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sometimes I think I write imaginary scenarios...things that might happen to me if I actually dated or went to bars..rather than short stories...but since these are completely fictional I do call them short stories...just stuff that happens when I start writing to get out frustrations.

Paper Bag Ugly

 A short story (so far)

Max's friends were laughing at her. They had been, it seemed, for at least the last five minutes and all because she had countered their accusations of her being shallow with a simple "I am not!"

"Uh huh," Bobbi said, unconvinced. "Prove it. The next ugly woman we see...you have to buy her a drink...maybe even convince her to go home with you."

Inwardly, Max shuddered, but she hated the thought of everyone at the table thinking she was just into pretty faces so she said, with more heart than she actually felt, "You're on!"

"Hey!" Rae piped up from the other side of the table. "I've got a question. Who defines the ugly?"

Jackie rolled her eyes. "I think ugly is pretty obvious."

"Ugly's a pretty harsh word, guys. And this isn't just a silly bet, it's a cruel one." That was sweet, always nice, Pinkie who was probably right in this case but never really seemed to ready to join in on any of their fun.

"Spoil sport!"

"I am not a spoil sport, Bobbi. It's cruel, plain and simple."

I have no proof this is how it went down, but it's how I imagine given what I know now and how Max's friends are...but I get ahead of myself and the morning that broke my heart...

Max looked at me with such sadness I grew scared.

"What's wrong?" My voice sounded jagged even to my own ears as I propped myself up to study her more closely.

"There's no easy way to say this-"

Just then the doorbell rang.

I started, but Max jumped up easily. "That would be the package work was going to have messengered over. Be right back."

She hadn't been two steps out of the bedroom when her phone beeped on the night stand, small light softly filling the small corner of the dusky colored room.

"Did you bag the ugly chick yet?” followed quickly by: “Our money’s riding that you couldn’t go through with it!" flashed across the screen, the screen I had no business looking at, but did anyway.

At first I thought it had to be a horrible mistake, a text sent to the wrong person, something so silly and out of context it had nothing to do with either me or Max.

But I knew otherwise…as if suddenly all my doubts about why someone like Max would like someone like me had not only been confirmed, but completely explained.

Butterball, someone had called me once. You have a nice body (at least from what I can tell, the woman had said snarkily) but your face? Phew!

Max was the first and only woman who had ever shown any lasting interest in me and I had ignored the little buzzes of warning that had flared through my body in the beginning.

“Are you okay?” Her voice was suddenly right next to me, her hands on my cheeks, caressing them.

I pulled away, jumped up as if I were on fire. Nausea had arrived, overwhelming me all at once. I rushed to the bathroom, made it to the toilet just in time before lunch came back up, obnoxious and evil.

Max was there in a flash. “Sarah-“

“Please, Max! Please don’t even bother explaining. It all makes sense now.”

“Sarah!” There was a cry in her voice. “I was going to explain. I was. But then the doorbell-“

“Please! Just leave. I can’t talk about this right now.” The need to retch again returned, but I did not want Max to see me throwing up. “Leave!”

“You shouldn’t have looked at my phone!” She might have been right, but her accusation somehow rang false and unfair in light of what she’d done.

“That may be true, but it doesn’t change what I saw!”

It didn’t matter if I was going to get sick again or not. I stood up fast, refusing to have her see me like this. I moved as menacingly as I could towards her. “Leave!” I screamed the word.

Finally, after looking at me with what seemed like sad eyes but was more likely disappointed ones (who knew how much money had been riding on the bet?), she left and after throwing up one more time, I fell against the toilet and cried like a baby.

Hours later I came to my senses, showered and fed, and decided I was being ridiculous spending any time at all crying over a supposedly grown-up woman who would bet her friends she could indeed date and bed someone ugly.

Besides, it was just as much my fault as hers.

I had broken my own rule about waiting until both of us were completely committed to each other before sleeping together. I had abandoned my romantic, wait-for-marriage before I give up my virginity beliefs just when it wasn’t ridiculous to say two gay women could legally get married.

Right now, I think I hated myself more than I did her. Eventually, I would forgive her. But I could never forget. Thank God she didn’t know I had never been with anyone before. No use giving her and her little gaggle of friends something more to laugh about when they met to settle the bet.

Of course, the way I had reacted physically and emotionally probably gave it away anyway. I had taken it so very seriously, felt such intensity about it all. And it had all just been a big, fat joke to Max.

This didn’t hurt as much as it opened old wounds, reminding me very harshly that I should never have stopped believing there was no one in this world for me.

Max was such a good liar, so convincing. There HAD to have been a lot of money involved for her to have been able to stomach being with me this past month.

She must have imagined someone else the entire time, she must have. How else could she be with someone she found ugly and make it seem so beautiful?

It all made me sad, when I would much rather have been angry. Anger would burn out much faster, feel more satisfactory. Sadness just made me sink in to something that would not let her go.

All the sweet things Max had said both in and out of bed suddenly sounded ridiculous, even cruel. How could she?

I also blamed myself for taking any woman seriously I’d met in a bar. If I broke it down enough, if I really looked at everything that had happened closely, I was just as much to blame.

Months went by and I immersed myself in work and solitary activities during my time off. I eventually stopped thinking of Max and how much I had enjoyed being with and around her before that very enlightening afternoon. I stopped hurting over the fact I’d wasted my first time on someone who thought of me as a joke she could make money off of. It didn’t matter anymore because I was through with love.

Max had kept up her phone calls and knocks on the door for almost two weeks straight following that day, but once it became clear I was serious about never talking to her again she moved on. She had persisted longer than a bet would merit, I’d give her that, but she probably had selfish reasons. She had a human side, after all, and maybe, just maybe, guilt kept her up at night. That didn’t mean she liked me.

At the grocery store, a little bit over a month later, I rounded the corner of the frozen food aisle and plowed right into someone.

“I am so sorry, I-“ I cut my own words off as I saw the woman in front of me, the very tired, but still lovely woman who only struck me as that much more out of league with all these weeks gone by not having seen her. Really, I had only myself to blame for having been duped so easily by a woman like this one.

“Sarah!” She sounded alarmed and pleased at the same time. “I—it’s-I can’t believe it’s you.” She stumbled over her words, completely unlike herself.

“Hello, Max.” Going for cold and distant, I instead sounded like some cartoon version of someone’s long lost arch enemy showing up unexpectedly. All that was missing was a handlebar mustache for me to twirl.

“How have you been?” The look in her eyes suggested she really wanted to know, but surely guilt (or my imagination?) was behind all that.

“Fine. Absolutely fine.” I pretended to rearrange the items in my cart’s front basket. “And you?”

“Okay.” She started to reach her hand out, then apparently thought better and brushed some stray hair out of her eyes. She looked adorable, if miserably so. A small part of my heart, a small part, went out to her. “Could we talk?” At seeing my expression, she rushed on. “Not here, obviously, but somewhere private where I can—“

“Max.” I sighed. “It’s okay. Honestly. I’ve moved on. You should too.”

“Moved on?” The words echoed weakly. “Are you seeing someone?”

At that I laughed, borderline hysterical. “Ha! Me? What do you think?”

She looked confused for a second, then must have realized what I meant. “It’s entirely possible you could be dating someone. You’re a very lovely woman.” Her eyes seemed to plead with mine and she added softly and, surprisingly, sincerely. “You really are.”

I laughed again, but this time more good-naturedly. “Max, you, um, you were the first woman I liked who asked me out in ages. In ages. My phone doesn’t exactly ring off the hook much. It never has. And you were not only the first to ask to me out in ages, you were my very fir-“ God, what was I doing, saying? What had I been able to say?

“Your first…?” She nudged. “Your first what?”

“Nothing,” I muttered, suddenly blushing furiously, and edged past her. “I really need to be going.”

But she grabbed my elbow as I moved on and when I turned back to face her, her eyes were wide. “Sarah, were you going to say I was-did you mean? Was I-“

An elderly woman tried to get through and gave us both a dirty look when we didn’t move right away. “Damn dykes,” tt sounded like she said under her breath. But I couldn’t be sure and in the state I was, thought it was a good distraction if she had. Again, I felt an insane need to laugh.

“I have to go. I do.” And I escaped her clutch and, out of sight, slipped away, leaving my cart behind I was so distraught.

But she called that night and despite my better judgment I picked up.

“Yes?” Again, I went for cold, succeeding much better this time.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I could have pretended I didn’t know what she meant, but I was not going to play games with her and I was so very tired and worn down…probably the reasons I answered the phone.

“Well, given what I know now, my gut instinct that you would have laughed was probably right.”

She said nothing for a full beat, then: “I would not have laughed. I would not have.” She paused and when she spoke again, her voice actually sounded broken. “You weren’t a bet for me, you weren’t. That…time was special for me, all of our time together was.”

There was nothing to say to that, now was there?

“Sarah?”

“Why?”

Now it was her turn to be without guile. “I was an idiot and I didn’t have my heart in it…not at all. But the girls were joking that I only was into superficial beauty and I wanted to prove them wrong. It was never about the money. I wouldn’t even take it when they offered it to me.”

“Well, good for you, Max. How very noble.”

“You have a beauty, you had it that night, it’s always with you, that light you carry. You don’t have to look like a model, you’re better than that. I saw it right away. I just went about it all wrong, with them and then you. But I—“ But she cut herself off right there.

“I forgive you, I do. I just can never forget. I…I can’t.” I struggled to explain because, in the light of day, if I truly thought about it I’d realize potential lifetime partners had committed worse crimes, right?

But I knew why, deep down, and I had try and get the words out of me. “Maybe, maybe, if my past were different, I could move on with you. But, you’re the first woman I ever liked who I thought liked me back and then when I discovered that wasn’t true, my entire personal history came rushing back at me…and, well, you were either part of a bet or you were making fun of me or you weren’t of right mind. Only one of those three reasons would make sense to someone like me. If we were to get together…as a couple, well, I’d always, always, wonder if it was real.”