Really Good, Actually(19)
Calvin agreed, with one condition.
Later, when I was taking him through each step of my skincare routine, I asked if this was his regular move with women. “Oh, definitely,” he said. “Doesn’t it make me seem sensitive?”
We double cleansed and applied an acid, serum, and night cream. It was the first time I’d done my full skincare routine since Jon had left. I fell asleep in my pajamas, a foot away from Calvin in his boxers and T-shirt, Guy Fieri smiling out at me over the rim of his little shades.
I woke up alone and glowing.
A Fantasy
I am at a karaoke bar, and I look amazing. Better than normal, but in a casual way, like I just got a haircut that affected my whole body. The bar is packed, and although I am the only person singing, everyone is on board with that and thinks it’s fun. In fact, I am taking requests.
The outfit I’m wearing is casual but looks special, like it’s not sparkling but I am, like “wearing sequins” is a vibe and I’m dressed head to toe in that vibe exactly. I am carrying myself with the easy confidence of a woman who both has a Tax-Free Savings Account and understands how one works. I sound great.
All the songs I’m singing are about heartbreak, and the raw emotion of my recent experience informs each number. People are so moved—some of them are weeping. Much of the audience is enthralled strangers, all of whom find me mysterious and alluring. The friends I came with are dumbstruck. No one can believe that I’ve been hiding this voice, that I’ve been so humble about it.
“We thought all her grief would be for nothing,” one whispers to another. “But look what she’s done with it. She’s like Nora Ephron, if Nora Ephron had the voice of Adele.”
Onstage, the pianist (there’s a band) gives me a little wink. A stranger leans over to my friends, “Sorry, do you know her?”
They beam. “We do.”
Everyone is smoking indoors, and it feels glamorous instead of like one of those old-man bars where the lights are always on full blast and someone’s chalking a pool cue for much too long while impossibly aged men read out-of-date newspapers and swear in Portuguese.
“What’s cool about Maggie,” a friend tells a stranger, “is that she’s divorced, but in like, a really fun way.”
“Divorced?” the stranger says. “So young? That is fun. Good for her.”
Suddenly, from somewhere: nuggets.
Chapter 6
Women should not be out here promising to buy the flowers themselves. I learned this the hard way, having woken up absolutely determined to do something thoughtful for my friends, in recognition of the food they’d cooked, the pep talks they’d given, and the maudlin slideshows of Janet pics they’d sat through since Jon’s official move out two months ago. They had better things to do—family gatherings, protests for or against various causes, brunches hosted by drag queens—and yet they’d rallied, taking me to the park to drink rosé, sending texts like plz shower . . . you can be depressed AND smell good, and even coaxing me out one night in August for a belated birthday celebration. It was time to repay their kindness (and, I thought, to build up further goodwill, since I was not done wallowing and would probably need to be babied for another month or so).
Lately I had been trying to lean into my little errands, framing everyday tasks as reprieves from sitting around thinking about my breakup. At the flower shop, this was not possible. The place was a temple to romantic love, full of thoughtful gifts, heart-shaped stationery, and balloons reading ur the 1. The unexpected kiss from Calvin had bolstered my romantic self-esteem for a week or two, leading to a few late-night DMs to people I knew at university and one spectacularly misjudged smile at a pretty barista. But I flirted like a baby deer learning to walk—falteringly, without any clear direction—and when my first efforts went unrewarded, gave up. Now I was back to my resting state: assuming I would be alone forever.
I stood behind some pampas grass and watched a wave of suitors consider tasteful potted plants, select arrangements, furrow their brows over the right message for the flimsy free card. It struck me that I was buying my loner’s bouquets at the same place my former husband had frequented for other flower occasions: Valentine’s Day, our anniversary, my birthday, a fight. The morning I turned twenty-five, he’d woken me up with the same number of bright, hopeful daisies.
I shook off the image and moved away from a shelf of cutesy picture frames. I was not interested in preserving these thoughts “in the amber of my memory” or anywhere else. Behind the counter, a middle-aged man with rolled-up sleeves and an apron stretched across a friendly, daddish paunch was fussing over an explosion of orange and yellow ranunculus. The store’s website had said small arrangements were forty-nine dollars each, which was more than I was looking to spend, so I approached the man and asked if they offered discounts on bulk orders.
“Oh, absolutely,” he said. “We do lots of corporate work. Above fifty units and we throw in a few fully free arrangements.”
“Great,” I said. “Good to know.”
The man cocked his head to the side, presumably waiting for me to place a large order on behalf of my company. Inoffensive jazz tinkled from the store’s speakers as I tried to think of something to say.