Overdue - 4

We met at a popular rooftop bar that served glitzy, overpriced cocktails. I’d heard of it but had never been there before due to my abiding distaste for places where people who cared about popularity and appearances and money gathered, a predictable remnant of my unhappy school years. Drinks had been my idea, the location Adam’s. Even with my extremely limited dating knowledge, I understood that if drinks went well, they could lead to a meal, which then could lead to a bedroom. But if they went poorly, I’d be able to make a fast escape.

The ability to escape quickly seemed crucial.

Although I was a punctual person, I wasn’t necessarily an early person, but I arrived a full twenty minutes before we’d planned to meet. I assumed Reza wasn’t unique and that being on time mattered to all UPS employees, so I hadn’t wanted to risk even a second of tardiness. It turned out the rooftop was closed for the winter and the bar area was limited to a heated top floor, but there was still a crowd and a view. I went ahead and purchased my own drink. This seemed like a good strategy; the rooftop had made me think about roofies, which made me think about how unfair it was that women had to think about roofies. (I doubted Cory was thinking about roofies.) My nerves were frayed as I waited alone in a too-tall chair at a too-tall table. It seemed as if bar tables existed only to make adults feel infantilized, and I didn’t need any help there. This date was already playing on all my childhood vulnerabilities.

Cory and I had both been late bloomers. While the average age for menstruation to begin keeps dropping due to God knows what hormones in our food and damage to our environment, my own period didn’t show up until I was sixteen. And by the time my breasts and hips finally followed, I was already too entrenched in the art of invisibility—head down, shoulders rolled forward, seat in the back of the classroom—for it to make a difference with the boys. I already believed I was undesirable.

Cory had looked even younger at sixteen and was often mistaken for twelve. When he’d first told me, I couldn’t believe it had been that bad. But later, once we fully trusted each other, he’d shown me the photos. He hadn’t been exaggerating. His body had been devastatingly childlike, more like a middle schooler than somebody who could drive. And whereas I had turned my shame inward and become sad and reflective, he’d turned his outward and become angry and disruptive. We both still carried resentment over these hurts, but mine was mostly under control while Cory’s actively simmered. However, as my feet dangled above the floor, I felt young and invisible all over again. Was dating making him feel the same way? Suddenly it seemed impossible that I was meeting somebody who wasn’t Cory. That anybody apart from Cory would even want to meet me.

Adam arrived a few minutes early, looking like his photos—and unlike Cory. He was taller and more muscular than my boyfriend. Olive skinned, not fair skinned. His eyes were brown and unobscured, not blue and framed with glasses. The whole package was so unfamiliar that I had to fight the urge to duck and army-crawl away.

When he scanned the room, he seemed surprised to find me already there. He approached with a nervous smile. “Ingrid?”

I stood and gave him a light hug. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Same.” He removed his coat and draped it over the chair across from mine. “I’m impressed. Most of the women I meet for drinks show up late.”

Several thoughts dominoed through me: I was right! Thank goodness I arrived early. He sounds a little judgmental. How often is he meeting women for drinks?

He winced. “That came out weird. I only meant to say I appreciate that you’re already here.”

I blushed as if the blunder had been my own.

“I’d offer you a drink, but … can I bring you something else?”

I declined, and he promised to return.

Don’t be invisible. I sat on my hands to stop them from shaking. Head up. Shoulders back. I wanted to spy on him while he ordered, but he deserved a chance to pull himself together in private, too, so I forced my gaze to the skyline instead. Most of downtown Ridgetop still had its original art deco architecture. I’d learned from Macon that a lot of towns in this part of the country had once had similarly elegant and ornate buildings, but most of them had been destroyed in the seventies and replaced with the blocky, uninspired boxes of the time. Ridgetop had been too broke to modernize. “A bad thing that turned into a blessing,” he’d said.

It had been another awful day at work with us barely able to acknowledge each other. Another book banner had even graced us with her hateful presence, though she might have regretted it because Macon nearly tore off her head. Normally he handled the complainants well. He had the patience and belligerence to outlast them. Exhaust them. He could outmaneuver almost anybody in any argument without ever raising his voice, but this afternoon he had roared , and the woman had threatened to have him fired.

“You will not win that argument, and you won’t win this one either,” he’d fumed, snatching the offending young adult book out of her hands.

The snatching was enough to get him into a bit of trouble with the director, but he was right that he wouldn’t be fired. If we’d still been friends, I would have cheered at his outburst and done another double cartwheel into the audiobooks. But if we’d still been friends, I doubt he would have lost his temper. I was very aware that I was the reason for his unhappy mood, and that made me feel even worse.

“Sorry. I forgot it’s not rooftop season.” Adam reappeared, looking embarrassed again as he followed my gaze and guessed at the reason for my uneasy expression.

“I don’t mind!” It came out with an unnatural zeal, so I called myself on it. “I swear that wasn’t sarcasm. I’m just nervous. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a date.”

I wondered if I should have admitted that, or even called this a date, but he smiled with understanding. “Yeah, Reza mentioned something about that. And I can relate. My first few dates after my divorce, I was a mess. Not that you’re a mess,” he added quickly. “I just mean that I understand. This stuff is difficult.”

“Does it ever get any easier?”

“A little. But sometimes it gets harder, too.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but it sounded truthful, and a measure of my anxiety receded.

“You’re going to do great,” he said. “I promise.”

I gave him a rueful smile. “How do you know?”

He shrugged, but it was a warm shrug. “Just a feeling. It doesn’t hurt that you’re an attractive woman,” he added. “Men will always be glad to see you.”

I made a face.

“Oh my God.” His eyes widened as he laughed in disbelief at himself. “I told you, this stuff is hard. I didn’t mean for that to sound creepy, but I think I just creeped you out.”

I laughed, too, if only to lessen the tension. But what he couldn’t have known was that it was the first time any man apart from Cory had so pointedly complimented my appearance. I wasn’t sure what to do with this, yet our conversation did grow easier. He wasn’t much of a reader, but Brittany was right that he was nice. And he had a decent sense of humor, even though he wasn’t as naturally funny as Cory or as slyly funny as Macon. He’d played soccer as a kid and had recently joined a casual adult league, which tracked. He looked like the type of handsome guy who wouldn’t have noticed me in high school but who would have at least apologized if he’d accidentally bumped into me in the hallway.

Adam will remarry , I thought. Perhaps to someone who also had children. He mentioned his daughter, Lily, several times, and I was glad that he wasn’t one of those men who pretended his children didn’t exist. I was also glad that I would never have to meet her.

I’m not sure what I told him. Not because of the second drink, which he’d purchased and I’d kept my eye on, but because the whole experience was so surreal that my mind kept wandering. I didn’t think he would reject me if I tried to kiss him. The vibe between us seemed to be okay. But how would I know when to do it? And how did people—people who had just met!—transition from kissing to sex? I hoped he’d take the lead. I also hoped he’d have protection on him. I was on the pill, but still. There were diseases. Oh God. What if I got a disease during one of these non-Cory encounters? (What if Cory got a disease?) How was I supposed to ask a stranger if he had an STD?

“Ingrid?” Adam had clearly asked me a question, but I hadn’t heard it.

“I haven’t eaten dinner,” I blurted. “Wanna grab a bite somewhere?”

He gave a startled laugh in a way that made me wonder if he’d just said something similar. “Wait,” I said. “Did you just ask me that?”

“Uh, no. I asked if you enjoy being a librarian.”

My cheeks lit like bonfires. “Sorry, I was just—”

“Hungry?” It was a polite tease.

“Yeah,” I said weakly.

He smiled, and his crow’s feet crinkled in a way that I liked. “Let’s go.”

As we headed down the stairs toward the street, I remembered that Kat and Brittany had both asked me to check in because they were paranoid about serial killers. (Cory didn’t have to be paranoid about serial killers.) “You’re the one who set this up!” I had said to Brittany.

“Yeah,” she had replied, “but some psychopaths are secret psychopaths.”

I texted them each a thumbs-up emoji and hid my phone back in my pocket.

“So, do you?” he asked.

“Do I…?”

“Enjoy working at the library.”

“Oh, um—”

Swooping in, he kissed me. It was unexpected and shocking. We had been descending from the fourth floor to the third, and then we weren’t. Flummoxed, I immediately laughed. He pulled back in alarm.

“No,” I said. Then, with another unwanted flash of memory, I corrected myself. “I mean, yes. It’s okay.”

It was happening much faster than I’d anticipated, but perhaps this was how these things went. Our mouths met again, tentatively at first, and then energetically. My second kiss! I thought with a thrill. Well, not my second kiss . But Adam would now and forever be the second man I had ever kissed in a romantic way. It felt like a victory.

He tasted different than Cory. Not unappealing, but odd. I continued to catalog the differences as if I were an outside observer: My head was tipped farther back. The hand on my waist was bigger. The neck that my arms were wrapped around was thicker.

“We could skip the restaurant,” he said against my lips.

My spine stiffened from bottom to top.

He pulled away again. “I only meant if it would be easier for you.”

I swayed as I took a step back.

“I’m sorry.” There was a beat, and then his expression turned apprehensive. “I promise I didn’t mean anything by that. I just thought with your situation, maybe…”

I hugged my coat around my body. “My situation?”

“This deal with your ex. Or I guess he’s still your boyfriend?” As he observed my reaction, he shrank even further. “You didn’t know. You didn’t know that I knew.”

“No,” I said tightly.

“I’m sorry. Oh God. This is awkward.”

My thoughts were tumultuous, confusing, and contradictory. Casual sex with a kind and attractive man was what I wanted, but not with someone who already knew I was an easy lay. But I was using him, too, so wasn’t it better to be on equal footing? Wasn’t this all a good thing?

“You call the shots,” he said. “We could go to your place. Or mine. Or we could still go to a restaurant first—”

“No.” I winced at how fast I said it, because I hadn’t meant to say it at all.

“No to the restaurant, or…”

The night tilted at a wrong angle. He wasn’t being vulgar or doing anything I wasn’t doing, too, but it was wrong. I didn’t understand why, I just knew that it was.

“To all of it,” I said.

“You can’t tell a man that she wants no-strings-attached sex,” Brittany said to Reza.

“But she does ,” he said, panicked.

My mortified friends apologized over the phone as I cried and scalded my tongue on a London fog. As ashamed and disappointed as Adam had looked, it couldn’t touch the shame and disappointment that I felt. As soon as I was out of his sight, I’d fled to my car, only to become paranoid about the two drinks. A few blocks away, there was a teeny walk-up tea kiosk inside a modified red British telephone booth, so I’d gone there to sober up. Normally I loved the quirky kiosk. Tonight it seemed lonely and pathetic and confused about its place in the world.

“Please stop apologizing.” I sniffled, shivering and huddling with my disposable cup behind a stunted oak tree. The temperature was freezing, but people were still milling around downtown. I didn’t want to be seen. “It’s my fault. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Brittany said. “You just weren’t ready.”

I wiped my runny nose on my glove because I’d forgotten to get a napkin. “I thought I was ready. I wanted to be ready.”

“He wasn’t the right guy,” Brittany said.

“The whole point was that it didn’t need to be the right guy,” I said. Adam was the second person I’d ever kissed, but this no longer felt like a victory. It was special when there had been just one. Now it seemed unfathomable that there had been only two.

“Well,” Reza said, “maybe it doesn’t need to be the right guy, but it still needs to be a right guy.”

“I wish we knew somebody else we could set you up with, but everyone at my studio is a woman,” Brittany said. “And the rest of our friends are either married or literally on the other side of the planet.”

I ground the toe of my shoe into a knobby tree root. “That’s okay. I would never ask you to do this again. And I’m sorry I put you in such a weird position at work, Reza.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, although a catch in his voice made it clear that he’d forgotten about the awkward conversation that awaited him the next time he saw Adam.

It was humiliating to have entangled my friends in all this. And I didn’t mean to tell Sue and Alyssa, and definitely not Elijah, about any of it either. But the problem with being temporarily out of my mind was that I was saying and doing all sorts of things against my best interests.

Because our branch was open Tuesday through Saturday, I had to work the morning after my disastrous Friday-night date. I arrived late, even later than Macon, and everybody was already chatting and doing the morning prep. Saturdays were our gossipiest days, so I went straight to scanning the overnight drop so I wouldn’t have to join in. I was able to play it cool for about five minutes before Alyssa called me out. Perhaps my unusual quietness gave me away, or perhaps it was my disheveled state. It had been another night with little sleep and lots of sobbing.

I don’t remember what she asked—probably something as mundane as Are you okay? You look a little fucked up , except Alyssa didn’t swear. Whatever it was, my mouth unlocked. Everything spilled out in a torrent, except for the part about Macon. But he was standing right there with everyone else, listening, and I just vomited it all out in front of him again.

Alyssa looked shocked. Sue looked skeptical. Elijah’s youthful brow was pinched with bafflement. At least we weren’t open yet, so there weren’t any patrons.

“But it’s okay.” I frantically scanned another stack of returns, trying to convey via my body language that everything was fine. “We know what we’re doing.”

“Let me get this straight.” Sue crossed her arms. “You and Cory are going to live as singles for a month. And then you’re getting married .”

“Yes,” I said.

She exchanged a concerned glance with Macon. He shook his head once at her, slightly. I often looked to the two of them for advice, but I couldn’t handle their opinions or judgments right now—especially not Macon’s, even though he was still being discreet about the part I had left out. Sue watched my herky-jerky movements, and her tone grew merciful. “I’m only wondering if a month is enough time for an experiment of this magnitude.”

“It’s enough,” I said, perky and bright. “It’ll be fine. I’m fine, don’t worry.”

“See,” she said, “it’s statements like that that worry me.”

“That guy last night…” Alyssa lowered her voice as if there were still a single person here who did not know my most personal business. “You were going to sleep with him? This is about sex?”

I balked. Had I actually told them that? “No. I mean, yeah. But that’s only part of it.”

Macon had been putting the money in our register. At this, he stilled.

My ears rang. My stomach dropped. Macon had only known that I wanted to kiss him. Date was the word I’d used: Cory and I were going to date other people. Now I had all but confessed that I would have slept with him, too. I crumpled—nearly fainted—into my chair. If he’d thought about my actions, and surely he had, he’d already surmised sex had been on the table. But maybe he hadn’t. Either way, my confirmation struck us both anew.

Alyssa didn’t seem to notice. “Does this mean you and Cory are polyamorous?”

“What?” I blinked up at her. “No.”

“That’s the literal definition of polyamory,” Elijah said. Literal meanings were important to him.

“It’s temporary,” I said. I wasn’t sure why the word sounded so jarring. I was in favor of polyamory for consenting adults, but it wasn’t something I had ever desired for myself. And it didn’t seem connected to my own situation. “Temporary,” I repeated.

Sue placed a hand on my shoulder and stared down Alyssa and Elijah until they retreated. She asked me quietly, “Do you need to go home?”

“I just need a minute,” I said. Breathed.

“Are you sure? It’s been a slow week. Macon can handle the desk.”

He still hadn’t moved. Nobody else seemed to have noticed.

I tried to give Sue a reassuring smile, but the smile wavered. Her grip tightened on my shoulder to give me strength.

By midday, Sue and Alyssa were hanging around the desk again. I had become the main subject of interest, so interesting that neither of them noticed the misery radiating from Macon. I was too inside my own head to resist their attention, so when they pressured me into creating a dating profile right then and there, I didn’t protest for long.

“‘Are your parents ugly?’” I asked.

Sue put on her reading glasses to scrutinize my phone. “Good lord. It really says that.”

The app I was signing up for required me to answer at least fifty algorithmic questions, although it recommended that I answer a few hundred or even a few thousand. Supposedly, the more I answered, the better matches it would find for me. I’d answered a few dozen so far. After the predictable lifestyle queries about sex and recreational drug use—some of which I’d read aloud to Sue and Alyssa, but all of which I’d answered privately—the questions had grown stranger. I was reading everything aloud now, to great amusement.

“Go on,” Alyssa said. “Answer it.”

“No.” I clicked. “My parents are not ugly.” The next question revealed itself. “‘Do you believe in dinosaurs?’”

Sue huffed. “Only in this country do they need to ask that.”

Alyssa shook her head in agreeable disbelief. She was religious, but not that kind of religious.

“‘Would you and your ideal match feel comfortable farting around each other?’” I asked.

Sue burst into laughter.

“Yes,” I said.

Alyssa raised a judgmental eyebrow. “That was quick.”

“Are you suggesting that you and Tim don’t?” Sue asked.

“No!” Alyssa laughed. “We’re polite. We hold it in and take it out of the room.”

“Oh, Russell and I are decades past that. There’s joy in letting it rip.”

They dissolved into even deeper laughter, which I interrupted. “‘Do you own any dice with more than six sides?’ I don’t, but I should check yes, right? A D&D guy would be fine.”

“Check yes, then,” Alyssa said.

Sue agreed. “You have to read between the lines.”

“‘Do you think women have an obligation to shave their legs?’” I asked.

“Jesus,” Macon finally said, though he still refused to swivel in our direction.

I clicked no, obviously. “‘Do spelling and grammar mistakes irritate you?’”

“Yes,” Alyssa said.

“Some people just aren’t wired for it,” Sue said. “Unless they’re willfully ignoring spell-check, I wouldn’t hold it against someone.”

“Do these questions irritate you?” Macon asked in a tone that eviscerated.

I put away my phone, chagrined. But that weekend, I lived on it. I answered more questions, tweaked my profile and liked others, waited for contact. Received contact. It didn’t take long for me to line up multiple dates. I hadn’t realized I would be messaging several different people at the same time, feeling them out and testing who was worthy of further pursuit. I’d been naive to have found Adam’s “most of the women I meet for drinks” line to be off-putting. That’s just what dating was: quick interactions with tons of people until something stuck. Sometimes the textual flirtations were dizzying, sometimes disgusting. But I was gaining the experience that Cory and I had wanted. Finally, I was doing something right.

I swiped past the shirtless pics and the guys posing with dead fish. (I had no idea I would see so many deceased trout.) I set the age parameters from twenty-five to forty-five but then quickly bumped that first number up to twenty-seven. In terms of message quality alone, those two years made a difference. And then I was off to the races.

My first date was with Brandon, a thirty-three-year-old welder with scarred hands and a big goofy laugh. Like Adam, he had a library card, but it had expired. We met at a cider house near the river—not the one with the friar and Cory’s car—and although we discovered we had nothing in common, we liked each other enough to make out in the parking lot afterward. The skin of his fingers was rough, but his kisses were sloppy and gentle, and I drove home feeling bubbly and elated and wishing nothing but the best for him.

The next night, still buzzing with optimism, I went out with Lawrence, a twenty-eight-year-old sous-chef with a handsomely crooked face. No library card. We met for dinner at a Korean barbecue joint, where he spent most of the meal complaining about his job at a restaurant that served Southern gourmet. I heard about his interests, his education, his friends. He only cared about the details of my life as they related to his. He didn’t try to kiss me, which was surprising because he seemed so into himself that I figured he’d assume I was, too. But then, as we parted ways, he said this: “Just so you know”—he tapped his teeth—“bulgogi. Right there.”

I did not wish the best for Lawrence, and I did not make the mistake of accepting a sit-down meal invitation again.

Two days later, I met Geoff (thirty-two, wildlife rehabilitator, active library card but nothing checked out) for coffee on my lunch break and then Mike (thirty-eight, surveyor, possible library card because two people had his same name) for drinks after work. Geoff removed a purple sweet potato from the bulging pocket of his cargo pants and gave it to me as a gift, claiming the purple ones would make me live longer. Macon often gifted me produce from his garden, so I’d never realized that there was an off-putting way to do it. And then Mike waxed on and on about weed strains, which caught me off guard because he was wearing khakis. This was fine, but also not for me. Neither getting high nor khaki pants had ever been my thing.

I did not make out with Geoff or Mike.

My next date was with a different Brandon—twenty-nine, paramedic, no library card—and I was pleased that we did make out. Again, the only thing we had in common was enough physical chemistry to press our bodies against each other inside my car, but he was more intense than the first Brandon in a way that transformed me back into a horny, groping teenager. He asked if I wanted to go out again. I said yes and then waited nearly a week for him to text. Finally, I texted him. He never responded, and I realized I’d been ghosted for the first time.

I wasn’t even that upset. Another adult merit badge earned.

But I was annoyed about the lost time and dove back into the dating pool with frenzied desperation. I met up with Kenji (cute and nerdy and extremely my type but could not have been less interested in me), Jay (slow-moving and depressed except when he spoke about radio antennas), Cameron (showed me pictures of his 3,400-square-foot house and kept repeating that it was 3,400 square feet), and Sunil (asked if I’d be willing to keep my toenails painted year-round). I did give in and kiss Sunil goodbye after several uncomfortable seconds of pressure and guilt, which left me feeling icky and angry and mad at myself instead of him.

Kenji had an active library card but nothing checked out.

Jay had an expired card and $4.25 in fines for a book about, I am not making this up, radio antennas.

Cameron and Sunil did not have cards, and I was not surprised.

Back on the app, I exchanged messages with a nice guy named Chad who talked about what a bummer it was to be named Chad, and then I felt bad when I decided not to meet up with him either. (He wanted to take me out to karaoke. Cory also liked karaoke, and I dreaded those nights when we went out with his coworkers, and I had to pretend to enjoy them all singing songs that felt three times as long as the original versions.)

I considered messaging the first Brandon again. Sweet Brandon with the goofy laugh! Had I judged him too quickly? February was approaching rapidly. I still hadn’t slept with anybody and was positive that Cory had. I’d never thought of myself as competitive, but now I felt its sting. Nor had I thought of myself as prudish, but now I wondered if I was.

The truth was, I just hadn’t wanted to sleep with any of them.

During my giddier shifts at work, the swollen-lipped days after a night of heady fumbling and bumbling and making out, I attempted to be friendly with Macon again. I tried engaging him in conversations but received monosyllabic answers. I leapt to assist the woman whose clothing always reeked of gag-inducing mildew, and I volunteered to kick out the guy who’d been permanently banned the previous summer for public masturbation to a tome on horse anatomy. Once I even slid a travel photography book toward Macon’s side of the desk, open to a spread with a sweeping ocean cliffside on one page and a bluebell-carpeted forest on the other. Did he want to meet me at either for lunch? The phone rang, and he grabbed it. He never answered the phone if he could help it, and as he testily guided the patron through placing an online hold for the new Kazuo Ishiguro, he closed the photography book and filed it away on a cart.

On my own phone, a prolonged and heated argument was raging between my mother and Riley. My holiday-loving sister wanted a Christmas wedding, and our practical mom was doing everything in her power to convince her that civilization itself might collapse if that happened.

I ignored them and refreshed, refreshed, refreshed the dating app.

Sue and Alyssa asked how I felt about the forthcoming end of the experiment. I didn’t know how to respond. I had only just gotten started, and I was still an inexperienced beginner. It wasn’t as if I had expected to become an expert—or even advanced—in one month, but shouldn’t I have at least graduated to intermediate? I felt disappointed and frustrated. Overwhelmed and underwhelmed. What might have happened if I’d had more time? And what had Cory been able to accomplish in the same number of weeks? I hadn’t considered the possibility before that we might no longer be equals when we reunited. Our experiences with other people were still supposed to represent a shared experience. We were supposed to have similar months. And although I didn’t know how his month was going, it was difficult to imagine him second-guessing any opportunities. He was, by nature, a go-getter. Up for anything.

I had missed the friend half of my boyfriend. I’d missed him during the downtimes, the hanging out times, the cooking dinner and cleaning up times. I had also missed his warm presence in bed, despite not missing the sex, because I was so consumed by the notion of having it with somebody else. If only I’d had more time, I could have gotten out of my head and made it happen. Then the two of us would still be on the same page.

On the last day of January, I jolted awake in a panic reminiscent of my first week alone. Our plan was to meet in a restaurant the following evening after work. That was where we would discuss our future, and then he would either come home with me or never come home again. But of course Cory was coming home. My panic was because I wasn’t ready. Our apartment wasn’t ready. Because he hadn’t been there—because I’d barely been there—discarded clothes were heaped in piles all over the floor, makeup was caked on the bathroom sink and countertop, and dirty dishes and frozen food wrappers littered the entire kitchen. I cleaned for two hours before work and then kept cleaning afterward until three in the morning.

Will he have a ring? I wondered, scrubbing furiously at the face powder that had become one with my toothpaste scum. Were we about to get engaged? I scrubbed so hard that the handle snapped off our cleaning brush. He would wait until we’d had a chance to discuss it, I assured myself, running my finger over the jagged plastic edge.

We had both always been so practical and rational.