Engaging Men Read Online Free

of times Kirk had gone home in the past year and a half and not invited me, it might even seem like his lid was still airtight.
    Since I didn’t know how to broach the subject of a meet-the-parents visit, I addressed the more immediate problem: “I wish you’d told me sooner…” So I might have had a chance to rally for position of serious girlfriend, I thought but didn’t say.
    “I’m sorry, Noodles,” he replied, contrite. “You know how busy I’ve been with this new client. Did I tell you that I’m designing a program for Norwood Investments? They have offices all over the country. If I land Norwood, I could have work lined up for the next few years…”
    His words silenced me for the moment. Maybe it was the injection of the nickname he had given me during the early days of our relationship, when I had ventured to cook him pasta, which, ail-American boy that he is, he referred to as noodles and sauce. After I had teasingly told him that my Italian mother would toss him out on his ear if he ever referred to her pasta as “noodles,” he had affectionately given me the name instead. But his warm little endearment wasn’t the only thing that shut me up. There was also his subtle reminder that he was a software designer on the rise. That the program he had created six months earlier to automate office space was the only thing on his mind, now that prestigious financial companies like Norwood Investments had taken notice. In the face of all this ambition, I somehow felt powerless to express my desire to be considered parent-worthy in Kirk’s mind.
    “Hey, Noodles?” Kirk said now, pulling a pair of jeans over his boxers and donning a T-shirt. “I’m gonna run down to Duane Reade and pick up a few things for my trip. Need anything?”
    Yeah, I thought: my head examined. “Um, no, I’m all right,” I replied cautiously.
    “Okay, I’ll be back in fifteen, then.” He gave me a perfunctory kiss on the forehead before making his way out the front door.
    The minute I heard the door slam behind him, I picked up the phone. I needed another perspective. Specifically: an ex-boyfriend’s perspective. And since pride prevented me from calling back the newly engaged Josh just yet, I dialed up Randy, whose number I still had safely tucked in my memory banks. After all, not marrying the men in your life did have its advantages. I had managed to turn at least two of my ex-boyfriends into friends.
    “I didn’t think you were into all that,” Randy said, after we’d exchanged greetings and I’d inquired about why the marriage issue had never come up for us.
    “Into all what?” I asked.
    “You know, marriage, kids. Hey, did I tell you Cheryl and I are working on our first?”
    “That’s wonderful,” I said in a daze. “What exactly do you mean I’m not into marriage, kids?”
    Randy chuckled. “C’mon, Ange, you know as well as I do that your career came first. You always wanted to be the big movie star.”
    “Actor. I am an actor.”
    “Whatever.”
    When I hung up a short while later, I began to wonder if maybe I was projecting the wrong image. True, I had long been harboring the dream of making a career of the acting talent I had been lavishly praised for all through high school and college. And though I hadn’t exactly landed my dream role in the four years since I had left a steady job in sales to pursue acting, Rise and Shine counted for something, didn’t it?
    Suddenly I had to start getting realistic, if I hoped to ever get a grip on this particular lid. I was thirty-one years old. I wasn’t getting any younger, as my mother lost no opportunity of reminding me. I needed to start looking like a wife.
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Chapter 2

     
I’m not really a wife, but I play one on TV.
    When I arrived home after the show the next morning and discovered Justin trying to tug a sofa through the narrow entrance foyer of our apartment, I realized that even if I didn’t look like a wife, I was quite capable of sounding