Wrong Number, Right Woman

by Jae

  If you like wearing it, why not? Denny typed back. You should wear whatever you feel comfortable in. If your date doesn’t appreciate you the way you are, they’re not worth your time. She hesitated, but when Bella nudged her again, she added, I, for one, would think it’s cute if my date showed up dressed like that.

  They waited, but again no answer came.

  “See?” Denny muttered. “Now we really scared her off.”

  “No, look, she’s typing.” Bella pointed at the three animated dots that had popped up on the screen.

  A moment later, they disappeared, and Sneaker Woman’s reply showed up beneath the other messages. Thank you. That’s good advice. I needed to hear that today. Despite your low opinion on your own fashion sense, I think you helped me more than Heather would have.

  Glad to help. Denny lowered her phone and glanced at her niece. She couldn’t have kept her broad smile in check even if she had wanted. “What do you know? We helped her.”

  Bella poked at Denny’s upper chest. “You’re all puffed out. Like you’re waiting for a medal.” But she, too, was grinning proudly.

  “Am not.”

  “Are too.”

  Denny poked her back. “Am not.”

  When the front door swung open and Salem stepped into the dining room, they were racing each other around the table, poking back and forth. Salem put her hands on her hips and regarded them with a shake of her head. “So this is what goes on here when you’re the one who picks Bella up? And here I was thinking you were my older, more mature sister.”

  “Hi, Mom.” Bella slid to a stop in front of her. “A woman texted Aunt Denny.”

  Salem let out a whistle and eyed Denny with an appreciative look. “Seems I underestimated you. Or my pep talk earlier really helped.”

  Before Denny could answer, Bella added, “By accident.”

  “Thanks a lot, kiddo,” Denny murmured. “When you put it like that, it does wonders for my self-esteem. Some of the people who text me actually want to talk to me, you know?”

  “I mean, this woman got her friend’s number wrong,” Bella said. “But we gave her great dating advice.”

  Salem opened her eyes comically wide. “Your aunt…giving dating advice?”

  Denny shrugged. “Well, you know what they say. Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”

  “So that means you didn’t ask Ms. Burkhart out. You chickened out, didn’t you?”

  “You wanted to ask out my school bus driver?” Bella scrunched up her face. “Ew!”

  Salem gave her a stern look. “Bella! I know I taught you better than that.”

  “Not because they’re both girls…women,” Bella said with a glance at Denny. “It’s just that… That’s like my aunt dating a teacher or something. My friends will make fun of me.”

  “She’s right,” Denny said. “It’s not a good idea. It could get Ms. Burkhart in trouble with the school. That’s why I didn’t ask her out.” Well, that and because she had chickened out. “Plus, like I told you repeatedly, I don’t need to date anyone to be happy, so would you please stop meddling in my love life?”

  “Nonexistent love life,” Salem muttered. When Denny shot her an I’m-the-big-sister-and-I-know-where-you-sleep look, she held out one hand. “All right, all right.” She lowered her gaze to the oversized purse she still held and examined it as if the battered old thing was about to spit out the winning lottery numbers. When she looked up again, the expression on her face was unusually timid.

  A lump lodged in Denny’s throat. She hadn’t seen her confident, outspoken sister like this since she’d been a scared seventeen-year-old, confessing to their parents that she was pregnant.

  Salem nibbled her bottom lip. “Um, what would you guys think if I did?”

  “Did what?” Denny asked.

  “Date someone,” Salem said so softly that Denny had to strain to hear her.

  Denny stared at her. Of course, her sister had dated every now and then in the eleven years she had lived with Denny. But she had always done so discreetly, without making it a topic of conversation in their everyday lives and without introducing Bella to the guy she was dating. But something seemed to be different this time. “Someone in particular?”

  Salem nodded. “Matt has asked me to do a haunted pub tour with him next weekend.”

  “Matt?” Denny repeated to give her brain a chance to process the news. “You mean, your Matt…Matthew Kowalczyk?” Salem often mentioned her favorite colleague, and Denny had even met him a couple of times over the years, when there had been an open day at the garden center.

  “He’s not my Matt,” Salem said. “But yes, that Matt.”

  “And you’re going on a date? This time, it isn’t just two colleagues grabbing a beer, right?”

  “Right. It would be a date. I mean, if that’s okay with the two of you.” Salem looked back and forth between them, and her gaze ended up resting on her daughter.

  A tiny wrinkle formed on Bella’s brow. She seemed to think about it for a moment, then said, “As long as he doesn’t think he can boss me around.”

  “He won’t. It’s not like we’re getting married, honey. It’s just one date.” Salem sounded as if she was saying it as much for her own benefit as for Bella’s.

  The oven timer went off.

  “Finally! I’m starving.” In her sock-covered feet, Bella skidded into the kitchen and tore open the oven door, even though she had declared her hatred for zucchini not even an hour ago. A cloud of steam and the scent of sizzling tomato sauce and melted cheese wafted out.

  “Careful. Don’t burn yourself.” Salem followed her.

  Denny stayed behind for a moment, only half listening to Bella’s protest about being treated like a baby. New people and new situations made her nervous, but she would deal with it for Salem’s sake. Bella was no longer a little kid, as she reminded them nearly every day, so after years of focusing only on her, Salem deserved some kind of adult life.

  Denny’s phone dinged, jarring her out of her thoughts.

  When she pulled it from her pocket, she discovered another message from Sneaker Woman. It was an upside-down photo of her navy skirt and the canary-yellow sneakers, as if she had pointed her phone down her body to take a quick snapshot. My lucky sneakers and I are ready to head out, the text said. Thanks again and sorry to have bothered you.

  No problem, Denny replied. Have fun on your date. Without waiting for a response, she slid the phone back into her pocket. She didn’t care if everyone and their dog were going on dates while she stayed home. Bella and she would gorge themselves on ricotta cheesecake while Salem made boring first-date small talk with Matthew Kowalczyk. Who needed a date if they could have cheesecake, right?

  She gave herself a firm nod. Right.

  Chapter 2

  Later that night, Eliza slid her key into the door and exhaled as she stepped into her studio apartment. Before she could close the door behind her, the one to the apartment across from hers swung open.

  “Hey, you’re home early,” her friend Heather called. “How was the date?”

  Eliza turned and leaned against the doorjamb. “Don’t ask.”

  “That bad?” Heather bridged the space between them with two long-limbed, graceful steps. “Or are you just being picky again?”

  “I’m not picky. I have standards.” Eliza looked left and right. “Want to come in for a minute so I don’t have to pour out my dating woes to every tenant in the building?”

  “That depends.”

  “On?”

  Heather laughed that deep, melodious chuckle that had made Eliza like her right away when they had first met five years ago. “On whether you have any of those yummy snickerdoodle cookies left.”

  “I do.” Eliza waited until Heather had entered the apartment before she closed the door behind them and added, “Although come to think of it, I’m not sure you deserve any.”

  “Oh, come on, you can’t let your best friend starve just because I made y
ou go on one bad date.”

  Eliza snorted. “No one ever died from a lack of cookies, and you won’t be the first.” Despite her words, she detoured to the kitchenette, pulled the last package of snickerdoodle cookies out of the cabinet, and tossed them to Heather. “Here.”

  Humming, Heather settled on the colorful braided rug that covered the bamboo floor and ripped open the package.

  Eliza sank into her easy chair—the one she and Heather had found at a flea market last summer and dragged home to her favorite spot in her tiny apartment, by the bay window overlooking the South Park Blocks. She kicked off her sneakers without untying them first and curled her feet under her.

  Heather glanced up from her impromptu picnic and raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow—a talent Eliza had always envied. Despite one cheek already bulging with a cookie, she somehow managed to look elegant. “Sneakers with a skirt?” Heather tilted her head and seemed to consider the daring outfit choice for a second before declaring, “It’s cute.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  “See? If he complimented your outfit, your date couldn’t have been that bad.”

  “You’ve got no idea. The entire date felt like one big April Fools’ Day prank someone was playing on me. But I’m not talking about my date. I’m talking about the guy whose number you gave me.”

  Heather blinked. “I gave you a guy’s phone number? When was that?”

  “When you scribbled down your new phone number in that awful chicken scratch of yours.”

  “What?”

  Eliza pulled up her contact list and held out her phone. “Is that your number?”

  Heather leaned forward and studied the contact details while gobbling down another cookie. “Yes,” she said with her mouth half full. “Oh. Wait.” She swallowed the remainder of her cookie and pointed at the small screen. “That last number should be a nine, not an eight.”

  Eliza gave her a meaningful look. “And that’s how I ended up asking a perfect stranger for fashion advice.”

  Heather burst out laughing, nearly spewing cookie crumbs all over the rug. “You sent a stranger one of your first-date panic texts?”

  “Yeah. And pictures of my outfits. How embarrassing is that?” Eliza bent down and slapped Heather’s knee. “Stop laughing.”

  Of course, that made Heather laugh even harder.

  “And to think you drive a school bus full of innocent little kids for a living,” Eliza muttered. “I hope you’re nicer to them than you are to your poor best friend.”

  “Well, the transportation department frowns on drivers making fun of the kids, so I have to behave. I didn’t even laugh when Butch Auntie showed up covered in ketchup today.”

  “Butch Auntie?” Eliza asked.

  “Yeah, an aunt of one of the kids. Butch, kinda cute, and painfully shy. I told you about her, remember?”

  “Oh, her. Right.”

  Heather eyed her. “What’s up? You seem distracted. I hope the guy you accidentally texted wasn’t an asshole about it.”

  “No, he was the perfect gentleman. He appreciated my style and encouraged me to be myself—which is more than I can say about my actual date.”

  “What did he do?”

  “What didn’t he do?” Eliza shot back. “He could write a handbook on 101 ways to mess up a date. Please tell me I don’t have to go back out there again.”

  “What, and have me waste my hard-earned money on that online dating service I paid for?” Heather firmly shook her head, making her blonde locks fly. “You promised you’d give it six months, so that’s what you’re going to do. Just because the first one was a dud doesn’t mean all the men on No More Frogs are going to be like that. The perfect guy for you is out there, I promise.”

  “From your mouth to the dating goddess’s ears.” Eliza rescued the last cookie from Heather and pressed the phone into her hand instead. “Now please put in your correct number before I end up bothering that unsuspecting stranger again.”

  Chuckling, Heather tapped the screen to edit her number.

  Denny hated running the register. It wasn’t the process of pulling the items over the scanner that she disliked, even though some of them were heavy. The pressure of being timed didn’t bother her either. She had been doing this job for six years, so she could have scanned forty items per minute with one arm tied behind her back. The grocery store chain she worked for even allowed cashiers to sit at the register. But the constant interaction with customers often left her exhausted—especially if it was customers like the little old lady whose groceries she was ringing up right now.

  Instead of swiping her card or handing Denny a bill, she was digging through her purse for the exact amount—eight dollars and ninety-three cents—while the line of waiting customers behind her got longer and longer.

  There goes my ring speed. Denny resisted the urge to tap her foot and hurry her along.

  Finally, the lady gave a triumphant cry and pressed the last cent into Denny’s palm.

  With a polite smile, Denny handed her the receipt.

  Before she could start scanning the next customer’s items, Julie walked over with her cash drawer. “I told the boss I’d cover your register so you can finally take your break.”

  As if on cue, Denny’s stomach rumbled, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten since before her shift had started at six. “Thanks. I knew you were my favorite colleague for a reason.”

  They switched out their cash drawers, and Denny watched with amusement as Julie pumped up the chair as high as it would go so she could reach the register. It wasn’t that Denny was especially tall, but her colleague barely measured five feet.

  “What?” Julie squeezed past Denny and slid onto the seat.

  “Oh, nothing.” Denny massaged her wrist, which had started to cramp after moving thousands of items across the scanner.

  On her way to the back of the store, she grabbed a cheese twist and a chocolate croissant from the baked goods section. She dropped her cash drawer off in the office, where her boss would lock it in the safe, then headed to the break room.

  It was empty. Unlike other supermarkets, the Grocery Port’s retail operations used minimal staff, with each employee doing every job. There were no produce stockers or cleaning staff, so all of her colleagues were busy at the register or on the sales floor. At least the job paid better than most others in retail, and being busy made each shift fly by and left no time for small talk with customers, which Denny was grateful for.

  She got her cell phone from her locker to see if Salem had texted her any last-minute items she needed Denny to bring home. A red dot on the messages icon indicated that she indeed had a new text. She sat at the table in the break room, took a big bite of her chocolate croissant, and opened the app to see what her sister wanted.

  The message waiting for her wasn’t Salem’s shopping list, though. Denny paused mid-chew. She had another text from Sneaker Woman. Had she forgotten to edit her friend’s contact?

  Denny tapped on the message to read it.

  Turns out my friend Heather is your number neighbor.

  Denny sat stunned for a second. Sneaker Woman hadn’t sent her another accidental text meant for someone else. She was actually talking to her! Denny had never understood how people could start a conversation with a total stranger. She usually tended to keep to herself, but now she surprised herself by setting down the croissant so she could type using both hands.

  My what? she texted back.

  It didn’t take long for Sneaker Woman to answer. Maybe she was on her lunch break too. Her number is the same as yours, just the last digit is one off.

  Number neighbor. Who had come up with that term? Denny shook her head. God, some days she felt old. Ah, got it. She hesitated, unsure how to continue the conversation, but knowing she wanted to. Finally, she typed, So how did the date go last night? Did they appreciate your outfit? She wasn’t being nosy, right? Asking how her date had gone was the polite thing to do.

  Looks
like the sneakers weren’t so lucky after all, Sneaker Woman answered. He didn’t even get to see them. I was already seated when he showed up twenty minutes late.

  Denny scoffed. What an ass! Sneaker Woman had put herself out there and agonized over what to wear, and he hadn’t even cared enough to show up on time. Before she could think of an answer, another text bubble popped up.

  With his neck covered in the biggest hickeys I’ve ever seen.

  Denny stared at the screen. You’re messing with me.

  No, I swear. He then proceeded to talk about nothing but his ex for an hour.

  What on earth…? Denny whistled through her teeth. Sometimes, she didn’t understand people. Um, if he’s got hickeys the size of a small country, maybe the ex isn’t that much of an ex after all.

  That’s what I figured, Sneaker Woman replied. So I told him we weren’t a good fit and left. I’m too old for games like that.

  Denny nodded her approval. Good for you. But forgive me for saying… I saw your pictures. You’re…what? Late twenties? That’s hardly old.

  Finally someone who knows how to compliment a woman! I’m thirty.

  Denny snorted around another bite of her croissant. Then she paused and studied the screen. Was Sneaker Woman flirting? And was she seriously considering flirting back? Finally, she decided she was imagining things and typed back, Ha! Spring chicken!

  Hardly. How old are you? Sneaker Woman asked.

  Denny started to type: Didn’t your parents teach you not to ask a woman her age? No wonder you’re single. But then she shook her head. Sneaker Woman was dating guys. Chances were, she was straight, so her manners around women didn’t affect her relationship status. Denny deleted both sentences and instead typed, I’m forty-one.

  Oh, so I’m practically talking to a senior citizen. Sneaker Woman added three crying-from-laughing-so-hard emojis.

  For a moment, Denny considered replying with a one-finger salute emoji, but then she reminded herself that Sneaker Woman was still a stranger, even though they had fallen into a surprisingly comfortable back-and-forth. Countering with an eye roll emoji was the safer option.

  Before either of them could send another text, the store manager stuck her head into the break room. “Can you finish your break early? Apparently, the good people of the Portland metro area are preparing for an apocalypse. They are killing us out there. We need another person on checkout.”