I poured three cups of fresh coffee and set out a plate of danishes, a sinful treat in honor of my being dumped by Stephen, my boyfriend of three years.Neither Jake nor Derek had the decency to look as if they felt bad for me.“What you need,” Jake said, as he chewed on a cheese danish, “is to purge him from your system.”“I could start drinking,” I said. “That oughtta flush him right out.”Derek shook his head. “No, something more…dramatic, I think.”“Take a trip?” I suggested. “Maybe some sort of spiritual journey? Or a weekend at a health spa?”Jake and Derek were my very gay next-door neighbors who had adopted me minutes after I’d left Oklahoma for a job in Los Angeles. Jake was a lawyer at a nonprofit organization downtown. Derek was an amazing hair stylist at an upscale salon in Hollywood. The two of them had become the brothers I’d never had. Plus, I now had really great hair.“I’ve been thinking about this for a while now,” Jake said. “I think that in order for you to find happiness in the next relationship, to rectify the karma, so to speak, you need to identify the single most problematic element of your relationship with Stephen and deal with it.
