...Exes...

Hannah kept checking and re-checking her phone as she waited for her friend in SoHo Park.

Her friend.

That was an odd thought. A.J. had been Jake's friend first, and one that Hannah was afraid she'd lost forever in the breakup and its aftermath. At least until a message had come through earlier that day.

I haven't heard from you in like 6 months. The fuck is up with that?

Hey, Hannah had responded to her cautiously, not wanting to seem overeager. Wasn't sure what the limits were. Been keeping my distance from Jake's circle and all.

Fuck limits, AJ's reply had read. I haven't seen you in months. I'm down in SoHo today working on a development. Let's get a beer. Six beers, shit. No pressure if you don't wanna talk about Jake or whatever. Just wanna hang out.

In the months since She and Jake had split up, it had seemed like most of their mutual friends had entered a silent pact that read simply, "We're with him." Now, there was a sign it might splinter, and she was more excited about it than she might have guessed.

"Hey!" A.J.'s voice boomed over the park's expanse. "How've you been? Oh my god!"

The smile was on Hannah's face before she even spotted her, not that it took very long. Amy Jo Brandt was impossible to miss; a loud, 6 foot woman with tattoo arm sleeves and a hard body chiseled by years of construction work. She wore a flannel work short over what Hannah knew was a generous bust, and denim short shorts showing off a pair of legs that she badly envied. Her short, strawberry blonde hair was cut into a messy bob, framing a face that, while attractive, was unmistakably boyish.

Such a contrast from Hannah herself; petite, feminine and short with waist length brown hair and a huge ass that no amount of cardio could ever seem to reduce.

"Oh my god!" Hannah, suddenly feeling choked with emotion as she embraced the woman. "You look amazing. It's...it's really good to see you again."

"You too," A.J. said. "I'm glad you were cool with meeting and stuff."

They walked through the park, looking for a dive bar they could drop into. When they finally found one, A.J. bought the drinks over Hannah's protests. From there, they proceeded to catch up on their lives, their friends and their work. On everything except for the person who'd introduced them in the first place.

"So I finally cut things off with Dana the psycho," A.J. explained during this, "Only wasted 3 years going on again off again with her. But, hey. Least I finally ripped the band-aid off."

"Ugh, thank god," Hannah agreed, "You know I hate using this word, but she was such a bitch. What was the last straw?"

"Honestly? Moving out to Queens. Once all the drunken booty calls stopped being an easy option and I didn't see her all the time? That's when I realized what a pain in the ass she actually was," A.J. explained.

She took a long swallow of beer.

"So that's where I'm living. I travel all over supervising the different sites, but I'm out of the actual hard hat work. Making good money, too."

"I'm really happy to hear that," Hannah said, a pleasant buzz beginning to accumulate. "This is nice, hon. I...really, really missed you. All of you, really. How's Ryan doing?"

"You know, living with his folks. Letting Jake support his hobbies. Pretending to run one of his Dad's stores. Ryan things." A.J. said, before stopping to give her hard, long look. "Why do you care, though? I love Ryan, but I never got the sense that you did."

"I think he brings out some of Jake's worst habits, but I still care about the guy," Hannah answered.

A.J. shook her head.

"No...you're asking about everyone but Jake. Aren't you a little curious?"

"I mean, I hear things..." She bristled, hoping that would serve as a polite way of expressing that she didn't really want to talk about it.

It wasn't that Hannah wasn't curious. She simply didn't want to dwell on him. She was over him. Wanted to be over him; to move the fuck on with her life after having wasted most of her 20s hoping he was the mythical "one", or at least that she could mold him into a reasonable facsimile of it. She also had no desire to talk about any of it with A.J., who while sweet, after a fashion, was both his friend, and about as emotionally subtle as a dynamite fisher.

Apparently she hadn't tiptoed around it enough.

"So he's dating a high schooler now. Did you know that?" A.J. asked.

"I'd heard. Twenty two or something." Hannah said, keeping her voice steady. "Look, he's a grown up. He's allowed to do whatever he wants."

"Maybe, but it's just so fucking obvious," A.J. said.

"I'm pretty much over him, to tell you the truth." Hannah said.

"That's...not what I've heard," A.J. said, a bit more tenderly now. "Being honest, babe? Part of the reason I hit you up was that I heard you weren't getting out much these days."

Hannah didn't even bother denying it.

"I am over it," She insisted, despite beginning to question it herself, "I've just been kinda down lately. That's all."

"Yeah. You're down because you're not over it," A.J. insisted. "I love both of you, and you're both doing the same shit. You can't just pretend to be over a 7 year relationship that quickly. Doesn't work that way."

Damn her stubborn eyes. This whole outing was supposed to be a distraction from all this.

"Look, it's not even him. Not really. I mean, yeah, I loved Jake, but it was pretty clear for a long time it wasn't going to work," Hannah said.

"Okay," A.J. said, "If it's not him...what is it?"

"It's not Jake," Hannah repeated, stalling as she tried to articulate the thing that had been eating at her since the breakup.

Jake was a good man; sweet, supportive, and a good potential provider. Stable, good family, good relationship with his family; traits whose importance she didn't see the significance of until she'd gotten older. And while he was occasionally prone to drinking too much, staying out too late or overspending on his nerdy hobbies, he was altogether free of any crippling vices. In fact, Jake had more or less come to inform the traits she knew she'd wanted in that fabled one, even after she'd given up on it being him.

The problem with Jake wasn't in what he was, but rather what he refused to be. He'd only moved into her three years into their relationship, after they were both going broke from the separate rents they were paying. It had taken another two years of strong hints, and multiple weddings that weren't hers to convince him to propose, and even then, he'd put off any meaningful planning of their matrimony until the very end. As their fortunes bottle rocketed upward, his from the bull market and hers from commissions on the concurrent real estate spike, their excuses for not marrying vanished. But was progress made? No.

They'd met as seniors in college. By the time she was staring down 30, she was still unmarried while all her friends and sisters were tied down. And as she watched the latter begin to pop out her nieces and nephews, she still hadn't received the commitment that would lead to children of her own. It was like Jake was chronically incapable of settling down; afraid to shut the door any opportunity that might limit his future options. And if he loved her, goddammit, why wouldn't he commit to her?

Still, that was the part she had figured out. She finally decided to open up about the part she'd hadn't.

"It's starting over," She admitted finally. "I think I made the right call, but I'm not any younger and it's been so long since I was at square one that I don't know how to move from it. I just feel stuck. Like I flushed my best years away."

A.J. seemed unconcerned about this.

"What? That's crazy! You're still young. You're still hot." She said. "Nobody's married at 30 anymore. And you've got the apps and shit now. What you need to do is get. Back. Out there. Get back on the horse, and if you fall off? Say 'fuck this stupid horse' and get on another one."

Hannah couldn't help but smile. She had a point. What good was moping going to do her? She left Jake because she was tired of inertia, and here she was, herself, using the breakup as an excuse to be inert.

"You're right," She admitted, relaxing into the barstool. "You're absolutely right. Let's go buy something hot, take some pictures, and then you can help me set up a dating profile or something."

"That's the spirit!" A.J. agreed, pumping her fist. "One more round?"

But by then, Hannah had already passed out.

*****

She'd come to in the same room Emily had, reading the rules off the same projector image. And despite still being tipsy from the bar (wherever and however she'd been taken, it hadn't passed enough time on her body to get her past A.J. **** feeding her ****), she was able to guess exactly what she'd find on the other side of the door.

Sure enough, a distance away, she found her ex fiance standing beside a woman she could only assume was the show's host, and above an annoying young blonde she could only assume was Jake's new girlfriend. Though she'd been aware of her on some, intellectual level, a quick mental inventory upon seeing her revealed that yes, it did piss her off. That she was half tipsy herself almost certainly wasn't helping.

She focused on keeping her chin up as she crossed the stepstones to the central platform, and maintaining as stoic a posture as possible. She was so successful that she lost track of her feet. In a weird moment of spaceless, her left one missed a step and she tottered off into the water with a small scream. There were sounds of commotion, and pretty soon, familiar hands were reaching up to pull her from the water. Her blue dress skirt and blazer were soaked through, her white blouse beneath it gone transparent, and she was pretty sure one of her heels had mysteriously vanished entirely.

"Are you okay?" Jake asked, helping her to her feet.

She had to forcefully push her sopping mop of hair back before she could see anything, fighting to salvage what little dignity remained to her in all this.

"I'm fine. Fine." She said, wrenching to get away from him.

He pulled back like she was radioactive.

"So sorry about that," The probably host said, "Let me help."

She waved a hand. Hannah gasped as she felt her clothes writing across her body, some melting away while others changed material. When it was done, she stood in a rather immodest bikini that she never in a million years would have chosen for herself, its color identical to the suit she'd been wearing a moment earlier. She stared down at it astonished, suddenly and entirely sobered.

It revealed her body for what it was; a short one with a fairly slim build, and ass slightly too large for the rest of her body. It revealed the slight tummy she'd developed since the breakup, and thighs that rubbed together in way they hadn't six months ago.

Host woman, or sorceress or whatever the hell she was looked down at her, a little too smugly for Hannah's taste; like a cat who'd spotted an especially delectable looking mouse.

"There you go. That should suit you fine until you can change later," She said. "And let's be honest, love; this is hardly the weather for business attire."

She took a seat across from Emily, arms hugging her bared midriff.

"Are you the teenager he's dating?" She asked, invoking A.J.'s word she'd rebuffed only a few minutes earlier.

The girl bit her lip and looked away, muttering only.

"It's nice to meet you. Jake says you're really cool."

Hannah almost instantly felt guilty. She opened her mouth to say anything polite, only to find that she couldn't **** anything out of it.

"Hannah....listen..." Jake tried, having little more success than she had.

"It's fine. You're both adults," She said, in a tone that accidentally implied that maybe they shouldn't be. That only made her feel worse.

Luckily, it was Leah that stepped in to salvage the situation.

"If you don't mind, we do have quite a few more contestants to get through," She said. "Our next is a 29 year old construction supervisor from New York. Please welcome, Amy Joe Brandt!"