But I’d been happy there. Not everyone was cut out to be the star of the show.
While I readied supplies for the morning’s classes, I thought again about the date situation—actually now I had more than a date situation, I had a boyfriend situation. Crap. Did I know anyone I could ask that fit the description I’d given Elyse?
If you did, you wouldn’t be single, dumbass.
True. I frowned as I set out plastic containers of paint brushes on each table. Maybe I could pretend he’d gotten sick. I’d RSVP for two so Elyse wouldn’t put me at the singles table, but I’d show up alone and say he had a migraine or something.
Yes, that was it! Perfect plan.
Or it would have been if Elyse had kept her big mouth shut. Countless times throughout the day, teachers and office staff came up to me and said how they’d heard I had a hot new boyfriend and they couldn’t wait to meet him at the wedding. They also said things like “Finally, huh?” and “About time!”
On the drive home from work, I weighed the humiliation of showing up alone against the challenge of finding someone to play my boyfriend, and decided the humiliation might be worse. Seating arrangements aside, I was tired of being teased all the time about my single status. Did they think I didn’t want to meet someone? Did they think it was easy to watch my friends fall in love and get engaged while my prospects went from bad to worse? Did they know how hard it was to look at myself and wonder what was wrong with me that I was thirty and had never been in love? Giselle was only one year older but had been in love—or so she claimed—like fifty times already, starting from age fourteen. She’d even been engaged once. (Very, very briefly.)
It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried to meet someone. I went on more first dates than anyone I knew. I let everyone from my mother to my hairstylist to my yoga instructor set me up, and I’d tried all the popular dating apps.
I’d met some OK guys. But I’d never felt that thing—that pulse-quickening, breath-taking, Hallmark-Channel thing. I knew it existed because I’d read about it in books and seen it in movies and even witnessed it in real life. Not with Giselle, of course. She was fickle as they come, and changed her mind about men as easily as she changed costumes. But my two closest friends, Jaime and Margot, were madly in love with their boyfriends, and Margot was already engaged. I saw what they had, and I didn’t want to settle for anything less. I believed in soul mates, and I wanted my own.
But where the fuck was he, already?
* * *
“I’m giving up,” I told Jaime that night at our weekly Wednesday Girls Night Out. It was just the two of us since Margot had moved up to her fiancé’s farm two hours north and only made it back to Detroit once or twice a month. “I’m going to die an old maid.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous. If I can fall in love, anyone can. And look at Margot—engaged to a farmer, for fuck’s sake! These things happen when you least expect them.”
I nodded glumly. It was true that love had struck my two besties when they’d least expected it, but I didn’t have Jaime’s fiery personality or Margot’s elegant style. I felt like there were things about them that drew people in, traits I didn’t possess. They had that extra something, just like my sister did. I wasn’t insecure about my looks, but I did sometimes feel a bit bland compared to them.
Jaime was a sultry, curvy dark-haired bombshell, and Margot had that lithe, blond Grace Kelly beauty—I had a couple curves, my mother’s gray-green eyes, and thick healthy hair, but nothing about me was extraordinary. If we were ice cream flavors, Jaime would be something fun like Birthday Cake, Margot would be something classic like Pralines and Cream, and I’d be boring old vanilla bean. Nice and dependable, but blah. The safe thing you order when they’re out of your favorite.
“Is this about Elyse’s wedding?” Jaime asked accusingly, pulling her hair into a low ponytail.
Sighing, I propped an elbow on the bar and my forehead in my hands. “Kind of.”
“Still can’t find a date?”
“No. And Elyse cornered me about it today at work. I was just about to tell her I was coming alone when she mentioned the singles table.”
Jaime made a disgusted noise. “The singles table. I hope Margot doesn’t do that to anyone. God, weddings are the worst.”
I picked up my glass of cabernet and took a drink. Margot was getting married just before Valentine’s Day, yet another holiday to dread. “At least at Margot’s wedding, I’ll be at the head table. And I won’t need a date, since I’m a bridesmaid.”
“I don’t see why you have to go to this other wedding at all. You’re not even that close to Elyse anymore.”
I winced. “I know, but I’d feel bad. I have to go. And now it’s even worse because I told her I was bringing my boyfriend.”
Jaime choked on her martini and set the glass down on the bar so roughly it sloshed over the rim. “Your what?”
“My boyfriend. You know, the one who looks like Ryan Gosling and fucks like a rock star.”
“Excuse me?” She looked around, like she was waiting for the hidden cameraman to pop out. “What did I miss?”
I sighed and shook my head. “This is so dumb. I couldn’t bear the thought of the singles table, so I made up a boyfriend.”
Jaime burst out laughing.
“It’s not funny.” I gulped more wine. “What am I going to do?”