Finding Fraser(10)

“For your sporran,” I said, still a little drunk.

The look of horror he gave me as the cab sped away led me to believe he didn’t really get the joke.





Fall & Forget…

11:00 am, February 22

Philadelphia, USA



Well, I have to say the conference was a success for just about everybody who attended. Certainly the group of Belles I met in the bar seemed to be having a most excellent time. (Sharan, if you ever read this, say ‘hi’ to Howie for me, okay?) However, my own encounter with Herself was an unmitigated disaster, and I’m feeling very discouraged. I’m not sure if I can continue. I have resolved to never think of it again, let alone write about it here.



- ES



Comments: 1

SophiaSheridan, Chicago, USA:

I’m glad to see you have come to your senses, Emma. This whole idea sounds like a wild goose chase, and really? I’m not so sure you’re not certifiable. Anyway, I think you’ll agree the fun is over by now, right? (And yes, obviously I found your blog. Paul found it, actually. How can you waste your time with this nonsense?) Please don’t make me read any more. The whole idea makes me nauseous. Come home.





Paul is Sophia’s husband. They’ve been married two years, but they’d met in ninth grade. I have never forgotten what a little creep he was in school. It took him a long time to grow out of it. To tell you the truth, I’m not sure he ever did.

These days, Paul is a tech wizard—a geek’s geek. He does some kind of work for the government, but all he’ll tell me is that he is a “white hat,” whatever that means. And that he makes good money. “Very good money, Sis. Very good.”

Asshole. And I am not his “Sis.”

The morning after the disaster in Philadelphia, I had been all set to pack up and go home—cash the ticket in and maybe heed Sophia’s advice and take a side trip to Mexico for a week, before deciding what to do next. However, a quick phone call reminded me the deal I got on the airline ticket was not refundable, not transferable.

And then I read Sophia’s comment.

I threw myself down on the little hostel room bed—which was a mistake, as it was apparently constructed of baling wire and straw—and did what I always do when I’m feeling low.

I pulled out my copy of OUTLANDER.

Well, come on. Where do YOU go when your heart is broken?

This is not a rhetorical question.

Some people hit the bar. Some throw themselves into their work. Some just leap into the arms of the first non-homicidal-looking person they find.

Me? I go to the bookstore.

I mean, I’ve tried drowning my sorrows, but somehow—it just never works out well. Drunkenness invariably precedes regret, at least in my experience. (See the events of the previous night for a case in point …)

My first boyfriend was beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes. Achingly gorgeous bone-structure. I’d had NO idea what he’d seen in me, but when he’d asked me to coffee, I wasn’t about to question it. We shared a second-year Grecian studies class, and he was one of only three males in the group. I was nearly twenty, and had resigned myself to undateable status long before. Who needed boys? After a painfully long dry spell in high school, I had thrown myself into my studies at college, and the middle-Renaissance period became my era of choice. NOT the best place to meet virile football players.

So when Campbell asked me to join him for our coffee break, I had a cup of Earl Grey in my hand before he could change his mind. He ordered a two-shot dark roast latte and we talked about my duties as a TA in a first-year literature class. How irritating it was to mark essays. How accessible the prof was in a kind of a Wolverine-era Hugh Jackman way. It was heaven.

That relationship lasted exactly thirty-seven cups of tea.

Tall. With honey.

When it became clear to both of us that Campbell’s long eyelashes were batting more at our hipster Hugh-look-alike professor than they were at me, he moved on.

And I went to the bookstore and bought the next Jamie and Claire book.

I don’t mean to minimize my devastation, here. Only a woman whose first true love had left her for an older professor with mutton chop sideburns and penchant for reading sonnets aloud in class can truly understand the level of my loss.

Campbell was beautiful, he was perfect and he had been—so briefly—mine. For a week afterwards, I lay on the floor with my head awkwardly propped against my couch cushions. I could still smell the scent of him there in the living room; the place where he’d sat and endlessly Googled class ratings for our professor on my laptop. (And men’s body-building sites. Hey—I was young, and a slow learner, okay?)

My friend Jazmin took me out for beers when it became clear that Campbell was lost to me. I sat at the bar and watched as she got progressively drunker, accepting Jager-bombs from a growing assortment of unsuitable young men. She finally left, her neck firmly ensconced in the crook of the elbow of the worst of the lot: a boy wearing a trucker hat emblazoned with the picture of a cup of coffee and the words ‘Joe before Hos’. It was only 8 p.m., so I paid the bill and headed for the bookstore. Campbell might have been beautiful, but his back was unscarred by life, his hair was not auburn and he didn’t roll his ‘r’s when he spoke.