My front door bursts open with a crash and Charley charges at me like I’m a bullfighter and she’s ready to do battle. “You’re home! Tell me everything!”
“What would you like to know? NASA was really cool, and I even got to go into a retired space shuttle.”
“Who cares? How did it go with you and Ben?”
While advanced beyond her years, my young friend is still only fifteen, so I’m not going to go into great detail. I answer, “He kissed me on national television. It’ll probably air on Monday.”
“What!?” She flops down on the couch next to me. “Did he kiss you kiss you or just kiss you?”
“What’s the difference?” I’m pretty sure I know the difference, but like I said, I’m not going to volunteer anything.
Charley kicks her feet up on my coffee table and scoffs. “Did he kiss your hand or your mouth?”
I point to my mouth and laugh when she jumps up and starts to dance around. “OMG, are you dating? Are you in love? What?”
“I think we’re dating,” I tell her. “Obviously, we aren’t in love, as we just started dating…”
She holds her hand up. “Stop. I’m a firm believer in love at first sight. Rom-Coms are my life. I will not have you disparage the voodoo of insta-love before I even go out on my first date.”
I can’t contain my laughter. “The voodoo of insta-love?”
She nods her head forcefully. “Having an IQ of one seventy-five doesn’t deter me from romantic notions. In fact, I would argue that I need more magic to balance out all the real data. As a Libra, I’m sure you get that.”
“Kid,” I tell her. “Believe in all the magic you want. I’m a total fan.”
“You’re never going to guess what I did yesterday,” Charley says.
“You went to Coney Island and overdosed on footlong hot dogs.”
“I wish. Try again,” she orders.
“You walked to Brooklyn all by yourself to check out the Bushwick Street art.”
She releases a long sound like a buzzer going off to indicate I’m wrong again. “I was interviewed by The Post!”
“What? Zay never told me. How did it go? When is it going to run? Tell me everything.”
Charley grabs a donut hole off the plate in front of me before saying, “It was great. Shelby’s mom is so cool. She’d already interviewed people from my school and they may have mentioned how amazing they all thought I was.”
Raising my eyebrows in question, I say, “Nice. What kind of things did they say?”
“She wouldn’t tell me that. She just said they really seemed to love me.” Charley releases an involuntary shiver of joy. “If it’s true, I might go back and take some classes even though I’ve already graduated. You know, I could do theater or pottery or maybe even learn another language.”
“What a terrific idea,” I tell her. “It might help you acclimate to Yale better to be as social as you can before you go.”
“I have a confession,” she says quietly.
“What’s that?”
“Sometimes I wish that I were a normal kid with a normal IQ so I could have had a normal educational experience. A lot of times I really hate being different.”
“I get it,” I tell her. “But being different is what makes you special. Would you rather peak in high school or peak when you’re an adult?”
“That’s an unfair question. Obviously, I want success for as long as I can have it which would mean waiting. But I also want to have normal high school experiences too. I want a first kiss, I want to go to prom, I want to belong.” She sounds so defeated.
I pull Charley close to my side and tell her, “Whatever your experience, there will always be things you wished were different. That’s just life. The only thing you can control is your attitude. With a good attitude, you increase your resilience and change your perspective.”
She tilts her head back and forth while rolling her eyes. “Okay, Mom.”
We spend the rest of the day researching why our app isn’t proving effective for me. According to Charley, it’s tweaked to the point of perfection. Yet, since my last failed blind date, I’ve received messages from three other men, all of whom come across as total losers. One of them has been unemployed, by choice, for four years and claims that, while he can’t afford to take me to dinner, he’d be happy to go out and let me pay.
The next one was a high school biology teacher who shared that he has a soap allergy. It’s been twenty years since he’s used an actual cleaning agent on his body. When he confessed to really enjoying the organic smell of the human body, I was out. I really love the smell of clean.
The third guy was a stockbroker and claimed that the stock market is his life so I should expect a crash course in the best yielding hedge funds. Yawn and pass.
It’s not that I’m actually looking to date anyone now that things have changed between me and Ben, but I still need to figure out why my app isn’t working. I can’t go public with it until I know I can stand behind the matches it makes, and the only way to do that is to pretend that I’m looking.
When Charley leaves for the day, I hurry to take a quick shower and then I pore over takeout menus. Ben and I are eating in tonight, which means romance is definitely a possibility. Therefore I want to make sure my food selection is a romantic one. I settle on sushi from a Japanese restaurant down the street with appetizers from an Italian restaurant. Then I order dessert from the Sunshine Bakery.
Twenty minutes before Ben is due to arrive, I slip into a pair of super soft capri pants and a sleeveless cotton blouse that ties in the front. Then I put on some big silver hoop earrings, a delicate bracelet, and my mood ring.
When I look myself over in the mirror, my stomach starts to jump around like it’s hosting a Mexican jumping bean tournament. I make a kissy face just for practice, then go into the living room to light some candles.
I’m full of excitement and trepidation. I really, really want tonight to go well. It’s one thing to connect with someone while you’re away — I mean, that saying “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” is a saying for a reason. Getting back to your own space is the true test, though.
Having said that, I already knew Ben was an exceptional man before we went to Florida (even though I did find him inordinately irritating). But all that head butting is behind us. From here on out, our path should be smooth sailing.
Thirty-Two
Ben
“Hi! How was the big trip?” Gwen asks.
My stomach tightens as I think about all the things I’m not going to tell her. Not because I was cheating on her or anything. We’ve only had one date, but I still need to let her know we aren’t going to have anymore. “Good, yeah. How’ve you been?”
“A bit stressed, to be honest,” she says. “I had to pull five teeth from a nine-year-old sugar-addict. Five. Can you imagine? Poor little guy has a condition that makes him high risk for anesthetic, so he had to be awake for it. It was not fun. Also, two of my sister’s bridesmaids got into a huge fight yesterday when we were at my parents’ house working on guest favors.”