Page 74 of The Perfect Rom-Com
“Pretty low. I think if Amelia actually steps away from her five-hour nighttime skin care routine and notices we’re gone, she’s more likely to seize the opportunity to leave us—me—in the dust.”
Jack’s arm has been wrapped around my waist the last hour. We’ve walked until the neighborhood peaked at a set of concrete yard art manatees, at which point we declared the house the winner and decided to turn back. Everything and nothing has changed in the past two hours, since that first kiss beneath the stars. The conversation continues on companionably about our normal shared lives, yet now there’s a fizziness to it that keeps my heart racing.
Maybe this’ll be my new heart rate.
One hundred and twenty beats per minute.
But even in the midst of our casual chat, a part of me slows things down every few minutes, says something regarding the subtle change around us that seems too good, too perfect to be true. “I know you were just exaggerating when you said that bit about dating me for ages. I remember Marilyn.”
He grins and tugs me a little tighter to his side. “That was before the Friendsgiving party. Everything changed the day before Thanksgiving.”
Thanksgiving Eve. The night I had Jack and his then girlfriend, Marilyn, over, force-fed her pigs in a blanket, and dragged them into playing that awful murder mystery board game.
They had met at the gym a few weeks prior, unironically, and I knew it was something when he texted that day that he wasn’t going to make it to dinner with me after all. That they were going with some of her friends to some trendy spot where everyone wore only neon items and there were no bowling balls in sight.
And I wasn’t jealous. Of course I wasn’t jealous—I had no right to be.
And it was fine on that first date when he bailed on me to choose something lame like twenty-five-dollar appetizers and music that didn’t make you pay a quarter to play.
And it was fine the second week when he was suddenly busy.
But it was not fine on Thanksgiving Eve, when he just casually skipped. Just. Skipped.
Bowling. The thing that was principal in our lives.
Date on Sunday. Date Monday. Date every other day of the week for all I care. But Wednesdays were mine. (Ours.) The Pin Pals needed him at least that one day of the week.
I needed him.
So, yes, technically, I had been morosely strolling the aisles of the grocery store at nine o’clock at night after bowling, and when I came upon the little box in the clearance aisle with the Christmassy cartoon figures—the leering Frosty the Snowman, a self-righteous little elf holding a toy hammer quite viciously—all looking suspiciously at one another, I snatched it up. Who Stole Rudolf’s Red Nose at the Karaoke Party? it asked.
Well, we certainly needed to find out.
I pretty much spam texted him into coming over to play, and everyone else for that matter. My conversation with Jack went like this:
Me: We need to cling to our youthful roots.
Jack: No.
Me: Do something spontaneous. You know, they say that’s what helps the fight against Alzheimer’s. It’s never too early to start considering optimizing our mental health, Jack.
Jack: No.
Me: Not to mention, you are the reason we lost tonight. It’s the least you can do to show up after that morale-shattering loss.
Jack: The Ballbarians (still the worst name) are undefeated. We both know I would’ve done nothing to bolster the team.
Me: I’ll make my special nachos.
Jack: Be there in 40.
Marilyn showed up with him.
She stood in the corner of the living room, pushing tortilla chips around on her plate in her slinky black dress for half an hour. She smiled and nodded uncomfortably as Emiliano spoke to her, emphatically, about something she could only partly understand in his budding English. But when she was handed a Grinch face mask along with her character card, that’s when she snapped. Suddenly had a terribly important email she’d entirely forgotten about that just had to be sent via her desktop, at home, and called an Uber.
Jack stayed.
“Ten thirteen p.m.,” Jack announces. “Everything changed at 10:13.”
