Impractically Perfect: A Romantic Comedy

by Genevieve Lerner

  “Are you sure...that you didn’t need to be anywhere tonight?” I asked, so smoothly I would’ve thought I was a romcom villain.

  “Of course,” Toby said, grinning. “What do you wanna do next?”

  An hour later, we were finally back on the train. After dinner, we had wandered around the neighborhood, stopped in a gas station, and bought a couple of cheap tall beers. Hiding in the back alley of a Walgreens, we drank them and discussed things like reincarnation and world politics. Then we ran back inside the drugstore to the $5 movie bin, where we ended up with a handful of movies that I knew Sven would never watch.

  The train jostled us so that our bodies bumped together, but we valiantly guarded the plastic bag of DVDs nestled between our feet. “So,” said Toby, digging through our prizes, “we have A Bug’s Life, The Red Shoes—what the hell is that? And let’s see, The Importance of Being Earnest...and this very shittily produced looking movie called Them and Us. Is that even grammatically correct?”

  I didn’t want to go home, so I shyly accepted Toby’s invitation to hang out a little longer at his place. He lived on the top floor of a duplex, by himself. It was completely unfurnished, and looked like a tornado with an anger management problem had hit it. There were little bits of newspaper everywhere, littered throughout the floor, and it smelled like something foul and familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it. The only pieces of furniture were a wooden crate that was in front of an old, giant tube television, and what looked like a child’s play table, so short you could sit on the floor while eating at it.

  “I don’t mean to be rude,” I said, gingerly stepping over a mutilated pillow whose stuffing was half pulled out. “But what the hell happened here?”

  Toby was running around, picking up garbage from the floor and telling me, “Wait, don’t come all the way in yet...uh, can you just turn and face the door for like, five minutes?” Because I’m a nice person and I totally understand what it feels like to be embarrassed, I obliged.

  He seemed to calm down a bit once I wasn’t looking at the apartment anymore, but with my face being toward the door, I might have been mistaken.

  “So,” he began, after inhaling a long breath, “it didn’t look anything like this when I left this morning. I mean, I didn’t have furniture...but that was gone ages ago. Well, a couple months. When Chloe took it.”

  I examined the door thoughtfully. It was painted green, but I could still see all the knots in the wood underneath. “Chloe’s your ex?”

  “Yeah. And the worst part? She took Ferdinand’s cage. Which is why there’s shit...everywhere.” It suddenly occurred to me what the apartment smelled like: Mrs. Purrpaws’s litter box, which my best friend did anything in her power to avoid cleaning.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and the distinct sound of a broom sweeping echoed throughout the room. With nothing to absorb the sounds, every thump was twice as loud as one might expect. “This is awful. I can’t believe she left me a stupid ferret, and that the stupid ferret would—oh! Hey Ferdie! Here boy!”

  His tone had completely changed. A voice that sounded a lot like the one he had used earlier on the train (was that today? It felt like a lifetime ago) to calm me down. I heard a bit of scuffling. “You want some leftovers? I brought you a fry, boy!”

  I didn’t bother tell him that I was pretty sure ferrets weren’t built to digest fries.

  “Want to meet him?” said Toby. His footsteps grew louder, and then I felt his breath on my shoulder. And possibly the breath of a much smaller creature, but I couldn’t tell for sure. “Just…try not to scream this time.”

  Meet him? As in, the ferret? That sounded like the last thing on my agenda, right after “cleaning all the clogged toilets within a five mile radius” and “laundry.” I really hate doing laundry.

  Toby laughed at my silence. “He’s really friendly. You can, like, turn around if you want, by the way.” Oh, right. I was still facing the door. Slowly, I shuffled around so that we were face-to-face.

  Except that we weren’t face-to-face. Toby stood nearly an entire head taller than me, so it was not him, but his ferret, whose eyes I was gazing directly into. But I was done having freakouts today.

  “Hey there, buddy,” I said, staring at his pointy nose. It sniffed me, and then started towards me. “My name is Penny. It’s very nice to meet you.” I formally offered him a hand, and told him I was very offended when he didn’t shake it. Instead, Ferdinand took a wild leap and landed on my own shoulder.What.

  “Jesus, I’m so sorry, Penny,” said Toby. “He never warms up to strangers that fast, I didn’t expect him to approach you so quickly.”

  And because I was Calmy McEasyGoing tonight, I just flashed him a smile. “I’m okay,” I said. And I was.

  My phone buzzing where I had stowed it under my bra strap woke me from my stupor. We had been trying to get through that not-real-sounding movie we had bought, and as it was only slightly less mind-numbingly dull than watching food cook in the microwave, my eyes had glazed over in less than fifteen minutes.

  “Holy shit,” I said as I read the lock screen. “It’s my boyfriend.” Sven hadn’t called me in days; I was shocked.

  “Your...oh, right. Of course.” But I wasn’t even listening, and already jumping to my feet and cradling my phone as if it were a precious jewel. I answered.

  “Hey, babe, how are you doing? It’s so good to hear from you!” I said. And it was. Except...it was weird. This was the first time that I had gone more than like, five minutes without thinking about him. It had been, well, all day, really. Which had been nice, somehow.

  “Come over tonight,” he said. “I miss you.”

  Finally! Finally, he was missing me! I knew it would only be a matter of time.

  “I miss you too!” I said, adrenaline already rushing through me and waking me right up. It only took me twenty seconds to run over to the door, shove my shoes on, and slip into my jacket. “I’m on my way.”

  A moment before opening the door to leave Toby’s apartment, I stopped and turned. This had been…god. Such an incredible evening. It was hard to believe that it had started out so entirely horribly. And for a moment, a quick, confusing, moment, I didn’t want to leave.

  But then I got over myself, waved Toby goodbye, and flew out the door, nearly slamming it behind me in my excitement.

  I hadn’t realized how late it had gotten, and by the time I found my way to the station (using Google Maps because I had no idea where I was) the trains were running less than half as often as usual. At the nearly deserted stop, I perched on a bench next to a wrinkly man in a suit, who was staring straight ahead at nothing with his striking blue eyes. For a moment, I contemplated asking him if he was okay, but then the sound of the approaching train snapped him out of his reverie, and I felt stupid.

  At the stop right before Sven’s, I realized my heart was pounding, and I couldn’t tell if it was because I was excited to see him or that I was terrified of the subway breaking down again, trapping me underground.

  As soon as he opened the door to his apartment, he scooped me into a giant hug. One that felt like it would have squished all the food from me if I had, in fact, had any food in me. As it was, I just let out a tiny fart that I really hoped he didn’t notice.

  “God, you smell good, Penny. Why do you smell so good?”

  “Uh, I don’t know,” I said uncomfortably, pulling away from his neck-biting teeth. “Maybe I’m just clean, or something?” Which was a lie. I had sweated so much during the whole subway-breaking-down-and-terrifying-Penny debacle that I was quite positive the only thing I smelled like was body odor and terror.

  Reaching his hand up under my t-shirt, Sven began kissing my lips, long, hard, slow. It was as if he had forgotten who I was or something, like I was this brand-new, exciting girl, instead of his girlfriend of three years, five months, and fifteen days.

  And then, our clothes had come off somehow, and he was carrying me—yes, carrying me—to his bedroom, where he th
rew me onto the bed and buried his face between my breasts. He stayed there for a moment, breathing heavily, and after a moment I began wondering when he would stop. Sven was strong and, well, heavy, and he was making it difficult for me to breathe.

  But it wasn’t long before he was back on top of me, his stubble scratching that sensitive spot right above my lips, rubbing me raw.

  It was the first time we had had sex in at least a month, and I was ready for it, for sure. It was what I thought about every night, alone in my twin bed, sharing a wall with Gillian. She often played loud, obnoxious romcom movies until late at night, and I would hear things like “You don’t know how long I’ve loved you for,” or “you’re all I ever wanted” or “what kind of tree does an acorn grow?” (sometimes she mixed it up and watched educational children’s movies).

  Even so, I found my mind wandering. As we rolled around together, hardly looking into each other’s eyes, I remembered the time that he had forgotten I was waiting for him in his car, and he had gone into the bank and proceeded in having an hour-long meeting, while I had roasted in the early afternoon D.C. sun. When I ended up with a mouthful of his chest hair—so much longer than I remembered—I was thinking of Cyril, and whether or not she would ever learn how to interact with people. When he came inside me, all I was wondering was if it would actually feel good if he was Toby instead of—

  Holy shit. Toby? This was so not an okay thing to be thinking. I didn’t feel that way about Toby—I hardly even knew him. Yeah, okay, maybe he was a little cute. And maybe when he talked he made my heart race a little. And maybe he made me more comfortable and more silly and more giggly than I could remember myself being. And maybe he made me feel like I could unabashedly be myself around him. But like...it wasn’t like he felt that way about me.

  Plus, he was missing actual body parts. Not ideal, right?

  And I have a boyfriend, I reminded myself yet again, watching him clean himself up. Not the most attractive look on a man. But he was mine.

  “I love you,” he whispered, snuggling his naked body up against mine and pulling me close to him. As the little spoon, I could feel his heart beating into my back.

  “You, too,” I responded quickly. And then, “So...can we talk about the other day with my Mom and my brother? You like, freaked out and left. And then, you said that you actually did want to marry me but not right now. And now...you’re acting like nothing happened? What am I supposed to think?”

  Sven sighed. “Do we have to talk about this right now, Penny? It happened. It’s over, it’s in the past.”

  “I got rid of all my stuff, Sven. Like you wanted.”

  He rolled over. “Let’s just sleep, Penny, okay?”

  It wasn’t okay. Why didn’t he want to understand me? Did he not care why I had let my mom believe that we were getting engaged? Did he not care that I had fixed everything that he thought was wrong with me?

  But after our last argument, I didn’t want to fight. I wanted things to remain just like this: perfect. So I just said “Okay,” snuggled in closer, tightly wrapped into his arms. My abs were tight, holding in a sob, but even so, a single tear escaped from my eye and rolled sideways down my face, across the bridge of my nose. Even though I was sharing a bed with this man who I was deeply in love with, I felt more lonely than I did sleeping by myself in my own apartment.

  Chapter Nine

  We All Have Secrets

  The next morning, I woke up to an empty bed. I could hear a clock ticking, because Sven kept an honest-to-god actual analog clock in his bedroom, while I was pretty sure I had never actually owned one. Instead, I used my phone alarm obsessively, reminding me exactly what time to eat, what time to sleep, when to work out, when to drink water. I had about twenty-five alarms set for each day. And still, it was the stupid clock ticking that woke me up, not my own alarm.

  For most of the night, I had lain awake, staring at the wall across from me, wondering how counting sheep ever got anyone to sleep. When my mind would wander off, instead of dreaming about swans and rainbows, I began calculating the exact number of hours before I turned 30. I wasn’t drifting off to sleep; I was getting more and more anxious, the bile swarming in my stomach, reminding me of the time that I was eight and rode a tire swing for an hour and a half until I finally threw up, all over Mom’s new shoes. When I did dream, it was of walking, talking lemons that were screaming at me from below, while I navigated my way across a tightrope made of a single, long, spaghetti noodle.

  So, I was pretty out of it when I did wake up from my stupor, which wasn’t so much a stupor as it was exhausted hallucinating. There was a note on the pillow next to me.

  Penny,

  Out to brunch with some friends. Text later!

  - S

  What?

  I knew it was irrational that I was angry that he had left—of course he had the right to go out to eat with his friends. So why did I feel this way? Why did I feel abandoned and alone, like I had done something to piss him off? I knew I shouldn’t expect to be invited to brunch—god knows Gillian and I had eaten without Sven countless times. But still…

  No matter. I lounged in his bed a while longer, enjoying the weight of the down blanket against my naked skin. Slowly, I dressed, pulling on my slightly-too-tight jeans and my oversized hoodie that I had stolen from the lost and found at work. It said “CORNELL” across the front in big, block letters, and I enjoyed getting into conversations with strangers, pretending I had gone there, discussing the beautiful campus and library. Sometimes I made up facts and made them feel stupid.

  Sven’s bedroom was huge, and every part of it had been immaculately decorated. There was white everywhere—bedspread, curtains, carpet—and he kept it incredibly clean and tidy. He had actually yelled at me before for bringing my coffee in there one morning. What would I do if you spilled it on the sheets?! he had asked me seriously, grabbing the mug from my hand and dumping it into the bathroom sink before I could protest.

  But Sven wasn’t here right now. I could...do whatever I wanted. I could bring coffee in here (as long as I was careful and didn’t spill even a drop, because he would totally notice.) I could...look through his underwear drawer—although why I would do that, I had no idea, I’m not a particularly snoopy person. Usually.

  Barefoot, I curled up in his huge (white) lounge chair, perfectly suited for a large living room, but his bedroom was big enough to accommodate several. His (white) desk sat in front of me, clean and dusted. The only thing on it was his laptop. Which he was very protective of. It was open, and the screen was dark. What if I...

  No. I couldn’t do that.

  Right?

  As if they had a will of their own, my hands approached the trackpad.

  Sven was my boyfriend. It wasn’t, like, totally unheard of for a girlfriend to just know what her boyfriend did on his laptop all day...was it?

  I clicked the button, and the screen came to life. Asking for a password.

  Nope. I was not a bad person. I was not going to snoop. It’s not like I didn’t trust him. I never understood when Gillian talked about the millions of guys she was always dating, about how she hacked into their phones, found them talking to other girls, and then immediately confronted (and usually broke up with) them.

  “Why,” I remember asking her one evening after a particularly violent screaming match between her and a guy that I was quite sure she didn’t even like, “are you even bothering with this guy? How is this even worth it?” But what did I know? I was just her best friend. Which she immediately proceeded in telling me, and then sulked for twenty minutes, then finally explained that he was exactly the type of guy she imagined herself with…if only she had actually liked him.

  He had been talking to another girl, but I didn’t bother pointing out that she was talking to (and doing other things to) several other guys, so how was it really fair for her to be angry with him?

  Whatever. I didn’t do anything wrong. All I had done was…nothing. Maybe I had considered t
he possibility that Sven had cheated on me at one point or another…but it wasn’t something that I actively worried about. I mean, our relationship was great. What could he possibly want to change about it?

  I mean, sure, sometimes we weren’t the best at communicating, but that was a normal relationship problem. Right?

  And sure, he didn’t want to propose to me…but that didn’t mean he had another girl on the side.

  Unless it did. Maybe there was nothing wrong with me at all. Maybe that was just his way of trying to make me think there was.

  But there was no way I was going to hack into his laptop. I had no idea what his password was, and I would probably leave fingerprints on the keypad or something and he would totally find me out. So I did nothing.

  Instead, I wandered downstairs, the heated tile floors warming the bottoms of my feet. There had to be clues around here somewhere.

  Peeking my head into the shower, I searched around for anything remotely womanly. A pink razor. Shampoo that cost more than three dollars. Tampons, an eyelash curler. But there was nothing. Granted, Sven didn’t leave his own stuff out, so I seriously doubted he would have left anyone else’s out either.

  And then, turning around to leave the bathroom, I saw it, hanging on the back of the door. A pair of black lace bikini bottoms. Jackpot.

  So. Sven was cheating on me. I knew I should be upset, angry…but I didn’t really feel anything. Because this proved what I had just begun to suspect: he wasn’t avoiding a proposal because there was something wrong with me. It was because he was a useless prick and had a different girl on the side.

  I slipped my phone out of my front sweatshirt pocket —it was only at 33%, having not charged it the night before—and called Gillian. Shockingly, she actually picked up; Gillian had a terrible habit of ignoring people’s calls/texts/carrier pigeons until it was completely and totally convenient for her. Even if it was an emergency. And then she would get mad if you didn’t answer her right away.