Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [28]
“That’s what I was thinking!” Lauren said.
“You guys, I’m right here,” Isabella said.
“Yeah,” they said, “we know.”
Isabella hadn’t dated anyone since Ben moved out. “Get back out there!” her friends kept saying. Isabella didn’t want to.
“Get back on the horse,” her sister, Molly, told her.
“You get back on the horse,” Isabella said to her.
“Nice,” her sister said. “Very mature.”
Her cousin suggested online dating. “That’s how I met Roy,” she said. Roy was a dentist with a beak for a nose, and he slurped his spit whenever he talked. “Wow,” Isabella said. “I’ll think about that.”
“I think I miss Ben,” she told Lauren one night.
“No, you don’t,” Lauren said.
“But sometimes, I really think I do.”
Lauren sighed. “Isabella, you miss the essence of a boy. That’s all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s better that he’s gone. He was a pothead, remember?”
“What are you?”
“I’m a pot enthusiast,” Lauren explained.
“Right,” Isabella said.
Isabella had never lived alone before, not really, anyway. She’d gotten her own place years ago, but Ben was there almost every night, and then he moved in. Now that he was gone, it was just her and the dust balls.
Sometimes she talked out loud just to hear her voice. She missed having someone there to discuss what to eat for dinner. “I think I’ll make a tuna sandwich,” she would say to no one. “Or maybe a veggie burger,” she would tell the couch.
She started sleeping with the television on at night. It blared reruns and gave her strange dreams. One night she woke up to a pop! and the TV screen was black. She sat up in bed and looked around. The air smelled like electrical burning, so she unplugged the TV and tried to go back to sleep.
“I could’ve died,” Isabella said to Mary the next day. “It could have exploded and started a fire all over the place.”
“I think you would have woken up,” Mary said.
“Maybe.”
“I wonder what happened.”
“I killed the TV,” Isabella explained. “I was too needy.”
“You have to meet my friend Jackson,” her coworker told her. “He’s an accountant, he loves to go wine tasting, and he’s a ton of fun.”
“Okay,” Isabella said. “Yes, okay.”
Her coworker arranged it so that Isabella and Jackson would meet at a bar and then go to a Mets game. “You are going to have so much fun!” her coworker told her. Isabella smiled and felt sick inside. “Oh, one more thing, just so you aren’t surprised,” her coworker said. “Jackson is a little bit bigger than most guys.”
“Okay,” Isabella said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
It turned out that Jackson was, in fact, obese. And by the third inning, he was so drunk that Isabella couldn’t understand him. He yelled at the guy in front of him for standing up, he yelled at the beer man for being too slow, and he yelled at the hot dog guy for running out of relish.
“What about me says, Set me up with an obese person?” Isabella wailed to Mary and Lauren later that night. She had made it through the game and then gone to chug wine at Lauren’s apartment.
“Nothing,” Mary said firmly. “Nothing about you suggests that you should date an obese person.” Lauren nodded in agreement.
“Your coworker is obviously an idiot. Or an asshole,” Lauren said. “I’m not sure which, but she’s one of them.”
“You guys, I mean he was really fat. Seriously.” She took a Kleenex and blew her nose. “Great,” she said. “I’m the meanest person. I date fat people, and now I’m obviously going to hell.”
Isabella’s friend from high school came to visit. Kerry Mahoney was a chipper blonde who wanted everyone to be married. “I am totally setting you up with my cousin,” she said. “He’s cute and fun, and you guys totally have the same sense of humor. I’m going to give him your number, and maybe you guys can get together next week.”
“Yes,” said Isabella. “Can I see a picture of him? Okay, yes.”
Isabella walked into Mexican Radio and looked around for someone who matched the picture she had seen. A boy with brown hair was at the bar, sipping a giant frozen pink drink with mango floating on top. He looked at her and smiled