The guy gets into the car after Olivia. I can’t see his face, but I already know who he is. People like Olivia always date the same kind of guy.
If it seems like I’m being judgmental, I am. I don’t ride around this city on a high horse saying I don’t judge people. Judging people sparks joy, so why should I quit?
They buckle their seat belts right away. It makes me want to weave in and out of the other cars even more recklessly than usual. Olivia clasps both her hands around one of her partner’s arms like she’s clinging for dear life, and I feel a surge of gratitude that I’m not chained like that to a man.
“They’re going to adore you,” Olivia gushes when we’re stopped at a red light in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
She’s talking to the guy like he’s some kind of show pony that she can’t wait to parade around. They must’ve just started dating and now they’re off to the big meet-the-friends event that the Redstockings rarely have to deal with since we don’t play for keeps.
I get this urge to butt into the conversation, and I could control myself, but where’s the fun in that?
“Oh, do you think so, Olivia?” I say. “I don’t always make the best first impression, but it means a lot that you have that kind of confidence in me.”
Olivia doesn’t say anything. She just sits there like she’s trying to convince herself that I didn’t actually speak. Then she starts whispering to her man in a serpentine sort of way, asking for advice no doubt. It pisses me off because she should be able to make up her own mind about what to say, and also it’s such a rich-person thing to do, for Olivia to see her Uber driver as merely a means to an end. You can always tell the character of a person by the first five wordsthey say to their Uber driver. If they say five words at all, which they usually don’t.
“I asked you a question, Olivia.” I turn off the radio to amp up the awkward silence as I wait for her to answer.
The guy has to speak on her behalf. “Sorry, I think she might’ve been talking to me,” he says to me. “But how’s your night going so far?”
My stomach recognizes his voice before my ears do. I whip my head around while I’m zooming up the Seventh Avenue circus, nearly clipping the side mirror of a Tesla that’s incompetently parked.
“Chris!” I think and say at the same time. There’s no gap between the two.
He looks just like he did the last time I saw him—the same dark parted hair and mellow brown eyes and those lips that need more of a shape. He’s not wearing a suit this time, but he still has a button-down shirt and dry-clean-only pants. It’s really not any better, but it seems better.
I’m weirdly relieved to see him. It almost feels like I’ve been driving around the luxury neighborhoods where I thought he’d hang out, just on the off chance that something like this would happen. That’s not what I’ve been doing; it just kind of feels like that.
“Emily Jane?” He seems uncertain, which I guess is fair since I’ve bleached my hair and buzzed part of it too, and I’m wearing these amber contacts today that make me feel like I’m a cheetah that just escaped a zoo.
“Just EJ,” I correct, though hearing my full name doesn’t bother me as much as I would have expected.
Olivia murmurs something, only to Chris, but I can still hear it. “You know her?” is what she says.
The way she puts that othering emphasis onhermakes me scream inside. I mean, why do women always have to go pittingthemselves against each other? I’m not pitting myself against her; I’m just reacting to her hostility.
They’re the kind of uninteresting people that dating app algorithms pair together because they’re programmed to match like with like, as if people are trying to find their clone, not their lover.
“Did you meet on a dating app?” I ask, hoping to confirm my theory and get Olivia more involved in the conversation so she can give me a chance to disprove the judgments I’ve made. Or maybe just confirm them more.
“We did,” Chris says, and I make a clucking sound to congratulate myself on being right.
It strikes me that there should be a dating app that deliberately matches opposites to keep things interesting. Maybe I’ll pitch the idea to Hal later and share in the profits.
Olivia is doing her little mumbling thing again and Chris is explaining to her that he met me at an art gallery once. There’s not much emotion in his voice, but there never is so I don’t take it personally. He’s probably just being extra careful not to arouse any suspicions.
“Chris asked me to marry him,” I elaborate for Olivia’s benefit, just so she understands the context. “But don’t worry, I said no.”
He tells her it wasn’t anything, just a practical joke, but I see Olivia withdraw her hands from his arm. There’s a victorious lurch in my stomach.
He reaches for her hand again but she resists. It’s so petty. We’re all going to be dead in the blink of an eye, and here she is wasting her life being miserable, punishing a man she’s choosing to be with. It doesn’t even seem like the makeup sex will be good, so what’s the point?
“Don’t worry,” I say to Olivia. “I told Chris he wasn’t my type.”
That just makes her prickle up even more like she’s a desert cactus. I’m really wondering what Chris sees in her. Maybe she gives better blow jobs than she looks like she would.
“Chris, feel free to text me if you ever need a private ride,” I say, dripping temptation over the wordsprivate ride. Then I rattle off my phone number. I say the numbers pretty fast because I don’t want to make it too easy for him. He blinks twice and I’m pretty confident that he memorized it on the spot. I mean, he’s an accountant, so numbers should be his thing.
We’re still some blocks from their Midtown destination, but traffic is all backed up. I’m starting to feel suffocated by having them in my car, so I pull over and eject them with pomp and circumstance.
