“What pictures?” Gary asked.
“At the wedding, obviously.”
Kelly couldn’t let this go on. “Mom, I don’t care how good this guy looks next to Gary, I’m not marrying him.”
“Not your wedding, silly. Though who knows! I mean for Clara’s wedding. Oh, and I almost forgot. He has a cocker spaniel.” Diane sat back, satisfied. The man had a cocker spaniel.
“It’s perfect, right, Kel?” Clara beamed.
“Wait, so you guys just went and found a plus one for me?”
“I know how you dread these things,” Diane said. “Now you don’t even have to worry about it.”
“What makes you think I don’t already have one?”
“Well, you don’t—do you?”
Kelly spluttered. “That’s not the point! I don’t want to go to my sister’s wedding with some tennis-playing jerkoff I don’t even know.”
“But you will know him. I set up dinner for the two of you. You’ve got almost two months to get to know each other.”
Kelly looked to her father. “Dad, you’ll pose next to me in the pictures, right, so everything looks good? I don’t need a plus one?”
“I would, but I probably wouldn’t live up to your mother’s standards. She’s never called me adorable.”
“Gary? Is anyone going to stand up for me or is my whole family happy to just pimp me out to a strange man off the streets?”
“Honestly, I’d be thrilled to have another guy at the family table,” Gary admitted. “My doctor said if I don’t start exposing myself to people other than Gina and the girls, I will lactate.”
“Kelly, this is ridiculous. You have to bring someone,” Diane insisted.
“Why? Who cares?”
“Who cares?” Diane set down her fork. Kelly sensed that she had asked the wrong question. “A wedding is a house of cards, Kelly. If you mess up my seating arrangements, all hell will break loose. And all of my friends, my family, my industry colleagues will be there. The eyes of the Bay Area are on me. I am a bridal professional and this is my daughter’s wedding! This is my Triple Crown!”
“Wait, so are you the horse in this scenario?” Kelly couldn’t resist asking.
“I think she’s the jockey.” Gary caught her eye before looking away, masking a grin.
“Please, just give him a chance, Kel,” Clara said. “It’s one dinner. I think you’ll have more fun at the wedding if you have someone to talk to, and I won’t have to worry about whether you’re having a good time. Please? For me?”
Kelly sighed. Clara’s sweet tone was much harder to say no to than her mother’s quasi-mania. She had a feeling she was about to meet a cocker spaniel.
Kelly wondered, as she prepared for her blind date the following Saturday, why other girls seemed to love the getting-ready process. In movies this was always a snappy montage that involved trying on various colorful outfits and throwing them off over your head like a jovial idiot who doesn’t understand how hangers work. Instead, there she was, in her drab apartment, staring sadly into her closet. It was like Eeyore shopping for a quinceañera dress.
Well, drab may be a little harsh—Kelly had a perfectly nice (for Silicon Valley rental prices) one-bedroom with square, modern lines, granite countertops mottled with black and sienna brown, and broad windows offering views of the small, flat park across the street, where dogs ran through the cropped grass and kids played soccer. Her IKEA décor was neutral and tasteful, if rather plain. She tended to choose items in neat, geometric shapes, pieces that had no possibility of clashing with each other or cutting the space in the room into any of those awkward, too-small-to-have-a-function wedges of unfillable air. It was easiest to go basic, she figured—safest. Pick out something inoffensive and you didn’t have to devote any time and energy to thinking about it, or worrying what other people would think. There was no way you would look back at that rectangular beige couch and think you’d made a horrendous mistake. She couldn’t imagine a world where home décor served any higher purpose than to do no harm.
The same philosophy extended to the wardrobe she was now peering into as if she expected it to offer her some magical, glamorous outfit she had never actually bought. She might as well have been looking for the portal to Narnia. Kelly owned very little in the way of going-out clothes or even casual clothes, because she did very little going out or casual-ing. Most of her items were work oriented: blouses in cream or taupe, skirts and trousers with simple lines. In actuality, her office was rather forgiving of the “artist/techie/genius with beard lice” types who worked in the Engineering department, many of whom dressed like college students who had rolled out of bed just in time for class. But Kelly wasn’t the type to indulge in such informality.
She swung out one of her three dresses and looked it over. A high neck, but at least it was sleeveless. Nothing says date night like a pair of arms. It was a basic, lightly fitted shape in a sturdy material of forest green. She worried that the green might be too matchy-matchy with her eyes. Then she worried that another color might not match enough. Before sliding it on, she snapped herself into a too-small, one-piece bathing suit she had brilliantly repurposed as a form of budget shapewear, repeating “It looks good, it looks good” in her head like a mantra while it rearranged her internal organs.
Kelly met her own eyes in the mirror as she blow-dried her light hair. Her routine here was more about correcting her features than playing them up. She twirled a round brush through her hair as she blew it out to eliminate its natural waves and create a simple, straight shape. She smoothed foundation over her freckles to cover them up. Her face and nose were a little longer than she would have liked, but she had learned through precise application how to rectify them with contouring. She actually liked her green eyes; just a little mascara and oyster-colored shadow was all that was needed there. She left her lips bare—this was a first date, after all, and the last thing Kelly wanted was to go overboard.
She stepped back and surveyed herself in the bathroom mirror, trying to imagine what she would think if she were meeting herself for the first time, pondering the question that has troubled mankind since the ancients: Hot or Not? Would she want to date herself? Not that she wanted to date Martin. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t want him to want to date her.
That would sure show her mom, and Clara. They had assumed she couldn’t get a wedding plus one on her own. As much as Kelly loathed to even formulate the thought, preferring to stow it safely in the back of her mental closet, with the dust and the fifth-grade gymnastics costumes, she knew that she was a failure in her mother’s eyes—and Kelly was not someone who accepted failure. She breathed out a contented little sigh just imagining her family’s shocked faces if Martin came back for a second date—if he actually liked her.
Kelly had always relied on data, and the models of her parents’ marriage and her own disappointing relationship history gave her little logical basis for predicting the arrival of true love in her own life at any point in the future. Her two previous boyfriends had been guys who looked great on paper, but made her even less happy than she had been alone. Still, a little illogical hope kept flickering, telling her that love might still be out there after all. Her stomach clenched in a way that was only partially the fault of