On the Rocks (29 page)

You fell asleep and missed the part where a smoking hot Vivian in the black dress shoots the snail across the restaurant. One of the best parts. Hope you slept well. And p.s. you snore.

Not exactly a love letter, but it was still written on actual paper before he stuck it to my forehead. It was the first handwritten communication I had received from a guy in a very, very long time. Maybe, truth be told, ever.

Chapter 18

Wheel of Fortune
for Single Girls

T
HE OPPRESSIVE
J
ULY HEAT
rolled on toward August, and I began to long for the cool New England fall days that were just a month away. For reasons I can attribute only to a tear in the universe, the frequency of Ben’s messages had increased. For reasons I can only attribute to the fact that my brain was no longer severely miswired, I refused to read them. I didn’t want him back. Why would anyone want to invite the cause of her virtual destruction back into her life right after she finished repairing the damage? It’d be like calling an exterminator and then holding open the door so the ants could crawl right back in. The only thing dumber I could think of would have been to shave off my own eyebrows with a Daisy disposable razor, and I liked to think I’d progressed some since the fourth grade.

I took the train back to Newport, reported for duty at the shop on Wednesday, and was looking forward to a nice quiet night at home. Now that Katie’s wedding had come and gone, I felt like I had lost ten pounds (figuratively, not literally). I didn’t fully feel like myself, but it was the best I had felt in a very long time. Now if I could only do something about the cellulite on my legs, I’d be downright chipper.

I was folding laundry when Bobby called my cell.

“Hey, how are you? How was your interview?” I asked.

“I think it went pretty well, actually.”

“That’s great. When do you think you’ll hear from them?”

“Who knows? Summer isn’t exactly the best time to be looking for a job. Half the people responsible for making hiring decisions are on vacation this month, so it’s probably going to be a slow process. We’ll see.”

“Good luck. Keep me posted.”

“Will do. So a friend of mine from law school is having a birthday party at one of the bars on Friday night. You guys should come. It will be good networking for me and good man-hunting for you.”

“I don’t like to think of it as hunting. I like to think of it as competing in some kind of modern game show. It makes it sound less desperate. I’m
not
desperate.”

“Oh, I know you’re not. But are you honestly telling me you’re starring in your very own island dating game in your mind?”

“I’ve been thinking of it more like
Wheel of Fortune
for single girls.”

“I’m all for whatever gets you out there, sister. I’ll probably head over about 9:30, so you can meet me there any time after that.”

“Okay. I have to work on Friday. I told Lara I’d help her catalog some of the inventory for fall. Then I want to work out and I have to run a few errands, but I should be ready by ten at the latest.”

“What exactly takes you guys so long to get ready? Seriously, I can walk into my house, shower, change, and leave for the bars in fifteen minutes flat. What the hell do you guys do to yourselves?”

“It takes time to be pretty. We have to straighten our hair, curl our eyelashes, that kind of stuff.”

“Don’t you think it’s strange that you waste all that time straightening what’s naturally curly and curling what’s naturally straight?”

“I’d never thought about it like that before.”

“I’ll never understand your kind. Gotta go, talk to you later.”

And with that, he was gone.

I
RACED HOME FROM WORK
on Friday and got in the shower. I decided to leave my hair curly to prove to Bobby that I wasn’t as nuts as he thought I was, and then took a deep breath and began what has become one of the most timeless and universal wars that women have been waging since the dawn of civilization: woman versus denim. These were pre-Ben jeans that I hadn’t dared try on since I gained my breakup weight, but my summer at the beach had separated me from my freezer, gotten me back into a regular workout routine, and helped me drop some weight, so the time had come to see if I could zip up the jeans without ripping them up the ass. I sucked in as much as I could as I struggled to pull up the zipper. Much to my surprise, my old friends fit better than I thought they would. They were definitely tight, but I was pretty sure they wouldn’t rip if I didn’t do any squats or side lunges. Few things will make a girl happier than losing enough weight to once again fit into her old jeans.

Score: Woman, one. Denim, zero.

Grace and I left the house around a quarter to ten. We entered the Cook House, yet another popular bar on the pier, and were told to head downstairs to join the other members of the “Happy Birthday [Insert Random Guy’s Name Here]” group. We were no more than two feet inside the door when Grace realized she needed cash and left to run back out to find an ATM. I headed downstairs alone and entered a large room filled with low couches and even lower cocktail tables, and with a long bar that wrapped around the perimeter. I walked the length of the bar and was surprised to find Lara sitting alone on a stool talking to a guy who was wearing a tight black T-shirt and a diamond stud in one ear. I made my way over to her and squeezed into the space between Lara and the man in the extra-small shirt. Over the years I’d found that the size of a man’s shirt is inversely correlated to the opinion he has of himself. The smaller the shirt, the bigger the ego.

“Oh, what a small world!” she squealed, revealing that she had had more than a few cocktails since I’d left her. It was sort of a silly thing to say. Of course it was a small world. It’s Rhode Island, not China. “I’m so happy to see you. I was having dinner upstairs, and this guy I was talking to invited me to come join the party. I figured why not, right? This is Sal,” she said as she gestured to the guy who looked like he belonged in the cast of
Jersey Shore
and nowhere near Newport, Rhode Island.

I turned my attention to the man with the large diamond earring and the shaved head.

“Hi,” I said curiously.

“ ’Sup,” he answered.

“Sal works here,” Lara said. “He’s a promoter.”

He turned and smiled at me, revealing gold front teeth. He handed me a business card. “Nice to meet you. If I can ever do anything for you ladies, you just let me know.”

“Thanks. We will.” I planned to throw his card in the garbage as soon as he slithered away and started bugging someone else. But it was not polite to be rude to someone’s face. Even if the face is of a Cro-Magnon man.

Sal said good-bye and shook Lara’s hand, then proceeded to work the crowd at the opposite end of the bar. I ordered an Amstel from the bartender, and when he handed it to me, he leaned in and looked curiously at Lara. “Look,” he said quietly. “It’s none of my business, but you look like nice ladies. I would steer clear of Sal if I were you.”

“How come?” I asked. “He said he’s a promoter here.” I looked at the business card, which I admit was a bit strange. It said S
AL,
followed by a beeper number. It might as well have said, F
OR A GOOD TIME, CALL. . . .
Oddly enough, I doubted Sal was much of a good time unless you were under the influence of heavy narcotics and suffered from night blindness.

“A promoter?” The bartender laughed. “Girls, he’s a drug dealer. He’s shady, and judging from the looks of you two, I don’t think you’re really into his scene.”

Lara squealed in horror like he had just told her that Sal was a Bosnian war criminal. “A drug dealer?”

“Thanks.” I shook the bartender’s hand and gave him the card to throw away. I always thought drug dealers hung out in alleys somewhere. It never occurred to me that they circulated among the rest of the world, like normal people, in bars full of preppy guys and girls who thought that wearing Lilly Pulitzer was some kind of religious sacrament. But then again, I also knew for a fact that there were a lot of normal-looking people out there who turned out to be complete psychos, so it kind of made sense. “What brings you out?” I asked.

“After I locked up, I decided I needed a drink, so I came down here for dinner. I only got here a few minutes before you did.”

“You’ve been at this party for all of five minutes and you befriend the leader of a drug cartel. Well done,” I joked.

“It was fifteen minutes, and I did no such thing. How was I supposed to know?”

“The gold teeth might have given it away,” I suggested.

She sighed, disappointed that her judgment had betrayed her, and then said innocently, “I thought maybe he was a boxer.”

Well, she had a point there.

Grace arrived ten minutes later, a pack of cigarettes for Bobby in hand. “Hey,” she said to the bartender, waving her hand to get his attention. “Vodka soda, please?” She squeezed a lime in her drink, removed the straw, and threw it on the bar before taking a large gulp. “What did I miss?”

“Lara spent her first fifteen minutes here talking to a drug dealer, but other than that, you missed nothing,” I said.

Grace seemed completely unfazed by this. “Oh good, I’d have hated to miss all the fun. I don’t see Bobby anywhere,” she added as she stood on her toes and scanned the crowd. “Oh wait, there he is. He’s actually talking to some guys I know from work. I’ll be right back. I want to go say hello.” She wove her way through the throngs of partygoers to one of the couches in the corner of the room where a large group of guys were getting very drunk, very quickly. Paying $300 for a bottle of Stoli and the luxury of being able to actually sit down in a bar seemed really stupid to me. Especially when you consider that this was the beach and the bar stools were free.

Lara’s eyes followed Grace to the table, where she planted a kiss on Bobby’s cheek and shook hands with the rest of the guys in the group.

I pulled my iPhone out of my clutch and checked to see if I had any messages. There was one from Ben. I deleted it without reading it and immediately felt confident. Funny, all you have to do is take the power back from one asshole in your life and it does more for your self-esteem than a year spent in therapy or a salon-worthy hair day. Go figure.

I looked up and realized there was a very cute blond staring in our direction. The old me would’ve worried that I had something stuck in my teeth or one of my boobs had popped out of my shirt Janet Jackson Super Bowl style. Not the new me. The new me smiled and remembered that she was a babe. She was single. She had just deleted her ex’s text message. Ain’t nothing gonna break her stride. He smiled a toothy, perfectly straight grin and made his way over toward us. Lara was continuing to assure the bartender that she was not the type of girl who would court a drug dealer, not that he cared in the slightest, and was completely oblivious to the conversation that was about to start up directly next to her. This was probably better. I was rusty enough in this arena. Throwing Lara in the mix was like making a Molotov cocktail of lunacy.

“Hey,” he said as he slid up next to me. “Tom Marsh,” he said as he extended his hand.

“Abby Wilkes,” I said, feeling my face blush either from insecurity, booze, or, most likely, both.

“You look familiar, have I seen you around?”

“Didn’t that line go out in the nineties?” I figured it best to just throw the sarcasm Frisbee and see if he’d fetch; if not, there was no point in continuing this conversation. If I was going to take this dating experiment seriously, then it was important that I examine compatibility factors off the bat.

“Call me old-fashioned.”

Not bad, Tom. Good boy. He deserved a Scooby snack.

“Well, I’m from Boston, and this summer is my first time in Newport, so in all seriousness, I doubt it.”

“No, I mean it. I’ve seen you in one of the stores in town. I went in to get a gift for my mom once, and you were working the counter. I thought about trying to talk to you, but I chickened out. I ended up buying one of those ridiculous signs you hang on doorknobs while I tried to build up my courage.”

“Really? That’s funny, and flattering.” I looked up at him and realized that I did recognize him. He was the guy who bought the I’
D RATHER BE FISHING
sign. The one who I thought seemed interested, but then left without even so much as asking my name. And now, a few beers in, he had no problem talking to me. Maybe I should suggest that Lara sell cocktails in the store to make sure that nothing like this ever happened again. I found it oddly cute that he could place me from his brief visit to the shop. This guy was either hugely attentive or a complete psychotic stalker. I decided to go with attentive until he displayed some other sign of needing to be locked up in a high-security prison wearing a face mask. “Oh yeah,” I said as I broke into a wide grin. “I do remember you. I’m sorry it took me a few minutes to place you.”

“Don’t be sorry. Is that what you do for a living? Work in that store?”

“No, I’m helping the owner part-time this summer. I’m actually a kindergarten teacher in Boston during the year.”

“Really, that’s great. It must be rewarding working with kids. At least you feel like you contribute something to the world.”

“And you don’t contribute?”

“I work in the accounts department of an ad agency. Let’s just say that if I drop dead tomorrow, no, I won’t feel like I have left my mark on society in any real way, you know what I mean?”

Cute, employed, and civic-minded.
Keep up the good work
,
Tom,
I silently instructed.

“I think these days everyone is trying to figure out how to make their lives more meaningful, but I’m sure the accounts department is happy to have you,” I said, so impressed with how far my ability to flirt had progressed over the last two months.