo,
apparently.
    “So
your theory is that the professional basketball player, who could have just
about any girl he wanted, was so devastated by our breakup that he is taking
time out of his busy game schedule to slash my tires and sabotage my office
ladder? And he’s sending me tickets to a game where twenty thousand people will
be watching so that he can…what? Kill me at halftime?”
    Marci
chewed the end of the pen. “Perhaps not. Who’s next?”
    “Kenneth.”
    “Kenneth,
stockbroker, dated six weeks. Broke up because”—Marci peered more closely at
her notes, as though she had not been Suzanne’s sole confidant for each and
every turn of these events—“because he had a hairy back—ew—and was ‘weird about
kids.’ What does that mean?”
    “You
remember this, don’t you? He wanted kids a little too much?”
    Marci
flipped a couple of pages. “Two years ago you broke up with Xavier because he
didn’t want kids.”
    “I
know. I’d like to have the option, I guess. But Kenneth was more interested in
the kids than in the grownup part of the relationship. Like he was just looking
for a womb.”
    “Womb…got
it. Now, Brad Number Two.”
    “Brad
Two was too outdoorsy for me. A little too Grizzly Adams, you know? Plus, he
had smelly feet.”
    Marci
lowered her voice. “Don’t tell him I told you, but Jake’s feet are smelly, too.
Yuck! Okay, Timothy…”
    “Got
into a fight at a bar on our third date.”
    “Matthew?”
    “Mommy
issues. Remember?”
    “Oh,
yeah. Who was that guy who didn’t wash his hands after pooping?”
    “Reggie.”
Suzanne made a face. The two of them shuddered and giggled. The timer dinged,
and Marci got the brownies out of the oven before going back to the list.
    “Okay,
what about Frank?”
    “Public
relations guy. Dated three weeks. Too…polished. He seemed like the kind of guy
who would make you iron his underwear.”
    “Manuel?”
    “He’s
a chef. Owns the Mexican restaurant down the street. We weren’t dating so much
as hooking up after closing some nights. He’d give me free margaritas and we’d
talk business for a while, and then…you know. It just never turned into more
than that. I’m not really sure why.”
    “Down
the street? So he