Cold Feet

by Amy FitzHenry

  I was struck by intense déjà vu.

  “This block looks so familiar, doesn’t it?”

  Liv gave me an incredulous look. “You don’t remember?”

  “Did we come here in law school? Remind me.”

  Liv pointed to the bar on the corner of the block. “That’s where we met Tony.” I mentally reset the day counter where I kept track of how much time had passed since Liv last brought Tony up in conversation. Tony, also known as Sexy Tony Brown, or Liv’s first love. The guy who stole her heart, ripped it out, and four years later still held a piece of it in his sexy hand. I calculated that it had been approximately six months since Liv last mentioned him, although I had to admit, this time it was probably my fault.

  After huffing our way up what felt like a million stairs, we found the key under the mat as promised and slowly opened the door. The apartment was even nicer, if slightly messier, than in the pictures I’d seen. As we’d only given the owner one hour’s notice, I mentally excused the mess.

  According to the listing, the apartment was owned by Phillip C. Richardson, who had a list of positive reviews but no picture. He sounded quite distinguished. I pictured a harried workaholic who could afford a beautiful, well-kept apartment, discounted due to unfortunate stairway placement, but didn’t have time to occupy it.

  The apartment turned out to be a duplex. On the first level was our room, as well as an additional somewhat lived-in guest room, a kitchen, and a large open living room. The entire top floor was a master bedroom and office—Phillip’s room, we assumed—which we decided not to check out, even though the place was empty. If we got caught, our snoopiness would surely result in a bad Airbnb review.

  “There’s a note on the kitchen table that says come to the bar down the street, not the Tony one, thank God,” Liv intoned. I reset the Sexy Tony Brown counter once again. “To meet our host. What do you think? That’s kind of weird, but nice, too, I guess.”

  “Why not? We can say hi and then do our own thing.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  After throwing down our bags and doing a final quick sweep of the apartment, we headed to the brewery where the apartment owner claimed to be. “Let’s get some drinks, find a table, and start working on our Hunter plan of attack,” Liv shouted over the din of the bar. “Then we can text Phillip and say we’re here and at a table so we don’t have to hang out with him all night.” We positioned ourselves at either end of the bar, so we were guaranteed to be served first, whether the bartender preferred blondes or redheads. I attempted to smile at him flirtatiously, but he only glanced at me with a smirk that said he knew exactly what I was doing and served the person to my right. I immediately turned bright red and stepped back, slightly behind a tall guy with dark hair sticking out of a green baseball cap, who jostled me slightly on my right.

  “Hey, sorry about that,” he said, turning to apologize, giving me a direct view of his bright hazel eyes. He had that nice-guy look, with a friendly smile and eyelashes so long that had he been wearing makeup, he would have gotten mascara smudges all over his face. I sighed jealously. I longed to have the mascara smudge problem. Luckily for him, his face was saved from being boringly cute by a scar that looked like a checkmark under his right eye. It made his whole face look slightly asymmetrical, but the whole thing made quite a nice package, and strangely, I had the sudden urge to reach out and touch his scar. Was it because of its interesting shape or because I was a crazy person? I was unclear.

  “Can I buy you a drink to make it up to you? And for your friend, of course,” he said, noticing Liv walk up empty-handed.

  “Sure, but only if it’ll ease your guilty conscience.” Strange thoughts about touching his face notwithstanding, free drinks were free drinks. I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, so I made sure my engagement ring was positioned facing out, and I ran my hand through my uncombed hair to give him a good view of it. Unfortunately, on the way down it got caught in my tangles.

  “Are you okay?” he said, turning around to notice my awkward positioning, arm sticking out, elbow akimbo. “Are you . . . stuck?”

  I turned pink with embarrassment as I tried to unwind my ring from my hair to avoid yanking out a chunk. “I’m fine, just got a little caught.” I gave up on the delicacy of the operation and started freely tugging, my arm starting to fatigue. “It’s okay, don’t worry about it.” I felt suddenly light-headed from having my arm up for so long and wondered what would happen if I fainted.

  Liv stepped in, quickly removing the ring from my hand first so I could take my arm down, and then deftly guiding it out of my hair like an egg from a bird’s nest. She handed it to me and everyone watched as I put it back on my left hand, which was bright red from exertion. Well, at least now he knew I was engaged.

  “Two more beers,” he said. “Do you guys have a preference?”

  “Amstel Light,” Liv piped in, at the same moment I said, “Allagash.” Great. Way to make me look high maintenance, Liv.

  “Done and done. I’m Dusty, by the way. We’re also getting shots. Buttery Nipples sound good?” I nodded before he could say it again. There’s only so much embarrassment a girl can take. He signaled to the snobby bartender that he needed two more shots.

  “Can we order food up here?” I asked.

  The bartender shook his head. “Someone will come around to your table.” He slammed down the drinks and turned to the next guy.

  “But we don’t have a table,” I said impotently.

  Dusty picked up the drinks and motioned across the bar.

  “We have one.” Without waiting for my assent, he started heading to the corner of the bar with the drinks and I turned to Liv, who had already started following him.

  “Do you want to sit with these guys?”

  “Relax, Em. We’ll see if his friends are cute, say thanks for the drinks, and then find our own table.”

  “What about Phillip?” I said to Liv’s retreating back. She ignored me.

  Dusty led us to a rowdy table with three other guys and pulled out two seats for us. I did a quick calculation: two Titleist hats, four legs clad in madras shorts, and one pastel popped collar. Jeez Louise, these guys were preppy.

  “Do you guys live around here in the Marina?” I asked innocently, to amuse Liv more than anything else, because it was practically guaranteed that this group of bros inhabited the preppiest section of San Francisco.

  “Yeah,” answered Madras #1, who introduced himself pompously as Carrick, silently daring us to ask which rich grandfather he was named after. He had a surprisingly deep voice, dark eyes, and a sexy, wolflike set of teeth.

  I lightly kicked Liv, ready to take our shots and get the hell out of there. But unfortunately, somewhere between Carrick’s foxy smile and his Alec Baldwin impression, I’d lost her. I had to admit, there was something very appealing about the way Carrick’s lips disappeared when he bared his teeth. It shouldn’t be hot, but it was. Liv ignored my signal, flashing the boys a pretty smile. Damn it, I thought, she’s gonna be nice to them.

  “That’s great. I love this area. We’re visiting for the weekend.”

  “Where are you guys staying while you’re in town?” Dusty asked.

  I gave him the address, which caused Carrick to look up.

  “Where?” he chimed in.

  I repeated the street name and number.

  “That’s my building,” Carrick said.

  “And mine, for the time being,” Dusty added. “I’m staying in Carrick’s spare room until I find my own place.”

  “That’s funny,” Liv exclaimed. “It’s an Airbnb place we rented out from a guy named Phillip. Is he your neighbor?”

  Carrick laughed. “Nice to meet you,” Carrick said to Liv, holding out his hand. “Phillip Carrick Richardson, but I go by my middle name. I guess that makes me your landlord.”

  My head
swam. We were staying with these frat boys? Abruptly, I desperately wanted to be on my couch with Sam, with my legs in his lap, sharing a pint of chocolate chocolate chip Häagen-Dazs and debating which episode of Friday Night Lights we were on. As if on cue, my phone rattled on the table. Sam Powell: iMessage.

  That’s good news, I told myself, slightly cheered. We were still connected enough that he could sense something was off between us and intuitively knew to check in. I gave myself a mini talking-to. Everything is fine between you and Sam. You are with your best friend. You have a drink. You are having fun.

  I held up my Buttery Nipple. “Are we going to take these or not?” The boys cheered in the affirmative, and the atmosphere at the table instantly changed from introductory to celebratory as we clinked our glasses and took our shots, each of us getting fractionally drunker and less self-conscious.

  It turned out Carrick was a buddy of Dusty’s from college. Dusty had recently moved out west from Manhattan and was, along with two other friends, creating a start-up much like Yelp, but targeted toward finding the holes-in-the-wall and neighborhood hangouts frequented by the city’s residents. They were going to call it MyLocal.com.

  “I love that!” I exclaimed genuinely. “Whenever I move to a new town I immediately search for my local—such a good name—coffee shop, bar, and bookstore. And trust me, I moved a lot growing up, so I know what I’m talking about.”

  “That’s great,” Dusty said. He was visibly pleased that I liked the idea. The more he talked about MyLocal, the genesis, the site design, and the investors, the more apparent it was that the company was his baby. My whole life I had always been interested in people with passions, no matter what those passions were. Ice hockey, street art, stand-up comedy, you name it. A person who cared desperately about what he did was cool.

  “We still have a lot of work to do. Our office doesn’t even have a coffeemaker yet. But when we do figure out how to turn on our computers and, you know, launch a company, you can be our first user.” He smiled, flashing killer straight white teeth.

  I wasn’t attracted to Dusty and his perfect smile, I told myself. I wasn’t flirting with him or enamored with his creative business savvy. I was one hundred percent still longing to be snuggled up with Sam and Coach Taylor. Despite this, I was having fun. With my new friend, I inwardly italicized.

  “One more question for you, Emma,” Dusty asked as my burger arrived and I heavily salted the fries that accompanied it. “Actually, two questions. Aren’t you concerned about your sodium intake, and two, what are you guys doing in San Francisco a few days before your wedding?”

  I’d given him the sketchy background of my relationship, but no specifics. Maybe it was the freedom I felt at that moment, temporarily untethered from the reality of my life, but, surprising myself as much as him, I told him the truth.

  “I’m looking for my birth father,” I said simply, reaching for the ketchup. “And I don’t believe in the whole ‘salt is bad for you’ thing.”

  “I’m not sure it’s really up for debate,” he said, laughing, before he paused. “Please tell me if I’m overstepping, but you don’t know your dad?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I’ve never met him before, never spoken to him. I just know he’s somewhere in San Francisco. Liv and I were supposed to be taking a bachelorette trip to Napa, but we made a detour. I guess I wanted to find him before I got married.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “It does?” I asked, shocked that he wasn’t, well, shocked.

  “Sure. It stands to reason that you would want to know your own family before you join someone else’s. How are you planning on finding him? Do you have an address or anything?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I guess I thought actually being in the same city as him would help; I’m not sure why. Does that sound ridiculous?”

  “Nope, it doesn’t. What kind of Internet searching did you say you’ve done?” Dusty asked thoughtfully. I explained the shallow depths of my research and how difficult it was to find a person whose name wasn’t really a name, but two words.

  “That’s the problem,” Dusty said, thinking out loud. “You need a search database that’s only for people. Like Yellowpages .com. Something that won’t cloud up the hits with half-moons and statistics on deer overpopulation.”

  “Why deer . . . ? Oh, Hunter. Exactly! Hey, this is your area of expertise. After you get MyLocal up and running, you should start a Who’s My Daddy app for people looking for deadbeat dads.”

  Dusty laughed but looked like he was considering it. I made a mental note to invest.

  “Have you tried LinkedIn?”

  “No, only Facebook and Google,” I said, feeling like a moron. “That’s a really good idea. That would narrow it down to just people.”

  “Exactly. LinkedIn, Twitter, Meetup—something where you can put in a first and last name.”

  Dusty pulled out his phone. “Here, let me show you.” Over the next few minutes, he quickly checked a few of the social networks he’d mentioned for Hunter’s first name, last name, and any combination of the two, using HTML language and a search box I wasn’t familiar with. This was ostensibly to make it go faster, although he might have just been showing off. I felt slightly less stupid when he also came up with nothing.

  “I have to admit,” I joked, “I’m glad we didn’t find him on Meetup. It sounds a little too Tinder-y for my taste.”

  “Meetup isn’t like that,” Dusty said defensively. “It’s for people who have hobbies like skydiving and who move to new a city and want to meet people who share their interests.”

  He paused.

  I gave him a knowing look.

  “Fine, I’ll admit it. Carrick is the only person I knew when I moved to San Francisco. I joined to play Scrabble. And I know what you’re going to say, but online Scrabble isn’t the same! The sense of excitement is lost.”

  I genuinely had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I excused myself to get another round of drinks with Liv, and we made a quick detour to the bathroom to have an official girl chat.

  “You and Carrick seem to be hitting it off,” I said cheekily.

  “He’s cute,” Liv offered lightly. “I can’t get over all of the coincidences today. First, our rental is on the street of the bar where I met Tony.” I reset the counter. “Then we run into the guys who live there at the bar. What’s next?” she said as she pushed the door open and turned back to look at me.

  As if on cue, standing at the sink was Val Baby.

  That wasn’t her real name, of course. Her full name was Valerie Babbitt. Val Baby was her social media handle. More than that, it was what she encouraged everyone to call her. I am a firm believer in the fact that you can’t give yourself a nickname. If a nickname comes your way, accept it. If not, sorry. But you can’t tell people to call you A-Train or the Handyman; it either happens naturally or it doesn’t. Thus spoke Emma on the Law of Nicknames.

  But that was Val Baby in a nutshell. Ridiculously confident in her own skin, because at a size 2, with long black hair that fell down her back and almond-shaped green eyes so large that people often stopped midconversation to comment on them, why shouldn’t she be? She had that exotic look that encouraged strangers to ask what her heritage was, as if her parents had the secret to impressive genetic combinations. I always wondered how these people planned to use this information, whether they asked out of genuine curiosity or solely in an effort to create the hottest match possible down the line. Oh, you’re a Brazilian Italian, quarter Japanese? Hold on, booking a trip to Rio.

  We were really good friends the first year I lived in Los Angeles. However, all at once, everything changed. The summer after we became friends, Sam and Val Baby left town to work on the aforementioned film, On the Royal Road, in South Carolina. It was based and shot in Charleston, his mother’s hometown, which gave the script a sense of place so real
it could only have been written by someone who spent every summer there growing up.

  Twelve weeks later, after a long, lonely summer without my new boyfriend and my current closest friend, they were back. As soon as Val came back, however, she dropped me like a bad habit. First she stopped texting me updates, then she was always too busy to hang out. Finally, her birthday rolled around and I saw her tagged in a big group dinner, looking gorgeous as she blew out the candles. I’d kept the night free, figuring we would be doing something to celebrate, so instead I sat at home, watching reality TV and feeling sorry for myself. A couple months later her network and profession changed on Facebook. She’d moved to San Francisco without telling me.

  That was why the second I saw my old friend, instead of being excited to see her, my nerves kicked into high gear. I observed her leaning forward against the wide metal sink, applying bright red Nars lipstick. When I walked in, Val handed the lipstick back to her friend—who, even glossier than Val, was practically glistening—and turned to face us. My shackles went up. Her shiny friend gave us what could only have been called a smirk. My fight-or-flight response said, Get the hell out of this bathroom immediately, but I had no choice but to acknowledge her presence.

  “Oh, hey, Val! How’s it going?” I reached over for the extremely fake one-armed hug made popular by gymnasts the world over, who were attempting to show their team spirit post performance, but who quite clearly wanted to shank each other.

  “Hi, Emma. Long time no see. And you’re Lydia from New York, right?”

  “Olivia. You got two syllables right,” Liv replied dryly. Val didn’t seem to register the correction, lazily pushing up the sleeves of her three-thousand-dollar (give or take) off-the-shoulder cashmere sweater before beginning to apply another layer of mascara. Unflappable. The girl is unflappable.

  “How are you?” I repeated nervously, my mind going blank from fear of confrontation. This was the first time I had seen her face-to-face in years. Val didn’t respond, only stared at me, making me feel like an idiot in two seconds flat. Meanwhile, other girls were moving in and around the bathroom and I somehow managed to be in everyone’s way at once.