Page 20 of Suddenly Dating
“Oh yeah? So did you work in a department store at some point, or have you always folded your T-shirts and boxers to a uniform size?”
“What’s wrong with being neat?” he exclaimed.
She opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “It was a rhetorical question. I’m not going to take clothes-folding tips from a woman who looks like she’s been on a hell of a bender.”
She gasped. “I beg your pardon,” she said grandly, speaking like some lady fromDownton Abbey,the show Melissa used to watch.
“I’m just saying, you look a little rough, so if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stick with my folded shirts than go with your method of storing clothes all over the bedroom floor. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go to work.”
“ThankGod,” she said, and turned around, marching back to her room.
Harry meant to march off, too, but he couldn’t make himself while that very nice bottom bounced away from him in skimpy black polka dot panties. Yes, the woman definitely had some very appealing junk in that trunk. So appealing that he had trouble thinking clearly about how mad he was.
Harry went out, locked the front door behind him, got in his truck, and drove far too fast down Juneberry Road into East Beach, fuming the entire way. He pulled to the curb outside the Green Bean Coffee Shop and turned off the ignition.
This roommate thing was not going to work. It has been less than twelve hours and already they were butting heads. He would have to do something different. But what? Unfortunately, Harry had run out of money and, therefore, options. It was either East Beach, which was fairly close to his current job and the bigger job he was trying to land, or it was his parents’ apartment on the Upper East Side.
“Someone shoot me now,” he muttered.
The last time he’d seen Jack and Beth Westbrook had been the week after he and Melissa had split up. He’d joined his family for their standing Sunday lunch to deliver the news.
He’d been feeling adrift, still wondering what he could do to make it right for Melissa. He’d tried to call her, but she wouldn’t answer the phone and had finally texted him, asking him to give her some space. So Harry had dressed in dark slacks and the cashmere sweater Melissa had given him for his last birthday, shaved his week-old beard, and combed his hair back as best he could. With all the emotional turmoil of that week, he hadn’t made it to the barbershop. He’d fully expected his mother to make a remark about the length of his hair, and of course, she did not disappoint.
“You should really trim it, Harry,” she’d said, reaching up to tuck more of it behind his ears when he’d arrived at home.
“I’ll get on that, Mom.”
The contents of his mother’s cocktail glass had tipped to the right along with her, and had come dangerously close to spilling on the expensive Persian carpet. For as long as Harry could remember, his mother never touched a drop of alcohol... until Sunday. On Sundays, she would start in the morning and go until Dad poured her into bed in the evening.
“Where is our girl?” she’d asked, looking around him.
“She’s not coming, Mom,” he’d said. “We, ah... we’re taking a break.”
He had then endured his mother’s wailing as if she’d just heard for the first time that the Titanic had sunk. Over the course of a horrible luncheon, he’d told his family—his mom and dad and his sister Hazel—what had happened.
Harry thought back to the bright spring Sunday. His family had been shocked and wounded by the split, naturally, because they’d all assumed Melissa would be part of the family, and had come to think of her as one of their own. It had been tough for Harry to listen to their sorrow. Especially when he was feeling that same sorrow and hadn’t really processed it.
He’d been sad, and wounded, and despondent... but there also had been a tiny part of him that had felt the tiniest bit of relief. He had goals in life, and he’d begun to feel smothered by Melissa’s expectations, his parents’ expectations, and the growing demand that he somehow fit everyone’s idea of what he ought to be when none of it matched what he wanted to be.
He’d explained to his family that the relationship had been complicated, and that there was no one “thing” that had done it.
“Oh, Harry!” his mother had groaned when he’d said all he could say, her drink sloshing around again. “I can’t believe you brokeup!Is it the apartment? I know it’s that apartment.Dosia!Dosia, are you going to serve any time soon?” she’d shouted at the family’s long-time maid.
Dosia had appeared from the kitchen with a platter of chicken breasts, her long gray hair in a bun on top of her head, and her wide hips covered in the gray shift of a maid’s uniform. “Hello, Mr.Harry.”
“Hello, Dosia.” Dosia had a little room behind the kitchen where she watched reality TV and knitted sweaters for her grandkids in Poland. Once a year, over the Christmas holiday, his parents paid for her trip back home. He had fond memories of lying on Dosia’s bed when he was a boy, watching television with her on the many nights his parents were out.
“I’m very sorry, Mr.Harry,” she’d said.
“Thank you.”
“Well?” his mother had demanded. “Isit the apartment?”
“Mom, come on.” He had felt suddenly exhausted in that moment. “It’s a lot of things,” he’d said.
“Can we eat?” Hazel had asked, consulting her watch. “I have to make rounds this afternoon.” His sister had a residency in psychiatry at Mount Sinai. She was two years older than Harry and rarely dated that he knew of. She’d often said she was married to her job. She had dark corkscrew curls and deep blue eyes. Harry had never understood why men didn’t fall at her feet, but if they did, Hazel kept quiet about it. Maybe she was just a lot smarter than he was.
“Yes, let’s eat,” Harry’s dad had said, reaching for the chicken. Dosia had appeared again, this time with asparagus and some sort of potato dish. She’d set them down and then very quietly removed the setting that had been laid for Melissa.
