Calendar Girl (July) Chapter 9:
We pick up with Mia having just told Wes what happened with Aaron. As Mia’s newly minted boyfriend, Wes has the honor of joining the elite ranks of Bad Books, Good Times boyfriends. In the spirit of said boyfriends, he instantly makes Mia’s assault all about himself.
“I can’t believe this. My girlfriend gets attacked, by a scumbag”— he turned on a heel and kept walking—“ and ends up in the hospital, and I’m not told jack shit about it! Jesus Christ, Mia! This is so fucked up.”
It’s understandable that Wes is furious about what happened and feels frustrated that there’s nothing he can do about it (and Mia points out that what he can do is just be there for her), but it’s not okay that right now he’s just focussed on how HIS girlfriend was attacked and HE wasn’t told about it. They should talk later about how Mia didn’t tell him, but that should not be the primary focus when Mia has spent “the last hour” telling him an “acceptable version of what Aaron did”. Which, what does an acceptable version even look like here? The only thing I can think of is not attempting to rape Mia and violently attacking her.
Wes can’t calm down, though. In fact, he’s so upset he’s getting all his homonyms wrong!
“It’s not over. There’s a god damned whole in my gut.”
Unless there’s a missing word there, and what he meant to say was, “There’s a god damned whole chicken in my gut.”
Mia reiterates how she doesn’t want to hurt Warren’s charity, and she also mentions that she doesn’t want the potential backlash, against herself and her clients, if her profession was put in the spotlight.
I nodded. “Yeah. On you, on Alec, Mason, Tony, Hector, the D’Amicos, Tai, Anton. It’s too much to risk to go for a full-court-press-style justice for what he did.”
“Sweetheart, you’re losing me. Who are all those people?”
I ask myself this nearly every damn day, Wes.
And that was when it got real. Very real. The kind of real that either made couples stronger or broke them forever. I had no choice.
The drama of this cracks me up. Yes, Mia hooked up with Alec and Tai, but that was it. The majority of this “very real” moment that could make or break them is Mia just talking about her new friends.
Initially, the conversation seems more about Mia’s point that her clients are famous people whose careers could be at risk if their hiring of an escort came to light.
Mia tells Wes about the modelling campaign she did, which he’d apparently seen, so how did he forget about this, and why didn’t he text Mia about it before given how closely they’ve kept in touch. She then explains how was hired to improve Mason’s image to potential sponsors.
Wes moved to the bar at the side of the room. He lifted the whiskey, and I nodded. I’d need a drink to get through all of this.
…Really? I mean, I understand this because it’s so boring, but it seems like he’s doing it to calm himself down.
Then she tells the ~epic~ story of how when she met Tony she found out he was gay! Wes is thrilled. The weird thing is that Wes was THERE remember? He met Tony and Hector, and I thought Mia told him what was going on? Thankfully, Mia remembers this too.
“I can’t believe you don’t remember what we talked about in March or staying in their house. I mean, yeah, they weren’t overt at the bar, and we did toss back a few too many, but really? You don’t remember anything about Tony and Hector?”
Wes explains that he vaguely remembers them, but mostly just remembers hooking up with Mia. I’ll let this one slide given I read a whole book featuring these characters and I barely remember them.
Actually, during the month I was there, I became really close with Tony and Hector. More Hector than Tony for obvious reasons.” I winked.
“Obvious,” he mouthed.
I am completely clueless as to what these obvious reasons are and how Wes can possibly know what Mia is getting at when he couldn’t even remember who these people were!
Once Mia starts talking about Alec and Tai, Wes gets really upset because they weren’t one-time things, which is ridiculous since he was consistently hooking up with Gina for months and he and Mia were really clear about not being exclusive. He’s so upset, he’s cursing and pacing around the room while Mia tries to assure him that even though she loves these guys and they taught her really valuable lessons, Wes is the one she’s in love with.
“Shit. Sweetheart, you’re killing me. You spent a month in paradise loving someone else?”
Was there a point in that past when Wes didn’t come off as super gross? I need to go back and re-read our posts from the first Calendar Girl because I just remember him being kind of bland and unmemorable. I really can’t stand what we’ve seen of him in this book.
They come to the conclusion that they can move past all of this, and Wes emphasises that he’s really and truly done with Gina:
“Gina is gone. G-O-N-E,” he repeated, spelling it out.
If only he had invoked the power of spelling when he had that “whole” in his gut.