Cheating on Myself (8 page)

“I’m not sure,” he said, drumming his fingers on the table. “You?”

“I’m going to get the shrimp.” I pushed my menu away. I’d been to Nina’s enough times to know what I wanted without even looking at the menu.

“That sounds good. I’m just going to order some soup and snag a few bites of yours, if that’s cool?” Jonathan pushed his menu away and flagged our waiter over. “Can I get a black napkin please?” When the waiter returned with a black napkin, he explained, “The white ones leave lint on my pants.”

“Smart,” I said, trying hard not to laugh. The leaky basement smell was starting to get to me again. “So, um, Jonathan, what instrument do you play?”

“Trumpet,” he said proudly. Okay, so it wasn’t a string quartet… he was in a jazz quartet. Also cool. I don’t know why I was jumping to so many conclusions. I vowed to stop making assumptions and give the guy a chance to tell me about himself. “But I’m learning electric guitar to expand the options. I’ve always wanted to be in a punk band.”

I swallowed. Jonathan was not making this easy. I was trying, but there was nothing less appealing to me than a guy my age who was still trying to make it in the music scene. Maybe I was being a little dramatic, but at the moment I couldn’t think of anything much worse. My practical side wanted to remind him that if he hadn’t made it by thirty-five, he probably wasn’t going to be a rock star. Then again, my practical side needed to take a hike, since all my smart decisions and solid planning had left me suddenly single and in a life I didn’t even recognize as boring. “That would be cool,” I said, even though I didn’t think that.

Our waiter came then, saving me from further conversation about being in a punk band. As we waited for our food to come, the conversation shifted to my work (he ranted for a while about Centrex being “The Man” and asked how I could possibly work somewhere that so selfishly promoted a consumer culture), our hobbies (from what I could tell, he played a lot of Wii), and eventually, our meals.

“This is great shrimp,” he said, stuffing his mouth full of shrimp that he unapologetically plucked from my plate. “Do you want a bite of soup?”

I almost started laughing. Who shares soup? But Jonathan was serious, and very earnest about his offer, too. “No thanks, I’m going to stick with the shrimp.” Based on the uninspiring conversation, it was abundantly obvious Jonathan and I were not a match. So when the meal ended and our check arrived, I figured it would make sense to split the bill and go our separate ways. I might have considered letting him offer to pay if I thought it had been a good date, but as it was, I got the sense this was a divide and say goodbye situation. There would never be a next time. I may have been new to dating, but I wasn’t that dim. I pulled out my wallet and slid the check over to my side of the table.

“Oh, awesome, you’re going to pay this time?” He was grinning at me and had made no motion to extract his own wallet. “My dinner was pretty cheap, so I guess that makes the most sense.” He looked at the check with interest. “Oof, you’re not a cheap date, are you?”

“I guess not.” This time, I couldn’t suppress my laughter. For some reason, Jonathan joined me. I was laughing at him, but I really don’t think he realized that. “Well, it was nice getting to know you,” I said, hoping to make it home in time for House Hunters.

Jonathan grinned, and leaned forward to hug me, right there at the table. “Yeah, it’s been fun hanging out with you, too.” The smell of leaky basement was overwhelmingly pungent, and I knew I had to get out of there. “My grandma’s home tonight, so is it cool if we go to your place?”

CHAPTER FIVE

A full week later, I sat in the front seat of Cat’s minivan, ignoring Pippa kicking at my seat from behind. Cat and I hadn’t talked a lot since our drinks night the week of the split, and I’d been missing both her and the girls. When I called to invite myself over to their house the weekend after my date with Jonathan, Cat begged me to join them at some festival they were going to in a local park. It was a Children’s Festival, sponsored by Centrex, and the girls’ favorite band was playing for free on the big outdoor stage.

I’d happily agreed, looking forward to special time with Heidi and Pippa, but I also longed for something that would get me out of the house. I’d been holing away all week, nervous amidst the whispers of layoffs at work and obsessed with the potential dates they were flagging for me at my online dating site. Anders and I had spent most nights at home that week, searching through the photos of eligible bachelors and laughing. It was juvenile, I know, but after the experience with Jonathan, I was allowed to be picky.

“Do you just get a fresh batch of guys to pick from every day?” Cat asked, peeking in the rearview mirror at her girls. Cat’s nanny, a cute twenty-year-old French girl, sat in the back row of the minivan. Even though she had her nanny along to help, Cat was always paranoid and overwhelmed when she was with her daughters. It was frightening to ride in the car with her, since she was constantly interacting with her daughters in the back. Some obnoxious bluegrass music was playing over the car speakers, and Heidi was busy singing along. “Pippa, stop kicking Stella!”

“There have been a lot of profiles to look through,” I said, grabbing Pippa’s foot behind me to tickle it. “I’ve only contacted one person, so far. We’re going out tonight.”

“Whoa, two Saturday nights in a row? You’re a real swinging single.” Cat smiled, but I knew she was still finding it hard to talk to me about anyone other than her brother. It was definitely weird between us, and that sucked. I wanted to tell her how much I was missing Erik, how much I was thinking about him and wondering what he was doing, but I knew if I opened that line of conversation, she’d just enable me to dwell. I had to make her believe I was coping, in part to help convince myself.

We pulled into a parking spot and I helped lift Pippa and Heidi out of the car. They ran ahead with their nanny while Cat and I dawdled behind. We walked through the grassy pathways in silence, both of us probably thinking about how awkward it would always be for us to talk about my dating life. “Do you want to hear about this?” I asked finally. “Is it weird for me to talk about other guys with you?”

“No,” Cat insisted. “I don’t want you to think you have to filter yourself, just because of Erik. I’m not going to tell him anything, you know.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did, actually. I sort of want him to know I’m functioning without him.” I shrugged. “That’s normal, right?”

“I’ll do my best to slip in some little anecdotes when I see him.” She stepped lightly on the grass, balancing on her toes to keep her heels from sinking into the not-yet-frozen ground. “I think he’s really missing you,” she said. “For what it’s worth.”

“It’s worth something.”

“Hey, Stella!” Pippa was calling to me from where she was standing near a stage on a hill. “Look! It’s Joe!”

I looked over at Cat, who rolled her eyes. “Both Pippa and Heidi have found their first true loves. Joe is the lead singer—and banjo player—in the Dog Hounds.”

“Dog Hounds?”

“This is a Dog Hounds concert, babe. You’ll be a groupie before you know it.” We had reached Pippa, who was staring lovingly across the stage to where three guys were setting up their stuff.

“So these are the Dog Hounds, huh, Pip?” Pippa nodded up at me silently, staring with rapture at the adult men who were dressed in ridiculous hats and silly overalls. I squatted down next to her and watched the guys warming up, wondering what made a perfectly normal man decide to become a children’s musician. I guess maybe you weren’t a normal guy, if this was what you did for a living? Were they pedophiles? Overgrown kids? Men who lacked the social skills to talk to other adults? I’d always found the Wiggles to be alarming, but I guess children’s stage bands freaked me out just as much. Not so much when normal bands, like They Might Be Giants or Jack Johnson, did kids songs… but men whose goal in life was to play for children? It was an odd pursuit. Not that I was judging.

Pippa and Heidi stood amongst a crowd of children, all of whom were watching the band tune their instruments and get ready for their set. One of the guys sauntered over to the edge of the stage and waved to all the little girls, who literally swooned.

“Hey, kids!” he called out, his voice full of cheesiness.

I felt bad for the guy, really. He was almost like a clown, wearing those ridiculous overalls—and that stupid hat. The poor dude had to wear a cowboy hat. From a distance I could see that under the hat, he’d puffed his hair up so he looked a bit like a dark-haired Ronald McDonald. Or Art Garfunkel, to his credit.

He strummed a few chords on his banjo, and Heidi’s shoulders tensed in anticipation. I bet these guys felt like real superstars, getting little girls to fawn over them like this. They couldn’t make it in a real band—like Jonathan—so they found poor, unsuspecting kids and sang stupid songs about breakfast and farm animals. Talk about a complex. I bet they all still lived with their grandmothers.

I studied the guy who was playing a little pre-show for us on the stage, and realized he was surprisingly good looking. He was probably in his late-twenties or my age, even, and had adorable dimples right at the tops of his cheeks. When he smiled, I caught myself smiling right along with the little girls, and realized I was being sucked into the vortex of children’s band crush right along with Heidi and Pippa and the rest of the crowd.

Overall Guy looked strangely familiar, and I wondered if maybe I’d seen his face on a billboard around town or the side of a bus, perhaps. He tipped his hat at me, then strummed his banjo for the kids. It was almost impossible not to smile back at him, but instead, I squirmed and looked down. I wasn’t a mom, so I wasn’t about to fall for this crap. Maybe he was used to lonely moms who wanted a little extra attention from the fancy musicians who charmed their kids, but I wasn’t going to get sucked into it. Also, I wasn’t going to date guys whose faces appeared on the sides of buses—realtors, musicians, weather guys, politicians. That was a rule. There was just something smarmy about a person’s mug grinning down from a public transit vehicle or billboard. It was like those people wanted the wrong kind of attention.

When banjo guy started singing, however, I was captivated. He had a beautiful voice, and I couldn’t help but wonder why he was wasting it on a song about roller coasters. The kids all screamed and jumped up and down, excited about the pre-show show. Pippa reached for my hand and pulled me down to her level to say, “That’s Joe. He’s so funny.”

Joe caught me watching him, and grinned again. I looked around, and realized I wasn’t the only adult woman who had noticed how hot he was under the hat and the fluffed-up hair. Several women had recently reapplied their lipstick (at ten in the morning, mind you), and a few were dancing along (one was swaying seductively in her ass-crack jeans, which seemed way wrong). Joe finished singing, and bent down to talk to a few of the kids who had pressed up close to the stage. He really knew how to talk to kids, and I caught myself smiling.

Even though I didn’t want kids of my own, guys who knew how to talk to kids and interacted with them in a normal way always impressed me. Erik had always been so awkward with Heidi and Pippa—he’d always get them all riled up, then got frustrated when they chased him around the house. And it had irritated me when he talked to them like small morons. They were smart girls, and he treated them like dolls or babies.

Heidi rushed over to me, her face flushed with happiness from her brush with fame. “Did you see him, Stella? Isn’t he ah-ma-zing?”

Before Heidi could gush more, Cat called to us from across the lawn. She’d spread a blanket on the grass, and had poured little cups of hot chocolate for the girls to help keep them warm. Aurelie, the au pair, was shivering inside her cute-but-chilly shawl.

“So these guys are from around here?” I asked Cat as I settled onto the blanket. Both Heidi and Pippa tucked up against me, cuddling into my armpits. I squeezed the girls, and wondered how much I would see them now that I wouldn’t be at any of the Wesley family functions. I hated thinking about breaking up with Erik’s family, too, but it was inevitable in situations like mine. I couldn’t stay with a guy just because of his nieces, right? And Cat and I would make it work… eventually, both Erik and I would find other people, and Cat and I would be just like any other friends.

“They’re both from Boulder or something, but they mostly play shows in the Midwest now. The girls love them, obviously.”

“Obviously,” I said, rubbing Pippa’s soft, blond hair. Pippa was as tiny as her mom, but had gotten her dad’s coloring. She was a petite blonde pixie, and absolutely adorable. I couldn’t resist grabbing her up into a squeeze-hug, but she squirmed out just as soon as the band started playing.

“Mom, I’m going to take Pip to the stage, okay?” Heidi looked at Cat hopefully, and Cat nodded. She gave Aurelie a look, and the au pair stood and followed the girls at a distance.

“That banjo guy is kind of hot,” I said, watching as the band transitioned from a song about pancakes to one about a kid who turned into a tree.

“Yeah, I’ve always thought that, too.” Cat laughed. “I think half the moms who take their kids to these concerts have the hots for one of the guys in the band.”

I looked around, and noticed all the women sitting near us were smiling way more than they ought to have been for a kids’ concert. “What is it about musicians?” I asked. “What’s the deal with these guys? Single? Married? Kids?”

“Ooh, are you interested?” Cat lifted her eyebrows and stretched out on the blanket. The girls were dancing in front of the stage with a few dozen other rabid fans.

“No!” I was not attracted to musicians. Certainly not musicians in costume. But even as my head insisted I not think about Joe, my body grew heated at the thought of what he would look like when he was freshly-showered. And naked. What was hiding beneath those overalls? “I’m just curious.”

“Well, the rumor on the mom circuit is that Joe—the real charmer—is a total douchebag. Janell LaMere had a girlfriend who heard he sleeps with anyone within a ten-mile radius. Frank—well, let’s call him the ugly one—lives with his parents and has a dot-com day job. Theo—he’s the dorky-looking runt—is in a really cool band, but is also married with kids. Probably cheating.” She shrugged. “But that’s just the mommy gossip. Remember, we make stuff up to keep things interesting.”