It was the song. It was our song. “To Make You Feel My Love” by Billy Joel.
The song that Adam and I had danced to at his dad’s wedding decades earlier. The night that rewired my entire nervous system and left me fighting waves of nostalgia—no, scratch that, a storm of heartbreak—every time I heard it, or so much as smelled spiced cologne or Dom Pérignon champagne.
Which wouldn’t be a problem if I didn’t work in the wedding business. But since my sisters and I inherited Bliss Bridal, which my grandmother founded in the 1940s, those triggers rearedtheir ugly heads a lot. Since taking over the business, we were no longer just a bridal boutique and had expanded to include day-of wedding coordination, which meant receptions, so it was very difficult to escape the song, the champers, and the cologne. I thought time would numb my reactions, but unfortunately they all had strongholds on my heart, head, and hormones.
In an instant, I wasn’t in my Tesla SUV anymore, I was sixteen, in my blue dress, the one I’d secretly hoped would catch Adam’s attention. It had a fitted bodice with a low-cut neckline that flared at the waist with spaghetti straps. The memory slammed into me so fiercely I nearly missed the turn to my neighborhood.
We’d danced together dozens of times before that night, but that night was different. That night we weren’t at a school event with his friends or mine, or one of his many girlfriends watching. That night we weren’t at one of his dad’s charity golf functions with stuffy people surrounding us. That night we were alone in his pool house, and even though there were two hundred people just outside, it felt like just the two of us.
The song was playing on the speakers, and he pulled me up to my feet. He’d grinned that crooked, dangerous grin and traced a line down my bare arm, his hand steady on my lower back, his eyes locked on mine. I could remember the exact pressure of his palm and the shiver that started at the base of my neck and reached my toes.
I didn’t lose my virginity to Adam that night, or any other night. He left for basic training three days later, and I never saw him again, but the experience ruined me for anyone who tried to follow.
Now, with the memory played in high-def in my mind’s eye, I had to roll down the window and let the night air cool my cheeks. My body was on fire, every nerve ending a live wire, and it was all because of a song I’d tried for years to forget.
How was it possible I was getting hot and bothered just thinking about how he made me feel with his hand just rubbing me on the outside of my underwear? How badly I wished that he’d been my first. How sad that, despite the fact he wasn’t my first, every single man since then had still been a distant second.
It was pathetic with a capital P. I really was a frigid bitch. An ice queen. And all the other names men had called me.
By the time I pulled into my underground parking garage ten minutes later, the memory of Adam’s hands, the sound of that song, and the mortifying aftermath of my date had mostly receded. A quick check in the rearview assured me I did not look like someone who had nearly orgasmed from a nostalgic daydream. Mission accomplished.
As I parked, the only issue I had was a minor existential one: the stall next to mine, which belonged to an Audi Q5, was so close to the dividing line it gave me heartburn. The owner, a tech bro I’d dubbed “Breakroom Dave,” had the annoying habit of parking so tight to my driver’s side I had to do a yoga lunge to get out.
Tonight, I was too amped to care. I slithered out, jacket in hand, barely noticing the reek of motor oil and the faint whiff of weed from the basement janitor’s closet. I kept my keys in one fist like a weapon, not because I was afraid but just out of habit of living in the city all my life.
The lobby, as always, was aggressively bright and smelled like an elderly person’s idea of “fresh lemon.” Mrs. Finch, the octogenarian who ran the HOA, considered herself the mayor of the building, and changed her hair color as often as I went through tubes of toothpaste, was watering the ficus near the mailboxes, her cotton-candy hair done up in tight little pin curls.
She caught my eye and immediately zeroed in. “Billie Brooke Shields Bliss, out late again! How was the date, dear?”
The actress filmed her show a TV movieWet Goldin San Francisco in the ’80s, and apparently stayed in the building. Mrs. Finch swore I was the spitting image of the actress when she was in her twenties.
I shrugged. “The best thing I can say about it is that it is over.”
Mrs. Finch regarded me with the kind of skepticism only someone who’s seen nine decades of bad dates could muster, she once told me, “To be honest,most dates I wished I would have just stayed home and taken a nice bath, but I think that about most sex I’ve had, too.”
She tsked. “You know, most men are better talked about with your girlfriends than actually endured in person. But if you ever want to skip straight to the postmortem, just come by after nine, and I’ll make ya my cocoa with a kick.” She pointed her watering can at me and winked.
Mrs. Finch’s cocoa with a kick was spiked. With what, I didn’t know, but the one night I’d partaken, I’d gotten tipsier than when I had four Sex on the Beaches at my little sister Birdie’s fiancé’s album release party. I wasn’t a big drinker, but that was the most I’d ever partaken of in one evening.
I flashed her a tired smile. “Thanks.”
She winked and went back to drowning the ficus, and I moved on to the elevator bank, pressing the call button five times in rapid succession, as if that would make it arrive any faster.
As I waited, my phone dinged. It was a text from Birdie, my baby sister and co-conspirator in all things ridiculous.
Birdie
How did it go???
Billie
I’m home.
No reply for a half-second, then:
Birdie
srsly. debrief tomorrow. <3
