Can't Think Straight:. Kiri Blakeley
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CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT
A Memoir of Mixed-up Love
Kiri Blakeley
CITADEL PRESS BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018
Copyright © 2011 Kiri Blakeley
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
All names of people (except for the dead) and some identifying factors have been changed. There are no composite characters. With a couple of exceptions, scenes appear in the order in which they occurred.
CITADEL PRESS and the Citadel logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.
First printing: January 2011
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010931891
eISBN-13: 978-0-8065-3499-2
eISBN-10: 0-8065-3499-0
CONTENTS
chapter one
chapter two
chapter three
chapter four
chapter five
chapter six
chapter seven
chapter eight
chapter nine
chapter ten
chapter eleven
chapter twelve
chapter thirteen
chapter fourteen
chapter fifteen
chapter sixteen
chapter seventeen
chapter eighteen
chapter nineteen
chapter twenty
chapter twenty-one
chapter twenty-two
chapter twenty-three
chapter twenty-four
chapter twenty-five
chapter twenty-six
chapter twenty-seven
chapter twenty-eight
chapter twenty-nine
chapter thirty
chapter thirty-one
chapter thirty-two
chapter thirty-three
chapter thirty-four
chapter thirty-five
chapter thirty-six
chapter thirty-seven
chapter thirty-eight
chapter thirty-nine
chapter forty
chapter forty-one
chapter forty-two
chapter forty-three
chapter forty-four
chapter forty-five
chapter forty-six
chapter forty-seven
chapter forty-eight
chapter forty-nine
chapter fifty
chapter fifty-one
chapter fifty-two
chapter fifty-three
chapter fifty-four
chapter fifty-five
chapter fifty-six
chapter fifty-seven
chapter fifty-eight
chapter fifty-nine
chapter sixty
chapter sixty-one
chapter sixty-two
chapter sixty-three
chapter sixty-four
chapter sixty-five
chapter sixty-six
chapter sixty-seven
chapter sixty-eight
chapter sixty-nine
chapter seventy
Acknowledgements
Praise for Kiri Blakeley and CAN’T THINK STRAIGHT
I thought I had escaped it. The family curse: my grandmothers on both sides, my mother. All had grown old alone—victims of divorce and heartless men. I, on the other hand, had been in a relationship for ten years. A good, solid relationship. The kind you want, the kind all your friends want. The kind I never expected someone like me would have.
Yet the lies we tell others pale in comparison to the lies we tell ourselves. And one night my fiancé decides to stop lying to both of us.
“I think I’m confused about my sexuality,” Aaron says, as Sex and the City drones on the TV in the background.
Just moments before, I’d been in our bedroom, living my normal life. Aaron had summoned me into the living room with a solemn, “We need to talk.”
That’s the kind of opener that, in movies anyway, usually precedes some bad, or at least important, news. But I’d felt no flutter of fear. Ten years spent in a warm haze of reliably reciprocated love had left me without even a sliver of relationship anxiety.
I was like the family dog coming for its usual belly rub and, instead, getting