Boyfriend #12
Peter Sosa, age twenty-nine
They met in the elevator. He worked on an upper floor, an ad exec, young for the position, so obviously a genius.
Smartness had always attracted Jane, that and hands and jawline and butt.
And eyes. Also, integrity of character—she wasn’t shallow.
Peter fell for her at once, he said, because she was stunning.
That’s the word he’d used—stunning. It’s a difficult word to dismiss. She longed to be that word to someone.
“What’s wrong? You’re married, aren’t you?”
“No, no, nothing like that.” He paused, leaving Jane to imagine.
“I have a girlfriend. I’m sorry. I’m not cheating, she’s right over there, at the table by the window.
She made me a bet that I couldn’t make the first girl I asked out fall in love with me.
She got the idea from some book she read, thought it would be romantic, then it went too far . . .”
Jane’s language would have made Britney the longshoreman blush down to her boots.