Page 8 of One Night Only
What the… Is he kidding? I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror, dressed only in faded gray shorts and a sports bra I should have thrown out years ago. The skin around my eyebrows is still a stubborn pink, smarting from my wax down the block.
I stand in the middle of my room, listening hard for the sound of the buzzer or a knock on the door. When nothing happens, I scramble over the bed to the window, which is already open in the faint hope of a night breeze. We’re on the second floor and the light is beginning to fade. A couple of people are smoking on the corner and a man across the street is talking loudly into his cell. But there’s no one waiting below.
He’s kidding.
He has to be.
I abandon the window and head for the kitchen, grabbing a T-shirt so I’m semi-decent, and peer through the keyhole, squinting at the warped bubble of hallway.
There’s no one there. I huff a sigh of relief as my phone trills with another text.
Made you look.
The little—
I turn my phone off and grab a plastic freezer bag from the kitchen, dropping his watch inside, before I knock on Claire’s open door. She’s sitting in the middle of her neatly made bed, still in her work clothes and glowering at her laptop.
“The guy from last night left his watch in my room,” I say to her without preamble. “I told him he can drop by and pick it up. Is that okay?” I wait but she doesn’t look up from the screen. “Claire?”
“The hot guy you slept with forgot his watch. Got it.”
“Thank you.”
“How do you do it?”
I turn back at her question, already thinking about my packing. “Do what?”
“Meet people so easily?”
At first, I think she’s joking, but the look on her face is completely serious. “I don’t know. You talk, you drink, you bring them home. It’s not rocket science.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.” I laugh. “Where is this coming from?”
She closes her laptop lid, shifting so she’s facing me. It’s like she’s about to launch into a presentation. “I think I’m becoming a spinster.”
“You’re twenty-eight.”
“Which would make me a spinster in Jane Austen times.”
“And at thirty-one what am I? A crone? You’ve got everything going for you. You don’t need to meet someone.”
“I know I don’tneedto, Sarah. But I wouldliketo. Is that so terrible? Does that make me a bad feminist?”
“Did your sister get engaged again? Is that what’s going on?”
“Mark’s moving to Seattle.”
I straighten in surprise. “Movingmoving? Forever?”
Mark works on the floor above Claire. She’s been obsessed with him since before we even met. All I ever hear is Mark cut his hair. Mark wore a new suit. Mark made eye contact. They kissed once, years ago, after a late night of crunching numbers or shredding files or whatever it is they do. According to Claire, they never spoke of it again. Except she, of course, never forgot it.
“A trial run for a few weeks while they open the new office,” she says. “But everyone knows they’re going to give him a good position there. He’s so talented they’d be idiots not to.”
“That sucks.”
“Not that it matters,” she says firmly. “He has a girlfriend.”
