Impractically Perfect: A Romantic Comedy

by Genevieve Lerner

But I hadn’t known they were stupid. Because those are the only people who believe conspiracy theories: crazy, stupid people. Right?

  “Now Rhonda,” said one of the twins, speaking into a phone that was hooked up to some sort of recording device. “What do you think the world needs to hear about the corners of the earth?

  “Candice, the thing is,” said a disembodied voice, “just because you haven’t seen something, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Just because nobody has seen the edge of the earth, it doesn’t mean it’s not there. In fact, it’s highly likely that many people have seen it, but those also happened to be the people who were sucked into space because there is very little gravity. Ever wonder why there’s always so many ‘missing people’?”

  “Interesting insight,” said a twin, who I now assumed to be Candice. “The government wants to cover this all up so it can control us. Simple.”

  I really wanted to say something so I shoved an entire carrot stick in my mouth to stop myself. It worked, but since I couldn’t chew it, I very nearly started choking.

  Camille cleared her throat. “But what about the tides? What causes those?”

  “Well,” said the person on the phone, “don’t you find it pretty obvious that it’s the tilting of flat earth? It’s like when you carry a shallow bowl of soup across the kitchen. There are lots of little waves in it that sometimes splash over the sides. Just like the tides.”

  There were so many things wrong with this theory that I almost stuffed my hands into my ears and started humming loudly, just so I wouldn’t get angry. Instead, because I’m not a complete asshole, I just sat there politely while my intestines boiled with rage.

  Whelp. I had definitely made a mistake in trying to hang out with Candice and Camille tonight—that much was clear. What wasn’t clear was exactly how I was going to escape. Because…I literally had to. I was probably going to hurt someone if I didn’t.

  Silently, so I wouldn’t destroy any of their recording, I tried to slip off of the bed, but the springs were creaky. I ended up lying all the way down on it and shimmying my way to the ground, in order to distribute my weight evenly so it made as little noise as possible.

  I was lucky that their chairs were facing the wall inside the closet; otherwise I would have been there all night, too ashamed to leave while they were staring directly at me. It took me nearly five whole minutes to crawl across the (also, conveniently, creaky) floor, open the bedroom door, and slip out, unnoticed by Candice and Camille.

  I did feel a little bad for just ditching them in the middle of something that they had worked so hard to create…but what was I supposed to do? Just pretend I didn’t have an issue with literally everything they were saying?

  Back in my bedroom, it only took a few minutes for all of my horrible feelings from earlier to come rushing back, and I had a very frank one-way discussion with my ants.

  “I know he loves me, but I think he’s scared to make a commitment. His job is really important to him, and he doesn’t want to give it up for a girl.”

  I waited expectantly for a response that I knew would never coming, watching two ants run circles around each other.

  “But the thing is…I don’t think I’m just ‘a girl.’ I’m Penny Freaking Partridge, and I’m his smart, capable girlfriend. I mean, I’ve done everything for him. And like, I take good care of myself, and I have a good job, and I don’t depend on him financially, and I have everything perfectly together. Shouldn’t that be enough for him?” I sighed.

  “You know what? It’s fine. He’s just going through a really rough time, like he said. He needs his rest. We had such a good night tonight…the last thing I want to do is say something and start an argument. We’re fine.”

  I crawled into bed, determined to feel better but for some reason, feeling even worse than before.

  Chapter Five

  Everybody Makes Mistakes

  “Shitty shitty shitpops, no!!” My alarm hadn’t gone off, and I was suddenly wide awake, twenty minutes before my shift. Okay, that’s a lie. My alarm had gone off, but I was exhausted from staying up until 4am binging the new season of Black Mirror, and my stupid morning self had turned off my alarm when it first woke me up. And then I had fallen immediately back asleep.

  There was no way I was going to make it to work on time: the train was too slow, calling an Uber would mean being stuck in traffic. There was only one option. Biking. In December.

  Still in my pajamas, I threw all of my work clothes into a backpack, praying that my tires would still have enough air in them. As it turned out, they were a little flat, but still had enough to get me to and from the office one time. Probably.

  I hauled my bike out of the laundry room that doubled as storage for our summer stuff and also as the cat’s bedroom. Naturally, my bike had fallen off the wall and someone had propped it over Mrs. Purrpaws’s litter box, so it smelled very distinctly of cat urine. But there was no time to worry about that now.

  Out the door I ran, bike under arm and backpack flung across one shoulder. If I left in the next thirty seconds and hit all green lights, I could still make it on time.

  I jumped on the bike seat and started down the driveway, accelerating...until I saw something out of the corner of my eye.

  Oh my god. Was that Mrs. Purrpaws? How had she gotten out of the apartment? In my hurry to leave this morning, I must’ve left the doors open a little too long. If Gillian ever found out about this, she would kill me.

  The stupid cat was sitting out in the frosted grass, staring up into a tree on the front lawn. There was probably a bird up there that she wanted to catch, or something. Or the wrath of Satan himself.

  I had just started to think about how I was going to get her back inside when my bike hit a patch of black ice, swerved, and ran onto the lawn, out of control. It was all I could do to keep upright—my brakes weren’t even working—and before I knew what was happening, I had skidded to a halt…

  …right into Mrs. Purrpaws.

  “Oh my god!” I screamed, abandoning the bike and my possibly sprained ankle and definitely bleeding forehead to check on my roommate’s cat.

  She was sprawled on her back and twitching. Holy shit. Had I killed her?

  Yep. This was hands-down the worst thing I had ever done, ever. Sure, I might’ve been a little mean to Cyril once in awhile, and yeah okay, I had lied to Dr. Booper once or twice about being sick when I actually was going to the National Festival of Ant Palaces. But I had never killed anything! I mean, except like fruit flies.

  The worst part was that Mrs. Purrpaws and I were mortal enemies. She had hated me with every ounce of her fluffy, hissy being. So like, yeah, a tiny part of me was ecstatic about this whole thing—but what if Gillian thought I did it on purpose? Which I most definitely did not do.

  Gillian wouldn’t be back for another few days. Maybe I could make a quick escape. I could pack up all my stuff, ship it to Nicaragua, and change my name to Lupita. Or maybe I should disguise myself as a tree or something.

  Or maybe, maybe, it hadn’t been Mrs. Purrpaws at all. Maybe it had been...some other cat. Or like, a raccoon. Raccoons are out at 7am, right?

  As I approached the mangled body, my heart sunk into the frosty grass. It was absolutely positively Mrs. Purrpaws—her distinctive heart-shaped belly markings were exposed for the world to see. And she was absolutely positively...NOT DEAD?

  She was breathing. As I watched her, I realized that she wasn’t mangled at all, but curled up into an awkward bendy cat position. But all in one piece.

  I had never been so happy to see her alive in my life. Tears suddenly pouring from my eyes, I knelt down next to her to give her a big hug, and to—

  MEOOOOW! In classic Mrs. Purrpaws fashion, the cat jumped up, spitting, and swatted at my face. I leaned back just in time to avoid an ear-to-mouth gash.

  But as she stalked away from me, I realized her gait was...off. She was favoring one of her legs, and kept turning back over her shoulder to glare at me, a
s if to say “this is all your fault.” Which, to be fair, it was.

  Still shaking, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and called Sven. The tears were starting to freeze on my cheeks, and I just needed some comforting words.

  “Hello? Hey…Penny?”

  “Hey babe,” I said, warmth already rushing through me at the sound of his voice. “I just need to talk to you for a second, I was running late to work, and I hit Mrs. Purrpaws and I thought she was dead, but she’s not, and now I don’t know what to do, and so many things are happening right now and I’m feeling really overwhelmed and I really just want a hug and—”

  “Alright, look, can you wrap this up? I really don’t have time to be talking right now. We agreed, only emergencies during the day, right?”

  He was right. We had.

  “Sorry, you’re right. I didn’t mean to interrupt.” Maybe almost killing your roommate’s cat didn’t actually count as an “emergency.”

  I heard him sighing on the other end. “I love you, Penny. Have a good day.”

  “I love you too. Sorry, again.” My words felt hollow, as if I was yelling them into a giant, echoey cave. I ended the call.

  Whelp. My rushing to work was all for naught; I needed to take the stupid cat to the vet.

  In a feat of adrenaline-induced bravery, I lured her into the pet carrier I found in Gillian’s room, using an entire can of tuna. I only knew of one vet in the city, from back when I had been dating Liam.

  Liam had been my first “real” relationship, and there had been so many reasons that we broke up I would never be able to remember them all. But what sticks out to me the most was his obsession with his own cat, Antony. When I had commented that this was a strange name for a cat, he got really sad, because apparently he had originally had a pair—Antony and Cleocatra. Cleocatra had died as a kitten, so now Antony was alone and dumb-sounding.

  Whether it was because he had lost a kitten so young or because of other strange personal issues (of which he had a lot), Liam had been obsessive about Antony’s health. He was a hypochondriac...for his cat. I had spent many evenings taking him to the vet when he was sure that he was meowing more because he had cancer or liver failure, but he actually was just meowing more.

  They say you learn something from every relationship...but I’m not sure I learned a single thing from Liam. Other than, of course, that I never wanted to be in a relationship with anyone like Liam ever again. And also, where a vet was.

  The office address was still saved in my Uber app, and forty-five minutes later (due to the rush hour traffic jams I had predicted), I arrived, Mrs. Purrpaws in hand. Well, more like, Mrs. Purrpaws desperately trying to escape her carrier by any means possible.

  “Penny!” the bright-eyed receptionist said the moment I walked in the door. “It’s been awhile—how’s Antony doing today?”

  “Actually,” I said, “this is Mrs. Purrpaws.” I sneezed.

  “Interesting name,” she said, raising her eyebrows and smirking.

  “She’s my roommate’s!” I said, a little too loudly. “And I may or may not have accidentally hit her with my bike...and now she’s walking funny.”

  The receptionist smiled. “No worries. Dr. Loeman will be ready for her in a few.”

  After warning her that Mrs. Purrpaws is the actual spawn of the devil and will probably mutilate anyone who tries to actually examine her, I took a seat in the waiting room next to a guy bent over what looked like a swaddle of a very tiny baby.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Purrpaws was throwing herself against the wall of her carrier over and over again, until it started to actually slide across the tile floor. I just prayed that she didn’t figure out how to open it: there was no way I would ever get her back in if that happened. It vaguely occurred to me that that might be an issue after the vet examined her as well, but I was at a point today where thinking any more than twenty seconds in the future gave me a severe migraine.

  Okay. I needed something to distract myself. And maybe to make it look like I wasn’t actually the person that had brought this demon cat inside.

  “What do you have there?” I asked the man beside me, decisively ignoring the yowling that was now coming from the carrier. After this much time in such close contact with Mrs. Purrpaws, my nose was definitely running, and I wiped it with the back of my hand.

  He sat up and looked at me, and there was a moment of recognition, followed a moment later by mortified certainty who he was.

  It was the guy—the guy that I had accidentally climbed all over at work. The relatively attractive but understated and missing-an-arm guy that I had absolutely, one hundred percent, completely mortified myself in front of. All my smart-ass retorts suddenly didn’t seem so smart anymore. (They weren’t.)

  While I gurgled and tried to find some combination of words that didn’t sound completely idiotic, his face was brightening.

  “Penny! What a surprise, it’s so good to see you again!”

  Yes. That would have been a good opening line. Too bad he’d beaten me to the punch. And he remembered my name. What was his? Taylor? Topher?

  “Um. Yes, you too!” Alright, alright. Not too bad. Keep it cool. “How’s your lap feeling?” NO Penny, WHO EVER TOLD YOU THAT YOU WERE ALLOWED TO TALK?

  Thank god, all he did was throw his head back and laugh ferociously. Unsure if it was at me in a good way or a bad way, I did nothing.

  “It’s totally fine. Seriously, why are you looking at me like that?” Oh, yes, TOBY! His name was Toby. I almost shouted this at him but made the intelligent decision to keep my mouth shut. He continued, “Actually…it’s crazy that we ran into each other, I’ve been thinking about you a lot.”

  Oh, god. He was going to sue me for sexual assault, wasn’t he? I knew I should have gone to law school instead of dental hygiene school. Then I would know how to defend myself. Although, I supposed, if I wasn’t a dental hygienist, I probably wouldn’t have ended up in this situation in the first place.

  Maybe I should go to law school now.

  Or, just quit everything and become like a zoologist or something. I mean, most animals are pretty gross, but penguins are adorable. As long as I didn’t have to be the person that beheaded the anchovies before feeding time, I would be fine. OR, what if I —

  “Is that your cat? He seems...lovely.”

  I determinedly kept my gaze locked to his face to avoid staring at his one arm and rolled my eyes. “It’s a long story...but no, not mine, and definitely not lovely.”

  “Well, this is Ferdinand,” he said, pulling back the edge of the towel so I could see whatever it was he had wrapped in there. I could see it wriggling a little, and then a nose poked out...

  “HOLY SHIT!” I screamed, recoiling in disgust. “THAT’S A FUCKING RAT!” For a moment, the usual barks and meows and parrots yelling “have a nice day!” went silent. Behind the desk, the friendly receptionist lady “tsk tsk”ed and muttered under her breath about how rats are great pets, actually.

  Toby just laughed, and continued to unwrap the giant rodent. “It’s not a rat,” he began, but I was still backing up, ready to leave Mrs. Purrpaws there and bolt out the door at another mention of “rat.”

  “Okay, whatever, possum, meerkat, mole...”

  “Penny, it’s a ferret.”

  Oh. Oh! I had actually heard of those! They sold them in depressing pet stores, those ones that always smelled terrible because they never cleaned their cages. Mom had used to like to drag me and Cam into them, which made us both miserable—he, because he wanted to cuddle and rescue every animal there, and me because I strongly disliked the stench and was allergic to all of the cats.

  But it also really looked like a rat.

  “Yeah, they’re not the prettiest,” he said, “I never exactly wanted this, but I don’t really have much of a choice in the matter. My wife left me a few months ago—she took the car. I got the ferret. Well...her ferret, to be exact.”

  Oof.

  “I contemplated bringing him
to a shelter,” he continued, “but I couldn’t let him be abandoned again. Besides, who knows where he would end up? Some...animal abuser could end up with him or something.”

  “Or maybe,” I said, “he would end up in the circus and get to travel the world!” Anything to lighten up this conversation. And steer it away from ex-wives.

  “The real question is, what kinds of circus-y tricks would he do?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember the last circus I had gone to. I must’ve been in middle school, and Cam had been a little kid.

  “He could jump through hoops of fire!” I said. “Or maybe he could do tricks on the flying trapeze?”

  Toby nodded seriously. “Flying trapeze for sure.”

  “Mrs. ...Purrpaws?” Someone was calling us in. The nurse? Is that what you call it for animals?

  “Well, it was nice to see you,” I said to Toby. I was shocked by how...nice he was to me. I couldn’t believe that he wasn’t just laughing at me from the moment I walked in the door and telling everyone how awkward I was.

  When I leaned down to pick up the cat carrier, I got a whiff of something awful, and had a strong suspicion that Mrs. Purrpaws had thrown up the can of tuna I had bribed her with.

  Twenty minutes and three hundred dollars later, the vet had confirmed that Mrs. Purrpaws had only gotten a scrape on the bottom of her paw—no internal injuries. Hopefully, I would be able to take her bandages off in a day or two, before Gillian got home. Otherwise, I’d have to tell her that I hit her with my bike...something I didn’t particularly relish doing.

  I was surprised by how quickly I was able to get her home, pick up my bag of work stuff, and get to the office (this time taking the train). I had contemplated taking the rest of the day off—but I knew that I would feel better surrounded by people who would distract me from this horrible start to the day.

  “Hey Bernard,” I said, walking in the front door. “What did I miss?”

  He smiled at me. “Oh nothing. Just the presentation of a LIFETIME!”