Girls in White Dresses - JENNIFER CLOSE [46]
But then her plan seemed too hard to carry out and so she let herself sit there. And after a few minutes, she leaned forward on the stool in a wobbly way and kissed Harrison in a crowded bar.
And that was how Harrison and Isabella met.
Her friends called him handsome, but what he was, was pretty. He had high cheekbones, delicate features, and flawless coloring—porcelain skin and cheeks that flushed naturally when he was excited. His shirts were never wrinkled. Even untucked at the end of a day, with his tie pulled loose, he looked staged, like somebody had gotten him a wardrobe for “end of the workday.”
Around him, Isabella felt sweaty and bloated more often than not. She wanted to apologize when she got a pimple or had to blow her nose. She was fairly certain he never had boogers.
Harrison met new people gracefully, shook guys’ hands and grasped their arm with his left hand. He kissed girls on the cheeks and remembered names. He was always interested in conversation, tilting his head at whoever was talking, nodding and interjecting every so often, but not enough to be obnoxious.
“He’s the one!” Isabella’s friends said. “We can’t believe you found him!”
The ones with boyfriends and fiancés were relieved for Isabella. She was twenty-seven and they all agreed it was about time. The single ones were sort of happy and a little annoyed. They’d been at the bar that night too. Isabella was pretty, but not gorgeous. Where had they been when he’d come up to her? (But for the most part, they were happy, of course.)
Harrison knew how to date. He made plans to go to dinner at restaurants where they could drink margaritas and hear each other talk. He took her to movies and then to a diner for grilled cheese. He always paid. He called when he said he would, and held the door for her. The first night she stayed at his apartment, he woke up early and came back with two cups of coffee.
“I like him,” Isabella told her friends. She sounded miserable. “He’s really fun. It makes me feel sick.”
Isabella knew enough by now to know that this wasn’t a common occurrence. You didn’t just bump into a nice guy that you liked every day. She was positive that she was going to mess it up.
Harrison and Isabella had been dating for three weeks when he mentioned the ski trip. He brought it up casually one day, as though the thought had just occurred to him that very moment, asking, “Do you want to go skiing for New Year’s?”
Isabella was in a panic almost immediately. She had been up most nights wondering if they would exchange Christmas presents, imagining the horror of handing him a wrapped box and being greeted with an uncomfortable look. New Year’s hadn’t even entered her mind yet. She was trying to deal with one holiday at a time.
“Isabella?”
“What?”
“New Year’s? A bunch of my friends are renting a house in Vermont. It should be fun.”
“Fun” was a relative term, Isabella knew. Something that seemed fun when compared to doing nothing could really end up being a horrific mistake. And a weekend with strangers could be up there with a car crash.
“Do I know any of them?”
“Um … I’m not sure. You met Parker, right?”
Isabella shook her head.
“Oh, I thought you did. Well, look, they’re a fun group. It’s not that big of a deal. If you want to go, great. If not, don’t worry about it.”
“Do you even want me to go?”
“Yeah.”
“It just kind of sounded like maybe you didn’t really.”
“If I didn’t want you to go, I wouldn’t ask you.”
“Oh.”
“Stop being so weird,” he said, and poked her in the stomach. “It’s really not a big deal. Just let me know.”
“Okay.”
Isabella wondered what it would be like to be a boy. She knew that Harrison meant it when he said it wasn’t a big deal. He really wouldn’t care. He didn’t have to obsess over her response or if she would go or not. If she were a boy, she would be much more successful. She was sure of it. As it was now, she wasted days at work analyzing things that Harrison had said to her. When he told her it was interesting that she had a goldfish, she lost