30 First Dates (7 page)

Erin glanced at her watch and interrupted him. "Oh, crap. Hold that thought. First bell's about to ring and I've got to send an email."

She reached behind her chair for her bag and slung it over her shoulder, snagging her phone from the tabletop and standing up so fast she got a head rush. She tapped vigorously at the screen for several seconds and then picked up the remainder of her lunch and stuffed it in the trash. She was still typing as Dave trailed her to the door.

"You're killing me here," he said. "What's going on with you?"

She stopped tapping at the phone and looked up at him.

"30FirstDates.blog.com. Go there on Monday and you'll find out."

Just as she said it, Jess Mickelson brushed past her through the open doorway into the hall. She glanced back at Erin with interest as the bell sounded the end of the first lunch period. Erin closed her eyes and stood stock still for a few seconds.
Awesome.

She shook her head. Surely Ms. Popular wouldn't care a whit about anything she and Dave were talking about.

As students began flooding the hallway, Erin said good-bye to Dave and rushed out of the lounge toward her classroom. As she walked, she finished typing her message to Nate, letting him know that on Friday night, he needed to wear a suit.

*  *  *

The three-inch heels Erin had borrowed from Sherri's closet clicked conspicuously against the concrete as she walked arm-in-arm with Nate up the sidewalk toward the church.

She
felt
conspicuous, at least—as if any minute one of the other, legitimate guests trailing from the parking lot up to the building would see the neon sign flashing "wedding crasher" above her head and call her out for what she was.

Nate put his right hand over hers where it rested against the sleeve of his charcoal suit jacket and gave it a squeeze. She smiled up at him, exposing both rows of teeth, displaying more confidence than she felt.

She breathed in deep and then looked around. The church was a red brick traditional, with a tall white steeple rising out of its eaves and wisteria vines snaking through a white picket fence that edged the sidewalk leading to its entry. The delicate lavender blooms burst over the fence in thick, fragrant clusters, like bunches of grapes ripe for harvest. Erin took another deep breath in through her nose and felt the sweet fragrance of the buds wash over her, relaxing her tense muscles.

Her mom had told her when she was a kid, no more than seven or eight, that at times when she wasn't having fun—when she was bored, when other kids were excluding her or making fun of her, when she just wanted to be somewhere, anywhere other than where she was—to
pretend
like she was having fun and then she would.

It was too simplistic a theory to put stock in; she'd scoffed at it dozens of times with adolescent/teenage/twenty-something insolence, but damn it if it didn't work. She pushed her shoulders back and decided,
I got us into this mess. I'm going to enjoy it
.

She glanced up at Nate again—he had a bemused smile on his face and his eyes looked far away. She'd felt ridiculous when she'd told him her idea, figuring he'd either think she was nuts or flat out say no, but he'd been totally stoked. Via email, they'd cooked up their story. Nate was a college friend of the groom's and Erin was his fiancée. They'd driven in from Oklahoma City, where Nate had moved after graduate school for a job with the District Attorney's office. Erin worked in pharmaceutical sales. She'd even bought a fake bauble from a teen store at NorthPark mall for the occasion and was wearing it on her left ring finger. She hoped nobody looked too close.

The other couples approaching the church were all in pairs, Erin noticed, and all perfectly coifed and impeccably dressed, regardless of age or gender. She'd been right to go the LBD route, she thought, glancing down at the classic-cut black sheath she'd bought for a teachers' conference cocktail party last year. Its clean lines, cap shoulders, and narrow belt were timeless, so she didn't feel over or underdressed, or out of style. Sherri's wine-colored stilettos gave an unexpected, but still understated, pop of color, just right for this conservative crowd. Nate, for his part, wore a dark gray pinstriped suit with a pale gray shirt and a rose-colored tie.
Hmm, he can really pull off pink.
If they didn't fit in tonight, it wasn't the fault of fashion.

The bride and groom were right around their ages, and Erin figured as long as they steered clear of the happy couple all night they'd be okay. She'd deliberately picked a wedding at one of the largest Methodist churches in Dallas. The bigger the crowd, the easier they'd blend in.

She pulled away from Nate as they crossed the threshold into the church and gave a wide smile to the usher, who held out his arm to lead her to a pew.

"Bride's side or groom's?" asked the kid, tall and gangly and no older than one of her trig students.
Uh-oh. What if one of my students is here?

Her smiled faltered a bit, but her voice was strong as she said, "Groom's, please." She was relieved when the usher stopped at a row about three-fourths of the way back in the cavernous sanctuary. The church was swathed floor to rafter in deep mahogany-stained oak, with solemn stripes of off-white plaster slithering between beams and up the walls, criss-crossing the peaked ceiling. Intermittent stained glass windows depicted scenes ranging from gory to glorious.

Incongruous with the somber architecture, fluffy silver bows adorned the inner edge of each pew, and flower arrangements were spaced every fourth row along the outer edge. The room smelled of freesia and Murphy's oil soap, a not entirely pleasant combination, Erin thought. From her spot next to Nate, who was seated nearest the aisle, she smiled and nodded at the couple to her right. She sat back and enjoyed the soothing strains of Bach—or was it Beethoven?—vibrating through the pews from a string quartet set up in the front left corner of the sanctuary.

Several minutes later, the music gently morphed to the familiar strains of Pachelbel's Canon—familiar because, in her late twenties, she'd attended more weddings than she could now count on both hands—and the processional began. Erin plastered the smile on her face again, stood, and pivoted with the rest of the congregation as the unfamiliar woman in white stepped down the aisle on her father's arm.

Beside her, Nate's face went as pale as the bride's gown.

*  *  *

April 19: Date 2

Name:
Nick*

Age:
    31

Job:   
Researcher

List:   
Ruin someone's life…or at least his day (aka, No. 8: Crash a wedding)**

OMG. OMG. OMG. I've never had a date like
that
before. I cannot
wait
to tell you what happened last night.

I went out with a friend of a friend. Since I sort of knew him already, I decided I'd ask this guy to help me do one of the weirder items on my list: stage a real-life version of "Wedding Crashers." Why is that on my list? Well, I don't know. I just thought it'd be kind of funny. (Repeat: I was drinking heavily when said list was made.)

So anyway, it
was
kind of funny. But the joke was on me. Why, oh why, didn't I think about the fact that if I crashed a wedding in Dallas, I might know some of the people there? I did, as a matter of fact, but as it turned out I didn't know anyone as well as my date did.

We'd made it to the ceremony and it was all, so far, so good. No one gave us funny looks or questioned our right to be there. I'd even made small talk with the people sitting next to us in the pew. When the doors at the back opened and the bridesmaids started walking in, I felt Nick* stiffen beside me. Honestly he looked a little green. By the time the bride walked in the room, his face had turned this pasty white color and I was scared he was going to pass out. "What's wrong?" I asked him. "Nothing," he said. He recovered himself, but he was sweating bullets and I swear, I felt like he was going to bolt out the back door through the entire ceremony.

When the wedding ended, we walked out of the church with everybody else. We were down the steps and almost to the sidewalk headed to the car—Nick was walking so fast he was practically pulling me, and as soon as we were alone I was planning to force him to tell me what the hell was going on—when this older woman stopped in her tracks right in front of us. "Nick?!?" she said, her mouth hanging open. She was wearing a floor-length, mint green satin dress and a corsage. I realized pretty quickly that it was the bride's mom. I have to admit, my first thought was, "Oh, shit, we've been found out."

Nick has a completely awkward conversation with this woman. Small talk for a while: "What have you been up to these last few years," "How's your family," that sort of thing, and then she gives him a hug. I deduce through the course of this, and he confirms in the car afterward, that he and the bride, Emily*, had gone out—for four and a half years. He was the first boy she'd ever slept with, and he'd cheated on her. Boy, did he! It was their freshman year of college and they were at different schools. She'd come for a surprise visit and walked in on him in his dorm room with another girl, buck freaking naked. They'd been engaged.

Yeah. Seriously. What a dog.

So he hasn't talked to her in NINE YEARS, and then he turns up at her wedding. I felt awful for him. Before we made it to the car two other people stopped him, and he had conversations with the bride's cousin and her aunt. Turns out he'd gone on family vacations with this girl and everything. Since there was absolutely no way to explain why he was there, thanks to me and my list he'll pretty much never live this down. He'll always be the guy who never got over Emily.

You'd think maybe he'd never talk to me again, but actually he was pretty cool about the whole thing. Needless to say, we didn't turn up at the reception. I'm still crossing No. 8 off my list, though. I'd say we crashed a wedding, and we crashed it thoroughly.

Erin submitted the post, sat back, and smiled. After finally making it to the car and leaving the church, she and Nate had gone to Chuy's and, over muchas grandes margaritas, shared nightmare dating stories. His love life was even more screwed up than hers was, mostly because he couldn't keep it in his pants.

She slouched back in her chair and stared up at the cheap metal fixture that dangled from a chain above Sherri's breakfast table. Where it met the ceiling, a tiny fissure snaked from the pendant's base to the corner of the room. Her eyes followed it and then glazed over as she contemplated her own love life. In all her years of crappy dates and even crappier relationships, at least she'd never cheated on anybody. She'd always been the one cheated
on
.

From Bryan Powell, who'd made out with Hilary in seventh grade while Erin wore his basketball letter jacket across the room, to Mathew, her ex-fiancé, whom she'd started dating sophomore year of college, her relationships read like equal parts comedy and tragedy, but they always ended in tragedy. Take Mathew, for instance. She hadn't learned about his extracurricular activities until she was three months out from their post-graduation wedding date.

She was still thanking God for helping her dodge that bullet.

Then there was Noah. Ah, Noah. The one she'd really wanted to love. He'd had his head stuck so far up his ex-girlfriend's ass she'd known he was a lost cause almost from the night she'd met him. Of course, now he was fighting his own battle—that ex-girlfriend was a best-selling author with a movie deal, and he had to watch her prance around the tabloids with her pretty-boy mega-star boyfriend.

Erin wanted so badly to think,
Ha-ha! Karma's a bitch
, but with Noah, she couldn't muster up the vindictiveness. He was just so lost-little-puppy sad. Still, the reason he'd lost the girl in the first place was because…he couldn't keep it in his pants.

Imagine that.

Score one for the ladies.
Last night was a date for the record books.

Now just twenty-eight more to go.

Crisis Situations

Erin took another sip of her Caffè Americano and nudged Ben's calf with a sandal-clad foot.

"Hey," she said, her voice drenched with concern. "He'll be okay. Really."

Ben looked up from his Medium Roast, his brown eyes unusually dull.

"I know." His voice didn't sound convincing.

Erin's heart ached for him. He was having some sort of existential crisis, which just wasn't like him. In the twenty-one years she'd known Ben, she could count the number of times she'd seen him this dejected on one…finger. This was it.

The previous night, he'd called her at 1:30 a.m., waking her from such a deep sleep she'd bolted upright at the clatter on her nightstand.

Ben was on his way to the hospital. His dad, an attorney at a big downtown firm, had been in an accident on his way home from a work function. Erin had managed to piece together that the function was to celebrate a colleague who'd been named partner, a position J. Michael Bertram, Esquire, had never managed to attain. She hadn't known he'd wanted to, but she'd learned from Ben, who'd learned from his mom, that his colleague's promotion had hit his dad hard.

Mike Bertram's blood alcohol level had been .09 at the time of the accident. The man had never even had a speeding ticket, as far as Erin knew, but now he had a blemish on his record that would be hard to live down. He also had three broken ribs, a concussion, and contusions on the lower part of his face.

But he
was
going to be okay. He'd been lucky. And the woman in the other car, who'd been at fault despite Ben's dad's inebriated state (she'd rear-ended him at a red light just inside the Arlington city limits) had walked away without a scrape.