Forever, Interrupted(8)

That particular morning, she was wearing big sweatpants that didn’t make her look fat because she was so skinny, and she had her hair pulled up into a ponytail, a zip-up sweatshirt covering her torso. You could barely tell she wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath her sweatshirt, and it occurred to me that this is how Ana does it. This is how she drives men crazy. She looks naked while being entirely covered. And you would have absolutely no indication she does this on purpose.

“Nice shirt,” I said, as I pulled my sunglasses off and sat down across from her. Sometimes I worried that my own average body looked oversize compared to hers, that my own plain, all-American features only served to highlight how exotic she was. When I made jokes about it, she would remind me that I am a blond woman in the United States. She’d say blond trumps everything. I’ve always thought of my hair as dirty blond, almost mousy, but I saw her point.

Even with how gorgeous Ana is, I’ve never heard her express satisfaction with her own looks. When I would say I didn’t like my small boobs, she’d remind me that I have long legs and a butt she’d kill for. She’d always confess how much she hated her short eyelashes and knees, that her feet looked like “troll feet.” So maybe we’re all in the same boat. Maybe all women feel like “before” photos.

Ana had already made herself comfortable on the patio, having a muffin and an iced tea. She pretended like she was about to get up when I sat down, but just reached for a half hug.

“Are you ready to kill me for last night?”

“What?” I said as I pulled out the menu. I don’t know why I even bothered to look at the menu. I ate eggs Benedict every Saturday morning.

“I don’t even remember what happened, honestly. I just remember parts of the cab ride home and then you taking my shoes off before you pulled the covers over me.”

I nodded. “That sounds about right. I lost you for about three hours and found you in the upstairs bathroom, so I can’t speak to how far you and that guy from the gym got, but I would imagine . . . ”

“No! I hooked up with Jim?”

I put the menu down. “What? No, the guy from the gym.”

“Yeah, his name is Jim.”

“You met a guy at the gym named Jim?” Technically, this wasn’t his fault. People named Jim should be allowed to go to gyms, but I couldn’t shake the feeling this somehow made him ridiculous. “Is that a bran muffin?”

She nodded, so I took some of it.

“You and I might be the only two people on the planet that like the taste of bran muffins,” she said to me, and she might have been right. Ana and I often found striking similarities in each other in meaningless places, the clearest one being food. It doesn’t matter if you and another person both like tzatziki. It has no bearing on your ability to get along, but somehow, in these overlaps of taste, there was a bond between Ana and me. I knew she was about to order the eggs Benedict too.

“Anyway, I saw you making out with Jim from the gym, but I don’t know what happened after that.”

“Oh, well I’m going to assume that it didn’t get much further because he’s already texted me this morning.”

“It’s eleven a.m.”

“I know. I thought it was a bit quick. But it is flattering,” she said.

“What can I get for you two?” The waitress who came up to us wasn’t our usual waitress. She was older, had been through more.

“Oh, hi! I don’t think we’ve met before. I’m Ana.”

“Daphne.” This waitress wasn’t nearly as interested in being friends with us as Ana might have hoped.

“What happened to Kimberly?” Ana asked.

“Oh, not sure. Just filling in for the day.”

“Ah. Okay, well, we’ll make this easy on you. Two eggs Benedict and I’ll have an iced tea like she has,” I said.

“You got it.”

Once she left, Ana and I resumed our earlier discussion.

“I’ve been thinking about resolutions,” Ana said, offering me some of her iced tea while I waited for mine to get there. I declined because I knew if I had some of hers, she’d take that as license to drink some of mine when it arrived and she’d drink my whole damn glass. I’d known her long enough to know where to draw my boundaries and how to draw them so she wouldn’t notice.

“Okay. And?”

“I’m thinking something radical.”

“Radical? This should be good.”

“Celibacy.”

“Celibacy?”

“Celibacy. Not having sex.”

“No, I know what it means. I’m just wondering why.”

“Oh, well, I came up with it this morning. I’m twenty-six years old and last night I got drunk and can’t be entirely sure if I slept with someone or not. That seems to be the closest to slut rock bottom that I want to get.”

“You are not a slut.” I wasn’t exactly sure if this was true.

“No, you’re right. I’m not a slut. Yet.”

“You could just stop drinking.” I had an interesting relationship with drinking in that I could take it or leave it. Drink, not drink, it did not matter to me. Most people, I’d found so far, fell strongly on one side or the other. Ana fell strongly on the “drinking” side.