A Girl Like You

by Maria Geraci

  Richard, one.

  Emma, zero.

  Lisa scrolls down the chart. “Good thing Nick isn’t a Pisces like I originally thought. Listen to this: ‘Pisces will see adventure in Gemini, but Gemini will tend to ignore Pisces’ deep emotions and not take Pisces seriously. Better skip this one or someone could walk away heartbroken.’”

  Jackie shudders dramatically. “God, Emma, I hope you never date a Pisces. It all sounds so…doomed.”

  This has now gone past the realm of strange and into the country of bizarre. Jackie has never expressed any sort of interest in horoscopes or palm reading or the zodiac or anything else woo-woo.

  It is at this point that Ben mercifully brings everything to a swift and abrupt halt. “Okay, people, let’s get to work,” he says.

  Everyone sighs good-naturedly and we get down to what it is we came to do. Jackie complains about her latest article, saying that she didn’t have enough time to do a proper interview, and Richard tries to score a fam trip to a new golf and tennis resort that is trying to get the magazine to write a review. After an hour of the same old, same old, we go to our separate corners and begin the work of putting together a magazine.

  As I’m settling down to finish edits on a piece that’s due tomorrow, I can’t help but reflect on the irony of this morning’s playtime. I know for a fact that Ben is a Pisces (everyone else knows this too). His birthday is March 19 and Lisa decorated his office with tiny cutout cardboard fish. Although only six days separate his birthday from Nick’s, apparently Nick is my celestial dream and Ben is my star-crossed nightmare. I could have saved myself months of heartache if I’d just paid attention to my horoscope.

  Later that afternoon, Kimberly calls to ask me what I plan to wear to the charity event in St. Petersburg.

  “It’s not till next month,” I say.

  “Three weeks and four days,” she corrects.

  “Um, my black cocktail dress?”

  “You mean the same black cocktail dress you wore to Jason’s office Christmas party last year? The same black cocktail dress you wore to Yolanda Burton’s engagement party? The same black cocktail dress—”

  “Okay, I get it. I need something new.”

  “Something not black. The party starts at five and it’s summer. Go light. Do you need me to come shopping with you?”

  “Thanks, but I think I can handle this myself.” I hang up and try to get back to work but Kimberly’s call reminds me that I haven’t been completely honest with Ben about the Trip Monroe interview. As my boss, Ben needs to know about my collaboration with the Yeager Agency. So before I leave for the day, I head over to talk to him. The door to his office is open but I still knock. Ben looks up from his computer screen.

  “Do you have a few minutes?” I ask.

  “Sure, come on in.”

  I sit on the sofa. “It’s about the Trip Monroe article.”

  “How’s that going?”

  “Good, actually. At least I think so. You see”—I laugh nervously—“I’ve had a little trouble connecting with Trip. When I said Trip and I are like this”—I intertwine my index and middle finger the same way I did at the meeting two weeks ago—“that was kind of a…white lie.”

  “I know.”

  “You do? How?”

  “Frazier, you’ve got to be the worst liar ever.”

  I’m not sure how to take this. I know I have the kind of face that gives everything away, but I had no idea it was this bad. If Ben could see through my Trip Monroe lie so easily, what else can he see? I really don’t want to think about it.

  “So you’re not mad?”

  “No, I’m not mad. I know how you are when you’re working on an article. If you were Native American, your name would be Dog with a Bone. I figured you were working it out somehow.”

  “Oh.”

  “So where are you with this?”

  I fill him in on everything I’ve done and triumphantly finish with the news of the celebrity charity event and how the Yeager Agency is paying my way. “Everyone wins here. I get a ticket to the cocktail party and my friend Kimberly gets an introduction to Trip Monroe.”

  “Good work,” says Ben.

  I start to leave when Ben says he wants to talk to me about something too.

  “T.K. called a few minutes ago. He just saw the final mock-ups for the September issue. He loves the manatee article. Told me to tell you you’re doing a fine job.”

  “Really? He said ‘love’? Or did he say ‘like’? Because there’s a difference, you know. What part did he like? Did he say anything about the Susie and Sam—”

  “Why do you always do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Second-guess everything until you beat it to death?”

  Now, this stings. Ben has never been annoyed with me before.

  He shoves a hand through his dark brown hair. “Sorry. I don’t mean to be an ass. He said he loved it, okay?” Most of the sting is gone, but there is still a tiny bit that lingers. “This probably isn’t the best time to ask, but I need a favor. You know I’m leaving for Vegas next Wednesday?”

  Ben’s best friend, Adam, who rowed crew with him at Columbia, is getting married in August in one of those fancy destination weddings in the Caribbean and Ben is the best man. Adam, Ben, and the rest of the male members of the bridal party, along with a good number of their buddies, are going to Las Vegas for a five-day four-night bachelor party. Four nights of drinking, gambling, and who knows what else (although I can imagine). Poor Amy. I almost feel sorry for her, but I don’t.

  “Do you need someone to go by your place and feed Lucky? I don’t mind. I kind of like cats.” Okay, this is a lie. Like Ben, I’m not a feline fan, but I am so glad he saved that poor sad cat from Richard and the hit squad at Animal Control.

  “Lucky? Yeah, actually, Lisa has the cat now.” He shrugs. “I was hardly ever home and he needed more attention than I could give him, so she volunteered to take him in.”

  “Oh…that’s great.”

  “So, the thing is, I have about a week to catch up on what’s essentially a month’s worth of work and I was hoping you might be able to help me with some of it.”

  “Help like what?”

  He waves his hand around the piles of papers on his desk. “Help edit some of these articles. Maybe read my latest ‘Letter from the Editor’ and tell me what you think of it. That kind of stuff.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah, I really need to start clearing off this desk.”

  Ben has asked for my help with this sort of thing before. Some people might think he’s taking advantage of me by trying to get me to do his work for him, but this is not the case. I’ve told you that Ben is a genius, and that wasn’t just because I thought I was in love with him. He really is the smartest person I know, and anything he can teach me, I want to learn. Normally, I have no problem working late. But tonight is different.

  “I kind of promised Nick I’d Skype him this evening.” I most definitely promised Nick I’d Skype him. At eight p.m., to be exact. “But…we didn’t exactly specify a time,” I lie. “So yeah, I can help.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive. This is work and work comes first, so show me the way, O Captain! My Captain!”

  The instant I say this, my face turns hot. It is without doubt the geekiest thing I have ever said to Ben. I am usually a bit more guarded around him. But it’s just like the day I asked him what his favorite word was. Before I knew it, the question was coming out of my mouth and I couldn’t stop myself, and look where that got me.

  But as I wait for the strange (as in, isn’t this girl strange?) look to come over Ben’s face, it doesn’t. Instead he shakes his head and laughs. “Frazier, you are the only person I know who looks happy at the prospect of more work.”

  He prints out some papers and hands them to me. It’s an article Richard wrote about a retired circus star from Ringling Brothers who has formed an amateur senior-citizen acrobatic troupe in
The Villages, which is a huge retirement community not too far from here. Ben asks me to edit it.

  I’m about to leave with the article when Ben says, “Stay.” He motions to his couch. “We’ll get more done if you’re not constantly coming back into the office to ask me questions.”

  “Who says I was going to pester you with questions?” But Ben doesn’t have to ask twice. I’ve already kicked off my shoes and made myself comfortable on the couch. This is way better than working in my cramped cubicle. I text Nick and ask if we can Skype later, like around ten. He texts back and says no problem.

  “Everything okay?” Ben asks.

  “Perfect,” I say.

  “I appreciate you staying late tonight.” He picks up his cell. “You like Thai?”

  Thai food is sometimes too spicy for my taste but I don’t want to seem like a culinary wimp. “I love Thai food.”

  Ben orders us dinner then hands me his monthly “Letter from the Editor” and asks me to take a look at it. The letter is for the September issue, which will feature my big manatee piece. Ben’s letters are always sharp and witty. But as I read this, I’m not sure what to think.

  Let me start by telling you that Ben is the first editor of Florida! magazine who is not a native Floridian, so there are some things that he just does not get.

  Take this conversation, for example:

  Ben had been at Florida! about a month when he asked me what I thought about a certain businessman who had once run for mayor of Tampa.

  “He’s a nice guy,” I responded. “A real cracker.”

  Ben blinked. “He’s a bigot?”

  “What? No, of course not. You’re thinking of it all wrong. When I say he’s a Florida cracker, I mean his family has lived here for generations.”

  Ben just shook his head and mumbled something about the heat. Try as I might, I never could get him to understand that cracker was actually an affectionate term among native Floridians.

  Remembering that conversation, I try to think of the best way to word this without stepping on his toes. “This is…good.”

  “But?”

  “But it’s off.”

  “Go on.”

  “You see, what makes your letters stand out is that you’re like this foreigner looking in from the outside. You see Florida from a nonnative point of view and that’s good because you see things we don’t. Like when you wrote about your first encounter with love bugs.”

  Ben cringes. “Nasty little crappers.”

  “Exactly. We’re so used to them that, honestly? I don’t even notice them, but you actually made them kind of funny.”

  “Glad I could provide a laugh.”

  “Remember when you were telling me stories about your rowing days at Columbia and about the time you rowed crew down here in Florida for a college regatta? And how your oar went out of sync…what’s that called again?”

  “Catching a crab,” Ben says.

  “Yeah! You caught a crab and got thrown in the river and this giant manatee came up to you and you started screaming?”

  “Screaming like a girl, you mean?” I nod and Ben makes a face. “You want me to write about that?”

  “How many other close encounters with manatees have you had?”

  He reluctantly plucks the paper from my hand and goes back to his computer and I begin to edit Richard’s circus piece. I was expecting a Water for Elephants kind of story, but instead, Richard’s piece makes this guy’s life sound idyllic. It’s like the story was written from a five-year-old’s point of view, only the five-year-old has an excellent command of the English language and is both witty and charming. It should be corny, but it’s not, and I have to admit, I’m impressed. I begin to jot down a few notes, when Ben asks me to read the new version of his letter.

  I go to his desk and read from his screen. The letter is all about how he ended up in the river with this humongous manatee and he started yelling, and the guys in his skull thought it was hysterical and they rowed off without him. Within minutes, Ben discovered that manatees are among the gentlest creatures on the planet. Besides being funny and real, the piece is also oddly sweet. Probably more so because it’s written from a man’s perspective.

  “This is great,” I say. “It’s completely relevant to the issue and it’s a personal story that only you can tell. The readers are going to love it.”

  “How on earth did you remember that story, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. I just did.”

  Ben looks at me funny and I feel myself get flustered. I think Ben would be seriously creeped out if I told him that I remember just about everything he’s ever said to me. Luckily, I’m saved from saying anything else because our food arrives. Ben hands me a carton of noodles along with a pair of chopsticks and we take a break from work to eat dinner. He sits on the couch next to me. Just a couple of feet away.

  “So tell me about this Vegas trip,” I ask, before taking a tentative bite of my noodles.

  “Fifteen guys, four hotel suites, lots of booze.”

  I swallow the noodles and am hit with a burst of red-hot flavor. I blink to keep my eyes from watering. “Are you going to see any shows?”

  Ben eyes me over the top of his carton of food. “Not the kind you’re probably thinking of.”

  “I think I’m thinking the same kind you are.”

  “For your information, Frazier, those kinds of shows are obligatory for a bachelor party. Not that I’m going to enjoy myself or anything.”

  I put my food down to cup my hands in the air a few inches over my breasts and make a jiggling motion. “You know none of those are real, right?”

  “Right.”

  “But it doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “Nope.”

  “What is it with men and big breasts?”

  “They don’t have to be big.” Ben is discreet, so I barely catch it, but there is no doubt he just snuck a peek at my chest.

  It feels as if we’re flirting with each other and I can’t help but think it’s because now that we’re both seeing someone there is a freedom to flirt without being taken seriously that was not there before.

  “So this guy you’re seeing,” Ben says, breaking through my thoughts. “Sounds pretty serious.”

  “Oh, well…not serious. I mean, we just started dating, but I’ve known him since high school, and you know—”

  “A word of advice, Frazier? Don’t overanalyze it. Just go with your instincts.”

  Then Ben does something unexpected. He plucks the carton of Thai food from my hands and exchanges it with the carton he’s been eating from.

  “You’ll like this better,” he says.

  I take a bite of Ben’s basil fried rice. He’s right. This is less spicy and more to my liking. We resume eating interspersed with some occasional conversation about the magazine, and that is the end of that.

  chapter eleven

  I leave work early Friday afternoon to go to the mall, where I hit Zara for something new to wear to the charity event. Kimberly is right. My black cocktail dress is old news. I rummage through the racks and quickly narrow my selection down to two choices: a black-and-white rayon polka-dot dress with three-quarter sleeves that surprisingly does not make me look like a whale, and a sleeveless lime-green-and-white print dress with a gathered skirt and narrow black belt.

  The polka-dot dress is more conservative and I could probably wear it to work. I know Kimberly warned me off wearing black, but since it’s got white polka dots, technically I don’t think this counts as the stereotypical little black dress (which in my case would be the stereotypical, slightly-larger-than-average black dress). The lime-and-white print dress is…well, I’m not quite sure what to make of it, so I try it on and ask the salesgirl what she thinks.

  “It looks fantastic,” she gushes.

  “You don’t think it’s too…”

  “Sexy?”

  I nod.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “A cocktail party, but it�
�s a work-related function.”

  “It’s perfect,” she says. “You’re right, it’s sexy, but it still covers everything up. Plus, you’ve got terrific arms. Show them off!”

  I’m still not convinced, but each dress is under a hundred dollars and I don’t shop that often, so I buy them both.

  I’m on my way out of the mall when I pass by Victoria’s Secret. When I told you it had been an embarrassingly long time since I’d had sex, I wasn’t exaggerating. Hence it’s been a long time since I’ve splurged on lingerie. All my undies look like they’ve each spent a month on a Survivor castaway.

  I buy four bras and twenty pairs of underwear and almost have a heart attack when I sign the credit-card slip. Is it strange that I just spent more money on my underwear than on two dresses? I kind of think it is, but then I imagine what Sophie Marceau or Audrey Tautou might do in this situation. They are both French and beautiful and sexy. I think they would have bought the underwear without even blinking. As a matter of fact, I think if forced to make a choice between the underwear and the dresses, they would both pick the underwear hands down.

  I also think they would have stopped by the coffee shop on their way out of the mall and bought the croissant I am now at this very moment nibbling on. I forgo my usual café latte and order a bottled water. After all, I am practicing moderation.

  I arrive in Catfish Cove around seven. My moms are both excited to see me. Being women of great intelligence, they can see that my dating Nick brings the added advantage that I will now be visiting home more often. Because I’ve only been dating Nick two weeks and because I respect my moms, I am not planning to sleep over at Nick’s place. I’m sure they expect that Nick and I will eventually have sex, but I really don’t want them knowing that I’ve already fallen so easily.

  Nick is picking me up at eight. I shower, wash my hair, and put on some makeup. All this takes about forty-five minutes, so I have a little bit of time to kill before he arrives. I decide to ask my moms’ opinion on which dress to wear to the cocktail party.

  I start with the polka-dot one, which I have now nicknamed the “unsexy” dress.