Point, Click, Love Read online

  Ed was kind of a gusher. While most men chose one or two things to compliment, Ed complimented everything—her black hair, her blue eyes, her toned arms, her tiny waist, her taste in books, her favorite restaurants, even the fact that she had two young children, something Ed, at age forty-six, never had and seemed to regret. Some might have called his behavior over the top, but Katie couldn’t help but fall for it. Rob rarely complimented her on anything, so she felt like she had a lot to make up for, and Ed was willing to do the job.

  When Ed first emailed Katie, she was a little annoyed that he’d ignored her age specifications. Putting her potential beau’s age limit at forty-five was already a stretch, so she wasn’t sure how she felt about dating a forty-six-year-old. Still, she was taken in by Ed’s boyish face, bright-blue eyes, and graying blond hair. And his profile was so perfect she thought for sure he had invented the whole thing.

  He was raised in Los Angeles but had lived in the Midwest for the last twenty years, working as an executive for a technology company. He made at least $150,000 a year—Match.com stopped counting at $150,000, as if to say, “Why would you need to make any more than that?” Katie always found it strange that some people were willing to disclose their salaries, but she was happy to know. Ed went to Princeton for college, business school at Wharton, and in between spent a year in Paris working for an investment firm.

  Then she stopped herself. Why do I care where he went to college? Katie wondered. I thought I was doing this for the sex. She realized that, when in bed with a man, it would probably be better to be there with a twenty-eight-year-old with an associate’s degree from a junior college than a forty-six-year-old with an Ivy League education. At that point she had to admit that maybe she was looking for something more than just sex. Good conversation? Nice dinners in fancy restaurants? Maybe the symphony? He could always use Viagra if need be.

  Frankly, Katie couldn’t imagine why Ed was interested in her. It wasn’t as if she didn’t have confidence, but she knew her limitations and she didn’t have a résumé that could compare to Ed’s. So what was it about her? Was her smile really so inviting? Her arms so alluring? Her restaurant picks so interesting?

  After only a couple of emails, Ed asked for Katie’s number, and within seconds of sending it to him, Katie heard her phone ring.

  It was one of those rings that pierces your body and runs up your spine. One of those rings that signals a call that might just change your life.

  “Hello?” Katie answered, a slight tremor in her voice. This was the first time she was actually talking to one of her suitors.

  “Hi there, Katie. It’s Ed.”

  Katie liked how confident Ed sounded. He already seemed in complete control of the situation.

  “That was quick,” said Katie.

  “I don’t believe in wasting any time. When I see something I want, I go after it.”

  “So you already know you want me?”

  “I know I’m intrigued enough to find out more about you.”

  “Intrigued, huh?” Katie had never thought of herself as intriguing, but she liked the sound of it.

  “I’m all about finding great things in unexpected places,” Ed said.

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Sure. I’m in biz dev.”

  Biz dev? thought Katie. “I’m sorry, I don’t speak that language.”

  “Business development. My bad. You hang around these technology types long enough, you start abbreviating everything.”

  My bad? Is this guy trying to sound like he’s twenty years old? wondered Katie. “What do you do?”

  “I look for small companies doing great things and buy them out.”

  “I see. Let them do all the hard work and then reap the benefits.”

  “Exactly!”

  “So I guess you work with a lot of young people.” The minute she said it, Katie realized she had said the wrong thing.

  “Well, yes. But I don’t consider myself an old fart yet.”

  “Oh, of course, I know. I’m sorry. I just meant—”

  “I know, I know. Don’t worry about it. It’s true. Most of the people I work with are much younger than me. I tend to gravitate to younger people.”

  “Am I young enough for you?” asked Katie.

  “I don’t know. We’ll have to see if you can keep up.”

  “I have to say, most of the guys on Match seem to be looking for younger women.” Katie was always appalled when she came across men who unabashedly stated that they’d date only women at least five years younger than themselves.

  “That’s true. Most guys think younger is better. But in the past year I dated a woman in her twenties and a woman in her fifties. Age doesn’t matter to me. It’s who you are.”

  Katie couldn’t help but be charmed by Ed. She liked how self-assured, but not arrogant, he sounded. Well, maybe a little arrogant. But maybe he actually had something to be arrogant about.

  “So you want to give this a try, Katie? Would you like to meet for dinner?”

  Katie had expected to be invited for coffee, maybe a drink. She liked that Ed went right for the dinner. “Sure. Why not?”

  Katie was excited. She wanted to tell someone about her first Match.com date, but it was too late to call anyone, particularly her best friend, Maxine, who usually went to bed around ten o’clock. Maxine’s husband, Jake, was a doctor and liked to get to bed early. Maxine and Jake had gone to a couples’ workshop in San Francisco a few years ago and the counselor told them that couples have the best relationships when they go to bed at the same time. Maxine swore it had made her marriage better, but Katie couldn’t imagine how much better it could have gotten, since it already seemed perfect to her. Maxine always had the perfect marriage, and as much as Katie tried to find a chink in Maxine and Jake’s armor, she never could. It was real. But rather than envying her friend, Katie was heartened by Maxine’s good fortune. Maybe, someday, it could happen to her.

  Chapter Two

  Maxine’s life used to be an open book. She used to share her thoughts and feelings with the people around her—her family, her friends. Now her life was full of secrets. She thought things and did things that she didn’t want anyone to know about. Like the fact that she spent hours at her computer going to celebrity gossip websites.

  Maxine was sure people would be shocked if they knew. She had spent her childhood reading books rather than watching Gilligan’s Island and The Brady Bunch, like her friends did. She didn’t even own a television until she had her first child in her late twenties. She was an artist—a painter—and a philanthropist. She was married to one of the most renowned gastroenterologists in the country. She had traveled the world and spoke fluent French, some Italian, and a bit of Chinese. Her kids were little geniuses who attended the fanciest prep school in town and were fawned over by their teachers. But the fact of the matter was, with all this, she spent a good part of her day reading about the celebrities and stars—both big and small—who populated online resources, from People.com to TMZ.

  She read about their triumphs and their tragedies, followed their career ups and downs, and looked at photos of their well-dressed children. She watched them lounge on the beach topless in the South of France and walk the streets of Santa Monica with Starbucks lattes in hand. But what she loved most was reading about their romances and breakups, marriages and divorces. For some reason, reading about Katie and Tom, Demi and Ashton and Bruce, and Lance and Sheryl and Kate and Ashley and that poor ex-wife who had stood by him through all those Tours de France and never uttered a bad word about him even after being dumped, made Maxine feel like she was on the verge of some kind of discovery about life, love, and marriage.

  Maxine was particularly intrigued by the Brad/Jen/Angelina combo. Even before she became celebrity-obsessed, she was struck by Brad and Jen—the golden couple. Everything about them glowed: their shiny blond hair and sparkling white teeth and richly tanned skin. Maxine had the idea that her friends thought of Jake and her as the Brad an
d Jen of the Midwest. No, they weren’t quite as tan, their teeth weren’t so white, and their hair wasn’t as shiny. But they were pretty people, smart, successful, wealthy. So everyone thought they had the perfect life.

  Then Brad left Jen for Angelina.

  Maxine was devastated.

  She knew it wasn’t about Brad and Jen—it was about Jake and her and the idea that there was no such thing as a perfect couple. If it could happen to Brad and Jen, why couldn’t it happen to her?

  At first she hated Angelina—those ridiculously plump lips and her haughty demeanor on the red carpet. And what about all those tattoos, the vial of blood around her neck, and kissing her brother full on the mouth at the Oscars? But after a while, she started thinking that Angelina did have more substance than Jen. She genuinely cared about the world around her and used her celebrity to make a difference for the poor and destitute. Sure, Maxine wondered about all those adopted kids, whether the couple was biting off more than they could chew. But their hearts seemed to be in the right place. Soon, Maxine accepted Brad and Angelina as a couple and decided it was better this way.

  So she had to wonder: Was there somebody else out there who was even better for Jake than she was? Or perhaps there was somebody out there for her who was better than Jake. Maxine was never a grass-is-always-greener kind of woman, but lately she couldn’t help thinking that maybe things could be better.

  And that was her biggest secret of all. Her marriage wasn’t as great as everyone thought it was.

  Maxine met Jake when she was traveling around Europe after graduating from Wesleyan. None of Maxine’s friends were interested in going with her, since they all had secured high-powered jobs or artsy internships, so she decided to go it alone. She would head from north to south, beginning in Amsterdam and ending in Sicily.

  Amsterdam was the perfect place to start, full of beautiful young people who were eager to make new friends and show off their town. Her first day there, she met a bunch of college students at a coffee bar who invited her to a party that night. The moment she walked into the cramped apartment, she was blown away by all the men, one more handsome than the next, and she resolved to meet a boy and sleep with him that night.

  It had been a while for Maxine. Although she had spent her first two years of college skipping from one boy to the next, her second two years were completely sexless. Maybe she was burned out, maybe she was too busy with her double major in painting and religious studies, or maybe she was just looking for something different.

  She zeroed in on a tall boy with deep blue eyes and jet-black hair; his name was Maximilian. They immediately hit it off, calling each other Max and discovering their mutual love of art. Maximilian tried to teach Maxine how to properly pronounce van Gogh. Maxine told Maximilian she wanted him to take her to his place, and he readily agreed.

  Maxine stayed in Amsterdam an extra week to be with Maximilian but decided that she still wanted to see the rest of Europe. So she boarded a train for Paris and spent the long journey convincing herself that she had made the right decision. But once she settled into her cheap Parisian hotel, she knew she had made a mistake. Paris was a terrible place to be alone and an even worse place to be while missing a gorgeous Dutch boy with blue eyes and black hair. The people were cold and they made fun of her accent, and everything around her—the intimate bistros, the parks, the fountains—seemed to be built for couples.

  After a few days, she hopped a train for Zurich, then Munich, then Salzburg, and in each place she searched the faces of the people for some kind of recognition, some acknowledgment of her existence, but everyone seemed indifferent.

  Once across the Italian border, everything changed.

  “Ciao, bella!” a man in a white apron shouted at Maxine the moment she walked into a coffee bar in Genoa, as if she were an old friend he hadn’t seen in years. It was like that everywhere she went—restaurants, bakeries, stores, and newsstands. And as she worked her way south, people only got more welcoming, as if friendliness increased in direct proportion to the warmth of the sun and the decay of the buildings.

  Rome is where she met Jake. They were staying at the same hostel, but he was with a group of college friends. Each night, Jake’s group would head out to one of the Irish pubs near the train station and get drunk on Guinness, while Maxine spent the night roaming the streets, hanging out at little wine bars, and eating hunks of pizza on the cement benches of the piazzas.

  One evening, Jake and his friends were standing outside the door of the hostel, trying to figure out which pub to go to, when Maxine walked out. She ignored the group, as she had for the past three days, and headed confidently down the street, even though she had no idea where she was going. A few seconds later, she felt a tap on her shoulder.

  “Hi!” said Jake.

  “Hi,” answered Maxine, stopping abruptly. She was surprised to have been followed but pretended it was the most normal thing in the world.

  “Sorry to bother you, but my friends can’t seem to get it together and I’ve noticed you going out every night by yourself.”

  “How do you know I’m not meeting someone?” Maxine said, resuming her walk as if she was rushing to an appointment.

  “Oh, yeah, sure. You could be,” said Jake nervously, struggling to keep up as he searched for the right words. “I mean, you probably are. But on the off chance that you’re not …”

  “I’m not,” she said, slowing down the pace a bit so he could catch his breath.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to butt in. It’s just that you seem to know what you’re doing, and my friends—”

  “Getting a little tired of the Irish pubs?” asked Maxine.

  “How did you know?”

  “It’s all your friends ever talk about. You’d think all Rome had to offer was beer, and not even Italian beer!”

  “I know, I know. It’s mortifying.”

  “So why do you go with them?”

  “I guess I’m not as self-assured as you.”

  “I guess you’re not.”

  “But we go to museums and churches and stuff during the day,” said Jake, trying to convince Maxine of his worthiness, following her like an eager, unwanted puppy.

  “Yeah, when you finally get up around noon, because you’re so hungover. The museums and churches close by then for the lunch break.”

  “So we go eat at a restaurant, and by the time we’re done, it’s three o’clock!”

  “You eat in restaurants?” she asked, stopping once again, surprised that someone her age would have the means to eat in a real restaurant. The one time Maxine tried doing that, she was horrified by the extra charges for bread and water and angry that the waiter guilted her into ordering three courses and a dessert. The whole experience made her feel powerless, so she vowed never to do it again.

  “Um, yeah. Where else would I eat?”

  “I’ve eaten so much bread and cheese over the past month, I think I may be getting scurvy,” said Maxine, putting her hand on her forehead like she was taking her temperature.

  Jake smiled. “How about I buy you an orange, then?”

  Maxine looked at him. “So, what? You want to tag along with me now?” Maxine wasn’t sure why she was being so bitchy to this poor guy. He seemed sweet and was actually nice looking, for an American guy. Maybe he just paled in comparison to Maximilian.

  “Yes, I do!” said Jake confidently, as if he needed more of a backbone to get anywhere with this girl.

  Maxine had planned to check out some new places that evening but decided that she’d take Jake to some of her favorite spots instead. Rather than going down the busy Corso, where cars whizzed by and tourists jammed the sidewalks, Maxine led Jake down a series of narrow, winding roads, where housewives carried the ingredients of their evening meals in blue plastic bags, men stood in wine shops drinking a glass before heading home, and young lovers held hands, stopping every now and then to look in the windows of shoe stores.

  When they arrived at Piazza Navo
na, they were greeted by a vast open space with three fountains lit up, the water sparkling in the moonlight.

  “Wow,” said Jake.

  “You haven’t been here yet?” asked Maxine in disbelief.

  “No, I have. But not at night.”

  “Yeah, Rome is totally different at night. You’ve got to see everything at night.”

  And so they proceeded to see everything—or almost everything. The Pantheon, the Coliseum, the Tiber—walking the whole way. At the Forum they hopped a fence and sat on a rock that was probably the base of a column thousands of years old.

  “Aren’t you glad I came along with you tonight?” asked Jake, taking Maxine’s hand.

  “Maybe.”

  “Oh, come on. I know you’ve been checking me out ever since you saw me.”

  “Are you kidding me?”

  “My friends noticed too. ‘What’s the deal with that loner girl?’ they said. ‘Does she have a thing for you?’ ”

  “That’s very funny, because, actually, you and your friends have been annoying the hell out of me.”

  “But now you see how wrong you were. Right?”

  “Right,” said Maxine. “Very wrong.”

  Maxine thought back to Maximilian, how attracted she was to him from the moment she saw him and how they shared the same passions. Yet there was something so distant about him, like he was an alien from another planet whom she could never truly know.

  With Jake it was different. She hadn’t been attracted to him right away, and on the face of it they had little in common. He was starting medical school in Boston in the fall, and she had no idea what she wanted to do. But already she felt safe and comfortable with Jake. Already she felt like he was someone she could spend the rest of her life with.

  Jake had planned to leave with his friends the next day and head to Brindisi, where they would take a boat to Greece. Instead, he asked Maxine if he could stay with her in Rome and then head south to Sicily. Far from being taken aback by Jake’s forwardness, Maxine was impressed with his spontaneity and his certainty that he wanted to be with her.