Living Single

by Holly Chamberlin

  Yes, maybe my mother taught that to me, often, though obliquely, hinting that this was the case with her. She’d married at twenty-one and I’d never seen her happy, only put upon, and used up. Or, it occurred to me, much, much later, acting that way.

  Okay. So I had made my own way, built a career, traveled, dated a fair share of exciting, interesting men. In retrospect: self-centered artists; self-absorbed Internet gurus; self-aggrandizing brokers—none with an ounce of energy for anyone but themselves.

  And then I’d turned twenty-eight. And the pangs began. Mild yearnings at first, for what, exactly, I couldn’t even name.

  Just something—else.

  Suddenly, going to a friend’s wedding dateless didn’t seem like striking a blow for the happy, independent woman.

  It just seemed—lonely.

  Lacy white gowns and sparkling headpieces are fun!

  That was Romance speaking up. It was new in town. Reason had tried to shut it down. But the yearning was big and clear and specific and Romance would not be silenced. It had appeared to remind me that I wanted to be married to that intelligent, funny, kind, and hardworking man. Okay, with brown eyes. It had appeared to remind me that I wanted to have children. Two, maybe three, healthy and happy and bright-cheeked. It had appeared to remind me I wanted a big, Victorian-style house on a tree-lined street, with a backyard big enough for a picnic table and a swing set and, of course, a barbecue. It had appeared to remind me I wanted there to be a little white church in the center of town—not Catholic—where my beautiful husband and children and I would attend Christmas Eve services. It had appeared to remind me I even wanted to be a soccer mom—as long as I didn’t actually have to play.

  But Reason mocked me. There’s just one little problem, Erin, it would say. Time’s running out. Your biological clock is ticking away. Did you know that a woman who gives birth at the age of thirty-five and older is considered to be of Advanced Maternal Age? AMA. And therefore she and her baby are at much greater risk for all sorts of calamities than, say, a twenty-five-year-old and her baby. So get a grip. Accept the reality. The door’s just about to close.

  I looked at the mother/wife and her brood. It was hard to tell at that distance, with her face mostly covered by her scarf, but when she laughed her voice sounded young and clear. I guessed she was about my age. Give or take a year. Which meant that she’d had her children in her twenties.

  Let’s face it, Erin. Reason again. If a man can date a twenty-five-year-old, he will. Even if the twenty-five-year-old makes less money and has less experience than the thirty-two-year-old he thought he might want to ask out. Until the twenty-five-year-old came along. Oh, sure, in the man’s mind, the thirty-two-year-old woman definitely has something the twenty-five-year-old doesn’t. Wear and tear.

  I didn’t want to feel bitter, really.

  And I couldn’t even blame anyone for my being in that place. I’d made the decisions all along the way. The decisions that got me where I was—thirty-two, single, and with no good prospect on the horizon.

  I loved my job and I was proud of my career and my condo and my travels. But at the same time, I wanted what I suspected it might have been too late for me to have.

  I wanted to fall in love. I wanted it to be real. And I wanted it to last forever.

  I watched as the skating family tumbled off the ice. For a moment, I listened to the laughter and shouts of the other skaters, to the excited barking of the dogs.

  Then I pulled my coat closer around me and walked on.

  Chapter Two

  “I don’t know what to order.”

  “Abby, you never know what to order,” I pointed out. “But you always wind up liking what you choose.”

  “That’s true. So why do I spend so much time agonizing over the menu? When the waiter comes I should just close my eyes and point.”

  “Wait. What if you point to mussels? You’re allergic.”

  “Oh, right.” Abby sighed. “Maybe I’d better just ...”

  “Ladies? Can I take your order?”

  I shot a look of minor panic at Abby.

  “Uh, just a few more minutes,” I said apologetically.

  “Thank you,” Abby added. “I promise we’ll be ready.”

  The waiter smiled, said, “No problem,” and walked away.

  “He’s nice,” I said, returning to the menu.

  My friend JoAnne hates when I do that. “You’re paying him,” she says. “He’s working for you. Why are you apologizing? Why is he ‘nice’ because he’s doing his job? That’s what people are supposed to do. Their jobs.”

  On general principle, JoAnne takes no prisoners.

  “Okay, I think I’m going to have the ... No, wait. Yes, definitely the chicken.”

  “I have my annual review tomorrow,” I said.

  Abby looked up from her menu and smiled. “I’m sure it’ll go wonderfully.”

  “How can you be sure? I can’t even be sure,” I said. Wanting Abby to be right. Wanting her to reassure me.

  “Easy. History has proven that every single time you’re sure you’re going to be fired, you’re not. Instead, you’re given a bigger expense account or new company car or whatever else people who work for profit-making companies are rewarded with. Extra vacation days. A nicer office.”

  “Still, anything could happen,” I argued. But I felt better already.

  Abby nodded. “You’re absolutely right. Anything could happen, at any time, with no warning. Which means something good as well as something bad. For example, maybe tonight’s the night you’ll meet Mr. Right.”

  I laughed. “Now that would be something!”

  Wouldn’t it? I don’t know, maybe it was watching that skating family earlier, the thoughts and feelings they stirred up, but when I’d walked into the busy restaurant, for a fleeting moment a thrill had run through me. A physical thrill, a big flutter or tingle, like something important was about to happen, something amazing.

  Like meeting that special someone?

  Not impossible, I thought, given the fact that Biba was a Boston hot-spot and that the room was filled with a fair number of twenty-to-forty-something, well-dressed, good-looking, financially successful men. Okay, there were also a fair number of twenty-to-thirty-something, well-dressed, good-looking, financially successful women, including Abby and me, so the competition was a bit stiff. But I wasn’t totally without confidence. Cupid had been known to strike in much stranger places.

  Reason snorted derisively. Get a life, Erin, it said.

  Romance countered. Abby is right. Anything can happen—if you just want it badly enough. If you just believe!

  It was a Thursday, a seriously busy restaurant night in Boston, as it is in most cities these days. Maybe the busiest, with the possible exception of Saturday. But Thursdays were more about singles and people who lived and worked in town than Saturdays, when married couples and people from the suburbs took over.

  I preferred eating out on Thursdays. Far more opportunity to meet the intelligent, funny, kind, and hardworking man of my dreams and get going on the mortgage for that Victorian house.

  The waiter returned.

  Abby ordered the pasta special, not the chicken, something with butternut squash, which seems to be the hot vegetable right now. I ordered the steak frite, rare.

  The waiter went off to place our orders. Abby and I sat back to sip our wine, talk, and take in the restaurant’s ambiance. With slightly spoolly hand-crafted modern light fixtures, a bar made out of concrete, and floors striped in alternate panels of oak and chocolate-colored walnut, it was a unique and funky salute to Crafts-movement chic, with a distinctly new millenium twist.

  “I love your suit, Erin,” Abby said.

  I laughed. “Thanks, so do I.” I’d bought the suit on a trip to Ireland the year before. This was the first time I’d worn it. A long, slim-fitting, single-breasted jacket with a high closure. Slim-fitting pants, cuffed. All wool, in a beautiful shade of deep rose, almost red, th
at complemented my pale skin, blue eyes, and ash blond hair.

  I’m not vain, but I know I’m not exactly hideous.

  “Don’t you know that man?” Abby said, nodding toward the front of the restaurant. “The tall one, dark hair, in the three-button suit?”

  “Where?”

  “He just came in. At the end of the bar. He’s with another man. A guy with a camel coat. Oh, he just took it off. And a woman in a red coat and an odd fuzzy hat.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. The bar area was crowded with people stopping by for an after-work drink with a friend or conversation with a colleague, with people waiting for tables with their dates. At first I couldn’t pick out the man in the three-button suit. How could Abby even see such a detail from this far away, through a dark and busy restaurant? And there had to be more than one man with a three-button suit ...

  Then the crowd at the end of the bar parted as the hostess led two women to a table and I spotted a red coat.

  Behind Red Coat woman, Three-Button. Yes. I knew him. Jack Nugent. He worked for a big marketing/PR agency named Trident. I’d met him at various times during my career at EastWind. I liked him. Jack was nice, a family man, decent, and very good at his job. I admired him even.

  But it wasn’t Jack Nugent that riveted my attention. It was the man with Jack and the woman in the red coat and odd fuzzy hat. The man with the camel coat over his left arm. The man with the air about him of nonchalance and confidence. Not arrogance, something subtler and sexier. A man at ease with himself.

  I’d never seen Camel Coat before. I would have remembered. Even at this distance of about thirty feet I knew I was seeing this man for the first time. Somehow, I knew it would not be the last.

  The thrill ran through me again, familiar now but more powerful, and nestled deep inside me.

  “Erin?”

  “Huh?” Reluctantly, I turned back to Abby.

  “What’s wrong? You do know that man, right? The tall one?”

  But there wasn’t a need to answer because Abby’s raised eyes and perfect social smile told me Jack had spotted me staring—how could he have not?—and was coming over to say hello.

  “Erin?”

  “Jack, hi! How are you?” I said brightly. Ignoring Camel Coat at his side. Red Coat woman had disappeared.

  “Fine, great. Glad the holidays are over, though. Too many parties and too many relatives.”

  Jack smiled to show he didn’t really mean any of it. Jack was a guy who actually arranged annual family picnics and barbecues. A patriarch-in-training.

  Camel Coat looked at me. For a moment I was sure he was going to say, “I know you.” Like he recognized me, like he’d known me at some distant point in his life. It was a look that seemed to want to place me, identify me, remember me. Take me home.

  And I looked at him, betraying all those questions and feelings and desires.

  He smiled a smile—amused, triumphant, predatory—that acknowledged he’d seen the need and desire and urgency in my eyes.

  I wanted to die with shame. I wanted to press my body against his.

  Just then Reason chimed in. Don’t make an ass of yourself, Erin. Get a grip!

  Smile brighter, Erin, Romance countered. He’s very attractive!

  Ignoring both, I smoothly carried out my social duty.

  I smiled back blandly, told my eyes to go blank. Then I turned to Jack.

  “Jack, this is Abigail Walker. She works in development at the BSO.”

  Jack greeted Abby with an open, socially acceptable smile and a brief handshake.

  “And this is Doug Spears,” he said. “Doug, Abigail Walker and Erin Weston. Erin is at EastWind Communications. Erin, Doug just joined Trident from IdeaONE.”

  Doug Spears shook Abby’s hand first. He leaned in closer to do so. My eyes focused on him like laser-guided heat-seeking missiles. His face was Harrison Ford-like, uneven, manly, with both smile and frown lines, unbearably sexy. His face told me that he was not a young man. But he wasn’t old, either. Maybe somewhere between forty and fifty.

  His hands looked strong, like he was used to physical labor or some skilled craft, maybe performed out in the sun, wind, and rain. He wore a gold link watch, not as fancy as a Rolex but well designed, not inexpensive, maybe a Tagheuer. His hair was thick and brown but might once have been honey-blond. The short cut didn’t conceal a slight natural wave. He was not very tall, shorter than Jack, maybe five-foot-eleven. Perfect for my five-six. His shoulders were broad. He wasn’t skinny but was in no way fat. He gave the impression of compactness, of bottled energy, nothing wasted. He gave the impression of focus and strength.

  Doug Spears turned to me. Almost unaware, I put out my hand to be shaken.

  “Nice to meet you, Doug,” I said. Trying to sound bland and blank, no more than a passing business acquaintance. “I’m sorry, I’m not familiar with IdeaONE.”

  Doug Spears took my hand and held it just a second longer than necessary. His eyes were an odd and compelling shade of golden brown. Like a lion’s or ...

  “It was my own firm,” he said, releasing me. “I sold the business to Trident and came on board as Senior VP of branding.”

  “We’d been trying to get Doug in-house for years,” Jack explained.

  “What made you sell?” I blurted, and immediately regretted asking such a personal question.

  Reason sputtered wildly.

  But Doug Spears didn’t seem to mind.

  “Money comes in handy,” he said. Looking only at me. “But mostly, it was probably boredom. I needed a change.”

  “And are you happy now?”

  Another inappropriate question for one stranger to ask another. Except that Doug Spears somehow was not a stranger. He couldn’t be. I’d recognized him somehow ... hadn’t I?

  Reason found its voice. Have you gone insane! it demanded. Do you realize you’re behaving like a lovesick teenager?

  Doug Spears looked more deeply into my eyes. Everything—even Reason—fell away at the sound of Doug Spears’s voice.

  “Oh, I think I might be,” he said. Provocatively. Teasingly.

  I would make you happy, I thought. I ...

  “Sir? Your table is ready?”

  I started. The universe expanded back to its normal size. I stumbled back into consciousness of a world inhabited by more than just me and Doug Spears.

  The hostess. A loud burst of laughter from the bar. The sound system playing Diana Krall. Abby. Jack.

  Jack smiled again. Had he seen? Had he sensed what was happening between Doug Spears and me?

  “Good running into you, Erin,” he said easily. No. He’d noticed nothing, I was sure of it. “And good meeting you, Abigail. Enjoy your dinner.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” I said. “You, too.”

  At least, I think I said that. I know I was thinking, This can’t end yet. Please, let him say something. Don’t let him walk away. Maybe I should ...

  Reason growled. Keep your mouth shut, Erin.

  Romance said, Give him your card, at least!

  Doug Spears nodded at Abby. To me he said, “Until next time.”

  I looked up into his fabulous eyes and promised that yes, there would be a next time. With a smile, I promised other things, too. And begged him to promise me back.

  Doug Spears began to walk away. As he did he shifted his coat from his left arm to his right.

  And I saw the wedding band.

  “Erin?” Abby said quietly, as Doug Spears faded into the boisterous crowd.

  “Yeah?” I said, avoiding her eyes. Knowing she’d seen it, too. Hoping we’d both mistaken a school ring for something more important.

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  Chapter Three

  The very last thing I needed on the morning of my review was a postcard from my mother. The very last thing I needed the morning after meeting the love of my life and two minutes later finding out he was married was a postcard from my mother.

  All right, maybe
not the very last thing. The very last thing I needed would have been something like a lousy case of the flu.

  But it certainly wasn’t a good thing, a postcard from my prodigal mother. Because with a mere twenty words or so, spoken or scrawled on a piece of paper, my mother could knock me flat. Just knock me down, deflate me, make me want to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over my head. For about a week.

  She was a powerful person, my mother. Though her motives have always been somewhat unclear to me, puzzling, from the beginning I’ve admitted her power to crush and strangle. And then to graciously offer to help her victim stand. It’s a strange and vicious cycle. And I fell for it every time because in spite of it all, I loved her, which meant I always opened up to her—just before she zinged me again.

  So I did not need a postcard from her, that day of all days. The day that I was sure I would be fired. Which event would lead rapidly and assuredly to my losing my apartment and being thrown out onto the street. Where, no doubt, I would be killed by a pack of rabid squirrels within a week. My rotting body not found for months.

  Review day was not a favorite day of mine.

  Despite the fact that, yes, thus far in my career review day had always resulted in a raise and quite often a promotion. (Or a bonus. Sometimes all three.) Despite the fact that by the time I’d gone to bed the night before I’d managed to work up a pretty good supply of confidence. But I think that might have been due to the wine. Wine and lust and an unbelievably ridiculous determination to win Doug Spears away from his no-doubt nasty wife.

  And then morning had come. The glaring light of day. And with the return of consciousness, Reason awoke and reminded me just how dangerous it was to be thinking romantic thoughts about a married man. And, it added, it’s ridiculous and a major waste of time to judge someone—his wife—without even knowing her.

  And then Reason’s nasty cousin Negativity slipped into the room and took over. Negativity tends to sound like a sonorous, Old Testament prophet of doom. Or a ranting, decrepit oracle.

  Pride goeth before a fall, Negativity cried. Things can change at any time. You never know what will happen. You can count on nothing. And never, ever rest on your laurels!