Anatomy of a Single Girl (3 page)

I never got to know Brie well. The few other times I’ve seen her have been at past Braff get-togethers, and she and Matt typically kept to themselves. They graduated from college in May, though they’ve been dating since their junior year of high school, so we all expected it when Matt popped the question last Valentine’s Day. I’m excited because I’ve never been to a wedding before, and it’ll be twice as fun going to one with Amy there as a bridesmaid. But as Brie blathers on all evening about centerpieces, personalized napkins, embossed place cards, and gift registries, I understand why Amy escaped to another state. I also have a newfound respect for my parents’ decision twenty years ago to elope with no fanfare at Fort Myers City Hall.

“Did you get your invitation yet?” Brie asks me after Dr. Braff goes into the kitchen to make more punch, leaving us alone on the porch. “Each one was hand-calligraphed with a real wax seal!”

“Yep, came in the mail yesterday. It was beautiful!” I pretend to rave, struggling to keep my eyes from glazing over. I’d like to escape inside, too, but it’d be rude to ditch Brie while she’s still having dinner. Part of her pre-wedding diet regimen includes taking painfully long pauses between bites to trick herself into feeling fuller with less food.

“I can’t believe I’ll be a wife in only forty-three days!” she peals after blowing a kiss to Matt in the backyard, where he’s playing glow-in-the dark badminton with his dad. “We’re so thrilled you’ll be able to share our big day with us!”

“Aw. Well, thank you so much for including me.”

“You’re welcome! I know you’re practically family here, which means soon
we’ll
be family. And I’ve been wanting to ask you …” She sips her vitaminwater. “Will you be bringing a date?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” I drone, now wishing I’d been rude.

“What about that guy you were here with last Fourth of July?”

I’m prepared for this. One of the pitfalls of having an ex-boyfriend is that people still pair you together in their memories, and sooner or later someone’s bound to mention him. And now that it has happened … I can’t say I feel nothing. I don’t think it’s possible to get royally dumped by the only boy I’ve ever done it with, let alone loved, and then feel nothing when he’s brought up in conversation. This whole recovery process has been two steps forward, one step back, but I feel okay. I’ve
been
feeling okay. And that’s pretty incredible, considering that just this past February, on the very day Brie was being proposed to, merely the word “valentine” reduced me to tears.

“We split over Christmas break,” I state matter-of-factly.

I’m
not
prepared for what comes next. From the way Brie’s jaw hits the table, you’d guess I just told her I have three months to live.

“Oh, Dominique. No!” She gulps down the half-masticated vegan burger sludge still in her mouth. “When you didn’t bring him tonight, I was afraid that might’ve been why, but … I could’ve sworn you two were forever! Oh, what a shame, you poor, poor girl!”

Doesn’t she realize that’s the most demoralizing reaction to breakup news ever? All my school friends said stuff along the lines of,
Hooray for moving on to bigger and better things!
They may not have meant it, but it was nicer to hear.

“Thanks, Brie, but like I said, it’s been ages.”

I take out my cell phone to check e-mail, not caring that it’s impolite. I’m assuming the subject’s closed. I assume wrong.

“Now, I faintly remember him talking about how he was planning to major in English. Did he go to Tulane also?”

I sigh. “NYU.”

“
Thaaat’s
right. And you two didn’t go to the same high school here, either.”

Is that a question?

“Correct. He went to Amy’s.”

“So you met through her?”

“Um … sorta …”

I sigh again, recollecting that winter’s day senior year when Amy took me to her school’s charity football game. Like a dolt, I tripped on my way to a Porta Potti, and
he
happened to be nearby and helped me up. There were instant sparks, but we were both shy, and it took two agonizing months of friendship before he worked up the guts to confess he wanted more. The moment we got together still ranks as the most magical in my life, though I should’ve taken the Porta Potti as a sign of where things would end up. It seems impossible that that football game was a year and a half ago. I remember it more vividly than this morning. But I’m not about to trot out the humiliating details for Brie’s sake.

“Actually,” I continue, “I probably never would’ve met
him if it weren’t
for
Amy, but she wasn’t close friends with him or anything. They just knew each other from both being on the track team.”

“Oh, okay. It’s coming back to me now. He’d mentioned he was a sprinter—well, he certainly had a runner’s body.”

I don’t respond.

“So tell me”—Brie clucks before taking another micro-bite of her bun-less burger—“what happened with you guys?”

I have to stop myself from asking if she’s for real. Brie has barely ever bothered to speak to me before today. So nothing entitles her to know that my ex-boyfriend, who had sworn his undying love to me during our last semester of high school, ceased having feelings for me during our first semester of college. She has no right to hear how he wanted to stay friends but that I wasn’t about to reward his change of heart by being demoted to a pal. And it’s no one’s business that he and I haven’t communicated since, and chances are we never will. But because it’d be awkward for a wedding guest to tell the bride to quit acting like a nosy bitch, I stick to vagueness. “It just seemed smart to keep our options open since we were so far away from each other.”

“Omigod, Dom, I know
exactly
what you mean! It was really hard at first with Matt in Ithaca and me at Bennington, but I’m so relieved we resolved to make it work. I couldn’t imagine a future without him now.” Brie extends her left arm and grins goofily at her 1.67-carat princess-cut solitaire before blowing another kiss at Matt. Then she gapes, wide-eyed, at me. “But there must be a chance of a reconciliation. I hate the thought of anyone being dateless at my wedding.”

I’m brainstorming how to respond to that without telling Brie to shove her ring where the sun don’t shine, when fireworks suddenly explode over San Carlos Bay, prompting us all to drop everything and scuttle to the front lawn for a better view. I’m grateful for the interruption, though the pang in my chest indicates it’s too late. The wound’s been torn open.

I’d been looking forward to the fireworks all day. Now I hardly notice them as I replay in my head Brie gagging on the word “dateless” as if it were code for “pathetic hopeless ugly reject.” Like I haven’t wasted enough time feeling like one. Then when I realize that everybody’s paired up—Amy’s mom on her husband’s lap on the porch swing, and Brie on Matt’s lap on a patio chair—it dawns on me that I’m a
fifth
wheel. Inevitably my mind begins wandering where it shouldn’t:
At this precise moment last year in this same spot, I was on someone’s lap as well.… I wonder if anyone’s on his lap now.…

I mentally slap myself across the face and keep my eyes trained on the sky, in a futile attempt to focus on the present. Perhaps I should’ve joined Amy in Kansas after all, though she’s probably sitting on Joel’s lap now, too—or going down on it, more likely. I consider texting Calvin for an ego boost, but seeking out the one boy who wants me, just so I can vent about another boy who doesn’t, would be irredeemably dumb. And cruel. Bitching about the past never helps anyway.

I don’t have to report to the hospital for another two hours, but I’ve learned from experience that the best way to combat “steps back” is to lose myself in work as quickly as
possible. So the instant the fireworks end, I announce that I need to get to my internship. Soon I’m racing away on my bike, wishing I had never come in the first place.

Fortunately, my supervisor keeps me plenty busy throughout my shift, and before I know it, I’m lumbering to the cafeteria to refuel on yogurt and granola for the ride home. I’m feeling okay again. Or maybe I’m too drained to feel anything after pulling an all-nighter of unpacking medical supplies, digitizing files, operating the switchboard, and fetching coffee for the staff. Whatever the case, the crisis is averted, and all I’m thinking is how good it will be to snooze away the Saturday.

I finish eating and am gearing up to leave, when one of the hottest guys I’ve ever seen sits down opposite me at the next table.

4

H
is cell phone starts ringing as soon as he pulls in his chair.

“Hey, dude,” he answers lethargically. “Yeah, Bruce will be fine. Just his forearm got burned, and the doctor said it’s only second-degree …”

Next to my tray is a back issue of
Scientific American
I borrowed from the waiting room to skim during breakfast. As a reflex, I hold it up and pretend to keep reading so I can sneakily observe him over the top of the pages.

“… I think we can safely assume he’ll never go near another firecracker again.…”

He looks older than me, but not by much.

“… We were here five hours before they finally took him in, so I couldn’t sleep, ’cause I was constantly bringing him wet paper towels from the bathroom.…”

He’s smokin’, all right—square jaw, Greek nose, full lips, slight tan.

“… Then he kept sobbing about what a good friend I was to stay with him. To get even for everything, I’m gonna make him do my laundry for a month.…”

But he’s cuddly, too, courtesy of his apple cheeks and dimpled chin.

“… At the desk, they said this was the busiest they’ve been since New Year’s. Guess Bruce wasn’t the only dickwad playing with pyrotechnics last night.…”

And his hair’s a fluffy jumble of sand-colored ringlets that shoot out every which way in a kind of ’fro.

“… Yeah, he’s all gauzed up now, in one of those curtained ER rooms, so I’m just grabbing some food.…”

Like me, he has green eyes, although his are a lot paler, resembling mint ice cream. They’re almost incandescent under the fluorescent lighting.

“… We can go once a nurse comes to remove his IV, which they said should be around nine, so not much longer.…”

I like how he’s built and broad-shouldered without crossing the line into gross muscleman territory.

“… Don’t sweat it, dude. I’m here, so I might as well take him home, too. You sound too hungover to drive anyhow.…”

And from the way his torso towers above the table and his outstretched legs extend out from under it, he can’t be any less than six two.

“… Oh, and tell the guys we have to remember to get a new fire extinguisher.… Okay, see ya soon.”

I’m not sure what I hope to accomplish by sticking around. If Amy were in my place, she wouldn’t think twice about striking up a conversation with this guy. But I’ve never been able to make a move like that. Either way, it’s superficial of me to want us to meet, when I probably wouldn’t have noticed him if he weren’t nice eye candy.

I must be doing a lousy job of acting inconspicuous, because all of a sudden he returns my stare. In a flash I resume reading, though I’m blushing from having been caught checking him out. This would be a good time to make my exit, but a few seconds later I find myself stealing another peek, and he’s
still
looking at me. We both drop our gazes, and I feel a little less stalker-ish, since I caught him checking me out as well. After another pause, I glance at him once more, and he’s furtively peering at me while keeping his head bowed, so I look away again. It’s like we’re playing footsie with our eyes.

“That’s my favorite magazine,” I hear him say.

My insides constrict as I slowly lift my nose from the page to face him.

“Really?” I squeak. “Your favorite?”

“Uh-huh. Actually, it’s a tie between that and
Wired
.”

“Cool.… Did you want it?” I hold out the magazine to him, and dorkily add, “It’s hospital property, so just make sure not to go home with it.”

“No need. I already read that one, but thanks.”

A lull ensues as he looks back down at his tray and begins spreading cream cheese on his bagel. Now that the ice is broken, I know if I leave, I’ll just wonder what might have
been. I’m scrambling for something to talk about, but he speaks first.

“So, how long have you been volunteering?”

“Oh … just since Monday. How did you know I worked here?”

His forehead wrinkles. “Well, I kinda inferred.” He gestures to my scrubs and necklace tag, which bears the word “volunteer” in big block letters. Duh.

“Right. My normal hours are nine to three during the week, but I helped out last night for the Fourth and just got off duty … and so did my brain.”

My cheeks flush again, but he gives me a comforting smile. Even his teeth are perfect.

“That’s nothing,” he says. “
My
brain’s so fried that at the drinks station just now, I poured orange juice into my Cheerios instead of milk. I had to throw the whole thing out.”