30 First Dates (2 page)

When she reached her front door Erin slid her key into the deadbolt and slipped inside, noting with satisfaction that the living room and kitchen lights were off—hopefully Sherri wouldn't be home for a few more hours. Jeffrey's condo had flooded and he'd been crashing on a friend's couch while a contractor replaced his fancy-schmancy ebonized hardwood, so they were hanging out at her place tonight. Erin was secretly pleased about that—she liked her comfy, jumbled apartment much better than Jeffrey's slick, personality-barren bachelor pad.

She padded through the darkened living room, which contained the random accumulation of the last six years—Sherri's sage green sectional with a chaise at one end, a hodge-podge of framed Impressionist prints and funky folk art on the walls, and Erin's old childhood dresser, which served as an oversized TV console. One crafty weekend they'd spray-painted it gray and replaced the outdated brass hardware with glass knobs, an idea Sherri had found on Pinterest.

As she passed into the kitchen Erin flipped on the light, casting the white cabinets and dark gray laminate countertops in a fluorescent glow so suddenly bright it made her jump. She set the bottle of wine she'd bought on her way home on the counter and realized she'd forgotten to pick up a movie at the Redbox outside Albertson's. Last weekend she and Jeffrey had gone to a concert at Cowboys Stadium and stayed out till almost 3 a.m. Tonight they'd decided to stay in.

A nervous charge buzzed down Erin's spine as she thought about what that might mean, and she hurried through the living room and down the back hall to change. Her step faltered as she approached her bedroom door and realized it was closed. She'd left after Sherri this morning, and hadn't she left it open?
Whatever
, she thought, and turned the handle.

It was locked.

"What the—" She jiggled the knob. "Sherri?"

She heard a series of frantic, muffled whispers and the sound of something—a shin, an elbow?—banging into something wooden. Her dresser or her headboard. She felt a momentary flash of fear. Was the apartment being robbed? Her fingers flitted toward the phone in the bag on her shoulder. But why would burglars have locked her door? And why would they be in her room, when the only expensive things she and Sherri owned—a flat-screen TV, a MacBook—were out in the open, in the main area of the apartment?

She jerked the door handle again, angrily now, but of course it didn't budge. She stood on her tiptoes to swipe her fingers across the top of the door jamb. Nothing. She darted down the hall to Sherri's room and did the same thing, and…bingo. She grabbed the thin, gold, hairpin-style key and slid it into the tiny hole in her bedroom doorknob. Three seconds later, the latch caught, and she flung open the door.

The sight that greeted her was like a lead weight attached to her jaw, which dropped at least three inches. Her eyebrows shot up at the same time—an expression that might have been comical if there was anything funny about the situation. There, between her and her own bed, was Jeffrey, his head down as he fumbled with the buckle on his belt. Cowering halfway behind him, clutching a white eyelet blouse across her chest, and staring at Erin with a frozen, wild-eyed look that was part shame, part confusion, and part unbridled fear, was Hilary, her oldest friend in the world.

Quarter-Life Crisis

Erin pushed into the room, undeterred by Jeffrey's seeming nonchalance—he had yet to look up at her—or by Hilary's disheveled state of half-undress. She dipped her head, forcing Jeffrey to meet her gaze.

"You," she said, and pointed toward the door. "Out."

She picked up one dark brown men's shoe from the floor in front of her dresser and tossed it through the open doorway. Jeffrey bent to retrieve the other one and headed for the door. Just before he reached it, he spun to face her. In his soft, slightly assimilated British accent, he said, "I got off a little early."

A gargled, choking laugh, more like a cough, emerged from Erin's throat. "Yeah, we all know you got off, Jeff. Have a nice life. Bye-bye."

She gave a little half-wave and turned her fury on Hilary, who'd managed to pull her blouse over her bra-less D cups—the perkiest money could buy—and stood silently, mascara-smeared tears streaking down her cheeks.

Erin regarded her, listening as Jeffrey's quick steps faded down the hallway and waiting for the click of the front door that signaled he was gone before she opened her mouth to speak.

Hilary beat her to it.

"Please don't tell Mark," she whimpered.

Erin closed her mouth, unsure how to even respond to that.

"What the hell, Hil?" she said, walking forward and sitting on the edge of her bed, facing away from her friend. Her forehead dropped into her hand.

"I know, I know," Hilary said, rushing to her side. "I don't even know how it happened, really."

Erin jerked her head up and stared at Hilary for several seconds, speechless. Oh, the irony of it all. Suddenly her entire love life, this entire farce of a friendship, seemed blended together, perfectly summed up by that one clichéd statement.

"How
did
it happen?" she asked, her voice flat. Oddly enough, she really wanted to know.

"Well," Hilary said, sniffling and reaching up to swipe her face with the back of one hand, leaving black-blown smudges across both cheeks, "I came over here to wait for you." She paused and looked up, not quite meeting Erin's gaze. "I used my key."

Erin nodded, suppressing the urge to roll her eyes.

"We had a fight," Hilary said, sniffling again. "Me and Mark. He started talking about the Aiden thing again."

Erin closed her eyes. Aiden. The first man Hilary had cheated on Mark with. Why, oh why, did every relationship she found herself in—romantic or otherwise—have to be so pathological? Was she drawn to drama? Did she somehow, deep in her subconscious,
choose
to spend time only with people who were very, very bad for her?

"Oh…kay. And that caused you to wind up on
my
bed having sex with
my
boyfriend how, exactly?" Erin asked, trying very hard to keep her voice under control. She felt like screaming at her, but she knew from experience that Hilary would freak out, cry, and somehow wind up finding a way to dump the entire situation in Erin's lap, as if it were her fault. "Start with step one. When did you get here, and how did Jeffrey happen to be here, when he doesn't even have a key?"

Hilary reached over to Erin's nightstand for a tissue and blew her nose loudly. Instead of throwing it into the trash can two feet away, she set the used tissue between them on the bed. Erin recoiled from it slightly, wrinkling her nose, and then realized her bed had been defiled in worse ways this evening. She winced.

"He wasn't here," Hilary said. "I came straight here from Mark's house. It must have been about 7:30. I'd barely gotten in the door when Jeffrey knocked on it. I was just about to text you to see where you were." She scooted back on Erin's comforter, grabbed a blue and white zebra-striped throw pillow with "Party Animal" embroidered on it in hot pink letters and pulled it tight to her chest, looking for all the world like a frightened little girl. "I was freaking out. Mark was threatening to call off the wedding," she said in a small voice. She stopped talking, tears streaming down her cheeks again as she stared at the wall opposite the bed.

Erin sighed and handed her the crumpled up tissue, refusing to take the bait. "And Jeffrey?" she prompted.

Hilary looked at her blankly for a few seconds and then took the tissue from her outstretched hand. "Oh. Well, he came here looking for you, obviously. He was planning to surprise you by coming over early, I think. I was crying, and he followed me in here, and he listened to me for a little while. He was so sweet about it; he's a really nice guy—" She paused and gave Erin a sheepish look.

"Yeah, he's a real keeper," Erin said dryly.

"Anyway, one thing led to another, and, you know." Hilary waved one manicured hand in the air. "Before I knew it we were making out." Her voice was small again. At least she had the decency to look embarrassed, Erin thought.

She leaned forward suddenly and grabbed Erin's left hand with both of hers. "I'm so sorry," she said, pressing her thumbs into the top of Erin's hand so hard it hurt. "I'm a real bitch of a friend, I know I am." She sighed dramatically, dropped her hands, and flopped back onto Erin's pillows.

She sure was taking a lot of liberties with her bedroom considering it was the last time she was going to see it, Erin thought.

"And now you're mad at Jeffrey, and you're mad at me, and Mark's mad at me and…oh, God. You're not going to tell Mark, right? Promise me that. Mark can never know what happened tonight." She leaned forward again, her eyes locking onto Erin's with a look of wide-eyed, calculated desperation.

Erin shook her head. "Hilary, I—" She took a steadying breath. "I…look, just, I know you're going through a lot right now, but can you please just go? My head is killing me, my
ex
-boyfriend just cheated on me and I've had a really long day, okay? I don't want to be in the middle of you and Mark, but you know what?" She stood up and paced over to the door. "I'm not going to lie for you. To be honest, I can't believe you have the nerve to ask me to do anything for you." She made a sweeping motion with her hands toward the hallway.

Hilary's brow furrowed, and her bottom lip puckered forward. She stared at Erin for a few seconds, and when it sank in that Erin wasn't kidding, she slowly scooted toward the edge of the bed. "I apologized," she said. "You're not, like, super mad at me, are you? I mean, you and Jeffrey weren't that serious or anything. You just met him."

"I met him three months ago," Erin said with patience she didn't feel. She reached up to rub slow circles against her temples. "Look, can we talk about this later? I really want to be alone in
my
room."

Hilary stood unsteadily, sniffling again as she rounded the bed to slide on her bright pink wedges, first the left one, which was lying on its side in front of Erin's bathroom door, and then the right, which was five feet away, near the nightstand. Then she bent down and snagged her lacy, nude-colored bra from the floor beside the bed—rather unapologetically, Erin thought—and picked up her purse from Erin's dresser.

She walked through the door and past Erin, who followed her down the hall and paused in the doorway between the hallway and the living room, leaning against the frame and watching as Hilary moved through the room toward the front door. When she reached it, she stopped and turned around, the bra flopping ridiculously from one arm. She reached up to run a hand through her straight blonde hair and opened her mouth, but didn't say anything. Erin watched as the bra slid up her arm, thinking she could at least have put it in her purse.

"You're still going to be in the wedding, right?" Hilary's voice was uncertain, like it was finally beginning to dawn on her that she'd done something wrong.

Erin snorted and shook her head in exasperation. "We'll talk later, all right?" She shook her head again and spun around, disappearing down the hall and into her room. It was several seconds—fifteen, at least—before she heard Hilary open and close the front door.

*  *  *

The next morning, Erin woke up with a headache that was the result of a smashing hangover. Not long after Hilary had closed the door the night before, Sherri had opened it, and as soon as she'd heard the story, she'd walked to the kitchen and popped the cork on the bottle Erin had left on the countertop. When they'd drained it, she'd opened another one. Three bottles and a half pint of Cherry Garcia later, Erin had all but forgotten Jeffrey's name. And, she thought, if Sherri was vying for the best friend spot Hilary had just vacated, she'd passed that test with gusto.

Still, it wasn't Sherri she wanted to talk to now. She reached for her phone and turned it on, bracing for the onslaught of texts and voicemails she knew Hilary would have left her by now. When it powered up, she saw she had messages not only from Hilary, but from Jeffrey and Mark, too. She ignored them and dialed Ben's number.

"Howdy, sweetheart," he answered.

She rolled her eyes. Ben, who looked more like a beach bum than a ranch hand, had been making fun of the cowboy cliché since they were kids—so much so that to the uninitiated observer, he appeared to embrace it. She'd never had the heart to tell him that.

"Hey." Her voice was glum.

"What's wrong?"

"Oh, where to start."

She filled him in on the whole story, down to the smallest details—Hilary's pink shoes, the bra dangling by its lacy straps, the Texas-shaped etching on Jeffrey's oversized gold belt buckle. (Jeffrey, who'd moved to Dallas from York, England, and had no business claiming the cowboy cliché, embraced it fully.) Ben got a good laugh over that buckle, but he sobered up quickly when Erin didn't join in.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"What do you think?"

He paused. "Meet me at the track?"

She smiled in spite of herself. "Bring it."

This, right here, was why she called Ben before anybody else in the world when she had a problem. He could have picked anywhere to meet her—a bar, a restaurant, any of a hundred places closer to her Uptown and his Downtown apartments, but instead he'd picked the Frisco High School track. It had been years since they'd met there, but during school they'd practically lived out there—they'd both run cross country in high school and college. After high school, in those days of summer limbo, it was where they'd met to start their daily runs, even after Ben's parents had moved thirty miles away to Arlington and he had no reason to revisit the old neighborhood.

She hadn't run with Ben in ages, and she couldn't think of anyplace she'd rather go, hung over or not. For her, a run with Ben was better comfort food than a whole gallon of Cherry Garcia. She hauled herself out of bed, pulled on running shorts and a fitted gray Nike tank top, popped two Advil, and headed for the door.