‘Sounds great. What was he?’ Lily went out with different guys almost every night after getting off work, but had yet to complete her fraction. She had founded the Scale of Fractional Love one night after listening to a few of our guy friends rate the girls they were dating on their own invention, the Ten-Ten Scale. ‘She’s a six, eight, B-plus,’ Jake would declare of the advertising assistant he’d been set up with the night before. It was assumed everyone knew that it was a ten-point scale, with face always being the first numerical ranking, body the second, and personality coming in last with a slightly more generalized letter grade. Since there were clearly more factors at work in judging guys, Lily devised the Fractional Scale, which had a total of ten pieces that each earned a point. The Perfect Guy would obviously have all five of the primary pieces: intelligence, sense of humor, decent body, cute face, and any sort of job that fell under the generous umbrella of ‘normal.’ Since it was next to impossible to find The Perfect Guy, someone could up their fraction by earning points on the secondary five, which included a definitive lack of psycho ex-girlfriends, psycho parents, or date-rapist roommates, and any sort of extracurricular interests or hobbies that weren’t sports- or porn-related. So far, the highest anyone had received was a nine-tenths, but he had broken up with her.
‘Well, at first he was going strong at seven-tenths. He was a theater major at Yale and he’s straight, and he could discuss Israeli politics so intelligently that he never once suggested that we “just nuke ’em,” so that was good.’
‘Sure sounds good. I can’t wait for the clincher. What was it? Did he talk about his favorite Nintendo game?’
‘Worse.’ She sighed.
‘Is he thinner than you?’
‘Worse.’ She sounded defeated.
‘What on earth could be worse than that?’
‘He lives on Long Island—’
‘Lily! So he’s geographically undesirable. That doesn’t make him undateable! You know better than to—’
‘With his parents,’ she interrupted.
Oh.
‘For the past four years.’
Oh, my.
‘And he absolutely loves it. Says he can’t imagine wanting to live alone in such a big city when his mom and dad are such great company.’
‘Whoa! Say no more. I don’t think we’ve ever had a seven-tenths fall all the way to a zero after the first date. Your guy set a new record. Congratulations. Your day was officially worse than mine.’ I leaned over to kick my bedroom door closed when I heard Shanti and Kendra come home from work. I heard a guy’s voice with them and wondered if either of my roommates had boyfriends. I’d seen them a combined total of only ten minutes in the last week and a half, because they seemed to work longer hours than I did.
‘That bad? How could your day be bad? You work in fashion,’ she said.
There was a quiet knocking on the door.
‘Hold on a sec, someone’s here. Come in!’ I called to the door, much too loud for the tiny space. I waited for one of my quiet roommates to timidly ask if I’d remembered to call the landlord to put my name on the lease (no) or bought more paper plates (no) or had taken down any phone messages (no), but Alex appeared.
‘Hey, can I call you back? Alex just showed up.’ I was thrilled to see him, so excited that he’d surprised me, but a small part of me had been looking forward to just taking a shower and crawling into bed.
‘Sure. Tell him I say hi. And remember what a lucky girl you are for having completed the fraction with him, Andy. He’s great. Hold on to that one.’
‘Don’t I know it. The kid’s a goddamn saint.’ I smiled in his direction.
‘’Bye.’
‘Hi!’ I willed myself to first sit up, then stand up and walk over to him. ‘What a great surprise!’ I went to hug him but he backed away, keeping his arms behind his back. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing at all. I know you’ve had such a long week, and, knowing you, I figured you hadn’t bothered to eat yet, so I brought the food to you.’ He pulled a huge brown paper bag from behind his back, one of the old-school grocery style ones, and it already had some delicious-smelling grease stains on it. All of a sudden, I was starving.
‘You did not! How’d you know that I was sitting here this very second, wondering how I was going to motivate to find food? I was just about to give up.’
‘So come here and eat!’ He looked pleased and pulled open the bag, but we both couldn’t fit on the floor of my bedroom together. I thought about eating in the living room since there was no kitchen, but Kendra and Shanti had both collapsed in front of the TV together, their untouched takeout salads open in front of them. I thought they were waiting until the Real World episode they were watching was over, but then I noticed that they’d both already fallen asleep. Sweet lives we all had.
‘Hold on, I have an idea,’ he said and tiptoed to the living room. He came back with two oversize garbage bags and spread them out over my blue comforter. He dug into the greasy bag and brought out two giant burgers with everything and one extra-large order of fries. He’d remembered ketchup packets and tons of salt for me, and even the napkins. I clapped I was so excited, although a quick visual of the imagined disappointment on Miranda’s face appeared, one that said, You? You’re eating a burger?
‘I’m not done yet. Here, check it out.’ And out of his backpack came a fistful of tiny vanilla tea lights, a bottle of screw-top red wine, and two waxy paper cups.
‘You’re kidding,’ I said softly, still not believing that he’d put all this together after I’d canceled our date.
He handed me a cup of wine and tapped it with his. ‘No, I’m not. You think I was going to miss hearing about the first week of the rest of your life? To my best girl.’
‘Thank you.’ I said, slowly taking a sip. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you.’
‘Ohmigod, is it the fashion editor herself?’ Jill mock-shrieked when she opened the front door. ‘Come on over here and let your big sister genuflect a li’l.’
‘Fashion editor?’ I snorted. ‘Hardly. Try fashion mishap. Welcome back to civilization.’ I hugged her for what felt like ten minutes and didn’t want to let go. It was hard when she’d started at Stanford and left me all alone with our parents when I was a mere nine years old, but it was even harder when she’d followed her boyfriend – now husband – to Houston. Houston! The whole placed seemed drenched in humidity and infested with mosquitoes to the point of unbearability, and if that wasn’t bad enough, my sister – my sophisticated, beautiful big sister who loved neoclassical art and made your heart melt when she recited poetry – had developed a southern accent. And not just a slight accent with a subtle, charming southern lilt, but an all-out, unmistakable, like-a-drill-through-the-eardrum redneck drawl. I’d yet to forgive Kyle for dragging her to that wretched place, even if he was a pretty decent brother-in-law, and it didn’t help when he opened his mouth.
‘Hey there, Andy darlin’, you’re looking more beautiful every time I see you.’ Yer lookin’ more beeyootiful avery time I see ya. ‘What are they feeding y’all at Runway, huh?’
I wanted to stick a tennis ball in his mouth to keep him from talking anymore, but he smiled at me and I walked over and hugged him. He might sound like a hick and grin a little too openly and often, but he tried really hard and he clearly adored my sister. I vowed to make a sincere