by Hilary Dartt
She sent a text to Summer and Josie: Super cute guy at bar tonight. Can I flirt my way into getting his number?
Within a second, she received texts back from both of them: No. Absolutely not.
She wrote back: Why? He’s cute. And he’s a doctor.
***
Under attack from a fresh wave of giggles, Josie and Summer took turns wiping their eyes with Josie’s bar napkin.
“‘Super cute?’ She has to be kidding us,” Josie said. “Now we know what her standards are. Haven’t you always wondered, when she talks about those really hot guys she sees here all the time?”
“Now we know,” Summer said, nodding so hard her sunglasses fell off her face and clattered onto the table.
“Come on, Summer. We have to do something. He is so not cute. He is so not a doctor. And I can guarantee he is so not good for her.”
“What the hell. You’re right.”
***
Summer: He’s at the bar telling you a sob story, right?
Delaney didn’t answer. How did Summer know?
She was going to employ her mommy senses during The Dating Intervention and Delaney didn’t like it one bit. It was an unfair advantage. David requested another drink and Delaney mixed it.
“You’re real cute, Diana,” he slurred.
“It’s Delaney,” she said, charmed by his … drunkenness. “And you’re not so bad, yourself.”
Her phone chirped.
Josie: Stop talking to him, Dee. Remember, we make the rules.
Delaney didn’t respond.
“So, David. What are you doing after this?”
Her phone chirped again.
Summer: Step away from the drunk guy. Hair gel, remember?
And again.
Josie: He’s wearing cheap shoes. He’s not a doctor. My guess: he’s in vacuum sales. He probably did a demonstration right before this and is drinking away his depression right now. He sucks for a living, Dee. And he hates his mother.
Delaney scanned the bar’s seating area. Were they here? They had to be. She’d noticed the cheap shoes, the hair gel, David’s general pathetic nature. But pathetic fueled her hormones, despite the voice in her head telling her to back off. She was sucked in.
That’s when she spotted two girls at the back of the room, wearing ball caps pulled low.
“I’ll be right back,” she said to Ivy.
Why would Josie and Summer show up at Rowdy’s to babysit her? Didn’t they trust her? This is ridiculous. She stormed to the back of the bar, fists clenched. They should let her make her own decisions. No, Mark, Zachary and Xander hadn’t been perfect. But they’d been okay. And they were out of the picture now, anyway. She was starting with a clean slate.
She stalked right up to the table where the girls were sitting, stuck her face two inches from a pair of mirrored sunglasses and felt completely foolish.These girls weren’t Summer and Josie. They were just a couple of friends out on the town for a couple of drinks – and they looked very surprised to be approached in this manner.
“Sorry,” Delaney muttered. “Get you a drink?”
Eyes comically wide and mouths hanging open like little goldfish, they simply shook their heads. She walked back to her spot behind the bar with less confidence, then mixed another drink for David and plunked it down in front of him.
“This one’s on the house,” she said. “And after you’re done, I’m taking you home.”
***
Closing time. Ivy flicked on the lights and the few stragglers who hadn’t already wobbled into taxis swayed their way out of the bar. Delaney swept the floor, wiped the tables and cleared glasses and bottles. David, for his part, remained on his stool, head pillowed on his arms. He’d snored a couple of times and Delaney wouldn’t be surprised to see drool on his sleeve.
Her phone chirped. Another text. It was Summer again. What was she doing up at two a.m.?
Don’t take him home, Dee. Fight your instincts. This is a moment. Choose to be the new you.
Delaney rolled her eyes. Summer had said something the other night about every choice being an opportunity to move one step closer to being your new self. You could choose to act like your old self and remain stagnant, she said, or you could choose to act like your new self and move forward. She probably threw in something about the Universe, too.
Delaney walked behind the bar to put away unused glasses and dump the limes in the trash. She glanced at the top of David’s head. He had thinning hair, which revealed a big dark mole on his scalp. Up close and in the light, he wasn’t quite as cute as she originally thought.
“Maybe you’re onto something, girls,” she muttered.
David woke with a start and Delaney noticed that he had drooled all over his arm, just as she expected.
“Was I asleep?” he mumbled.
“I think so. Want me to call you a cab?”
He straightened up, looked at his watch, noticed the drool spot on his arm, tried in vain to brush it off.
“I thought you were taking me home. That’s why I’m still here.”
What was it about guys like David that drew her in?
“Oh, that’s right,” she said, infusing her voice with cheerfulness she didn’t feel. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
“Well, you don’t have to,” he pouted.
“Of course I don’t,” she said. “But I’d really like to. Let’s go.”
From the other end of the bar, Ivy wiggled her eyebrows.
The walk home was quiet and very cold. David’s conversational skills seemed to have dried up as he started to sober up. Although it was only seven minutes from Rowdy’s to Delaney’s front door, her face was numb by the time they got there. Anxiety, which had taken shape as a tiny black stone when David had woken up with drool on his arm, had developed into a full-blown boulder as they walked. She felt like she’d carried it all the way home and now her arms were so heavy she could barely get her keys out of her pocket as they rounded the corner of Oak Street.
But apparently, she didn’t need her keys. As they approached her house, she noticed the lights were on and someone was standing in the living room, a silhouette in the big picture window.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Delaney slowed to a stop when they approached her house. She knew she had turned the lights off when she left for work. This could mean one thing and one thing only. Delaney took a deep breath in an attempt to quell the panic rising in her stomach.
“Uh, David,” she said quietly, “you’re going to have to go home.”
“What? Why?”
The orange-tinted light from the street lamp cast ugly shadows under his eyes and his breath puffed out in a foul-smelling cloud.
“I have a visitor,” Delaney said.
“You don’t have a roommate?”
“Nope. Not a roommate. I’ll call you a cab.”
“Will I see you again?”
“Probably not.”
As she dialed the cab company they habitually used to send people home from Rowdy’s, she couldn’t help feeling like a teenager who’d been caught sneaking out of the house, or coming home way after curfew. She was scared and she wasn’t afraid to admit it, she thought as she gave the taxi dispatcher her address.
“See you,” she said to David.
Steeling herself, she walked up the path and into her front door, leaving David pale, shivering and fidgeting with his tie in the cold.
***
“I told you not to bring him home,” Summer said in a deadly calm voice. Delaney imagined this was the scariest mommy voice she had – the one the kids really listened to. It didn’t come out to remind the kids to put on their shoes or pick up their toys. No, it was reserved for critical situations, like when Luke came after Nate with a butter knife.
Delaney sat on the couch, biting her lip and examining her fingernails. Summer stood over her, hands on her slim hips, face twisted into a weird combination of concern and anger.
Oh, yeah. She’s defini
tely pulling out all the mommy stops.
Even as Delaney waited in fear, she noticed the dark circles under Summer’s eyes, the wisps of hair escaped from her bun. She looked exhausted. Delaney felt guilty. Not only had she failed The Dating Intervention less than forty-eight hours after its inception, but she was also the cause of her best friend being awake at two in the morning when she had to get up again at six with the kids.
“Why can’t you just trust me?” Delaney whined as butterflies swirled madly in her stomach. Why was she nervous? This was ridiculous.
“It’s obvious why I can’t trust you, isn’t it? Number one, you make terrible decisions. Did you see that guy? And number two, I knew we’d have a rocky start. You don’t like being told what to do. Josie told me how, after you shopped Saturday, you spent the rest of the day decorating. Not job hunting.”
“Well, I need a good atmosphere. You know. To feel like a professional. I needed a printer to print out resumes. And a suit,” she said weakly, because she was now losing steam. “For interviews.”
“Did you actually write your resume or print it?” Summer demanded. “No. I know you didn’t. But let’s not get sidetracked. We’re here tonight because you brought home that … that … weasel! After I specifically told you not to!”
Delaney winced. She wanted to shrivel up right there on her living room couch.
“What was your inner voice saying to you in that moment, Dee?”
“He was nice.”
“Tell me that’s not what your inner voice was saying. Please.”
“Okay. It wasn’t. It was saying, ‘This guy’s a loser. What are you doing?’ That’s what it was saying.”
Summer nodded. “Thought so. So why were you ignoring it?”
“I don’t know. He liked me. He said I was charming.”
“He did, did he?”
“He was nice,” Delaney said again. She felt her resolve slipping.
“Oh, sure. Sure he was. You were mixing him free drinks.” She was pacing back and forth across the living room now, her long skirt swirling around her legs. “You told him you were going to take him home. Do you know why, Delaney? Because you wanted him to spend the whole night thinking you were sexy. And you wanted to spend the whole night feeling sexy. Well, guess what? You wouldn’t have felt very sexy when you woke up next to David Steadman tomorrow morning. Do you know who he is? He’s the scumbag who got fired from the hospital because he was groping all the nurses. Don’t you remember me telling you about that? The big hype at Derek’s work a couple months ago?”
“You didn’t know that until you saw him. And I wouldn’t have known it tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, you would have, after you heard all his one-liners. He’s famous for them.” She stopped pacing and stood facing Delaney. “Anyway. That’s not the point. The point is, David Steadman is a type. The wrong type. And he’s a prime example of the type you always pick for yourself. He’s down here –” she held her hand, palm down, an inch off the floor, “and you’re up here.” She stretched her arm above her head.
“You accuse me of being judgmental and over-critical, but you guys find something wrong with every guy I date. Who’s over-critical?”
“You’re only critical of guys who’d actually be good for you.” Summer shook her head. “If there’s a nice guy, normal, with a decent job, who doesn’t live with his mom, you find a sprig of ear hair or a splotch of eczema unbearable. Or the crescent-shaped mole on his cheek. I mean, really! This is exhausting. I thought I had a few more years before I had to parent a teenager, but look, I get practice now.”
She flopped down on the couch next to Delaney.
“That’s mean, Summer.”
“Face the facts, Dee. Now, I’m going home and to bed before I strangle you.”
For the briefest flash of a moment after watching Summer flounce down the walkway to her car (why hadn’t she noticed it when she walked up?), Delaney felt indignant. The facts? Delaney hadn’t been a teenager for a decade and a half, at least. It wasn’t even possible that she was acting like one now.
The realization didn’t dawn on her until she had to fight off the temptation to turn off the porch light before Summer got in the car.
Delaney did behave like a teenager. Yes, she broke the rules. Yes, she tried to avoid being found out. And yes, she felt self-righteous and then completely guilty when Summer put her on the spot. But it was more than that. Like a teenager, she craved male attention, even when it came from someone who was absolutely not a good match for her. Like a teenager, she went farther than she really wanted to, just to keep that attention flowing. And like a teenager, she had some growing up to do.
The problem is that I don’t know how to grow up, she thought as she brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas. Her inner voice responded, Now you’re acting like a baby, Collins.
She climbed into bed. As Pixie curled up beside her, she let the tears fall. They slipped from the corners of her eyes down onto her pillow, one after another. She didn’t cry out of anger at Summer and Josie, or out of sadness for herself. She cried because she knew they were right. She needed to make a change. The trouble was, although she had a vague image of where she needed to end up, she had absolutely no idea how to get there.
CHAPTER NINE
Weekly Happy Hour was starting to feel like a weekly examination.
“Yes. We were here Monday night, spying on Delaney,” Summer said to Benjamin, popping a green olive into her mouth. “Yes, we’re acting like the mothers of a teenage daughter. The crazy mothers of a teenager daughter. A crazy teenage daughter. And yes, we’re proud of it.”
Josie nodded, a demented smile plastered on her face.
“When she started mopping up,” Summer said, “I hightailed it to her house. I thought that would give her one more out. She could say something like, ‘Oh, my roommate must have waited up for me,’ or ‘My boyfriend’s here.’”
“But no,” Delaney butted in. “I said, ‘There’s a stalker in my living room.’”
“He was a slug, Dee,” Benjamin said, nodding. “Soggy, floppy, dejected. You could do better. I’ll get you ladies your drinks.”
“Does anyone besides me notice that I’m being picked on?” Delaney said as Benjamin walked away.
Neither of the girls responded. Instead, Josie raised her glass and said, “You’re a true friend, Summer. You had to get up at six with the kids and you were at Delaney’s ’til two-thirty.”
“She needs us,” Summer said.
“Not to change the subject,” Delaney cut in, “but did anyone besides me notice that Summer is eating green olives out of a bowl?”
Silence descended on the table while the women exchanged meaningful glances. Then Summer, having just swallowed another olive, burst into tears.
“I’m pregnant,” she wailed, putting her forehead on the table.
Benjamin had returned with their drinks and after setting them down, did a celebratory dance.
“Congratulations, Summer! I’ll exchange that wine for water!” He plucked her wine glass off the table and danced off. This made Summer cry even harder.
“What? That’s great news!” Josie said. “Cheers, Summer! Cheers to Gray Baby Number Five!”
“Wait,” Delaney said. “Why are you crying? I thought you wanted a fifth baby.”
“I do,” Summer said, at once insistent and miserable. “I do want a fifth baby. It’s just that I hope this little guy or girl can’t sense my—I don’t know—my anxiety.”
She took a tiny sip from the water glass Benjamin brought back. Josie dug a tissue out of her purse and handed it to Summer, even as she blotted her own eyes.
“What? Why do you have anxiety?” she asked.
“Derek lost his job,” Summer said. “They’re downsizing at the hospital. We just found out last night. He’s being laid off in a month. So I’ll be three months’ pregnant, supporting our entire family. Our growing family, I might add. On a freelance graphic design inco
me. Not the best start to a new life for this little peanut.”
“He’ll find another job,” Josie said in a soothing voice. “He will. There’s a nursing home or hospital on every block in this town. Or maybe he could be a school nurse.”
“I hope so,” Summer said. “And you’re right, Josie. You always know how to put things in perspective. There are a lot of nursing positions in town. And I really am happy. About the baby. It’s just that I’m scared, too.”
“You’ll be fine,” Delaney said. “You always are. You’re the best mommy I know. You’ll make it work. And if all else fails, you could probably use the same techniques you used on me last night to shame someone into giving Derek a job.”
Summer chuckled.
“It was the middle of the night. I was tired and cranky. I wanted to be asleep in my bed, not at your house on loser patrol,” she said, then quickly added, “I didn’t mean you. I meant that guy. Anyway, Hannah’s pregnancy was so easy, I’d forgotten they’re not all like that. The insomnia, the nausea, the bladder. I tried to go to bed at eight, like I usually do, but I couldn’t sleep. So I hatched this plan to get a baseline for you. So we’d know what you were really up to. Once it was clear you’d be taking that guy home, I ran over to your house and sure enough…”
Delaney shrugged her shoulders.
“Don’t think you’re off the hook,” Summer said. “We still have rules for you. And Josie made a flow chart.”
With a wicked grin, Josie pulled a folder from her purse. She slid a piece of paper out and placed it on the table in front of Delaney.
The Dating Intervention
The Rules
1. Do not, under any circumstances, tell the men you’re dating that your girlfriends are in charge.
2. Summer and Josie make all the major decisions. If you must make a decision, use the flow chart (Appendix 1). No exceptions.