I didn’t want to hang out with Gregg Wyte. I don’t know why I let my daughter\u2019s effusive \u201csure\u201d stand. She always thought I needed to get out more. But I liked my own company. I read, sometimes cooked, and putzed around our Grosse Pointe Parks home. I worked in Detroit as a victims advocate. I had more contact with people than I wanted on a day-to-day bases.<\/span><\/p>\n

Looking in the mirror, I stared at the forty-eight year-old stranger looking back at me. Her eyes were still deep blue, and her hair was an interesting mix of yellows, golds, and reds, with a sprinkling of silver starting to creep in. This woman\u2019s neck was not as firm as it used to be and tree rings were beginning to etch their way around it. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCharlotte Mason,\u201d I\u2019d always used my maiden name, \u201chow did you get to be this old?\u201d I asked my reflection. <\/span><\/p>\n

The kicker is, I had never thought getting old would bother me, but it did. Put simply, I hated it. The lines, the wrinkles, the gravity; I might not run three miles a day, but I exercised six days a week: cardio, weights, Pilates. And I didn\u2019t consider myself a vain person – thank God, I supposed. <\/span><\/p>\n

I checked my watch. I had a half an hour before I was due at the rock. Maybe I could cancel. I should have gotten a cell number or hotel name. There were only two hotels in town, both of them bordering on rent-your-sheets by the hour. I called down to the front desk, asked for Gregg Wyte\u2019s room, and was met with \u201cSorry, no guest by that name.\u201d I called the seedy wanna-be hotel number two and got the same response. <\/span><\/p>\n

Not being able to track Gregg down, I decided to suck it up and meet him. Checking my ass and profile in the mirror, I realized it could be worse, laughed at myself, flipped out the lights, double-checked that I had my room key, and made sure the door closed behind me.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I didn’t want to hang out with Gregg Wyte. I don’t know why I let my daughter\u2019s effusive \u201csure\u201d stand. She always thought I needed to get out more. But I liked my own company. I read, sometimes cooked, and putzed around our Grosse Pointe Parks home. I worked in Detroit as a victims advocate. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-151","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lalongbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lalongbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lalongbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lalongbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lalongbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lalongbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lalongbooks.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}