No More Horrible Dates

by Kate O'Keeffe

  “Is it too much of a cop-out to say I just haven’t met the right guy?” I reply.

  “Not at all. I think I like you even more now that I’ve heard that.” His eyes are warm as he smiles across the (sticky, ugh) table at me, and the team of high kickers inside my tummy do their thing and shout, “This guy is great!”

  We continue to chat and flirt with another until I’ve finished my glass of wine and Chris offers to buy us another drink. A moment later, he’s back with more Pinot Grigio and an even larger glass of scotch for himself.

  As I eye his drink, I can no longer hold myself back. “You like scotch, huh?”

  “Yeah, I do. My family’s Scottish, so I basically grew up on this stuff.”

  An image of Chris as a baby drinking scotch from a bottle flashes before my eyes. “Not really, right?” I say with a light laugh.

  “Nah. I’m kidding. But the Scots do know how to drink. Slàinte,” he says, raising his glass. “That’s Gaelic for ‘cheers.’”

  “Right. Got it. Slàinte,” I repeat as I lift my glass of wine. I watch agog, as he swallows down the amber liquid, slapping his empty glass on the table once more.

  “Did you have a bad day or something?” I blurt out before I can stop myself. It’s really no business of mine. I’ve only just met the guy.

  “What?” he asks then realization dawns on his face. “Oh. Yeah, it’s been a crappy day. A crappy week, really.”

  “Because of your great aunt?”

  He looks at me blankly.

  “The one who died?” I add hesitatingly.

  “Oh, yeah, because of my great aunt. Right.”

  Wow, he really wasn’t close to her.

  “But generally, it was a bad week.” He reaches across the table and takes my hand in his. “That’s why I’m glad I met you over the bananas.”

  I smile, my shoulders relaxing with relief. He’s had a bad week, that’s all. People often drink more when they’re stressed. Although my girlfriends and I tend to stress eat copious amounts of sugar instead, I get that. I work with arrogant, self-interested rugby pros after all. I know what stress is, believe me.

  He presses his phone on the table, and his screen lights up. “Hey, I’ve got to go do a thing right now. Wanna come with me? It won’t take long, and then we can go grab a bite to eat.”

  “A thing?” I question.

  “Yeah. It’s already started, so I’d better go. But, you know, you could come. If you want.”

  Although his scotch intake is sounding alarm bells in my head, I like this guy, and I don’t want this first date—okay, “Initial Meeting”—to end just yet. “That sounds fun.”

  “I should probably tell you it’s a wake for, you know, my great aunt.”

  “Oh.” Oh, no. I pull a face. “Not fun then.”

  “It’ll be fine. I’ll deliver these”—he picks up the flowers from the table and waves them in the air—“say hello to some people, and then we can go. It’ll take ten minutes tops.”

  Going to a wake for the great aunt of a guy I met less than an hour ago seems a little off. A lot off. “Are you sure?” I question. “I didn’t know her. It feels kinda weird to me.”

  He hops off his stool and offers me his hand. “I am totally sure. Having you there will really help take my mind off it all.”

  “I thought you said you hadn’t seen her since you were fourteen.”

  “Oh, yeah. Take my mind off death in general, that’s what I mean.” He shudders. “Death. It sucks.”

  How eloquent.

  “Okay,” I reply, very possibly against my better judgment, and we walk hand-in-hand out of the bar and down the street a block to a church hall. I can hear people talking in low, respectful voices inside before Chris pushes through the doors. We enter a brightly lit room, packed full of people dressed in black, all with grim looks on their faces. Which is appropriate, of course, because this is a wake for a dead person.

  I glance down at my yellow summery dress and instantly feel like a lone flower in the gloom. Don’t get me wrong, I adore my dress. I made it myself, like I do with most of my clothes. It’s got a sweetheart neckline and puff cap sleeves, and the A-line shape is subtly sexy, falling just on the knee. Being non-tall, finding cute and sexy clothes can be a real challenge. My mom taught me to sew, and designing clothes became my passion from a young age. If I had been brave enough to follow my dreams instead of getting a sensible (boring) business degree which led to a sensible (boring) job to make my dad proud, I would be a fashion designer.

  Maybe someday I’ll be brave enough to follow that dream.

  A stiff-looking middle-aged woman with bobbed hair and a gaunt face approaches us. “Chris. You’re here,” she says and then slides her eyes over me and adds, “and you brought a date.” There’s more than a note of distaste in her voice.

  “Yeah, ah, this is Erin,” Chris says with a slur before he turns and flings the flowers unceremoniously onto a nearby table.

  My guess is all that scotch has now hit his bloodstream.

  “Erin,” Chris continues, “meet my mom.”

  I gawk at the woman. This is his mother? What a way to meet my potential future mother-in-law! At her aunt’s funeral with her half-drunk son.

  “Hello, Mrs.—” I stop abruptly. What is Chris’s last name again? It starts with a G I think. Govenor? Gavin? Or was it a J? I rack my brain, but I come up with nothing. In the end, all I do is repeat, “Hello,” in as grave a tone as I can muster, hoping to convey my sense of loss for her as well as respect for the dead (which is a lot to load onto one word, really).

  Mrs. Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Is blinks at me a couple of times before she gives me a brief nod and turns back to Chris.

  “Erin’s really great,” Chris begins, totally not reading his mom’s mood. “We met at the supermarket tonight, and I knew she was single because she had bananas in her basket. Did you know that’s a thing, Mom? That’s a thing, right, Erin? The banana thing?” His speech is really slurred now.

  “I, ah, yes, I think it is,” I reply. Chris is right. I had heard somewhere that having bananas in your basket at the supermarket on a certain night of the week indicates singledom, but tonight I was buying bananas because I like bananas. Come to think of it, I wonder what all the married and coupled-up banana lovers do? Get hit on when all they’re trying to do is buy their favorite fresh produce? What a nightmare.

  “Well, whether it is or it isn’t, it might have been best to leave your new friend at the supermarket, Christopher.” Mrs. Whatever-Her-Last-Name-Is gives Chris a meaningful look before she turns to me and says, “He’s grieving, you understand. He’s not quite himself.”

  “Yes, of course,” I reply, feeling about the size of a Lilliputian. Why did I let Chris bring me here? I knew it wouldn’t be appropriate to go on a date to a wake. “He must have loved his great aunt very much. Your great aunt. No, that’s not right. Your aunt. Yes, that’s it.”

  She crinkles her brow. “I’m sorry?”

  I swallow, feeling increasingly awkward. “Chris told me he and the…deceased weren’t close, but now I suspect he was putting on a brave face. The loss of anyone in one’s family is hard,” I say, trying my best to sound philosophical and wise, “even if it is for a great aunt one has not seen for some time.” Pleased with my assessment, I tilt my head and smile sympathetically at her.

  She studies me for a few seconds before she takes me by the elbow and walks me away from Chris. “My dear, I don’t know why he told you that his great aunt is dead. She is, but that’s beside the point.”

  “Right,” I say in the same sympathetic tone, not following in the slightest.

  She lowers her voice and says, “It’s his girlfriend.”

  My disappointment stings. I knew Chris being single was too good to be true! “He has a girlfriend?”

  She presses her thin lips together and shakes her head. “Had. He had a girlfriend. She died.”

  I place my hand over my chest. “Oh, but that
’s awful!”

  “Yes, yes, it is.”

  I glance at Chris. He’s got his head bowed now, looking thoroughly dejected. “When did she, you know, pass?”

  “Last week.”

  My eyes almost pop out of my head in shock. “Last week? Oh, no. Poor Chris! No wonder he drank his body weight in scotch.”

  She purses her lips. “Indeed. And bringing you here to his girlfriend’s wake is in very poor taste, don’t you think?”

  Wait, what?!

  I blink at her creased, tight face. “This is his girlfriend’s wake?”

  She raises her eyebrows. “Does your IQ match your EQ? Yes, Erin, this is Chris’s girlfriend’s wake.”

  My jaw dropping to the floor, I turn to look at Chris. He’s now rummaging around in his pocket for something, completely oblivious to my discovery. In shock, my eyes glide past him and land on a poster-sized picture of a young woman on a beach, smiling out at the camera, the wind in her hair. The name Caitlin Forrester and the dates she lived tell me all I need to know.

  Oh, no.

  “I’m so, so sorry, Mrs.—” I still have no recollection of Chris’s last name, but I know I need to press on to make this right. Or as right as I can when I’ve met a guy, had a drink with him, and he’s invited me to his dead girlfriend’s wake. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea. Really, I didn’t. Chris told me this was his great aunt’s wake, Mrs.…Chris’s mom.”

  She shoots me a puzzled look. “Christopher has had a very hard time of it lately,” she explains, and I nod along. “I’m sure you’ll understand that I need you to leave.”

  “Leave. Yes. Of course. That’s what I’ll do.” I begin to back away. “Right now, in fact.” I glance quickly at Chris, but he’s so preoccupied with trying to appear normal, he seems completely oblivious to my presence.

  I back right away until I bump up against something. I turn in alarm to see I’ve inadvertently backed into a large arrangement of flowers. I manage to catch it before it topples over. Phew! That was close.

  As I check that the flowers are stable, I hear the familiar tones of an Adele song coming from somewhere nearby. She sings out the title of the track, saying hello to someone who’s on the other side of something. And then it repeats, the same words again. And again.

  Chris and his mom and a bunch of people nearby turn and gawk at me.

  For a moment, I’m confused. Why are they all looking at me? I know I’m not meant to be here, but I’m not singing the wildly inappropriate song.

  And then, with a sickening realization, I work out where the sound is coming from. My purse. My phone is ringing in my purse. I’m the one with the song saying hello from the other side to a bunch of people at a wake.

  In a flood of mortification, I remember Darcy and I had been messing around with the ringtones on our phones last night, and she’d changed mine to this song. She laughed when she said she was calling me from the other side of the room to go get her another soda.

  Now, standing at a wake, the words take on a whole new meaning.

  “Erin?” Chris says, his face aghast. He looks like he’s seen a ghost—or at least heard one.

  I put my hands up in the air. “Oh, no. No, I don’t mean Caitlin. She’s not calling from the other side, or from anywhere, because, you know—” What am I going to say, because she’s dead? No, I can’t! That would be horrible, just like this date. Horrible, horrible, horrible! I swallow and try again. “It’s just my ring tone. That’s all it is. My roommate and I changed it last night,” I explain in a rush. “It’s quite funny, really, when you think about it. Don’t you…think…?” I trail off, as people continue to stare at me and my internal voice yells, Stop, Erin. Just Stop!

  I have so got to get out of here.

  As if I need a final straw—because I’ve got to tell you, right now my straw stack has reached the freaking ceiling—I back away from the gawking crowd right into that darn flower arrangement again, the one I’d only just managed to save from toppling over. This time though, there’s no saving it, and it goes crashing to the floor to a collective gasp from the people watching. Which, by now, is pretty much everyone in the room.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I mutter. I catch the look of utter bewilderment on Chris’s Mom’s face. And then, I turn and run, letting the heavy door bang against the wall in my haste to get out of there.

  As I make it out onto the street, I run from the mortification, I run from the sadness in the room, and I run from the world’s most inappropriate funeral song. But most of all, I run from the chance of something new with someone I thought was a normal, straightforward guy. Today will go down in history as the new champion in my ever increasing catalogue of utterly horrible, horrible dates.

  Chapter 2

  I’m still recovering from my funeral ordeal the following morning on my daily commute into the Hawks office. As I think of the look on Chris’s mom’s face (I guess I’ll never need to know her last name now), ice-cold humiliation drips down my back.

  Last night, when I literally raced back to my apartment, I confessed the full sorry story to my roommate, Darcy. She was both shocked and amused by what I told her, but mostly amused, particularly when I told her about the Adele song at the end.

  I had to laugh when she asked me if he thought it was his dead girlfriend calling from the grave. Of course he did! Everyone in that room must have thought that.

  And now, as I sit in my car, stuck in barely crawling traffic, I’m back to square one: dateless, single, alone, and surrounded by my loved-up BFFs with their great guys. Lucky me that the first guy I’d been interested in since Braydon turned out to be a scotch-chugging, dead-girlfriend-denying fraud who put me in that truly awful situation.

  Braydon. The mere thought of his name makes my body tense. He was the one I fell for hard. The one who let me down. Even though I know I’m over him, he left a trail of destruction across my heart, and it took me a long time to even want to look at another guy.

  I grip the steering wheel of the car my brother, Tim, says has a motor the size of an alarm clock and try my best not to dwell on my singledom. With my one and only date in recent memory ending in total disaster, I’m not holding out much hope for the romantic fairy tale ending I so want. I guess the only thing to do is focus on my career. Or, to be more precise, to focus on the career I want to have. You see, even though I manage sponsorship deals for the Hawks, my true passion lies in designing clothes, specifically clothes for non-talls like me. Being the first person in my family to ever graduate with a degree, my parents were so proud of me, I couldn’t let them down and throw it all away. Which is how I find myself in a job I don’t like, working with a bunch of jocks, when all I want to do is design clothes.

  I learned all I know from my dear mom. She taught me to sew, she encouraged me to design, and she always found something positive in all the clothes I made—even when the seams were wonky or the material sagged in the wrong place. For me, designing and making clothes is my outlet. It lets me be me, and I’d love nothing more than to make it my career someday.

  I follow the traffic onto the Great North Road, and that’s when I see the large billboard that I’m forced to look at every morning of my life looming before me. It’s an image of my least favorite rugby player, someone I know all too well, thanks to the fact that he’s the face of Bennett Motors, the team’s largest sponsor.

  Nick Zachary. Even his name makes me tense up. He embodies everything that I loathe about sports pros and rugby players in particular. He’s arrogant, good-looking in that totally-knows-it kind of way, and is so far up his own butt I wouldn’t be surprised if daylight was a foreign concept to him.

  And what’s more, right now as I sit in barely crawling traffic, he’s gazing down at me from thirty feet in the air, taunting me with his glistening six-pack as he poses next to a Bennett Motors car.

  I scoff, as I always do right about now on my daily commute. Why does the guy have to be shirtless to advertise a car? I mean puh-lease! It’s
an ad for a freaking car, people, not chest wax. If I were him, I’d be claiming sexism, that the world is treating me as an object rather than admiring me for my sporting prowess. But he doesn’t, and he won’t. Instead, he continues to gaze out at me with that smug look on his face as I crawl along in my tiny car with the alarm clock engine.

  I avert my eyes as the traffic begins to creep marginally at more than a snail’s pace, and mercifully, I pass by the billboard before I come to a stop at another red light. My phone beeps, and I collect it from the passenger seat. It’s from my boss, Ed Steele, and it’s all in caps. Hmmm. Ed really only uses yelling-at-you-in-an-extremely-loud-voice caps if there’s something seriously wrong.

  URGENT MEETING IN CONFERENCE ROOM

  I wonder what’s up? I glance at the light—still red—and tap out a quick reply.

  Everything okay, Ed?

  My phone pings again in less than five seconds.

  NO! GET HERE. NOW!

  Well, I guess that’s clear. Worry rolls through me. What can this be about? As the lights change I tap out a hasty reply.

  Will be there in 5 minutes.

  Nine minutes later—darn the Auckland traffic—I push my way through the glass revolving doors into the lobby, give a quick wave to the girls on the reception desk, and manage to dive into a packed elevator before the doors close with a whoosh behind me. I drum my fingers against my thigh as I stare at the numbers highlighting each floor on our slow climb to level twenty-one. I’m sure we stop at every single floor, and more and more people pour out, until finally it’s just me and someone else standing at the back of the elevator. I’m too focused on watching the numbers climb to notice who.

  “You seriously need to relax, Erin,” a voice says behind me, and I whip around to see who a) knows me by name and b) is being so rude.

  My eyes land on a tall guy with an athletic physique wearing a hoodie top paired with track pants and a set of headphones hooked around his neck. His brown eyes gaze back at me with a hint of a smile around his lips.