Seemed a good time to try out my theory, so I asked, “And then you legally changed your name to Aurelia Havisham?”
“No,” she said with a grimace. “That’s my government name. My mother’s favorite college roommate was named Aurelia. My father saddled me with the extremely rare last name.”
“Huh. So she didn’t even know she was naming you after a woman who got stood up on her wedding day, and then ... you got stood up on your wedding day.”
“Don’t rub it in, Stark.”
“I would never!”
“Why didn’tyoumarry?” Salcedo asked me, pointing the conversation exactly where I didn’t want it to go.
“Marriage hasn’t worked out well for my family,” I said. I almost told her my darkest secret, but even the cozy emptiness of the Waffle House, with its drone of employee arguments and the hum of an overworked air conditioner, couldn’t lull me into sharing that information. “Let’s just say that my mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, and a myriad of aunts all married poorly. It may go back further, but that isn’t the sort of information you can find in the family Bible.”
“Statistically, fifty percent of marriages end in divorce,” Salcedo said.
Havisham muttered something like “assuming you could get them down the aisle,” and I sighed deeply. “Well, as it turns out, avoiding marriage did me no favors. I don’t have a claim on any part of the business I helped build nor the house I helped pay for. You heard him demanding money to get the title for a car I exclusively paid for. I could kick myself for trusting him, but what was I supposed to do? I was in love. I was thinking in terms of forever.”
“Damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” Salcedo said softly.
I lifted my coffee mug in a mock toast. “Hence, my new plan to become a cat lady.”
“Stark, you don’t have a cat.”
“Well, it wouldn’t take much to get one, now would it? I’m only thirty-nine. I have time.”
“Thirty-nine. That’s another stupid age,” Havisham said.
Salcedo’s eyes grew wide. “Are there any other ages I should worry about?”
Betty tore off the ticket and slapped it on the table. “All of them.”
“I have got to find more friends who are my age,” Salcedo muttered under her breath. “Y’all are depressing.”
Havisham took the ticket and slid out of the booth. “The truth often is.”
Once we were outside, enjoying how the Georgia night was warmer than inside the Waffle House yet cooler than the day had been, Salcedo paused by her little hybrid. “Sometimes I wonder if I should give up on the idea of love, but I’m sure as heck not going to declare it to the universe. That’s how you end up going on dates with dudes like Tanner. But ... is it worth it to even try for something other than ... how did you put it, Havisham? Scratching an itch?”
I leaned against my Corolla. “Oh, I don’t think this conversation is going to pass the Béchamel Test—”
“Bechdel Test.”
“Whatever.”
“Seriously ...” She turned to Havisham. “You were stood up at the altar.” And then she turned to me. “We all saw your ex. Then it turns out that the first guy I’ve tried to date in college was trying to use me for some kind of frat game? It’d be one thing if I were with a group of people my age, but we have three different generations here, only the story seems the same.”
I looked to Havisham. She was squinting at the night sky, trying to find stars she wouldn’t be able to see for all the security lights in the parking lot. Finally, she spoke. “I think it’s tough to find a person you want to spend the rest of your life with no matter who you are or what age you are, but I think it’s even harder for a woman to find a man who’s comfortable enough in his own skin to allow her to be herself. Heck, forall we know, there’s a poker game full of men somewhere, and they’re all commiserating on how women did them wrong.”
“Huh,” said Salcedo. “But how do you know if you’ve found that person? Is there a sign from the universe that would make you take a chance on love?”
“At this point I’m kinda like Sally fromPractical Magic,” I said. “I need a guy whose favorite shape is a star, he can flip pancakes, and he has one blue eye and one brown eye and—”
“I think it was one green eye and one blue eye,” Havisham said in a gruff voice that indicated she likedPractical Magic, but she also didn’t want to admit it.
“Whatever,” I said.
“Would you be serious?” Salcedo interrupted. “Please.”
“Fine, if you’re right about how I’ve provoked the universe, then I’ll know he’s not the perfect person for me unless”—here I stopped to think of something ridiculous—“he wears friendship bracelets unironically, reads self-help books because he’s comfortable in his own skin but knows he’s not perfect, declares his love for me under a blue moon, and—”
