“From Astoria?”
“Sure. I’ll go home and change real quick, and then I’ll drive over to get you.”
“You have a car?”
He laughs. “Yeah. Don’t you?”
“Nope. I thought about buying one when I was supposed to move to the suburbs, but over here I really don’t need one.”
“Fair enough. I bought mine when I moved to the island, so yeah, that makes sense. But I kept it because driving is a nice luxury every now and again.”
“I’ll bet. Do you know your way around Brooklyn?”
“Not really, but I’ll figure it out.”
“Okay, well, just a warning—it’s a hike. It might take you over an hour in rush hour traffic.”
“That’s okay, Gracie,” he says. “I think it’ll be worth it. I’ll leave the office early.”
I wonder if you can text 9-1-1 operators while you’re in the middle of a phone call. LikeEmergency. I’m having a heart attack. The hottest guy in the whole school is asking me out. Please come.My chest pounds and I try to breathe and remain composed. I picture their response.Ma’am. You’re thirty-one. You haven’t been in high school in over ten years. You should be ashamed of yourself for wasting taxpayer money by requesting a response to an embarrassing text message like this.
I swallow. “’Kay.”
“One job. You pick the restaurant. Something nice.”
“What kind of food do you want?”
“How do you feel about Italian?” he asks.
Good. Better than Mexican, which’ll have me farting all night. I can pick something relatively safe at an Italian place.“I love Italian,” I say.
“Okay. Pick a nice Italian place and I’ll see you at seven. Email me your address.”
I gulp. “Uh huh.”
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yepperoni,” I say.Oh, fuck. Not this again.
He laughs. “See you soon, Gracie Landing.”
Colin
I asked her out to dinner.
I could have asked her out for drinks instead, which is more of a typical first step, but after reading the pages she sent me, I don’t know. Like, talking to her on the phone and over email, she was really funny—but reading her work was kind ofhot. Definitely not what I expected. So, I figure if this is a girl who can nail funnyandsexy, she might be someone worth having dinner with.
Plus, I haven’t been out on a real date since before I was with Elle. And yes, I realize I could just take her out for drinks instead of committing to a meal, but Gracie doesn’t seem like the kind of girl you’d pick up at a bar.
I don’t want to be one ofthoseguys, anyway. A guy like Dom, who tries to lay his swagger down on random strangers over beer and loud music. Been there, done that, and I’m not a fan. Those girls are usually sloppy and overdone. Plus, it’s dark—and what looks good in the dark might not look quite as appealing in the light of day. I figure by meeting up for dinner, I can basically kill two birds with one stone: I can see if she’s nice lookingandget a good meal.
I honestly prefer to have a girlfriend. I realize that’s not a very macho thing to say, but it’s true.
The best girlfriend I ever had was this girl named Caitlin, who I met the summer after freshman year of college. I had just come back to the Bronx from my stint in Arizona, and I got a summer job at Brophy’s Hardware Store so I could start saving money. Caitlin was the owner’s daughter. She was studying to be an elementary school teacher at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, and she lived in a huge house in Larchmont. Her dad ownedsevenhardware stores throughout the Bronx and Westchester. She was forbidden fruit (being my boss’ daughter) and so was I (being an employee of her dad’s). Also, I don’t think it helped that I lived in the Bronx, given how rich her family was. We had lots of stuff in common, namely a similar taste in all things media. She came into the store one day in August claiming to have an extra ticket to a Counting Crows concert in Wappingers Falls, a little town in Dutchess County.
I was never really the type to think that things are “meant to be,” but this particular concert was being held at a minor league baseball stadium.
In exchange for my free ticket, I drove Caitlin there, and on the way home, it was so late and we were both so tired that we pulled over in a McDonald’s parking lot and slept together. Literally. We took a nap, holding hands. She was my girlfriend after that. We saw each other every weekend. She’d come visit me one weekend, and I’d go stay with her the following weekend. We went back and forth like that until graduation, when she moved to Hawaii as part of a teacher placement program offered by her school. Neither of us wanted the relationship to end, but after one visit to Hawaii (which involved two layovers, took about twenty hours of travel time each way, and cost me a whole month’s worth of paychecks from the hardware store), we came to terms with the hard truth that it wouldn’t exactly be feasible for us to maintain something long distance.
