I drove a safe enough distance down the street, then pulled over. It was a Friday night and close to eleven. Dave wasn’t home and he was wearing his good shoes.

Date. Fucker.

I sat in my BMW waiting. I hadn’t eaten dinner and my tummy growled. The best I could hope for out of this breakup drama was dropping a few pounds. I pulled out one of the “disaster Zone” bars that I kept stashed in the glove compartment in case of emergency. I devoured it in three bites; I was so hungry I sucked the waxy frosting off the cellophane wrapper. Catching sight of myself in the rearview mirror sucking on the wrapper, I thought of what a pig I was. No wonder Dave cheated on me with Chloe.

Glancing at the clock, I made a contract with myself about how long I would stay there. I’ll lurk until midnight, I told myself; anything more than that is psycho. I didn’t know what I hoped to gain by staying. Would I see Dave with Chloe coming home for the night? Maybe I’d see Amy from Atlanta? I turned on KCRW and stared out the window. Tinted windows gave me anonymity. I wouldn’t even crack the windows, and it was getting warm quick. I was trying to be undercover.

I waited.

After twenty minutes, I gave up. I didn’t want to wait till mid-night, and by leaving early I felt like I was demonstrating a lot of control. Dave could come home from his date and find his stuff at the door. I didn’t care.

The next morning I woke up groggy, feeling hung over but knowing I wasn’t. I would have preferred the hangover. If I’d had somewhere to go out to the night before, someone to down tequila shots with, it wouldn’t have been so bad to feel shitty in bed on a Saturday morning. Instead I was waking up in my bed with my cat as company. I felt like I was breathing lonely.

I decided I would approach my new singlehood like a pro athlete. After all, I was going to have to “get back out there.” Put myself on the market. I was going to take yoga, I told myself, drive out to Malibu on the weekends and take long, soul-searching walks on the beach. I would eliminate all the “white stuff” that Oprah talked about—sugar, flour, and potatoes.

That afternoon I headed to Whole Foods on Santa Monica Boulevard and packed my cart with “Whole Woman” vitamins and scoured the packaged food labels for “all natural” and “whole grain” before I went to do some damage in the fresh produce section. I was trying to figure out the difference between “organic” and “heirloom” tomatoes when I bumped into my friend Bernie, who wrote for some lame CW sitcom.

“Dani! So how have you been doing? Married yet?” he asked.