Page 41 of Forget Me

12

MIMI

“So what,exactly, do you remember from your bachelorette party?” I swirled the wine in my glass. It was the first time I’d seen Bree since her honeymoon, and we were at our favorite booth by the window at our usual Wednesday-night bar, the one that served half-price appetizers until seven. The Sharks game blared on the televisions over the bar, and the place was packed with turquoise jerseys.

Bree’s eyes widened, then she blinked. “Oh, everything. We had so much fun! We were all here, except you. You were late. And you came in buzzed. Remember?”

“Oh, I remember that.” Though I hadn’t realized exactly how drunk I was. “I came from my brother’s engagement party.”

“That’s right!” Bree pointed at me, then sipped her martini. “Then we had some drinks, then someone said we should go to the other bar.”

That was one of Bree’s work friends. So we’d all piled into a couple of ride-shares and ridden to Divisadero Street. I remembered that. That was where I’d met up with the Mystery Man.

“That bar was fire,” she said, “but then it got late and people started leaving.” She pouted.

“You left,” I pointed out. I picked up a sad, cold mozzarella stick, but I’d already stuffed myself with chicken wings and fried mushrooms. My stomach couldn’t hold another thing. I dropped it back onto the plate.

“Yeah, Josh came in and hauled my drunk ass home.” She giggled. “You didn’t go home?”

“Not then. This guy came over and talked to me. He had glasses. Ithinkhe was super-hot. You don’t remember him?”

“I might be married, but I have eyes. There was this one cute guy here that night. No glasses, though.” She tapped the table, then her eyes went wide. “I remember! He showed up at the second bar a few minutes after we did. But he didn’t come over. He just sat in a corner with a newspaper. God, I wished he’d come over.”

“You’re married, remember?” Could her cute guy have been my Mystery Man? I didn’t remember much about his face—except the glasses—but I remembered how he made me feel. He listened when I told him how much I wanted to be like Larissa. He told me he had a boss he thought the world of, too. We made a connection.

“So, did you go home with this Mystery Man?”

“I don’t think so. I woke up alone at my place. In my clothes. But I had this.” I tugged on the chain around my neck and pulled out the ring I’d found in my pocket. The plain gold band was scarred like it had been worn a long time. But I remembered the Mystery Man was young, about my age.

“A wedding ring?” Bree’s eyes widened. “What the hell, Mimi! Are you Vegas-married?”

I laughed. “I don’t think we had time to go to Vegas. And no matter what happens in rom-coms, I’m pretty sure they won’t let you get married if you’re blackout-drunk. Even in Vegas. I think he gave it to me for safekeeping. To—to…” His words dangled just out of my reach.

I slipped the ring onto my thumb and spun it. Clearly a man’s ring, it was way too big to fit any of my fingers.

“Wow. And now you have to find him and give it back. It’s like Cinderella’s slipper!” She tipped back her glass and drained the last drops of alcohol. “Then you have to marry him.”

I snorted.

“I’m serious. It’s, like, fate or something.”

“I think you’ve been watching too many romance-channel Christmas movies.”

“Yeah,” she said dreamily. “But it’s always the guy who’s the buttoned-up accountant and doesn’t have any Christmas spirit.”

“I don’t have to have Christmas spirit. I’m Jewish.”

“Not too many Jewish folks in those movies.”

“Nope.”

“But…” She drew out the word, the way I knew meant she’d just had a terrible idea. The way she had in high school when she’d asked me to run interference while she ripped the promo sticker off the window at Taco Bell and ran out with it.Whyhad she wanted it so badly? She’d finally given up trying to explain it to me and walked out without the window cling. Fifteen years later, I still didn’t understand the point.

“But?” I prompted her.

“It doesn’t matter that we’re Jewish. We can still like those romantic movies. Where the woman wants the holiday festival to go off without a hitch, and the man wants to bulldoze the whole thing to build a ski resort, and they fall in love anyway and in the last scene they take their kids to the holiday festival.”

I wrinkled my nose. “That sounds awful. Wouldn’t a ski resort be better for the town’s economy? They could take their kids skiing.”

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