Chapter 9: Should I?

In the past three days, Laura had been showered with more interest and attention than in her years spent with Luke.

Admittedly she had allowed herself to daydream about being with each one of them as her potential date, love interest, or significant other, committed partner, or special friend. Casually dating all three at the same time was the wild card she had not been expecting.

Did it make her a slut to be shared by these three men who were lifelong friends? Were they for real, or toying with her? How would she ever settle on picking just one? Did dating a trio of male friends make her just as bad as her ex, who, despite being in a relationship with Laura, continued, often with her suspicion, dating and sleeping with whomever he chose to?

She decided to put her ideas on paper to gain some insight or at least a little more clarification about her love square. She found a legal pad and pen and tore out three sheets of paper, one for each guy, then drew a line down the center of the page with a plus at the top of each left column and a minus on the right. She wrote each of their names at the top of one of her pros and cons lists.

Several hours later and running out of paper, she was right back where she started. With assessing the merits and means of dating the three guys in question and throwing herself into their trio’s mix, she realized she had just formed another quartet. But would all four of them playing together make for harmony or discord? Many women would love to have such problems.

It was nice to be treated for a change. Starting out it might have been chicken wings and croissants, but it was a nice gesture and impressed her enough in looking forward to what kind of date the three very different men might have in mind for her.


A few blocks away from her loft, she was so busy looking up at the sky’s changing colors that she stopped paying attention to her urban surroundings. As a result, she got a big, unwelcome surprise.

“Hey. Watch where you’re going lady.” She recognized this male voice before she looked down. She had accidentally bumped into Luke. The brief time apart since their break up had not done him any favors. He was unshaven, looked neglected and stank. It was definitely him. He was looking up at her from his lowly place on the dirty sidewalk. He did not even make the top of her pros and cons list. If he somehow had, he would have had minuses galore and unworthy of her consideration but all too worthy of his place in the gutter.

Instead of offering her hand to help him up, she stepped over him and continued her walk, but at a more brisk yet careful pace. Any more delay in his presence and he might recognize her, too, then be up to his old tricks of trying to get into her head, feigning nothing more than a passing interest in her or in winning her heart, with his sole desire to gain access to as much of her hard earned income as he could get in order to get over on her.

With each step away from him, she resolved to open herself to more new positive adventures. She deserved better. She became more and more certain of herself. Left right left right: she stepped forward and continued her march of strength and resolution. She became ever more keenly aware of her power and attractiveness as a newly detached and available single woman in the city the farther away she moved from Luke the loser.


Most of all, legal pad lists aside, these three men she had met treated her with respect, which had never been the case with her ex. The walk had done her good. She had solved her own problem. Upon returning home, she balled the three lists up and put them in a ceramic bowl. Then she lit a match from a matchbook from the club she and her friend Caitlin had visited and threw it in the bowl. “Goodbye to the past and hello to my future.”

She got out her phone where she had put each man’s phone number. The ball was in her court; it was her turn to play. She crossed her fingers and sent up a prayer. She decided she would date all three of them: Don, Alex, and Ricky.