an incredibly perfect boyfriend, who not only had a high-paying accountant job but came from money. Big money. Then there was my boss, Caroline, of course, who was round with her fourth child, compliments of the hardworking husband she kept back at her sprawling Connecticut home. The other three senior features editors were married, too. Sandra, whose wedding to Roger two years earlier had been almost as splashy as Patricia’s; Debbie, pushing fifty and married for so many years no one even remembered what her husband looked like; Carmen, who not only had a husband but—according to our production assistant and resident office gossip Marcy Keller—a boyfriend on the side. Janice in production was married two times over, despite the hairy mole on the side of her face. Who was left among us single folk but the editorial assistants, who were too young to care?
I glanced down at the end of the table and swallowed hard as I caught sight of the strange trio who sat clustered there: Lucretia Wenner, the angry copy chief who neither woman nor man could truly love; Nancy Hamlin, the bodily pierced and butch admin everyone suspected was a dyke; and Marcy Keller, who spent so much time studying everyone else’s personal life she barely had one of her own. I quickly closed my eyes, shutting out the hopeless look in their eyes that not even their bitter smiles could mask.
Oh God, was this what I had to look forward to?
Confession: I am not ready to be an ex-girlfriend.
This fact became glaringly apparent on my first real weekend of singledom. Derrick had flown out only three days prior with a promise to call once he was settled, though we had agreed that from now on, we were strictly friends. I will confess right now that he is the only “friend” I have ever had whom I secretly wished would fail miserably. In fact, I was practically preparing for the day when he would return to NYC, tail between his legs, begging me to take him back.
Though Jade had invited me out for a girls’ night out with a couple of her friends from Threads, the fashion magazine where she worked as a clothes stylist, I opted to avoid an evening of gyrating on a dance floor looking fat and unfashionable next to Jade and her pseudosupermodel friends, in favor of a quiet evening at Alyssa’s.
“You’ve been denied your right to be angry, Em,” Alyssa explained after she’d set me up with a martini. Two sips of it made me fall into a state of self-pity that I was attempting to wallow in until Lys cut me off with her “I’m Okay, You’re Okay” brand of advice.
Sighing long and deep, I watched as she slid mushrooms expertly into a pan for the gourmet dinner she was cooking for her live-in boyfriend, Richard, who had yet to arrive home from his high-powered—and, need I say, high-paying—job as a corporate lawyer. Alyssa was a lawyer, too, but one of those earthy-crunchy ones who fight to save trees and make tap water fit for human consumption. In addition to being a top environmental lawyer and all-around hell of a gal, she liked to whip up heart-healthy, mind-expanding meals with names like wheat gluten casserole with roasted baby corn. Somehow these qualities, which I’d always admired in Alyssa before, began to depress me as I watched her cook. Is this what it took to maintain Girlfriend status? Maybe I should have made more of an effort with Derrick, whipped up something heartier than coffee with Cremora on all those Sunday mornings we spent together.
“Just because he had a perfectly good reason to leave doesn’t mean you don’t have a perfectly good reason to be angry,” Alyssa continued, sautéing in earnest now, her curly brown shoulder-length hair swept up into a ponytail, her brow furrowed over her bright blue eyes.
Though Alyssa knows me better than most, when it comes to this ex-girlfriend business she cannot relate. After all, Lys has been successfully dating since puberty. Once I asked her how she always managed to have a boyfriend on hand, and she laughed, saying she usually hung on to the guy long enough for them to grow completely sick of each other, then broke up with him just as New Boyfriend stood waiting in the wings.
Now if this were any other girl, I might have said Alyssa suffered from Chronic Boyfriend Syndrome—a condition that leads many women not only to date, but also to plan their lives around men who are for the most part reprehensible but seem preferable to the other option…which is no boyfriend at all. But I can honestly say that despite her claims, I am sure Alyssa never dated a guy out of this kind of neediness. It is just that she is utterly lovable—so lovable, in fact, that most men upon meeting her wish they had an Alyssa of their very own.
Her current beau, Richard, the first man Alyssa has ever dared live with and, I must admit, the best guy she’s ever been with, is a perfect example of this. Richard was the roommate of Alyssa’s last boyfriend, Dan. They were all in law school together, and since Alyssa pretty much lived at Dan’s place in order to avoid her own awful roommate, Richard took every opportunity to bond with her whenever he was in her warm and fun-loving presence. I can just imagine his joy when Dan up and moved back home to Ohio to practice law with his father’s firm, leaving Alyssa free and clear for Richard, who had already fallen hopelessly in love with her from the sidelines.
Now, as Alyssa looked up from her mushrooms, silently demanding my assent to her psychobabble, I struggled for words to explain how I felt.
“I don’t think I’m angry, Lys. I think I just miss him, is all.”
“Well, get angry, Em,” Alyssa said, turning from her sauté to look at me. “You’re not going to get over this unless you do.”
The thought of getting over Derrick horrified me. Derrick was the man I loved. My soulmate. Getting over him was not an option.
“Mmm-hmm,” I muttered vaguely in response, and while I sat pondering the audacity of her suggestion, I found myself agreeing to stay to dinner with her and Richard, which, I realized later, was a mistake. As I watched them exchange tidbits of their day along with meaningful glances, one thing became very clear: I needed to get a life. A life that didn’t involve…couples.
Confession: I have been operating under the mistaken belief that I would never, ever, have to enter the dating world again.
I called Jade first thing Saturday morning and practically begged her to have brunch with me. And despite a slight hangover, best bud that she is, she agreed to drag herself out of the house before dusk.
We met at French Roast, mostly because they had outdoor seating and Jade would be able to smoke. As I sat waiting for her at five to one—I am chronically early, a habit I developed probably to have something to hold over the chronically-late-but-otherwise-perfect Derrick’s head—I looked forward to some solid single-girl bolstering. After all, Jade was one of the few friends I had who seemed fearless in the face of the battleground that was the NYC dating scene. She never seemed to suffer the same kind of losses other women did. When she gave out her number, the man always called. Sometimes she didn’t even pick up the phone—that’s how sure of herself she was.
At one-fifteen, she breezed up to the sidewalk table I had secured, looking effortlessly gorgeous in capri pants and a tank that showed off her toned shoulders. Jade is one of those women who was born to wear clothes—a perfect size 6 with just enough bust to matter and no hips. Her hair, a deep, rich shade of red, fell in soft waves down her back, seemingly without effort or design. Her eyes are green, her skin smooth and flawless over high cheekbones. She is the kind of woman other women would hate if they could, simply by virtue of the fact that no man can ignore her when she is in a room. But there is something about her that is irresistible to both men and women. It amazes me sometimes that we are even friends, she graceful and self-assured, me always fumbling and often angry. Yet we’ve known each other since grade school and are bonded together by shared memories of first bras, first boyfriends and first successful undereye coverage finds. When she was edging toward twenty, a photographer encouraged Jade to put together a portfolio and she did, but when the time came to submit it to modeling agencies, she shrugged off the opportunity, as if it were something anyone could do. As it turned out, after various attempts at other careers, she landed a job on the other side of the camera, working as a clothes stylist for Threads Magazine.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, giving me a solid one-arm hug, then pulling back to look into my eyes—gauging my mood, I suppose—before she slid into the chair across from me. First we