Page 38 of My So-Called Perfect Life

“Those fucking assholes.”

I grab my cell and dial Mercy.

“Hell—”

“Which one of you bitches sent this?” I ask before letting her finish.

Her intense laughter fills the other end of the line. “Come on,” she says between laughs. “That is hilarious. I saw it, and I couldn’t help myself.”

I look down at the plush green keychain shaped like a bacterium. The chlamydia strain, to be exact. “No, I don’t think it’s funny.”

Today was a great day when it came to not thinking about Ryan, Scott, and the events of this weekend. The burning had subsided, and I was moving past all this crap.

“How much longer are the two of you going to keep making jokes about this?”

Mercy sighs. “Come on, Dani. You have to laugh about it. I found that online when Amelia and I were looking shit up about chlamydia, trying to determine if we should believe Mr. Bartender. I couldn’t not order it.”

Dropping the stupid keychain on the counter, I grab the letter. “I’m so glad the two of you find my bad luck so entertaining.”

Mercy continues to ramble on about finding the humor in the bad things in life, while I open up the letter.

"That motherfucker!” I mumble.

“What?” Mercy asks. “Who’s a motherfucker?”

I stare at the piece of paper in my hand. “You’re never going to believe this,” I say before reading her the letter.

I just thought you should know that Scott gave me chlamydia in case he doesn’t tell you. I guess Karma got me. I’m sorry.

—Mandy

“That motherfucker,” she agrees.

“Holy shit, Merc,” I gasp as a flurry of questions whirl in my mind like a blizzard. “How many people do you think he was sleeping with? Am I stupid? How couldn’t I tell? What if chlamydia isn’t the only thing I wind up with? Oh, dear god! What is the incubation period for all the others?”

My head instinctively whips around looking for where I left my computer. I need to start looking stuff up. Gonorrhea. Syphilis. Herpes. Oh my god, anal warts. What if I come down with anal warts?

“Take a deep breath,” Mercy tells me.

“Screw a deep breath Mercy,” I shout as I head back to my bedroom for my laptop. “I’m like a walking petri dish! I could be an STD incubator. What a fucking asshole. He couldn’t even use a condom while banging any chick with a pulse. Shit, what if they were professionals, Mercy? He seems to like them slutty and skanky. What if he was doing prostitutes? I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Dani,” Mercy shouts, quieting the storm in my head momentarily.

“What?”

Her voice is stern as if she’s scolding one of her students. “Stop looking for your computer. Don’t go searching the web for useless shit. Call your doctor and go in to have a full panel. The damage is already done.”

Ugh! I hate that she’s right. The damageisalready done.

“I wasn’t looking for my computer.”

She laughs. “Yes, you were. And then you were going to google as much shit as you could. In an hour, you’d have yourself convinced that you had every symptom for each disease you checked into.”

I sigh. “I cannot believe I actually thought that man was the one. Six years of my life that I’ll never get back.”

I wait for the anger to come, but it doesn’t. I would’ve thought knowing that he was cheating on me just for sex would hurt more than him falling for Mandy. I mean, yeah, it hurt to find out that he was having an affair with her. It was painful, but when I wouldn’t take him back and he wanted to go away with her, I thought he actually had feelings for her. Knowing that he was just out banging other chicks simply to get his rocks off should’ve hurt worse than this unresponsiveness in my chest.

“You want me to come over?” she asks. “We could do pedi’s and watch a movie . . . something to take your mind off everything . . . what about something scary? We haven’t seen the newest one of theParanormalmovies yet?”