One of Us Is Dead(57)

With wine in hand, I walked back into the living room and took a seat on the couch. Firing up my laptop, I opened a browser and typed eHarmony into the search bar. It autofilled before I could finish typing it, as I had visited the site nearly two years ago.

It was on one of the many nights Keisha and I had had drinks after a long day of work. She kept pushing me, telling me I needed to start dating, that I wasn’t getting any younger. Not much had changed. After my third drink, I agreed to let her help me set up a dating profile. We spent hours on it and somehow actually made me sound interesting. We messaged one eligible bachelor that we both agreed could potentially be a good match for me. Keisha wanted to message a dozen. She believed the more hooks we put out, the more we’d catch. I wasn’t looking for quantity. I was looking for quality. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t sure I was really looking at all, but I was trying to be open to it. That was the first and last time I had looked at the site. I had never revisited it, never followed up to see if he had messaged me back. I wasn’t ready, or maybe I feared the rejection. Maybe what terrified me more was the opposite of rejection. What if he had wanted to get to know me? To date me? To love me?

Logging into my account, I typed in my password and username. It took me a few moments to figure out how to navigate the site. I found the little envelope with the number one over it. I had a message. It was eighteen months old, and it was from a man named Henry. I remembered him. He was our front-runner that evening and the only man we messaged. He worked in finance. Never married. No kids. Dog lover. Tall. Athletic. Ready to settle down and focus on the things that mattered in life, like love, laughter, and family. He had worked hard, solely focused on his career for many, many years. He was perfect.

I slowly read the message.

Hello, Jenny. I was so pleased to receive your message. It sounds like we have more in common than we care to admit. Overworked, me too. Ready to live, me too. The belief that cats are for people that never had the love of a dog, me too. I’d love to take you out to dinner sometime, so we can discuss anything but work and talk about how great dogs are . Look forward to hearing from you.

—Henry

My lips spread into a massive smile, one I couldn’t contain. It was the first time since the attack that I felt anything other than anxiety. I reached for my wine and took a drink of the liquid courage. Setting the glass back down, I cracked my fingers and took a deep breath. This was it. I was finally going to put myself out there. Keisha was right. I needed more than Glow.

Moving the cursor over to his name, I clicked on it. The screen loaded and it said, Profile No Longer Exists. I refreshed and clicked it again, receiving the same error code over and over. I took another drink of wine, then opened a new tab. I brought up Facebook and typed his first and last name into the search bar. His profile was the first one.

Just as I was about to click Add Friend, I stopped. His last post on his wall caught my eye.

So happy to announce that Ashley and I are engaged. She’s everything I have ever wanted in a partner. Here’s to a lifetime of love, laughter, and all the dogs.

Below the photo was a picture of him in a suit and his smiling bride-to-be. She was blond and petite . . . like me.

I closed the laptop and tossed it on the coffee table with a thud, knocking over the wine and spilling it onto the area rug. I didn’t flinch. I didn’t attempt to immediately clean it up. Instead, I wrapped a blanket around myself and laid down on the couch. Squeezing my eyelids closed so that they held back my tears, I sank deeper and deeper into myself, finding what it was that I truly had at my core: nothing, just a deep emptiness. I knew I couldn’t go on living like this.





47

Karen


Keisha pulled out her phone and put on a Spotify playlist of early 2000s R&B songs, while I leaned against the table in the waxing room. Placing her phone on the counter, she turned to me.

“What’s the music for? Trying to get me in the mood?”

“I don’t need to try, honey.” She winked. “The music is to cover the screams of pleasure I’m about to bring out of you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

She walked to me and put her lips on my neck, licking and kissing all the way up to my hairline. “I’d say so,” she whispered hot breath into my ear. The hair on the back of my neck stood. My heart raced. I tingled all over.

“How much time do we have?” I asked, my breath already ragged.

Keisha glanced over at the clock on the wall. “Thirty minutes. Jenny said she needed a couple hours, but she’s never away from this salon for more than thirty minutes during working hours.”

“How’s she holding up?” I asked, while Keisha slid her top off, revealing a black lacy bra. She pulled mine off too, revealing a red lacy bra. We had clearly known we were going to see each other today or at least hoped we would, hence the lace rather than the usual cotton bras I wore.

“She’s not herself. Hasn’t been since the attack. And she’s overworked and stressed with all the drama in the salon lately.”

I felt a pang of guilt.

Keisha unzipped her pants and slid them down her toned thighs. I followed suit, revealing my creamy-white runner’s legs. I really needed to actually get a spray tan one of these times. The girls were going to get suspicious if I kept going in for “spray tans” and coming out my usual pale self.