On the Rocks(75)

Chapter 18



Wheel of Fortune for Single Girls




THE OPPRESSIVE JULY HEAT rolled on toward August, and I began to long for the cool New England fall days that were just a month away. For reasons I can attribute only to a tear in the universe, the frequency of Ben’s messages had increased. For reasons I can only attribute to the fact that my brain was no longer severely miswired, I refused to read them. I didn’t want him back. Why would anyone want to invite the cause of her virtual destruction back into her life right after she finished repairing the damage? It’d be like calling an exterminator and then holding open the door so the ants could crawl right back in. The only thing dumber I could think of would have been to shave off my own eyebrows with a Daisy disposable razor, and I liked to think I’d progressed some since the fourth grade.

I took the train back to Newport, reported for duty at the shop on Wednesday, and was looking forward to a nice quiet night at home. Now that Katie’s wedding had come and gone, I felt like I had lost ten pounds (figuratively, not literally). I didn’t fully feel like myself, but it was the best I had felt in a very long time. Now if I could only do something about the cellulite on my legs, I’d be downright chipper.

I was folding laundry when Bobby called my cell.

“Hey, how are you? How was your interview?” I asked.

“I think it went pretty well, actually.”

“That’s great. When do you think you’ll hear from them?”

“Who knows? Summer isn’t exactly the best time to be looking for a job. Half the people responsible for making hiring decisions are on vacation this month, so it’s probably going to be a slow process. We’ll see.”

“Good luck. Keep me posted.”

“Will do. So a friend of mine from law school is having a birthday party at one of the bars on Friday night. You guys should come. It will be good networking for me and good man-hunting for you.”

“I don’t like to think of it as hunting. I like to think of it as competing in some kind of modern game show. It makes it sound less desperate. I’m not desperate.”

“Oh, I know you’re not. But are you honestly telling me you’re starring in your very own island dating game in your mind?”

“I’ve been thinking of it more like Wheel of Fortune for single girls.”

“I’m all for whatever gets you out there, sister. I’ll probably head over about 9:30, so you can meet me there any time after that.”

“Okay. I have to work on Friday. I told Lara I’d help her catalog some of the inventory for fall. Then I want to work out and I have to run a few errands, but I should be ready by ten at the latest.”

“What exactly takes you guys so long to get ready? Seriously, I can walk into my house, shower, change, and leave for the bars in fifteen minutes flat. What the hell do you guys do to yourselves?”

“It takes time to be pretty. We have to straighten our hair, curl our eyelashes, that kind of stuff.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that you waste all that time straightening what’s naturally curly and curling what’s naturally straight?”

“I’d never thought about it like that before.”

“I’ll never understand your kind. Gotta go, talk to you later.”

And with that, he was gone.



I RACED HOME FROM WORK on Friday and got in the shower. I decided to leave my hair curly to prove to Bobby that I wasn’t as nuts as he thought I was, and then took a deep breath and began what has become one of the most timeless and universal wars that women have been waging since the dawn of civilization: woman versus denim. These were pre-Ben jeans that I hadn’t dared try on since I gained my breakup weight, but my summer at the beach had separated me from my freezer, gotten me back into a regular workout routine, and helped me drop some weight, so the time had come to see if I could zip up the jeans without ripping them up the ass. I sucked in as much as I could as I struggled to pull up the zipper. Much to my surprise, my old friends fit better than I thought they would. They were definitely tight, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t rip if I didn’t do any squats or side lunges. Few things will make a girl happier than losing enough weight to once again fit into her old jeans.

Score: Woman, one. Denim, zero.

Grace and I left the house around a quarter to ten. We entered the Cook House, yet another popular bar on the pier, and were told to head downstairs to join the other members of the “Happy Birthday [Insert Random Guy’s Name Here]” group. We were no more than two feet inside the door when Grace realized she needed cash and left to run back out to find an ATM. I headed downstairs alone and entered a large room filled with low couches and even lower cocktail tables, and with a long bar that wrapped around the perimeter. I walked the length of the bar and was surprised to find Lara sitting alone on a stool talking to a guy who was wearing a tight black T-shirt and a diamond stud in one ear. I made my way over to her and squeezed into the space between Lara and the man in the extra-small shirt. Over the years I’d found that the size of a man’s shirt is inversely correlated to the opinion he has of himself. The smaller the shirt, the bigger the ego.

“Oh, what a small world!” she squealed, revealing that she had had more than a few cocktails since I’d left her. It was sort of a silly thing to say. Of course it was a small world. It’s Rhode Island, not China. “I’m so happy to see you. I was having dinner upstairs, and this guy I was talking to invited me to come join the party. I figured why not, right? This is Sal,” she said as she gestured to the guy who looked like he belonged in the cast of Jersey Shore and nowhere near Newport, Rhode Island.