The Best Man

by Annabelle Costa

  “What?” I say. I’m playing dumb.

  “Kirby said you were a total asshat when you guys got together.”

  “No. I was just being myself. I guess I’m just naturally an asshat.”

  I can hear Ted sigh on the other line. I’d like to point out to him that he’s the asshat who failed to warn his girlfriend that I’m in a wheelchair. What’s up with that shit?

  “Come on, Johnny,” he says. “You’re my best friend. I want you and Kirby to get along.”

  Best friend.

  Yeah. Once, a long time ago, Ted and I were best buddies. Then I got hurt and he moved across the country. I don’t know if I’ve got a “best friend” anymore, but if I had to pick, it wouldn’t be him. Probably somebody from work. I barely know Ted anymore.

  “Listen,” Ted says, “why don’t you call Kirby and offer to take her to dinner?”

  Why not? Because I’m incredibly attracted to her. And all I’ll be able to think about will be the fact that I’ll never get a girl like Kirby. I wasn’t able to get a girl like her before. Maybe if I hadn’t gotten hurt, I’d have gained confidence and some degree of charisma by now. But that hasn’t happened—just the opposite. Whenever I see an attractive woman, I immediately lose all my confidence and assume there’s no way she could be attracted to someone who looks like me.

  “Ted…”

  “Please, Johnny,” he says. “I’ll pay for the meal. Okay?”

  Yeah, that’s not happening. “No, it’s fine. I’ll call her.”

  “You promise?”

  “Yes!”

  “Thanks, buddy.” Ted’s voice breaks. “Kirby’s a great girl—the love of my life. I know you’re going to like her.”

  That’s exactly what I’m worried about.

  I’m not excited about the idea of going to dinner with Kirby for more reasons than I can count on one hand. I don’t enjoy eating out in public, and I don’t enjoy showing a new person how I feed myself. I know after six years, I need to get the fuck over it, but I haven’t. When I eat out, I have to push my utensils into a hand splint so that I don’t have to grip them. It’s the sort of thing that makes people stare.

  My life is a series of tricks that I use to be able to do basic things that are easy for everyone else. Even though I can’t move my fingers, I am able to grip things using something called tenodesis—basically, I can cock my wrist back and my fingers close into a fist. It’s not a tight fist, but it’s good enough to grip something that’s not too heavy. I use the hand splint to eat when I go out, but at home, I have foam rollers for the utensil handles, as well as utensils that hook onto my fingers. I can actually wedge a utensil between my fingers if I’m in a pinch, but I end up dropping it so many times, it’s not my first choice.

  I type by wedging a pencil between the fingers of either hand—I can get close to twenty words a minute with this method—or else I can use the knuckles of my little fingers or the tips of my thumbs. (The pencil method is the best though, because it’s easiest to hold down the shift key that way.) If I want a bag of chips, I rip it open with my teeth. Ditto for a popsicle or really anything that’s in a wrapping. I use my teeth for way too much. Good thing I took good care of them.

  Right now, I’m tired and I don’t feel like trying to coax a woman who hates me into having dinner with me. And then after that, I have to do my goddamn bedtime routine. I miss the days when I could just crash on the couch if I was too tired to get up. That’s not a possibility anymore. I need my pressure-relief mattress and I also need to swap out my comparatively small legbag for a larger Foley bag that I hang off the side of my bed. Hell, just getting undressed is a big production.

  But it’s better than when I first got hurt and was living with my parents. When I still didn’t feel confident doing my own transfers and handling my bedtime routine. As soon as it hit nine o’clock, my mom would say to me, “Come on, Johnny, let’s get ready for bed.” If I felt like staying up a little longer, it was too damn bad. My parents were early risers, so nine o’clock was bedtime.

  Living my life on someone else’s schedule? Sucked.

  Having your mom help you in the shower when you’re twenty-five years old? Sucked big time.

  It takes five rings for Kirby to pick up, to the point where I’m hopeful she might not answer. I wouldn’t leave a message. I never leave messages—I always sound like a moron when I do. I especially never know what to say at the end of the message. What do you say after you leave a voicemail? “Bye”? “Call me back”? “Have a nice day”? It never sounds right.

  But then I hear her voice on the other line and a knot tightens in my belly.

  “Hi,” I say weakly. “It’s John. John Yang.” When she doesn’t say anything, I add, “You know, Ted’s friend?”

  “I know who you are,” Kirby says irritably.

  “Right.” I bite my tongue to keep from making a smart remark and instead say, “So I thought maybe we could go to dinner one night next week.”

  She hesitates. “Did Ted just tell you to call me?”

  “Yeah,” I say. Why lie? It’s painfully obvious what happened.

  “I don’t know,” Kirby says. “I’m pretty busy next week.”

  Fantastic. She’s busy. I’m off the hook.

  Except somehow I find myself saying, “I’ll pay.”

  “What?”

  “Like, it’ll be my treat,” I say. “And we can go wherever you want to go.”

  Wherever she wants to go? Why did I say that? I’m giving her way too much power to fuck up my evening. She’ll probably pick a place with half a dozen stairs leading to the front door.

  I wait for an entire sixty seconds as Kirby decides if I’m too objectionable to ever see again. “Okay,” she finally says. “Let’s do dinner.”

  Chapter 5: Kirby

  I end up letting John pick the restaurant, because the idea of possibly choosing a location that isn’t wheelchair accessible and causing even more embarrassment is far too stressful. He selects an Italian restaurant in Hoboken, and I show up ten minutes late accidentally on purpose. On purpose because I’m still pissed off at him for last time and not at all excited about seeing him again. And accidentally because I’m really bad at being on time. Late is my default.

  As I’m walking toward the restaurant, I see a gray Toyota with blue plates parked in one of the handicapped spots right by the entrance. I wonder if that’s John’s car. The one he assured me that he could drive.

  When I get into the restaurant, John is sitting in his chair by the hostess. He’s dressed nicer than he was at the bookstore, in a plaid button-down shirt and khaki slacks. The long-sleeved shirt masks the thinness of his forearms and he looks very cute with those brown almond eyes. He’s actually much better looking than Ted. Any woman in her right mind would think so.

  “You didn’t stand me up,” John notes, looking some combination of surprised and relieved.

  “I considered it.” (I didn’t really.)

  “That’s her,” John tells the hostess, nodding in my direction. “She’s here.”

  “Wonderful!” the young, blond hostess says in an annoyingly chipper voice. “Let me escort you to your table.”

  Our table is near the entrance, which is a good thing because John’s chair doesn’t navigate easily between tables. Although he does better than I would have thought, which makes sense considering Ted said he’s been wheeling himself around for six years.

  When we get to the table, the hostess makes a ridiculous fuss over us, fawning over John and asking him a million times if there’s anything she can do to make his “dining experience more comfortable.” John keeps telling her he’s fine with decreasing amounts of patience in his voice until she takes the hint and leaves.

  “Why are you so dressed up?” John asks when I pull off my coat.

  I look down at the black dress I’m wearing. Am I dressed up? Well, maybe a little. The truth is that after John made that comment about Ted’s other girlfriends being hotter
than me, I felt a need to prove myself to him.

  “I didn’t know I was supposed to dress sloppy like you,” I retort, even though he’s not actually dressed sloppily. It does make me wonder if he picked out those clothes himself. Does he dress himself? If so, how? I can’t even begin to imagine how he’d manage the buttons on that shirt.

  In any case, he ignores my comment.

  I order chicken parmigiana and John asks for a steak cooked rare. “Bloody,” he says to our cute, skinny, blond waitress, who is probably much more physically suited for Ted than I am. “Still mooing, if possible.”

  “You got it, honey,” she says.

  “Also,” John adds, “do you think you could have the steak sliced for me?”

  The waitress looks down at John’s hands. She gets it.

  “Sure, sweetie,” she says. I can’t help but notice a patronizing edge to her voice. “No problem. And would your girlfriend like her food cut up too?”

  Wow, this is just awkward on so many levels. Does she think I’m disabled too? God. I want to tell her I’m not, but that would sound wrong. And the girlfriend part irks me even more.

  “No,” John replies. “That’s okay.”

  “Okay then,” our waitress chirps.

  “I’m not his girlfriend,” I speak up.

  John and the waitress both turn to stare at me.

  “I mean,” I say quickly. “We’re just friends. Well, not friends exactly. I’m dating his best friend. Actually, we just got engaged. Me and his best friend. Not me and him. Engaged, that is.”

  The waitress nods vacantly at me, then dashes off with my order before I can crawl into a hole and die. When I finally get up the nerve to make eye contact with John again, he’s smiling that crooked smile.

  “Thanks for clarifying that,” he says. “I’m sure she appreciated it.”

  “Oh, shut up,” I mutter.

  That actually gets a laugh out of John. To my surprise, he has a really nice, friendly laugh. It makes me like him just a teensy bit more. Like, one percent more.

  “So,” I say, folding and unfolding my napkin in front of me. It’s a nervous habit I have—playing with napkins. If it were a paper napkin, I’d be ripping it to shreds by now. “You’re a programmer like Ted.”

  “Yep,” John says. He doesn’t seem to have much to add. He seems a little distracted by the list of specials posted on the wall, even though we’ve already ordered.

  “Oh,” I say.

  Ted owes me for allowing myself to go on this dinner from hell.

  “So you work in some kind of bakery or something?” John asks. He could not possibly sound less interested in my answer.

  “Yeah,” I say. When he doesn’t ask any follow up questions, I say, “I’m the cupcake specialist.”

  When I started working in my aunt’s bakery about five years ago (putting my college education to good use), the baked goods I immediately gravitated towards were cupcakes. Minnie really encouraged me to the point where she has an entire section of the bakery dedicated to Kirby’s Kupcakes. (It was her idea to spell “cupcakes” with a K. I swear.)

  I love cupcakes. My favorite part of a cake is the more crisp edges, and cupcakes have a much higher edge to innards ratio than a cake. I love the way they fit in the palm of your hand. I love picking out wrappers for them. I love cupcakes.

  John raises his eyebrows. “The cupcake specialist? They need a specialist to make cupcakes? Cupcakes are just small cakes.”

  “That’s not entirely true,” I say. “With cupcakes, you need to be a lot more careful about the proportions and the baking time, because even small differences can completely ruin them.”

  “And that would be tragic.”

  I feel my face burn. Despite everything, part of me is tempted to walk out on John Yang. I’ve been nothing but pleasant to him, and he’s been a total jerk. It’s obvious that he doesn’t like me for whatever reason. Is it that he doesn’t think I’m good enough to marry his best friend? Is he still pissed off by my reaction to his disability?

  Or maybe, just maybe, he’s a bitter, lonely guy who doesn’t want to see anyone else find happiness. I probably shouldn’t say that out loud though.

  Although I’m really tempted.

  John is staring down at the table thoughtfully. “They didn’t give me utensils.” He lifts his brown eyes. “Did they give you utensils?”

  I confirm that I have a knife, fork, and spoon laid out in front of me. “Yes.”

  Irritation fills his face. “What the hell? Why did they give them to you but not to me?”

  To be fair, the utensils were clearly on the table when I first sat down. I don’t recall them handing me a set of utensils, then ignoring John because he’s disabled. He’s overreacting to this. In order to diffuse the tension, I joke, “Because they didn’t have utensils in medieval times, they don’t have utensils at Medieval Times.”

  Without skipping a beat, John retorts, “Would you like a refill on that Pepsi?”

  “You don’t have utensils but you have Pepsi?”

  “Dude, I got a lot of tables.”

  We both look at each other in amazement.

  “I can’t believe you were just quoting The Cable Guy,” John says. He’s staring at me like he just found out that we were brother and sister in another life.

  “I can’t believe you quoted it back!”

  He shakes his head. “That is literally my favorite movie, ever since I was a kid.”

  “Me too!” I cry. I add, “Ted thinks it’s the dumbest movie he’s ever seen.”

  “I know,” John groans. “He just doesn’t get it. It’s a classic on so many levels. I wrote my college senior thesis on that movie.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did,” he insists. “It was called ‘The Portrayal of the Trickster Archetype in The Cable Guy.’”

  “Wow,” I say. “You know what? You’re much cooler than you look.”

  “Gosh, that means a lot coming from a girl whose job is to bake tiny cakes all day,” John replies, although he’s grinning now.

  The waitress arrives with our piping hot plates of food, and is apologetic about the missing utensils. She addresses John when she asks if there’s anything else we need, and he politely declines. Then I watch as he slides his fork to the edge of the table and seems to be lacing it into a slit in his hand splint. Or at least attempting to do so.

  “Do you need any help?” I ask, before I can stop myself.

  John looks up at me. At first I’m certain he’s going to say something snarky to me, but then he just shakes his head. “Nah. I got it.”

  And that’s how he eats. With a fork attached to the splint on his hand. And considering everything, he does a decent job of it. I try not to stare, but it’s hard not to. I notice that several people at tables surrounding us are watching him when they think he’s not looking.

  “You know what?” I say suddenly. “We should watch it.”

  “Huh?” John asks around a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  “The Cable Guy,” I say. “I’ve got it on DVD. We should watch it together.”

  A tiny smile forms on John’s lips, and I feel a spark of triumph. He doesn’t smile much, which makes it a small victory whenever he does. “Watch it?”

  “Like, tonight,” I add. “Right after dinner. Come on, it’ll be fun. Spontaneous, you know?”

  John’s smile slips slightly. “Yeah, I just… I can’t tonight.”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “Why? You got a hot date after this?”

  “No,” he says quickly. “It’s just… it’s already pretty late, so…”

  “You go to bed this early, old man?” I tease him. “You can’t stay out late for a change? Live dangerously?”

  John looks down at his plate of half-eaten steak and mashed potatoes. Finally, he says, “I just can’t.”

  I remember how earlier I wondered how he was able to dress himself with his arms being so limited. Now it occurs to me that maybe
he can’t. Maybe he’s got someone who comes to help him at night, and it isn’t reasonable for him to stay out late. In which case, I probably shouldn’t make this more awkward than it already is.

  “Okay,” I say. “How about you come over this weekend then? I’m free Saturday afternoon.”

  John gives me a wary look. “I’m busy Saturday.”

  “I’m free Sunday afternoon too.”

  “Wow, you’re popular.” He squints at me. “I don’t know. I’m guessing your house isn’t accessible. In fact, I’d bet a million dollars it’s not.”

  “Then you’d be out a million dollars.” I smile triumphantly. “The woman who owned it before me was like a million years old. There’s a ramp to the back door. And… I’ll bake cupcakes.”

  John hesitates another moment, then nods. “All right, what the hell. Let’s do it.”

  Okay, he could definitely seem more excited about the whole thing, but you know what? I’m excited enough for the both of us. It’s pretty hard to hate a guy who loves my favorite movie.

  Chapter 6: John

  A misnomer about being paralyzed is that my legs don’t move. They do. Just not when I want them to.

  It’s called muscle spasms. My legs will jump and bounce, sometimes for extended periods of time. I have to reposition them and sometimes lean on them, and eventually it stops. But I hate it. I hate the way it looks and sometimes when the spasms are really bad, it feels like they might almost throw me out of my chair. I know a guy whose hip dislocated from spasms. I’m on meds for it, which have helped immensely. But I’ll never get rid of them entirely.

  As I get to the end of my dinner with Kirby, I notice that the spasms in my legs have kicked up. I can tell she doesn’t notice since my legs are under the table. It probably means that I need to empty my legbag, which is why I turn down her movie invitation. I don’t want to have to find the bathroom in this stupid restaurant—I just want to go home and take care of it there.

  But as the spasms grow worse, I can tell that’s not a possibility. And if I wait long enough, there’s a decent possibility of leakage. That’s just what I need—piss all over my pants leg.