“It’s just hard. You know I was with Nash for four years. We were planning our wedding, Gretchen. I can’t just pretend that didn’t happen. I can’t act like I wasn’t ready to settle down. I’m over the bar scene,” I tell her, hoping playing the sympathy card will make her shut up. Even the Gretchen machine has boundaries when it comes to my botched engagement and the downward spiral that almost landed me in the looney bin. “I’m over the hapless fun and, frankly, men are just skeevy these days.” I look down at my toes, making sure they aren’t touching. “They only want sex.”
Gretchen leans in and hugs me, her lean arms wrapping around my shoulders, and light brown hair sticking to my glossed lips. “They aren’t all skeevy, honey. Some are good and you will find a good one because you are good,” she whispers.
“You smell like a baked potato, Gretch,” I counter, trying to figure out the exact scent of her spray tan. I already know for a fact all men are skeevy, and all the good ones get snapped up quickly. She giggles, then pulls back and plays at mock outrage, one hand splayed across her chest.
She sniffs a forearm. “It’s vanilla passion,” she says, lacing her words with a slight French accent. It sounds more like a Crocodile Hunter accent, but I don’t say so. I know she is trying to lighten the mood, to force my focus to the present. “How do you expect to get Johnny Nash out of your head if you don’t fuck him out of it?” Gretchen smarts.
Her question is crass, but I can’t deny the truth in her words. It’s been years since Nash and I can’t stop dwelling on the monumental birthday I have coming up. Thirty. I am alone. I shudder.
“You don’t want to be alone when you start to get wrinkles. You have to find a man now, so he’ll think your wrinkles are adorable when you do get them. These are your prime years,” she says, cocking one eyebrow, urging me to disagree. The obscene wisdom that trickles out of her mouth at times such as this reminds me why we’ve been friends for so long. I puff out my cheeks and pretend to swallow down a mouth full of vomit. Then I smile.
She folds her arms under her breasts, not amused by my joke. “Seriously though. You’re giving him all this power over you just by acting like a stick in the mud.” Gretchen pauses. “Meeting someone new will help.”
I sigh. Meeting someone new will only mute the dastardly sorrows for a brief time. Thinking maybe I do want a mute button, at least for the night, I decide to agree with my best friend, the dictator.
“Fine, Hitler. I’ll go out. I’ll try to have fun. I’ll dance from the windows to the walls until sweat drips down my balls. Happy?”
Gretchen nearly chokes on her own spit before she replies through hysterics. “I’m going to go find that song on my iPod and you are going to get your hot little ass into that very dark corner of your closet. Find that dress –you know the one. Then we are taking our hot, professional asses to the club. I need to stalk Benji and you need…to get out. I’m going to introduce you to some people and I won’t let you self sabotage either, so don’t even think about wearing cotton briefs.” She pats me on the ass and, just like that, my best friend, the Gretchen machine is back in action, our tender moment gone. Her outrageous attitude and her inability to lie made the decision to move into her Virginia Beach condo the easiest decision I’d made in a long time.
“Professional. Ass. Club. Words that don’t go together for a thousand, Alex,” I quip at her retreating back. I add, “You have a brown smudge on your professional ass!” Gretchen merely laughs and adds a little extra jiggle as she struts down the hallway to her room.
Benji wants her. I know he does. What I’m not sure of is why she doesn’t act on her feelings for him. Then again, I obviously don’t know much about love and relationships. The only guy I’ve ever loved wriggled his way into my heart and then ripped it out. When I thought the worst was over, he had his new, much younger girlfriend prance on it in her daddy-bought Louboutins.
Breaks weren’t something thrown my way often. When you want something so badly for so long, it takes a very long time to get over it. I don’t expect anyone else to understand, but I’ve been grieving for the life I didn’t get. The life I probably won’t ever get with my rapidly deepening wrinkles. I scowl at my full-length mirror as I pass by to the dark place in my closet.
When I exit my bedroom wearing the tight black dress and a pair of sky-high heels, I see Gretchen waiting for me by the door. She looks up from digging in her clutch and smiles widely. She squints her eyes, then nods fiercely one time. She approves, thank God. I roll my eyes as I brush past her to open the door.
She puts her pointer finger all the way into her mouth and then pulls it out, effectively removing the red lipstick that could potentially get on her perfectly white teeth. She wipes her finger off on a napkin and throws it on the counter before wrapping her hand around my waist.
“Let’s go. Jess is out front waiting. She’s the DD tonight,” Gretchen admits with a smile. With one sentence she is also letting me know she expects me to get crazy-pants-wasted with her tonight. I slide into the passenger seat of Jess’s BMW and strong perfume assaults me at the same time as the artic blast from the air vents.
“Hey Jess,” Gretchen exclaims from the back seat, as the car pulls away from the curb.
“Hey, guys,” Jess says as she points the vents in front of me onto herself. She continues, “I don’t want my makeup to get shiny.” I laugh because her makeup is the least of her worries. I look over at her and drop my eyes to her barely there white mini-skirt. Like barely there. She doesn’t have a slutty bone in her body, so how she dresses when she goes out confounds me.
“I can see your underwear,” I tell her, laughing. She doesn’t even attempt to pull her skirt down.
She shrugs. “I’m not going to be sitting down tonight. It’s just us girls right now.” Her flawed logic is painfully refreshing. Because dancing won’t make it ride up more than sitting. Sure. Jess cranks up her rap music to a level that makes me wince. Always the ghetto booty rap when in the world of Jess.
“Good point,” I say, peeking into the side mirror to see Gretchen stifling a laugh. When we arrive moments later and the valet guy opens the door for Jess, I don’t try to hide my sniggering when his eyes widen briefly. Jess hands him the fob with a small wink and finally readjusts herself.
When people say age is only a number, I don’t think they take into account the difference a few years can make. As I watch all the newly minted twenty-one year olds dance around with full cups splashing vodka everywhere, I wince remembering those days. Finding yourself, losing yourself, and then finding your real self. That’s what happens in only a few years. Unfortunately for me, I get to lose myself one extra time. Here I am, warped back in time, mixed in with twenty-one year olds, trying to find it again.
Being almost thirty and supposedly wiser, Gretchen called ahead and reserved a table for the night; not that Jess will be sitting at it, but it is a reprieve all the same. I slide into the booth and wedge myself toward the corner, deciding to make it my home for the night. I watch Jess meander closer to a few of our other friends just as Gretch sits down next to me.