I've Never Been to Vegas, but My Luggage Has: Mishaps and Miracles on the Road to Happily Ever After

by Hale, Mandy

  Every day during the first year of The Single Woman, I was realizing a new dream, reaching a new level of trust in God, and setting new goals, always aiming a little higher and a little bigger than I did the day before. I created a vision board, listing all the things I hoped to achieve over the next few months, and hung it in a place where I would see it every morning when I woke up and every night before I fell asleep. There is something very powerful about putting your dreams into writing. I began to realize that, good or bad, you could speak your life into existence. Proverbs 18:21 says, “The tongue has the power of life and death.” I would be joking around with a friend saying how I hoped to have my own reality show someday, and a few days later I would get an e-mail from a network or a production company wanting to discuss a pitch for a reality show. I would dream aloud about how I wanted a certain celebrity to follow me on Twitter, and a week or so later they would start following me. It wasn’t magic. It was the power of choosing to speak words of life, hope, and achievement over my life rather than negativity, pessimism, or defeat. A few of the goals I listed on that first vision board that seemed at the time like pie-in-the-sky dreams were:

  1. I will meet Oprah.

  2. I will sign a book deal.

  3. I will leave my day job and will be a full-time writer.

  Within two years, all those dreams would become realities.

  * Quotations Book, accessed August 19, 2013, http://quotationsbook.com/quote/34884/.

  Chapter 14

  New Attitude, New Adventures

  It was late spring 2010, I was thriving at work and loving my single life, and the future of The Single Woman had never looked brighter. Little did I know that my life was about to come full circle in another wonderfully unexpected way. One of the little girls I babysat in my youth was coming to intern with my company for the summer.

  The oldest of her sisters, Alli was now a twenty-year-old senior at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. I hadn’t laid eyes on her in about eight years, but we had recently reconnected on Facebook. When she learned that I was working in PR, she inquired about whether my company might be hiring interns for the summer. Her degree was in communications, so it seemed like a perfect fit. My boss conducted a quick phone interview and, much to my delight, gave Alli the stamp of approval! I could hardly wait to get to spend some time with her and get to know her as an adult. I wondered what she would be like now and how my memories of her as a child would compare with her grown-up version.

  After my first few weeks of working with Alli that spring, I no longer saw her as merely “the little girl I used to babysit.” She began to feel like my little sister.

  I like to think that all the summers she spent with me as her babysitter were foreshadowing the summer that Alli and I were about to embark upon together, although I don’t think anything could have prepared either of us for the unbelievable adventures we would find ourselves in.

  The first hint that we were in for a wild ride came the night of the CMT Music Awards (again proving that my past and present were inextricably linked). A connection I had made on Twitter offered me tickets to the event that night, and I invited Alli to go as my guest, but I didn’t find out for sure I was getting the tickets until about four hours before the show.

  The show was spectacular, and afterward, we had already decided in advance, we were going to do a little detective work to try and sniff out where some of the top secret after-parties were so we could try and ogle some of our favorite celebs. This was a big year for the CMT Awards, and stars like Ryan Seacrest, John Mayer, and even the cast of Jersey Shore—what they had to do with country music, we had no idea—were in town for the show.

  “Think, think, think. Where would be the most likely location for a top secret after-party to be held?” I asked, tapping my thumbs against the steering wheel.

  “Hmm, the Hutton?” Alli piped up.

  “Good call!” I exclaimed, pointing my car in the direction of the fancy West End hotel. “Let’s go scope it out!”

  We were disappointed to see no signs of Hollywood shenanigans at the Hutton, nor at any of the other four or five obvious hot spots we cruised past over the next hour. By this point it was getting late, and since we both had to work the next morning, we decided to give up the ghost and hit the interstate back to Murfreesboro.

  “Wait!” Alli screeched just as I pulled onto the entrance ramp to I-40.

  “What is it?” I cried, pulling to the far right lane in case we needed to turn around.

  “Someone just tweeted about an after-party at ‘WK.’ What’s WK?” Alli asked, looking puzzled.

  “WK, WK . . . ,” I said aloud. Then we both looked at each other.

  “Whiskey Kitchen!”

  I got off at the next exit and whipped the car around to head back downtown. I’m not sure what we were thinking or what our plan was for getting into this party. It’s not like we had invitations or were on any lists. But we were resolute. We would find a way in!

  “I say we just wander in like we know exactly what we’re doing,” said Alli. “Anytime you walk in somewhere with confidence, people tend to just let you slide on by.”

  Okay, so we did have a plan.

  We pulled into the packed parking lot across the street from the Whiskey Kitchen. It was an up-and-coming restaurant and lounge located in one of Nashville’s trendiest new areas of town, nicknamed the Gulch, so it made sense that a big-time celebrity would be having a party there. As we crept through the parking lot, looking right and left to see who we could see, we noticed a long, black Lincoln town car parked diagonally in the parking lot, taking up several spaces. A driver was propped up against the car door, looking bored. He nodded at us as we darted past, trying not to be too obvious about our gawking. Looking back, I’m sure we were about as subtle as a herd of gazelles.

  As we got closer to the door, we changed our stance, pushing our shoulders back and attempting to suavely stroll right past the doorman, who was standing behind a podium, checking people off a list.

  “Ladies,” the man called out as we were about halfway past him. “Excuse me. Ladies! May I have your names please?”

  Alli looked at him with wide eyes.

  “Oh, we’re not on the list,” she explained innocently. “We thought we could just walk in, like any other night. Is there something going on here tonight?”

  The man looked at us skeptically, like he didn’t buy our story. Not one word of it.

  “Well, yes, there is,” he replied. “This is a VIP event, and if you’re not on the list, I’m afraid I can’t let you in.”

  Embarrassed now, we slunk away in a cloud of humiliation, hoping we could scurry back to our car without receiving any pity-filled glances from the people in line behind us who heard the whole exchange. We were just approaching the parking lot when the driver of the Lincoln town car called out to us.

  “Leaving so soon?” he asked.

  “Oh, well, it’s a private event, and we’re not on the list, so we’re just going to call it a night,” I called back. He held out a hand to stop us, then beckoned us over.

  “So you girls really wanna get into that party?” he asked with a smile.

  “Well,” Alli replied, “we did think it would be kinda cool. We don’t even know whose party it is, though.”

  “It’s Kid Rock’s,” the driver explained. “And it just so happens that I’m his driver. If you girls could wait just a minute, I could go talk to him and get you in. If you really wanna get in.”

  Alli and I looked at each other in disbelief. What dumb luck must we have to just happen upon Kid Rock’s driver? Kid Rock, whose party was going on inside and whose list we had just been rejected from?

  “Well, sure,” I blurted, trying to temper my excitement. “I mean, if it’s not too much trouble.”

  “Hang tight just a minute,” the man said. He dashed across the street. We saw him walk around to the outdoor patio of the restaurant, where some revelers were hanging out, and lean
down to whisper in the ear of who we could only guess was Kid Rock himself.

  A few seconds later the driver waved us over, gesturing for us to go around the doorman and come directly to the back patio. And just like that, we sailed right into Kid Rock’s CMT after-party, thanking his driver profusely before darting straight to the ladies’ room to scream and jump up and down in circles like total fan girls.

  “We got into Kid Rock’s after-party!” Alli squealed. “We actually did it!”

  In a state of disbelief and shocked glee, we wandered around the party that night, hardly believing what we were seeing. We spotted Uncle Kracker standing by the bar. We took our picture with Mike “the Situation” from Jersey Shore. We even heard whispers that Ryan Seacrest was hidden away in some top secret VIP area, but, the rare unicorn of Hollywood royalty that he is, we never actually saw him.

  As crazy as it might sound, I firmly believe we spoke our CMT after-party adventure into existence that night. We simply believed that we would find a way in, refused to admit defeat, and poof! The door opened for us. Sometimes all it takes in life is a little stubborn determination.

  It was the kind of spontaneous adventure I love, the kind that sneaks up and surprises you and winds up becoming a day you look back on with laughter for many years to come. And although Alli is almost a decade younger than I am, she was quickly becoming one of my closest friends. When she came back into my life, I was at a point where I desperately needed a little fun in my life. I was working feverishly to get The Single Woman off the ground. I was working just as feverishly at my full-time job. I was healing from my relationship with Steven and learning to love my single life, but I still had a thing or two to learn about the importance of just plain fun. Of silliness. Of going on wild adventures with your girlfriends and sneaking into rock stars’ parties and being spontaneous. That’s what my friendship with Alli, and what the summer of 2010, was coming to mean to me—incorporating the fun back into my life and working hard but also allowing myself the grace to relax, breathe, and laugh. I took the position of influence that God had given me through the platform of The Single Woman so seriously that sometimes I forgot to just be Mandy. Learning to reconcile my two worlds was made a little easier by the fun-loving, exuberant girl I literally had known since she was in her mother’s womb. We shared a rare and special bond.

  I also confided my Mr. E story to Alli, filling her in on the whole saga, and finding the courage to admit to her and to myself that I still had unresolved feelings for him. I hadn’t heard from him in over a year by that point, and I had no idea how he was doing or where his life had taken him. After finally disentangling myself from Steven, I was able to see clearly how I had rushed into that relationship as a way to avoid dealing with my feelings for Mr. E. Strangely, I felt like the closer I got to God and the more I prayed about His will for my life, the more I thought about Mr. E. Of course, summer always made me think of Mr. E. Warm weather, sunshine, carefree days, and breezy nights seemed to evoke nostalgia about the summer we had spent together two years earlier. But he was gone now, and I was moving on with my life, so what did it really matter anyway?

  Perhaps, though, all those unresolved feelings suddenly coming to the surface weren’t just a fluke after all, but foreshadowing. A few days later I heard from Mr. E for the first time in a year and a half. It was in the form of a Facebook friend request, but it still rocked my world.

  At some point or another, every girl has to respond to the inevitable earth-shattering Facebook friend request. The ex that appears out of nowhere. The high school sweetheart who’s suddenly single again and wants to know what you’re up to these days. The old friend you had a major falling out with and never thought you’d hear from again, suddenly ready to let bygones be bygones. Yes, Facebook is much like the ghost of Christmas past, always waiting to come dragging its chains into your present with faces you thought you had left safely in your yesterdays. And most of the time you can overlook the person’s infractions, whatever they might have been, and hand them an all-access pass to your online existence, if for no other reason than to show them how fabulous your life turned out. But when it comes to someone who once owned your heart, it’s never that simple. Actually, I guess you could say with Mr. E, it was more like rent-to-own, since he never seemed to generate enough interest to own it outright; but nonetheless, allowing him access to my life, even just my online life, was allowing him access to my heart. A heart that had long ago closed the door on the idea of him, convinced that he would never be the man I needed him to be.

  Though I briefly considered denying his request for friendship, something told me there was something deeper and more complicated at work here—that this was simply a prologue to a much bigger chapter in my life. I had been praying for a resolution to my Mr. E saga. Could I really walk away from what might be a blatant answer to that prayer?

  Besides, I didn’t want to run from this. I didn’t want to hide. I’m not the same girl he left behind a year and a half ago, I thought, mentally stepping into my Single Woman stilettos.

  “How adventurous are you feeling?” I heard the echo of Mr. E’s voice in my mind.

  I clicked Confirm.

  Chapter 15

  A Stop Along the Way—or a Destination?

  Though Mr. E and I were now Facebook friends, I wasn’t brave enough to actually venture onto his page yet. That would actually make his brief reappearance in my life real. Plus, with all my newfound girl power, I felt like he should be the one to reach out to me.

  I did keep one eye constantly on my own Facebook page over the next few days, I must confess, waiting for the inevitable moment when he would send me a message, a comment, or at least a poke, but day after day, nothing. While the surprise request in my inbox had put Mr. E back on my radar, he was definitely still off the map. After a week or two of complete radio silence, I finally gave up and went back to my regularly scheduled programming, refusing to allow myself to sit around and wait on him to make contact any longer. I was in a great place in my life, possibly the best ever, and I knew that when time, circumstance, and God were ready for our paths to cross again—somewhere other than cyberspace—they would. Besides, Alli and I were having an epic summer, and I wasn’t going to allow Mr. E to disrupt that. I had way too much in my life to look forward to, to keep looking back.

  “Any word yet?” Alli asked me at work the next day as she breezed into my office for our morning chat.

  “Nope!” I said cheerily, firm in my resolve to stop monitoring Facebook like it was the Dow. “Not a peep. But it’s okay. I’ve called off the Facebook stakeout. I’ve decided to let it go, and whatever will be, will be!” Alli looked impressed, and I have to say, I was feeling pretty impressed with myself. This was a huge moment in the life of Mandy, and I was as cool as a cucumber. As zen as the Dalai Lama. As laid-back as . . .

  “Wait a minute! Did you see this?” I screeched to Alli as I opened up a Facebook invitation to my friend Brad’s pool party, which was now just two short weeks away. Brad has this incredible house in one of the wealthier areas of the city and is famous for the legendary pool parties he throws each summer that leave you feeling like you’ve just been dropped off in the middle of an episode of MTV Cribs. Seriously. You stand there waiting for P. Diddy to float by with a fruity beverage in his hand.

  “What is it?” Alli asked, dashing over to my computer to see what had unnerved me so much. “Oh!” she said, seeing the picture that was there, clear as day, under the attending guests.

  Mr. E.

  He was also a friend of Brad’s. And he had RSVP’d to the pool party. The pool party that was happening in two weeks. The pool party that I was now RSVP’ing to, which meant we would be in the same vicinity, under the same roof, in the same room, for the first time in a year and a half. And this was all going down in just two short weeks.

  Alli and I looked at each other, our eyes wide.

  “Wow,” she whispered. “We have a lot of planning to do!”


  Planning? This was going to take serious strategizing.

  It happens to every single girl sooner or later, and usually at the most unassuming times. You know the drill: you’re sashaying along through life, happy as can be, not a care in the world, when all of a sudden, you turn a corner and come face-to-face with Your Past. Also known as: the Ex. Not just an ex, but the Ex. The one who can melt you into a puddle of mush with one glance in your direction. The one who most likely broke your heart—maybe even unintentionally. And the one who still possesses the power to single-handedly rock your world more than the entire cast of People’s Sexiest Man Alive issue showing up on your front doorstep would.

  I knew that after our year-and-a-half-long hiatus, the very combination of Mr. E and me in one room would quite possibly send the earth rotating the wrong way on its axis. I mean, this was (almost) as big as the New Kids on the Block reuniting. The way I looked at it, I had three paths I could take when this climactic life moment occurred:

  A) Run in the opposite direction with my tail between my legs.

  B) Stand frozen, without moving an inch, and maybe wear a camouflage bikini to try and blend in with Brad’s shrubbery.

  C) Take a deep breath, face the moment head-on with a smile, and be my most rockstar self. Not the Mandy that he walked away from, but the Mandy that he won’t remember why he walked away from once he sees the fabulous transformation I had made since he exited stage left.