Charming Falls Apart

by Angela Terry

  “I don’t know, but my mentor just accused me of spreading rumors about her.”

  I ponder that for a couple silent seconds before saying, “Touché.”

  “Let’s just call it even, okay? I didn’t call when I should’ve, and you accused me of getting you fired.” She holds up her glass. “Truce?”

  This time I clink my glass with hers. “Truce.”

  “So what was that earlier about how lucky I am?” I ask.

  “Maybe you don’t realize it, but your life is charmed. No matter what happens, you’ll land on your feet. The rest of us, not so much. Am I jealous about this fact? Totally. But at the same time, I know you have a good heart and I wanted to be there for you when everything fell apart.” She pauses to take a sip of champagne. “But, honestly, I had my suspicions about Neil and Stacey, and you were my boss. Then when you were fired, I was scared about losing my job too. Circumstances being what they were, I just felt caught between a rock and a hard place and withdrew. I’m sorry I wasn’t the friend you needed, and it sucks that all this has hurt our friendship.”

  “This might be the weirdest, but most honest, conversation I’ve had with anyone since my ‘charming’ life fell apart.”

  Kate laughs heartily and I know she wishes me no bad will.

  “So now what?” she asks.

  “‘Now what’ what? About our friendship?”

  “No. About how we’re going to get that bitch Paige back for firing you and making you unhirable. She’s ruining my life too, and nothing cements a friendship like a common enemy.”

  AFTER YESTERDAY’S DRAMA, I’ve earned some reality television binge-watching time. This Sunday afternoon, TBS is doing a Say Yes to the Dress marathon, and I settle in. While it would seem that I’d want to avoid all shows wedding-related, I actually find Say Yes to the Dress to be rather cathartic. The way some people shout at their television screens during a football game, as if the players can hear the viewer’s instruction to “run, run, run” with the ball, so I’ll shout at my television, “You look beautiful! Don’t listen to them! Why in the world does your mother want you to wear a ball gown to your beach wedding? Just get the chiffon sheath you love!”

  In the current episode, there’s one bride who recently lost over a hundred pounds and bears a strong resemblance to a young Grace Kelly. Her family and friends are pushing bedazzled mermaid-fit gowns at her, wanting her to show off her new figure. But the dress she falls in love with is a strapless, unadorned satin dress with a sweetheart bodice and a beautiful A-line skirt. To get the family on her side, Randy gussies her up with an elegant finger-tip lace veil and pearl choker. Before she turns around to show everyone, Randy says to her, “The only person who will be wearing the dress is you. Only you know what’s right for you.” But even with accessories, her family and friends can’t let go of their vision of her in a “sexy” dress, and the bride can’t bear to wear a dress that no one likes. She leaves the store defeated and dressless.

  The other bride in the show is the complete opposite: a bombshell who wants to show it off! Her mother wants her in a traditional wedding gown and preferably covered up. At some point, one of the other family members jokes, “What do you want, Joan, to have your daughter in a wedding dress or a turtleneck muumuu?” This bride doesn’t care and is trying on all the sexiest skin-baring Pnina Tornai dresses she can shimmy herself into. When she settles on a strapless fitted mermaid dress with a corseted bodice with see-through lace, and asks, “Whaddya think, Ma?” I’m pretty sure Ma is about to have a stroke. But Ma just shakes her head and says, “Your poor father.” But it doesn’t matter because this bride says yes to the dress and suddenly everyone is on board and even her mother is joining in on the group hug.

  The advice Randy gives the first bride is almost exactly what I told myself when I was dress shopping, and it paid off, even if it didn’t result in wearing my dream dress down the aisle. The second bride reminds me of Gabriela and when I was trying to tell her to slow down and she was having none of it. And because she was having none of it, she broke her personal record. If she’d listened to me, she would have ended finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack. Randy’s words, Gabriela’s determination. …

  It all hits me.

  Reading the self-help books is the same thing as listening to others. I’m simply trading the opinions and advice of my family and friends for these self-help authors’ advice. While I have to think the authors’ advice is well-meaning, just like mine was to Gabriela yesterday, and some of it has made me examine my life more closely, at the end of the day the person I have to listen to is myself. Only I can know what’s right for me. I’m the only one who is going to be wearing the dress … or in a broader context—I’m the only one who is actually going to be living my life. So, really, the only opinion that matters is my own.

  It’s time I start listening to my heart and making my own rules.

  Monday morning, I’m sitting at The Cauldron waiting for Eric to finish up a phone call with a vendor before we start our meeting. After the race, he didn’t text me the entire weekend, nor I him. I’ve been lying low and avoiding him; the boundaries were getting a little too blurred for me, and I’ve decided it’s better to keep everything professional between us.

  “Sorry about that.” Eric takes the chair across from me. “I had to clear that up, otherwise we would’ve had ten times our regular order of paper cups and no place to store them.”

  “No worries. Let’s see, what should we talk about first?”

  “How about how was the rest of your weekend?” He grins.

  “It was good, thanks. Yours?” Boundaries, Allison. Keep it simple.

  “Nothing too exciting. Mostly worked and worked out. Did you have a good date on Saturday night?”

  Date? Oh, he must mean Kate. I nod in response. “Uh-huh.” I don’t want to hear if he had a date or if working out included with a beautiful brunette, so I say, “So let’s talk about this press release I wrote on Friday. Did you get a chance to review it?”

  We talk about the press release, and after we’ve finished Eric says, “So I’d still love to take you out for a celebratory dinner. Are you free this Saturday?”

  Boundaries, Allison, boundaries, I remind myself. But I also have no plans and would love to have dinner with Eric. And if he’s free on Saturday night, then I’m guessing things with The Brunette didn’t work out. Boundaries, schmoundaries. “I am, and dinner sounds great!”

  “Great.” He grins at my probably too-enthusiastic response. “Do you have any favorite places?”

  “I’ll let you decide. I’m easy.” I’m also curious where he’ll take me. If he takes me somewhere casual, then it’s not a date; if he takes me somewhere nice, then perhaps it is a date. But I’m not getting my hopes up, I warn myself.

  “Okay, then. It’s a date.”

  “It’s a date.” I smile back at him, my hopes unfortunately raised high. “So should we go over my task list for the week?” We talk business for about twenty minutes and to do so I manage to control my excitement about Saturday. Once we’ve gone over everything on the list, I wrap it up and say, “I better get working on these items then. And unless you have any more changes, I need to send this press release out and then make some calls from home.”

  THE CALL I make from home is to Jordan. “I have a date with Eric on Saturday!”

  “Shut up! A real date? Not a business thing? Is there going to be kissing? Tell me there will be kissing.”

  “Uh, actually, I don’t know.” Sure, Eric used the word “date.” But then so did I when I had first invited him out to lunch. “I mean, I think it’s a date, but now I’m not totally sure.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure? Then why are you calling me in the middle of the day at work to get my hopes up?”

  I tell her how it went down. “It sounds like this might be a date,” is her verdict. “And if I were you, I would dress appropriately. Then if it isn’t really a date, it will at le
ast get him thinking that it should be.”

  AFTER JORDAN AND I hang up the next call is a surprise.

  “Hi, Suzy,” I answer.

  “Allison! I’m calling with great news!”

  “Yeah?”

  “Our hiring freeze is over! What do you think about coming to work for us?”

  Oh! Oh? “Oh, wow! Suzy, that’s great! What are you thinking?”

  “It would be a senior account position with the salary comparable to what you were making at PR Worldwide. So it would be the same job, but so much better because you’d be working with me and I’d make sure to put you on the best accounts,” she says.

  I adore Suzy and I know her firm has more fun clients than PR Worldwide, but it’s the same job. Though I have a million thoughts swirling in my head, there is only one emotion in the pit of my stomach: the tiniest seed of dread. I try to shake it off because this is the perfect opportunity. Maybe Kate was right. Maybe I was born under a lucky star. Maybe nothing in my life has to change.

  “Do you need me to come in for an interview?” I ask.

  “Yes, though it will just be a formality. You already know everyone, and we all know you’re more than qualified. And after you interview, you can start immediately.”

  We set something up for Thursday.

  AFTER HANGING UP with Suzy, I go into my closet to start thinking of my interview outfit, though I keep getting distracted by wanting to pull out possible “date-not-a-date?” outfits for Saturday. I try on my go-to black Theory pencil skirt suit, but it looks too funereal for an informal interview. I then try on my gray Theory pantsuit, but it just screams drab and no statement jewelry can save the corporateness of it. I take a different approach and try on some shift dresses and even a pink Kate Spade dress. But with every outfit I try on, that seed of dread grows. The same job. The consulting thing was never meant to be permanent, and right now The Cauldron is my only client. At a firm, I’d have regular hours, a regular salary with benefits, a steady stream of clients and … the same job.

  Other than contacting Suzy and Darren, I never really did pursue the rumor about me or even think about confronting Paige after my conversation with Kate. If I had really loved my job, wouldn’t I have fought harder? Wouldn’t I have gone for the in-it-to-win-it sprint to repair my reputation in the PR community and get my job back? After I’d cooled from my initial feeling of shock on learning that Paige was behind the rumor, I also felt a little bit of “well, so what?” Paige obviously loved her job and felt threatened enough to save it. Maybe I didn’t love my job enough to pay attention to the threat of losing it. And anyway, it seems my reputation is just fine if I’m being offered the same job at another firm. Though, honestly, this thought doesn’t bring me the comfort I thought it would.

  I finally decide on a colorful DVF silk print dress with an Alice & Olivia black linen jacket and patent heels. I’m not so sure that I’ve decided on this outfit because I love it, but it’s the last interview-appropriate dress in my closet, and I can’t bear to try on anything else, and so it will do. Looking at myself in the mirror, I feel no excitement. No nervousness. No sense of anticipation. I only feel that I don’t want to do this.

  I take out my phone and call Suzy.

  When I download all this news—about drinks with Kate, the call from Suzy, the interview I canceled, and my new business plan—to Jordan on Saturday while drinking rosé on her building’s roof deck with the other pool-goers soaking in the last warm days of September before fall weather hits, her response is, “All of it makes sense. I still think Kate can be a sneaky snake, though. Maybe she should go to law school rather than staying in public relations. And as for Paige, what she did is called slander and is actionable in court.”

  “While it would be great to sue her, that’s a lot of work. It’s easier to just take her clients.”

  After I talked to Suzy, I called Kate asking to meet up—I have an idea of how we can get back at Paige. Kate knew that I loved the community outreach programs, and the truth is she didn’t and wanted to get the extra work off her plate. So she’s decided to outsource all her and Paige’s clients’ (i.e., all my old clients) community relations work to my consulting firm, which now specializes in matching community outreach programs with corporate sponsorships.

  When I asked Kate if she thought that was too risky, explaining that I wouldn’t want to get her fired, she shrugged and replied, “What do I care? It’ll be worth it to see Paige’s face. And if I get fired, hopefully, I can get a good recommendation from you.” She grinned as she said this last part, and I laughed.

  Maybe Jordan is right that Kate is a sneaky snake, but now she’s my sneaky snake and friend again. I understand now why she felt awkward around me—who wants to tell their boss she has doubts about her fiancé. But now, we’re on a level playing field and partners in crime. Stacey and I will never recover our friendship for obvious reasons, but also I’ve realized that she was a holdover from my teenage years with my old rules of fitting in. Our friendship was based on circumstances and shallow activities rather than a deep bond. The reason Jordan and I have stayed friends is because we ultimately share similar values, such as loyalty, and I couldn’t have gotten through this summer without her—she’s my bestie till the end.

  “Not to change the subject, but I’ve been dying to show you something,” Jordan says, fishing around in her straw tote bag. She finds what she’s looking for and hands me some papers.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “An application.”

  “I can see that.” It’s an application for a Master of Science Mental Health Counseling program. “But why are you giving it to me? I don’t want to go back to school.”

  “It’s not for you, silly. It’s for me. I’m thinking of getting out of law and becoming a psychologist or therapist.”

  “You’re kidding?” All these years of Jordan complaining about her job, but insisting she couldn’t do anything else. “But what about the golden handcuffs?”

  She waves her hand dismissively. “At a certain point, what’s the point if I’m that miserable? I’ve already made a lot of money. And, anyway, I intend to specialize my practice in high-achieving but miserable lawyers. Then I can make a billable hour off of them for a change.” She winks at me.

  I laugh and hand her back the application. “Good for you, Jor! That sounds like an excellent idea.”

  All this time, I thought Jordan was living vicariously through my self-help journey, but instead she was right alongside me. For all her denials about looking for a new job, clearly the gears in her mind were turning.

  “So are you ready for the big date tonight?” Jordan asks, selflessly changing the subject from her major life-changing news to my petty issues of wardrobe.

  She’s going to be an awesome shrink.

  SINCE I’VE STARTED working at a coffeehouse rather than a corporate office, I’ve been rocking a more casual style lately. Also, I had decided that my hair was too high-maintenance and have been letting the brown grow back in, and so with some well-placed lowlights, it’s more of a bronde look rather than my former bright blonde. My daily makeup routine has also gone in a more minimal, low-maintenance direction, with usually just some mascara and lip gloss. While tonight I don’t do the full-on application of my former days, I do add some eyeliner and highlighter to make my eyes smolder and cheekbones glow. I’m wearing a loose black mini-slip dress with stiletto sandals that have delicate suede straps that wrap around my ankles. Even though the dress is short and shows off my legs, it’s not tight, which leaves something to the imagination.

  When Eric calls me from downstairs to say that he’s here and in an Uber black car, I take a last look at myself in the mirror to make sure I look okay and suddenly a flight of butterflies takes off in my stomach. “Date or not-a-date, it’s all good,” I tell myself in the mirror. “Whatever happens happens; for tonight I’m going to stop worrying and just have fun.” When I step outside my building, Eric is standing out
side of the Uber, and I see him break into a great big smile when he sees me, and I can’t help but feel my own smile grow wider.

  “Hi,” he says. He hugs me and gives me a light kiss on the cheek, and I catch a rich, heady scent that makes my knees weak. Is that Tom Ford Oud?

  “Hi,” I say back, with a huge smile and blush spreading across my face.

  “You look amazing,” he says, as the driver comes out to open the doors for us.

  “Thanks. You do too.” Even though Eric gives off a casual laidback vibe at The Cauldron, I can see the finance guy in him now with his black slacks and button-down shirt, and dare I notice a rather expensive watch on his wrist?

  “So where are we headed?” I ask.

  “We have a seven-thirty reservation at Boka. Have you been?”

  I have, and I know it’s one of the fancier, and sexier, restaurants in Chicago. The man has good taste, and more importantly—this is definitely a date.

  AS SOON AS we’re seated in the main dining room, with its cozy, dark, modern bohemian vibe, I experience a new side of Eric. He’s always been easygoing and comfortable, but I’m seeing a more polished side as he confers with the sommelier on the wine list. At first, I worry that my nerves will get the better of me and I’ll screw up our easy camaraderie. But, after we finish ordering, Eric quickly launches into more detailed questions about Girls Run It and soon the conversation and jokes are flowing, as is the wine, and we could just as easily be sitting at The Cauldron.

  As we’re eating dessert, Eric convinces me to try his apple tart, and, right as I’m taking a bite, a woman approaches our table and puts her hand on Eric’s shoulder. I look up and it’s The Brunette. I almost choke on the tart. “Hey, Eric,” she says. “I thought that was you.”

  “Oh, hey, Adeline.” He stands and gives her a quick hug. She smiles at me and Eric says, “Allison, this is Adeline. She’s a runner too.”

  She puts out her hand. “Call me Addie,” she says.