Don’t be drunk and depressing. Get to work.
After a big gulp of wine to fortify my strength, I closed out of Instagram without even scrolling down (I deserved a medal) and opened my work files, looking over my notes from a meeting I’d had with a new client this afternoon. My task was to create some content ideas that would increase brand awareness and grow potential customer engagement—pretty standard stuff.
But it was impossible to concentrate knowing he was right beneath me. Every noise had me wondering.
What was that thump? Did he drop something?
I hear hangers on the closet rod in the guest room down there. I bet he has so many clothes he needs two closets. Total peacock. (Never mind that I used two full closets too.)
Rod. Now I wonder what his rod is like.
Was that the front door closing? Where’s he going?
He’s back. Wonder if he got dinner. I’m hungry.
The toilet just flushed. Great, now I’m thinking about his rod again.
His bedroom TV is on. Wonder what he likes to watch at night. What if it’s porn? (That thought intrigued me so much, I went into my bedroom, lay down on the floor and pressed my ear to the hardwood.)
Nope. He’s catching up on Game of Thrones. Bummer. But also cool, because GoT is awesome. Wonder who his favorite character is. For a moment, I entertained a little fantasy about the two of us watching together, maybe even sitting on the couch, with a pizza and a bottle of wine on the table.
No. I bet he doesn’t even eat pizza.
Mmm, pizza.
I love pizza.
Hauling my tipsy ass off the ground, I gave up on work and went into the kitchen, where I found a French bread pizza in the freezer. I debated using the oven, since frozen pizza nuked in the microwave always turns out a bit soggy and flaccid, but decided I was too hungry to be picky. While it cooked, I studied the box. “French bread” was a bit of a stretch, and I wondered if it had been a marketing idea. (“I know!” I imagined someone saying in an advertising meeting. “Let’s call it French, that sounds fancier. Maybe they can make the one edge a bit bullet-shaped so it vaguely resembles a baguette, but make it wider, like a baguette after a piano was dropped on it.”)
When the microwave dinged, I took my dinner back to my desk—along with another glass of wine…OK, the rest of the bottle—and while I ate, I researched the history of French bread pizza. According to the Internet, where all Great Truths are discovered, Stouffer’s bought (or maybe copied) the idea from a guy who ran a food truck at Cornell University, starting in 1960. I filed that interesting yet useless maybe-fact away in my brain, which housed an entire library of those things, and tried focusing on my client again.
Needless to say, after that much wine, I ended up back on Instagram, and was rabidly scrolling through Quinn’s account (Jesus, did the guy ever take a bad pic? And did he get to keep all the little underpants he wore in these photo shoots or did he have to give them back? Like, if I snooped in his underwear drawer, would it be full of colorful banana hammocks or just plain old boxer briefs?) when my phone vibrated. I glanced down and saw a text from Claire, one of my two closest friends.
I need one of you to put ORC into motion.
Got it, I typed back.
Let me know if you need me, Margot responded.
ORC stood for Operation Rescue Claire. It meant I had to call her in five minutes with some reason she needed to leave the terrible date she was on, immediately. We’d set it up two years ago among our friends after it became clear that NO is not in Claire’s vocabulary, so she says yes to all dates. She doesn’t like to hurt people’s feelings, and besides that, she genuinely believes that her soul mate is out there, poor thing. She’s the kind of girl who thinks love at first sight is possible, people always mean what they say, and Jack somehow survived freezing in the Atlantic after the ship went down in Titanic. (“They didn’t have anyone confirm his death and there was no funeral! I think he survived and found her and she kept it a secret!”)
After a while I stopped arguing with her, although not only did I believe he was dead, I thought there was enough room on that door/raft that Rose could have saved him, but whatever. Pretty sure Claire believes in unicorns, too.
Honestly, I had no idea how we were such close friends, but we’d been together since grade school. Margot, the third member of our trio, had gone to private school up until ninth grade, when she finally convinced her parents that she couldn’t catch New Moneyitis by attending public schools. We’d each gone to different colleges but had moved back to the area after grad school, and we had standing GNO dates every week.
I waited the five minutes and called Claire, claiming to be her mother with an emergency at home. “I’ll be right there, Mom,” she promised in an unnaturally loud voice. “Fifteen minutes at most. Don’t move.”
We hung up, and she called me from the car ten minutes later. “Thanks. I was dying.”
“Good thing you drove yourself.” I carried my empty plate and glass into the kitchen and set them in the sink.
“Always. Especially this time. I had a feeling.”
“What went wrong?”
“He spent the first thirty minutes of our date talking about his ex. He was in tears by the time my second glass of wine arrived. I took my entrée to go.”
“What is it?”