CHAPTER TWO
Andrew
It tookminutes to decide on a place. Not the stiff bar at Juniper and Ivy, but somewhere louder. More rousing and buzzing with lowered inhibitions. We settled on a dive bar near the Gaslamp Quarter of downtown San Diego. Walking distance from her condo, she claimed. Where we can be a little reckless and loose. Grace claimed it’s the perfect place for her to wash away the last hour of her night by submerging it in alcohol and bad decisions. It sounded like the perfect way to temporarily forget the night I had too.
“There’s got to be a better way to meet someone,” Grace grumbles, emptying her second Ketel soda. “I seriously can’t believe men like this Harold guy exist.”
She had her hair up in a loose bun, and as soon as we stepped into the bar, she took it out of the uncomfortable knot she had it in. She’s running her fingers through her scalp, rumbling a low hum through the ease of literally—and figuratively—letting her hair down. The dark waves tumble down her back, and I can’t decide if I like it better up where I can see the smooth slope of her neck or down like she has it now, framing her round face and making her look a little unruly and wild.
I only know Grace as an extension of my sister. I never thought much of her, merely meeting her a handful of times in passing. At graduation, the occasional birthday parties, all with a swift “hello” or “how are you” that always felt informal and stiff. And then Teeny got married, started a family, and those special occasions grew twofold. Baby showers, weekend barbecues, birthday parties with blow-up houses and elaborate princess cakes. I saw more of Grace. And while I assumed that most people plateaued once they hit thirty—an asinine assumption on my part—she proved me absolutely and unquestionably wrong.
I watch her flag down the bartender, leaning far over the bar top. Her body twists at her waist, forcing her to reposition herself on her seat. I get a glimpse of the back of her dress where the sliver of skin displays the blemish-free ridges of her spine. It’s a different kind of skin exposure. Not the typical short skirt or low neckline, and I never knew less could be this much more. She orders another, scooting her butt closer to the edge of the stool to talk over the noise, and I watch her uncross and cross her legs in an attempt to get comfortable. The hem of her dress brushes past the fleshy part of her thigh, and I force myself to look away. With a heavy weight of reluctance.
“Can I ask you something?” I ask, tilting back my own drink, averting my eyes.
“Sure.” She rests her chin on the heel of her hand, turning to face me with an adorable tilt of her head as she looks at me over the curve of her shoulder.
“Why did you even go on a blind date?”
She doesn’t answer me. Instead, she starts playing with her glass, her eyes zoned in on the cold tumbler as she pokes at the loose ice cubes with a cocktail straw.
“It can’t be that hard for you to snag a date,” I add.
“You’d be surprised.” She lifts the drink to her lips and tilts back what remains, just as a fresh one arrives in front of her.Her morose, sarcastically spoken tone, along with her defeated demeanor, says more than her words. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the dating pool isn’t so much a small chlorinated body of water with a springboard and a lifeguard but more like an ocean. A dark vast one that’s scary and ominous, and she’s on a flimsy life raft, waving her arms at nothing.
I don’t respond with generic words meant to be encouraging or a phony rebuttal filled with false hope. I wait, hoping my open posture and her second drink is enough for her to pour her heart out.
A deep, glum sigh leaves her pursed lips before she says, “It’s not that I have trouble meeting men,” she explains to me. “I guess I have trouble meeting the right man.”
Her reasoning is like a hook, drawing more questions out of me. Making me want to know more about her and the confines of this so-called quest for the right man. “And what constitutes as the ‘right man?’”
“What’s with the twenty questions?” she responds, answering my question with a question. Deflection, I see.
“Call it a keen interest in a friend,” I say, staying on neutral ground to coax out her answer. That hook tugs and digs deeper, reminding me not to pry too hard, or she might close right up.
“That’s what we are? Friends?”
“Are we not?” I try not to sound offended.
She shrugs. “I guess.”
“So?”
Another heavy sigh. She taps her manicured nail on the bar top. A pause while considering her answer. “Someone who has some ambition. And wants the same things I do.” She smiles to herself before pointedly adding, “Andnota twenty-something fuckboy.”
I pull my drink away just short of a spit take. “‘Not a fuckboy.’ That’s pretty specific.”
“I’ve familiarized myself with the kind,” she tells me, her palm pressed against the bar top. Another deflection technique to deviate her unwarranted shame through sarcasm. “The year after my divorce was…interesting.”
Her divorce. I met her, albeit very quickly and in passing, when she just started dating the guy. She would fill my sister in on all her dating woes, and those stories would make it to my ears. By the time she’d gotten engaged, they moved, bringing the gossip and drama closer to home. And those moments we spent around each other became less fleeting and more purposeful. We’d chat beyond a simple “Hello, how are you,” and I got to know a bit more about my sister’s best friend. I found it odd that I never met the guy. She never brought him with her to those gatherings that inadvertently brought us into the same social space. And I may have heard through the grapevine—the long twisty telephone-like string being my sister—that he never wanted to join her. He preferred the company of literally anyone else but her, and it made me wonder why he even bothered marrying her in the first place. When I heard she was getting divorced a few years ago—another tidbit from a sororal little birdie—I thought, “Finally,” ignoring the way my ears perked up when Grace’s name and the word “divorce” came hand in hand.
“So, you’re looking for Mr. Right. Not Mr. Right Now.”
She nods. “I’m not getting any younger. Can’t be wasting the last of my childbearing years on meaningless hookups and?—”
“Twenty-something fuckboys?” I eye at her over the rim of my glass, my brow dancing with a cheeky taunt.
She throws a finger gun at me. Bingo.
