The Best Man

by Annabelle Costa

  “What movie did you watch?”

  “The Cable Guy,” I tell her. “And Serial Mom.”

  Minnie snorts. “How did you rope him into watching those horrible movies?”

  “They’re not horrible!” I insist. Nobody gets me. “Anyway, it was his idea. He loves both those movies.”

  “Is that so?” She raises her eyebrows, which are flecked with flour. “Sounds like this best man could be your soulmate. Maybe you should dump Teddy and marry him instead.”

  I roll my eyes at Minnie. She’s being completely ridiculous. Although I have to say, until things got weird at the end, I had a really great time watching those movies with John. He and I just connected somehow. It’s too bad he’s such a jerk.

  Chapter 12: John

  For a while after Becky broke up with me, I joined some online dating sites. I figured if Becky liked me, there were other women who might as well. I had three versions of my profile:

  The first contains a headshot of me looking my usual average-looking self. It says nowhere in the profile that I use a wheelchair or am disabled. I used to get plenty of hits from that profile and the women were really flirtatious at first, but the interest usually fizzled fast when I revealed that I’d be showing up on four wheels. Did I say usually? I meant always. It was fucking depressing.

  The second contained my version of a full frontal. Meaning the photo was of me in my wheelchair, looking… well, accurate. I got zero hits from that version. Not even one. Also fucking depressing.

  The third had the benign headshot but I did mention the fact that I’m disabled in the profile. Vaguely—I didn’t say I was a wheelchair-user or a quadriplegic. But it was there. Nobody was going to get blindsided.

  I got a handful of responses from the third version of my profile, some of which have even led to dates. A couple even led to second and third dates, but nothing past that. Three dates is the most I’ve had with a woman since Becky. Two women have kissed me, but it was nothing to write home about. There was never any connection. Most of the time, when they stopped returning my calls or politely said they weren’t interested in anything further, it was a relief as much as it was a disappointment. Although when you kiss a girl and she won’t return your calls, you start to worry about your kissing abilities.

  I ended up taking down all the profiles about six months ago. The awkward dates with strangers weren’t making me happy. I made the decision that if I ended up meeting a girl in some organic way like with Becky, then great, but online dating just wasn’t working for me.

  So it’s surprising when I get an email in my inbox today saying that someone has messaged me about my dating profile. It turns out I left the free accounts active. It’s not worth paying for rejection, but I’ll take it as a free service.

  I try to remember which profile I put up on that site. If it was the one where I failed to mention my disability, the one with the photo of me in the chair, or the one where my disability is in the profile but not the photo.

  It’s a relief to find out that the private message is in response to the third version of my profile. So she knows I’m disabled even though she’s never seen the chair. That’s a start—a possibility. Her name is Allison and she’s a few years older than me, but decently attractive in her picture. She writes: “Hi, John! What’s up?”

  I agonize a lot before I message her back. Should I? Shouldn’t I?

  The cons are the usual: She’s probably not going to be interested once she knows my whole situation. There’s no way she’ll be interested. These dates never work out. It’s going to be painful and awkward. She’s probably ten years older than she looks in her photo.

  This is why I gave up on dating and decided to just be okay with being single for now. Except when I lay my eyes on a woman like Kirby, it makes me realize maybe I’m not as okay with it as I thought.

  So then I think about the pros: Maybe she’ll really like me. Maybe we’ll hit it off. I’m lonely. I haven’t kissed a girl in close to a year. Holy fuck, I want to kiss a girl.

  Then I get wrapped up in a kissing spiral and I realize that I’m definitely messaging this girl.

  I keep it chill. I write back: “Doing good. Whassup with you?”

  Whassup? Why did I write that? Am I thirteen? Is this 1999? Christ, it’s been too long since I’ve dated. I’m getting weird.

  It seems like Allison is online, because she writes back right away: “I’m good too. Liked your profile! Love a guy with a sense of humor.”

  I read over my profile, trying to figure out what gave her the idea that I have a good sense of humor. I can’t figure it out, which is probably a bad sign. I write back: “I liked yours too.”

  Wow, I’m rusty.

  I expect her next question to be about my disability, but it isn’t. And neither are the rest of our back-and-forths. I’m worried maybe she didn’t notice it in my profile. It’s not like I put it in bold capital letters. I should probably say something. I don’t want her to show up at a restaurant to meet me and get surprised. I did that to a girl once and it wasn’t pretty.

  But she seems to really like me and we’ve got a flirtatious banter going—an actual banter. Nothing ruins a flirty banter like saying, “Hey, guess what? I’m a quadriplegic!”

  Two days after our initial exchange, I give her my phone number and she calls me. I’m ridiculously excited about it. Especially when I hear her throaty, raspy voice on the other line. I’m sure that means she’s a smoker, which I hate, but I don’t care. It’s fucking sexy as hell.

  “Hi, John,” she says. “So I finally get to confirm you’re not an eight-year-old boy.”

  “Nope,” I say. “I haven’t been eight in at least two years.”

  Allison laughs throatily. “You have a cute voice, John.”

  We end up talking for the better part of an hour—nothing too deep, mostly just flirting. Then she suggests drinks. Part of me wants to see her this instant and part of me never wants to see her. Correction: never wants her to see me.

  “Listen,” I say carefully. “I just… I should mention… I mean, it’s in my profile, but… I’m disabled.”

  Not too much information. Not right away.

  “Yeah, I saw that,” Allison says casually. “So am I.”

  I suck in a breath. What? Okay, that’s a twist. A cute disabled girl—that could be a good thing. She doesn’t look disabled in her profile pic, but neither do I. “You are?”

  “Oh yeah,” she says. “For, like, three years now. How about you?”

  “Six years,” I say.

  Allison lets out a low whistle. “Wow, and you’re only thirty-one, right? You got started young. I was working at the supermarket and I was lifting this crate, and bam, I blew three discs in my back. Haven’t been able to work since.” She lowers her voice. “On bad days, I have to use a cane.”

  Aw crap. She doesn’t have any clue. “Oh,” is all I can come up with.

  “How about you?” she asks.

  “I, uh…” I have to tell her. I don’t want to, but I have to. “Actually, I still work. But… I do use a wheelchair.” Then, for reasons that I can’t entirely explain, I quickly add, “Sometimes.”

  “Oh, wow…” Allison sounds properly impressed. “You got it worse than me then. Although there are some days when I’d love a wheelchair.”

  If I weren’t so horny and desperate, I’d be personally affronted by that statement. There are no days when I love my wheelchair. There are no days when I wouldn’t give anything just to be able to walk again, even just a little.

  “So what about Saturday night?” Allison suggests.

  I glance at the calendar on my phone and I realize: “Saturday is Valentine’s Day.”

  “Yeah, well.” I can almost hear Allison shrug. “It’s just a day like any other, right? And it’s not like either of us have any other romantic plans if we’re on a dating website.”

  “Okay,” I breathe, although I’m not entirely sure it’s okay. Our first date on
Valentine’s Day—this could be a story we’ll tell our children someday. But I suspect that it’s probably just going to make what’s usually a painful day for me even worse.

  As we solidify our plans, I get this nagging feeling that I really need to be straighter with her about my disability. I should just be entirely honest with her. But it’s not like I didn’t tell her about the chair. I told her. She won’t be taken off guard when I show up in it. This is going to be fine. True love. All that crap.

  _____

  I spend too long trying to figure out what I’m going to wear for the big date with Allison. This is my first date in a long fucking time. This isn’t going to be like in college when I’d just throw on whatever T-shirt and jeans were least dirty. (Okay, who am I kidding? I was never casual about girls. I always obsessed too much.)

  It’s a no brainer that I’m going to wear long sleeves. A T-shirt is far easier to put on so it’s what I always wear around my house, but when I venture out into the real world with other human beings, I don’t want them gawking at my bony forearms. I put on a black dress shirt, and luckily, Maddie is around cleaning, so she helps me out with the buttons on the sleeves.

  “You look cute, John,” she tells me as she runs a hand through my black hair to help me smooth it out. “Where are you headed out to?”

  “Just going out with some friends,” I mumble. I know if I tell her I’m meeting a girl, she’ll get excited and embarrass the shit out of me. And probably get me more nervous than I already am.

  I check out my face in the vanity mirror over my sink. I look okay. I don’t have a particularly spectacular face in one direction or the other. I’m really average. My eyes are slightly slanted and darker than they look like they should be thanks to my father’s Chinese ethnicity, but most people think I’m just a regular white guy with slanted eyes.

  I don’t have a full length mirror in my apartment. I don’t want one. The last thing I want is a daily reminder of how I look. After a period of time, being in a wheelchair seems almost normal and you genuinely forget the way other people see you. Mirrors are a brutal reminder that I’m not just a normal guy sitting in a chair. I look disabled—and not just a little bit.

  And those aren’t the sort of thoughts I need to have in my head just before my first date in a long fucking time.

  Allison and I are meeting at a bar that I’ve been to before, so I know it’s accessible. I know what she looks like, so when I wheel in the door, I keep my eyes pinned for a woman with ash-blond hair and a heart-shaped face. When I see her, my heart drops. Not because she looks about ten years older than she did in her photo—she’s clearly pushing forty and has possibly even pushed it already—but because she’s seated herself all the way in the back.

  Great.

  I make my way back there, battling chairs and tables and barstools. I’m halfway across the room when my wheel hooks on something, and I can’t figure out what it is. It’s too goddamn dark in here. All I know is that I’m stuck.

  I’ve caused enough commotion that Allison finally spots me. I can see the way her eyes widen at my appearance—and that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I don’t have a full length mirror at home. She stands up, and I’m relieved that she walks toward me and not right out the door.

  It turns out what snagged me was some girl’s long purse strap. It’s wrapped itself around my wheel. Her boyfriend tries to work it loose. What a mess. “Could you get up for just a minute?” he asks me.

  Allison arrives just in time to hear my response: “No, I can’t. Sorry.”

  She stands in front of me, smiling awkwardly as the guy keeps trying to free me. I dare to look up at her, and even in the dim light of the bar, it’s obvious that I was right she lied about her age—she’s at least forty, even though she claimed to be in her early thirties like me. The bar is no-smoking, but I can smell the smoke fumes wafting off her slim body. But despite all that, she’s sexy—I’d love to have a nice evening with her. She clutches her own purse and flashes her yellow smoker’s teeth at me. “John?”

  I nod. “Yeah.” I glance over at the guy who is still working at my wheel. What the hell is taking him so long? He’s untangling a purse strap from my wheel, not solving a Rubik’s cube. “Sorry.”

  “We can sit over here.” Allison nods at the next table over. Right next to the purse that trapped me. Wonderful.

  I do eventually get free and I’m able to join my date, who doesn’t look all that thrilled to be here with me. But to her credit, she could have easily taken off while I was entangled in the purse and couldn’t chase her down. She didn’t. So I’ve got to give her props for that.

  “You’re not really what I thought,” Allison finally tells me.

  I almost shoot back that she’s no thirty-year-old, but I’ve still got some distant hope that this could work out, so I keep my fool mouth shut. “Yeah,” is all I say.

  She squints at me thoughtfully. “It’s sneaky that you misrepresented yourself that way.”

  “I told you I use a wheelchair,” I mutter.

  “You said sometimes. You can’t walk at all, can you?”

  I feel the heat burning my cheeks. “No.”

  “So,” she says, “you lied.”

  She’s got a point—what can I say? I was a shit. I lied to her by “misrepresenting” myself. “Sorry.” I watch her playing with the strap of her own purse and I can tell she’s thinking about taking off. I don’t want her to go—the thought of her walking out on me at this point makes me feel awful.

  “Please don’t go,” I blurt out, feeling like a tool as I say it. “Just… stay and have a drink with me. Okay?”

  Allison blinks a few times in surprise, as if she can’t believe I guessed she was trying to make an exit. She frowns thoughtfully. “Okay, I’ll stay and have dinner with you,” she says. Then, before I can celebrate, she adds, “If you give me fifty bucks.”

  Jesus. I thought I couldn’t feel any worse than I did a minute ago, but there it is. Wow.

  “But that’s just for dinner,” she says. “No touching or kissing. Got it?”

  It just keeps getting better and better.

  I may be out on an internet date on Valentine’s Day with a woman who wants fifty bucks just to be seen with me, but I do have a little dignity left.

  “Fuck you,” I say. “I’m not giving you fifty bucks. Get the fuck out of here.”

  Allison shrugs as she rises from her seat. “Hey, I could use some extra cash and you look like you could use some company. But that’s fine.”

  As I watch her walk out of the bar, I feel sick. I can’t believe this just happened. Yeah, my dating life has sucked lately. But I didn’t think it had gotten to the point where I’d have to pay a woman just to spend time with me.

  No touching or kissing.

  She didn’t even want to touch me. The thought of it repulsed her.

  That’s it. After I get home, I’m deleting all my remaining dating profiles. I’m done with this shit. I’d rather be single.

  I sit there, thinking about what happened, and my stupid eyes start tearing up. The worst part is that it’s Valentine’s Day, which really shouldn’t matter because it’s just a stupid day, but somehow it does. I can’t believe Allison wanted money to stay here. I can’t believe it.

  Then my phone starts to buzz. I pull it out, lay it down on the circular table, and see Kirby’s number on the screen. I frown and hit the green button with my knuckle.

  “John?” Her voice is breathless. “Listen, I really need your help…”

  Chapter 13: Kirby

  There’s a bridal outlet down in Jackson that one of my friends raved about, and I decided that the Sunday of Valentine’s Day was the perfect day to check it out. It’s over an hour away from me, so it wasn’t a quick drive, but the fact that it was Valentine’s Day meant that the shop was nearly empty. After all, anyone getting married in the near future probably would have plans for Valentine’s Day. Except for the girl whose fiancé is three-thousa
nd miles away.

  I looked at a few possibilities for bridesmaids dresses, and then I… drumroll please… bought a wedding gown! It’s a beautiful sleeveless, scoop neck gown that had just the right amount of lace to not be overwhelming, and it was so reasonably priced that I couldn’t leave the store without it.

  There’s something really surreal about buying your wedding dress. I kept looking at it in amazement, thinking to myself, “This is the dress I’m going to get married in.” I almost cried, if I’m being totally honest.

  While I was driving home, I was on top of the world. I finally had a wedding dress! And even though Ted told me that I should spend whatever I wanted on it and he’d pay the bill, I was pleased that I found something that fit into my assistant baker budget. I’ve been living frugally for so long, it’s hard to break the habit.

  And then my engine died.

  I was at a red light just before reaching the highway. And all of a sudden, I saw smoke pouring out of my hood. And then the engine light came on. (A little late, thank you very much. The smoke was a big enough alert.)

  So that’s why instead of being halfway home with my wedding dress, I am sitting at a service station just outside of Jackson, New Jersey, being told that it’s going to take at least a day to repair my engine. And oh yeah, the wait to get a taxi is two hours.

  “Two hours?” I scream at the taxi dispatcher on the phone.

  “Maybe three,” he says. “Definitely no more than four hours.”

  “How is that possible?!”

  “It’s Valentine’s Day, lady,” he explains in his thick Jersey accent. “What do you expect?”

  “So what am I supposed to do?” I say, clutching my white dress so hard, it might very well rip.

  “Dunno, wait two hours?” he suggests. “Or you get a friend to pick you up.”

  Great. Because I’ve got dozens of friends willing to drive an hour out to Jackson on Valentine’s Day to rescue me.