“The Great Chicago Trivia Championship,” he said, brow furrowed. “You don’t know about it?”
“No…I’ve been away from the trivia scene for a while.”
He pulled out his phone. “Give me your number.”
I rolled my eyes. Okay, well, this was a new one. I awarded him a few points for ingenuity.
“To send you the info,” he said, annoyed. “I don’t want to be competing in this thing against a bunch of losers.” He smiled. “I only want to beat the best.”
Flattery would get him everywhere. “Ugh, fine.” I rattled off my number. A few seconds later, a photo of a flyer popped up on my phone. Starting a week from Tuesday, for six weeks, a bunch of different bars around Chicago would be hosting a massive, citywide trivia tournament. Teams could have no more than eight people. It cost two hundred dollars to enter, with a five-thousand-dollar grand prize. “Dang,” I said. The grand prize for trivia tonight at O’Leary’s Barn was twenty-five bucks off your bill.
“Exactly,” Brad said. “It’s kind of amazing. Teams compete from all around the city. It culminates in a big event on the final night for the top four teams. This bar is one of the host sites.”
“Cool.” I shut off my phone.
“There’s a big trophy, too.”
My ears perked up. “A trophy?” I had the perfect spot for it, too: right on the back of my baby grand piano.
“Do you think you and your friends might be interested?”
At the mention of my friends, I downed more of my drink. Yessi couldn’t get out of the house that often, and Kelly was living in Galena now. “I don’t think so.”
“Too bad,” he said. “I hope you find someone else to play with. The competition needs talent like yours.”
A lump formed in my throat. A big part of me wanted to do it. I hadn’t felt as alive as I had answering those questions tonight in I didn’t know how long, but I didn’t have a team. I couldn’t think of one single person who’d want to spend the next six Tuesdays with me. “Thanks for the info, Brad.”
“I mean,” he said, “you have my number now. Feel free to text if you’re ever lonely…for trivia.”
Somewhat grateful to be able to channel my emotions from despair over my life into annoyance at Brad, even momentarily, I focused on the new shot Peter had just set in front of me.
“Go away, Brad.” This was my life from now on: drinking alone in a bar, having no one to compete with me on my trivia team, considering a booty call with an obnoxious younger man just for something to do. I downed the shot.
“I think you’re done now,” Dax said, clearing away my shot glass and plate of limes.
“I think you don’t know what you’re talking about, my friend.” I flashed a twenty and motioned to Peter to get me another drink. He, my hero, obliged me.
Chapter Nine
Inglourious Astirds
By the time I woke up in bed the next morning, the inside of my mouth had taken on the consistency of a gym sock—fuzzy and stinky—and I could feel the beginnings of a headache marching outward from the depths of my brain.
One by one, memories from last night popped into my head like still images from a slideshow: Kelly flouncing into the bar with a spectacular engagement ring on her finger, Mark making us lose at trivia, Peter plying me with shot after shot after shot, me talking with Dax, fighting with Dax, smelling Dax’s leather jacket as he put it on at the end of the night…
For some reason I could feel the supple leather against my cheek. I brushed the sensation away and kneaded my throbbing temple.
I hadn’t gotten sloppy like that since the day after I finished med school, because I rarely ever, even pre-concierge practice, allowed myself to let loose to the point of forgetting chunks of the night. As I told Darius the day before, I had responsibilities. I was a mature, adult woman.
A sad numbness lurked behind my hangover. Last night had been anything but fun and celebratory. I’d allowed myself to be overserved in order to drown out an impending sense of dread and doom. My vision blurred, and not just because I hadn’t put my glasses on yet.
Kelly, my perpetually single best friend, was getting married, and I was the last spinster standing.
Not really. I mean, I didn’t see it that way—not exactly. I knew neither a ring nor a mate determined my worth, but I still couldn’t shake this sensation of being left behind, especially since I was the last to know Mark even existed. Yessi and Kelly were part of the “couple club,” and I wasn’t.
It was like back in high school when all my girlfriends suddenly started dating, and I found myself at home alone on Friday nights, watching Boy Meets World with my mom and dad.
Did ABC still host a TGIF lineup on Fridays? Well, I was about to find out.
No, Annie. Stop it. No more wallowing.
I’d allowed myself one night of being a pathetic, blubbering cliché. It wasn’t a night I was proud of, but it was over. Now, in the light of day, I could go back to being a kick-ass concierge doctor who was fine on her own, who didn’t need a man or anyone else to fulfill her, and who didn’t even need a mother-sucking plant in her big empty house to keep her company.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed, pausing a moment to let my pounding brain catch up. I was never drinking like that again.
Never, ever, ever, ever. Ever.
I patted my bedside table, hunting for my glasses, but they were nowhere to be found. My dress from last night formed a blurry puddle in the corner of the floor, and I had fallen asleep in my bra and underwear—black lace, theoretically my “I’m feeling fun and flirty” lingerie, though I had only put it on because it happened to be clean and it had been quite some time since anyone had actually seen my underwear. I was on a bit of a dry spell.
From the counter in the adjoining bathroom, my phone buzzed, jolting me into action. After a night of foolishness, I was back on the clock now, ready to serve my patients who needed me. I had made them a promise to be there whenever they had a question or concern, and I’d shirked that duty, handing it off to Tina for the night. I wouldn’t let them down again.
I just hoped nothing too emergent had happened while I was indisposed.
I padded into the bathroom, the cold tile waking up the bottoms of my bare feet, and picked up my phone. I squinted at the screen, holding it away from me and closing one eye to see better.
Fifteen messages? Crap. This couldn’t be good.
Immediately I imagined all my patients in the hospital at the same time after a coincidental pileup on the Kennedy.
I clicked on the first one, from someone listed in my phone as “John the plumber.” It said, Annie, I’m flattered, but I’m married.
An unpleasant tingling sensation snaked its way up my neck.
I looked at the next message. From Brad, Mr. Very Stable Genius. lol. Not for me, Annie, but you know I’m game for a hookup. Text me next time ur up late.
My chest tightened, and my ears burned. What. The. Fuck. And “ur?” No. Absolutely not. Who was he kidding?
I scrolled to the top as a slab of lead settled in my stomach. I closed my eyes and counted to three before reading the text I had sent at 2:34 a.m. to…I counted…thirty-nine men in my contacts.
Hi, everyone! This is Annie Kyle, and I am letting you know that I am serious about settling down. Yes, that means getting married. I’m sick of playing games and pretending to be someone I’m not. I am a doctor, which means I work a lot but make a ton of money. If that scares you, that’s your problem. I love TV, and I love to run. I hate coconut, but I will drink a piña colada. I don’t want kids, but I may be open to, like, a turtle. If this interests you and if you are serious about marriage with me, Annie Kyle, please respond to this text. Everyone else, thank you for your time.
A pained squeak escaped from my throat, and I couldn’t decide whether to run or lock mysel
f in the bathroom forever.
As a compromise, I hurled my phone as hard as I could at the bedroom wall, watching as it slammed against the plaster. I prayed that I had smashed it to smithereens, as if that’d erase the embarrassment of last night—like fifteen men hadn’t already read and responded to my embarrassing messages—like the goddamn Cloud wasn’t a thing.
Oh, but it was a thing.
Out of nowhere, my bedroom door flew open, and who should appear but Dax. Still wearing his black jeans from last night and a white T-shirt, his dark hair shot up at all angles, and dark circles rimmed his blue eyes. “What happened? Are you okay?”
“Oh my god, what are you doing here?” I lunged for my bed and grabbed the first thing I could find—a large unicorn-shaped pillow my niece had given me for Christmas—and attempted to hide my underwear-clad body.
Dax’s eyes traveled from the floor up to where the unicorn horn rose like a spire between my breasts. “I told you I would stay here.”
“What? Why?” A little flicker of a memory popped into my head, but it was attached to Dax putting on his leather jacket, and its smell was the only thing I could recall about that moment.
“Because you drank about a gallon of tequila, and I didn’t want to leave you alone.”
Oh. That.
He reached down and picked up my phone, dusting it off. “I’m assuming someone responded to your text?”
I hugged the unicorn tighter. “You knew about that?” I squealed.
He held up his hands in surrender. The sunlight through the window glinted against my phone’s screen. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I tried to stop you.”
My nostrils flared. “Why didn’t you?”
His shoulders rose to his ears. “Because…I’m not your keeper, and I barely know you.”
“You overserved me.”
“That was Peter,” he said, “and, again, not your keeper. Plus Peter and I started watering down your drinks after a while, anyway.” He glanced at the phone. “How was the response?”
I reached for the phone, accidentally dropping the unicorn in the process. Oh well. What did I have to hide? I placed one hand on my hip and held the other one out expectantly. “Give it to me.”
Eyes squarely on my chest, Dax passed me the phone. “What did the guys say?”
“I don’t know. I only read two of the messages—both rejections, thank you very much.” I stepped over to my dresser and buried the phone under a pile of my underwear, where it would live for eternity. I grabbed my robe and wrapped it around my nearly naked body.
“You’re not going to look at them?”
“What’s the point, Dax?” I said. “If I don’t look at them, I’ll never know. I’ll go buy a new phone today and get a new number, and then I’ll move to Wyoming and go full Doc Hollywood or something, and everything will be fine.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.” He turned to leave.
“Besides,” I said, stalling him with his hand on the doorknob. “Nobody worth considering would respond to a message like that. If anyone wrote back saying they’d be up for settling down with me after one drunken text, that would be a huge red flag to avoid them.”
“You’re right.” He pulled open the door.
“And, I mean, how would any of this even work?”
Dax turned slowly back around.
“Like, what?” I shrugged, chuckling. “Would I call one of them and say, ‘Hey, yeah, person I barely know. Let’s do this. Let’s get married.’”
Dax’s eyes narrowed. “Are you…considering this?”
“No!” I laughed. “No. Could you imagine us telling people how we got together? That I sent a drunk text to a million guys, and this one responded? That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” he said, arching his bisected eyebrow. “It is.”
I reached into my underwear drawer and pulled out my phone. “Or…is it?”
“Are you still drunk?”
I scrolled through my phone, looking quickly at the responses. A few guys actually had responded affirmatively. These were all men I at least had some rapport with. I knew what they looked like and what they did for a living. I was almost forty, and I’d never been good at the dating thing. Any time I’d tried online dating, it had been a disaster. An arrangement like this could be more my speed.
I didn’t “need” a husband, but…maybe I wanted one? “These guys had the courage to respond and tell me point-blank that they feel the same way,” I said. “I shouldn’t reject them out of hand.”
“Okay…” Dax said, hand back on the doorknob. “I’m gonna go…”
I waved him off and looked back down at the phone, focusing on the red circle with an 8 over my message icon. Kelly had met her new fiancé in a chance encounter at the wine shop he owned. Yessi had met Polly while out celebrating the night she made partner. My mom and dad had known each other back in kindergarten. Everyone had a unique story about meeting their spouse. One wasn’t better than the next.
And maybe someday, my future husband and I would find ourselves, happily traveling the world, telling all the folks on our cruise ship about the day I sent out a drunken mass proposal and he responded.
Chapter Ten
A Team Has No Name
After Dax left that morning, I made myself some coffee, sat down at my kitchen table like I was about to pay bills or do my taxes, and read through each and every one of those responses. On a legal pad, I listed the names of all the eligible bachelors and created columns for pros and cons.
When all was said and done, one man stuck out: Robert James Casey.
His pro list was long. I found him attractive. He owned his own successful business, and he was good to his mother. Having grown up together, we already knew a lot about each other and could skip over the whole “getting to know you” phase.
Cons, I wasn’t so sure about. He’d been married before, but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. And, if I remembered correctly, he liked watching sports a lot, which was one of my least favorite recreational activities, but we were talking about marriage here, not fusing our bodies together. He could watch sports on his own time.
One item straddled both lists: my mom loved him.
If I ended up marrying Rob, I would never, ever, ever hear the end of it.
At lunchtime on Saturday, I headed out, as usual, to my mom’s house. Already things were not going as planned. I’d wanted to get out to Edison Park early, to get my chat with Rob over and done with before lunch, but I had several patient calls I had to take.
No problem. Mom and I would eat together, assuming I could choke anything down, and then I’d head over to Rob’s.
As I pulled into my mom’s driveway and shut off the engine, my eyes traveled to Rob’s house, right next door, a big, old, yellow-brick Chicago bungalow with a mossy green awning across the front windows. I saw no lights on in the house, but that didn’t mean anything. It was midday, and the sun was out.
I hadn’t even considered that he might not be home. Frick. I’d been going for the element of surprise. I should’ve planned this better. Damn it.
Oh well. Couldn’t dwell on that now. I grabbed the bag of sandwiches from Tony’s Deli and headed into my mom’s house.
Voices came from the back of the house. Probably my mom watching the news on TV. She kept it on all day, every day, whenever she was awake. “Mom!” I called.
“In here!” she responded.
I tossed my heavy purse on the wingback chair just inside the front room and headed back toward the kitchen. “Something smells good,” I said. “Did you ba—”
I stopped short as I realized my mother was not alone. Sitting at the island in the middle of the room was a very familiar-looking man about my age, with blond hair that had dulled slightly since our teen years, sun-tanned skin, and muscular arms peeking out from under an old
Cubs T-shirt with Greg Maddux’s name and number on it. Back when we were kids, he’d always reminded me of Johnny Lawrence from The Karate Kid, in a good way. I’d always found Johnny much hotter than Daniel LaRusso.
“Hi, Rob.” My throat nearly closed up. We were supposed to meet at his house, not here. At least that was the way I had planned it in my head while also foolishly neglecting to relay that plan to anyone else.
He smiled, looking just as nervous as I felt. “Good to see you, Annie.”
“Robbie came over to help fix my sink.” My mom passed him a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies. “It started leaking yesterday.”
He raised one of the cookies, smiling. “This is my payment.”
“Thank you so much, Rob,” I said sincerely. I let that sentence do some heavy lifting—thanking him for being there for my mom when I couldn’t be and expressing my gratitude in advance for him not saying anything embarrassing in front of her while he was at it.
“Maybe you want to join us for lunch,” my mom said.
Both of our heads snapped to her. Lunch. With Rob Casey. And my mother. I’d never survive it. Not today. “I’m sure Rob has—” I started to say.
He stood and chimed in. “I do,” he said. “I’m meeting a client about a kitchen remodel.”
“Next time, then,” my mom said as Rob leaned down to kiss her on the cheek.
I knotted my fingers together as I worked up my nerve. “Hey, Rob,” I said, nodding toward the back door, “can we…?”
Avoiding my mother’s gaze, I led him out to the backyard and onto the patio, away from the windows and the prying eyes of my mother.
He grinned sheepishly. “So…” Rob folded his arms, as if looking for something to do with them.
This was my cue. “Rob,” I whispered, taking a moment to make sure my mom wasn’t hiding on the stoop or that his mom wasn’t just beyond the bushes, spying on us, “first of all, about that text: I’d just found out my best friend got engaged out of nowhere, and I was overserved at the bar—”
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