Marian Keyes - Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    My life was the Reduced-Male variety, the Male Lite life.

    Daniel was wonderful, really. Boyfriends came and boyfriends went (and believe me, they went), but I could always rely on Daniel to be the boyfriend figure in my life, to annoy me with sexist comments and say that he preferred the shorter, tighter skirt.

    And he wasn't unattractive, or so I was told. All my friends thought he was adorable. Even Dennis, my gay friend, said that he wouldn't kick Daniel out of the bed for eating potato chips. And whenever Karen answered the phone to him she made faces like she was having an orgasm. Sometimes Daniel came to our apartment and, after he'd gone, Karen and Charlotte would lie on the bit of the couch where he'd been sitting and roll around and make noises like they were in ecstasy.

    I couldn't see what all the fuss was about. Because Daniel was a friend of my brother Chris, I'd known him for years and years and years. I just knew him too well to have a crush on him. Or for him to have a crush on me, for that matter.

    There might have been a time, once, several thousand light-years in the past, when Daniel and I smiled shyly across a Duran Duran record and contemplated kissing each other. But then again, there might not have been, I couldn't actually remember ever feeling like that about him, I just assumed that I had because, in the free-for-all of emotions that was my adolescence, I had a crush on just about everyone.

    It was really for the best that Daniel and I didn't like each other that way because, if we did, Chris would have to go to all the bother of beating Daniel up for violating his sister's honor and I didn't want to cause anyone trouble. 30 / marian keyes

    Karen and Charlotte--quite mistakenly--envied my relationship with Daniel.

    They would shake their heads in wonder and say, "You lucky bitch, how can you be so relaxed around him? How are you able to be funny and make him laugh? I can never think of a thing to say."

    But it was easy because I didn't have a crush him. When I did like someone I panicked and knocked things over and opened conversations by saying things like, "Do you ever wonder what it's like to be a radiator?"

    I looked at the note that Karen had left for me--there was even a little stain on it that she had labeled "dribble"--and wondered if I should ring Daniel. I decided not to, he might be in bed.

    Accompanied, if you follow me.

    Damn Daniel and his active sex life. I wanted to talk to him.

    What Mrs. Nolan had said had given me food for thought. Not what she had said about me getting married--there was no way that I was fool enough to actually take that seriously. But what she had said about me being under a dark cloud had reminded me of my bouts of Depression and how awful they'd been. I could have woken Karen and Charlotte, but I de- cided against it. Apart from the fact that they could turn nasty if roused from their slumber for any reason other than an impromptu party, they didn't know about my Depression.

    Of course, they knew that sometimes I said I was depressed, and then they said, "But why?" and I would tell them about an unfaithful boyfriend or a bad day at work or not fitting into last summer's skirt, and they would be more than sympathetic.

    But they didn't know that I sometimes got depressed lucy sullivan is getting married / 31

    with a capital D. Daniel was one of the few people outside my family who actually knew.

    That's because I felt ashamed of it. People either thought that depression was a mental illness and that consequently I was completely nuts or, more often they thought that there was no such thing as depression, other than a vague, neurotic concept. That I was merely indulging myself, wallowing in teenage angst that was way past its use-by date. And that all I had to do was to "pull myself together" and "snap out of it" and "take up sport."

    I could understand that attitude, because everyone got depressed some- times. It was