Heart of the Matter - Emily Giffin [9]
“Shut up,” I say, wondering what man would stand her up. Beyond her perfect figure, she is also funny, smart, and a huge sports fan, rattling off baseball trivia the way most women can recite Hollywood gossip. In other words—she is most guys’ dream. Granted, she can be high-maintenance and shockingly insecure, but they never glean that at the outset. In other words, she’s break-up-able, but not stand-up-able.
Ruby preaches from the next room that it’s not nice to say shut up as Cate continues, “Yeah. Before last night, I always had that going for me. Never been stood up and never dated a married man. I almost thought the former was my reward for the latter. So much for karma.”
“Maybe he was married.”
“No. He definitely wasn’t married. I did my research.”
“Wait. Was this the accountant from eHarmony or the pilot from your last trip?”
“Neither. It was the botanist from Starbucks.”
I whistle as I peek around the corner and catch Ruby taking a surreptitious bite of French toast. She hates to lose almost as much as her father, who can’t even make himself lose to her at Candy Land.
“Wow,” I say. “You got stood up by a botanist. That’s impressive.”
“Tell me about it,” she says. “And he didn’t so much as text an explanation or apology. A simple, ‘Really sorry, Cate, but I think I’d rather curl up with a good fern tonight.’”
“Well. Maybe he just. . . forgot? I offer.
“Maybe he decided I’m too old,” she says.
I open my mouth to refute this latest cynical tidbit, but can think of nothing particularly comforting to say other than my usual standby that her guy is out there somewhere—and she will meet him soon.
“I don’t know about that, Tessa. I think you might have gotten the last good one.”
She pauses in such a way that I know what’s coming next. Sure enough, she adds a wry, “Correction: the last two good ones. You bitch.”
“Any idea when you’re going to stop bringing him up?” I ask, both of us referring to my ex-fiancé. “Just a ballpark estimate?”
“Hmm. How about never?” she says. “Or . . . let’s just say when I get married. But wait—that’s the same thing as never, isn’t it?”
I laugh, and tell her I have to run as my memory is jarred back to Ryan, my college sweetheart, and our engagement. And by engagement, I don’t mean that Ryan had just proposed. Rather, we were mere weeks away from our wedding day, knee-deep in honeymoon itineraries, final dress fittings, and first-dance lessons. Invitations had been mailed, our registry completed, our wedding bands engraved. To everyone in my life, I was a typical, glowing bride-to-be—my arms toned, skin tanned, hair shiny. Literally glowing. Everyone but my therapist, Cheryl, that is, who, every Tuesday at seven o’clock, helped me examine that blurry line between normal wedding anxiety and commitment issues stemming from my parents’ recent, bitter divorce.
Looking back, the answer was obvious, the mere inquiry suggesting a problem, but there were so many factors clouding the issue, confusing my heart. For starters, Ryan was all I really knew. We had been dating since our sophomore year at Cornell and had only ever slept with each other. I couldn’t imagine kissing anyone else, let alone loving someone new. We had the same circle of friends with whom we shared precious college memories I didn’t want to taint with a breakup. We also shared a passion for literature, both of us English majors turned high-school teachers, although I was about to start grad school at Columbia with the dream of becoming a professor. In fact, just a few months before, I had talked him into moving to the city with me, convincing him to leave his job and his beloved hometown of Buffalo for something more exciting. And although it was exciting, it was also scary. I had grown up in nearby Westchester, making frequent trips to Manhattan with my brother and parents, but living in the city was a different matter, and Ryan felt like my rock and safety net in the uncertain, scary real world. Reliable, honest, kind, funny Ryan with his big, boisterous family and parents who had been married for thirty years