Last-Minute Love (Year of the Chick series) (11 page)

“L
et me guess El, you want the guy who looks like a model.”

She flipped her hair to one side. “I don’t WANT anyone…they want me.”

She makes it look so easy.

Amy and I followed E
leanor to a table that was next to our targeted guys. We pretended they weren’t even there and started talking. Eleanor was facing the guys which was the money-shot move, while Amy and I laughed loudly for no reason, as we faked like we were having the most interesting conversation.

It took about…less than sixty seconds to be approached.
Right on time.
Supermodel-face didn’t make any introductions, since he was the prize bird just like our Eleanor. One of his friends who had cropped brown hair and a pretty decent build flashed a smile in my direction. “Having a good night?” he asked.

This guy wasn’t bad-looking, but he didn’t have that “special something” that would drive me wild
. Like eyeglasses. Whatever.
“Why aren’t you dancing?” I said. “You guys should all be dancing in a man-circle out there.”

He laughed. “I don’t come to clubs to
dance in man-circles. I’m Dylan by the way. And you are?”

“Romi.”

“Romi? That’s an interesting name.”

I was so
extremely bored by that comment after hearing it a million times, that I was one step away from changing my name to Rachel.

But tonight I was a wingman.

I smiled sweetly. “Thanks, sometimes I get self-conscious about my name.” I batted my long eyelashes, which if done correctly could result in the hypnosis of my subject.

It worked.

He chugged the rest of his drink and swallowed hard. “Do you wanna dance?”

I really
had no interest in someone putting the moves on me, but I knew I had to get him off of Eleanor’s hands.
Like a good wingman would.
Amy was already well into her role, as she laughed at all the jokes of the hot guy’s other friend, this short Hispanic man all dressed in black. As Amy dragged her guy to the dance floor I dragged mine too, which left Eleanor alone with the supermodel-face.

Best wingmen ever.

***

Twenty minutes later I was sweating like a pig and dancing my face of
f to some wicked beats. It wasn’t just an expression; I was literally dancing my face off, with my makeup melting away by the second.

Dylan
turned out to be a pretty good dancer, with all kinds of spins and twirls. Others were even giving us some room on the dance floor; we owned it. Despite the dance-a-thon chemistry, I wasn’t attracted to him at all. It wasn’t really his fault, it was just that all the dancing reminded me of a male cheerleader or a gay BFF. Before I could properly configure my “gay-dar,” he slid his hands down my ass like it was now or never. A second later I become an official citizen of “Ass-Rub City.”
Population: two.

I craned my neck in search of Eleanor, and when I spotted her
she was still at the table, still talking to the supermodel-face. It seemed to be going okay, but there wasn’t any laughter or flirty physical contact.
I’ll give it a couple more minutes.

Dylan, who was now busy squeezing my ass-cheeks like they were pizza dough
, lowered his eyes and smiled at me seductively. Or at least he thought it was seductive. To me he looked like a deranged clown. “Wanna get out of here?” he said.

Sure! J
ust not with you.

I smiled and spun around so I didn’t have to answer, finally unhinging his hands from me in the process.

When I looked over at Eleanor I could see her type a number into her phone, then supermodel-face did the same.

The exchange!

With my wingman duties complete, I told Dylan I had to use the bathroom, with no intention of ever coming back. It was harsh, but as I’d learned in my “year of the chick” nights out the year before, it was a harsh world.

As I left him I could still feel h
is handprints embedded on my butt.
Gross.
I realized that if local guys meant an imprinted ass, and if long-distance guys meant mysterious ghosts or guys with girlfriends, then maybe I was better off alone for a while.

Just me and my cat...

Chapter Ten

September was now upon us, and my book was officially on the market.

In the first ten days since the release, the support had been overwhelming.
Friends, acquaintances, co-workers, they all cheered me on for this curious “author” thing. My parents however, were a totally different matter.

Writing? What a waste of time!

Right now I only wanted to make myself a cup of tea, and bring it up to my room without any trouble. I looked over at the family room, and my parents’ heads were buried deep in their Indian newspapers.
Perfect.
 

I balance
d the cup of tea in my hands and scurried out of the kitchen.

“What happened to your book?” my mother suddenly asked, her head still buried in the paper.
Dammit.

I stopped in my tracks and sighed. “It’s still a new release,” I said.

My father poked his head out of the “World News” section. “But popular books sell thousands and thousands of copies in the first week. Don’t you always hear that on the news?”

I clenched my teeth and eyed the stairwell, my escape so close I could taste it. “I did everything on my own,” I said. “So first I have to do
the marketing, find the readers, and then I WILL have good sales.”

“Such a waste of time,” my mother said, adding a disapproving
cluck of the tongue. That seemed like a good closing statement, so I dashed up the stairs trying hard not to spill my tea.

I was used to my parents’ skepticism by now,
because if it didn’t involve big job titles or raises, skepticism was all they knew.
Whatever.
I shrugged it off and settled into bed, with one hand on my cup and the other on my laptop keys.

I’d scheduled a few paid p
romotions, and the first one today had already led to fifteen book sales, which I could check on my book’s account every time I hit “refresh.”
Not that I’m obsessed.
I wondered how many of those readers would hate my book. There were bound to be some haters (just like James had reminded me), and there was nothing I could do to control it. My best defence was remembering my favourite books of all time, and how they all had scathing reviews. It was part of the gig, or a part of any gig in the arts. This was both acceptable to me and annoying to me, because only in those fields where you expressed yourself artistically, were people allowed to ridicule you publicly. This made me think of rude waitresses, terrible doctors, dumb cell phone customer service representatives...how come THEY didn’t have a listing on Amazon.com where I could publicly berate them?

I slapped myself on the
head and remembered to focus on the good. I had two nice reviews so far, and forty sales in the first ten days (even though half of those sales were from friends). I also had a blog tour coming up, which meant I’d be reviewed and write guest posts as well. This online thing would be a bit like a virtual book tour, only I didn’t get to shake any hands or sign any books. There was also the chance that no one would leave a comment or even give a damn.

Welcome to “i
ndependent author” land.

I
glanced at my e-mail, but still hadn’t finished my latest response to James. Our notes back and forth were never urgent anymore, but it was comforting to have him as a virtual ear. Even so, that feeling of nostalgia would often creep up, the one where I wished he could be more.

My daydream went on pause when I
heard the familiar buzz of my phone. I grabbed it from my bedside table and found a message from Laura:
Remember Erik? Well he asked me for your e-mail address. Weird, huh?

For the first time in a while, my
heart started thumping in my ears.

Erik? The only person
I know who read “Shantaram”?...

***

We’re just friends and we both like reading.

That’s wha
t I kept telling myself two days later at work, as I stared at my e-mail from Erik. When Laura told me he was going to contact me, the wildest of fantasies popped up in my head.
.
In this unlikely scene he would realize he couldn’t live without me, break up with his girlfriend in Denmark, and stay in New York City forever. All so we could build a love-nest.

Yes, the insane part of my brain which had practically taken over when I’d first starting
talking to James---but which I’d muted to an almost-whisper in my now more mature grown-up days---was for a moment re-awakened. I quickly shut it down when I remembered I was at the office.

In reality there wasn’t any need to go nuts, as Erik had only wanted to c
ongratulate me on the book release.
Big frickin’ deal.
It seemed we both enjoyed books like a couple of nerds, which was hardly the dramatic outcome I’d been imagining. I decided this was a casual “once in a while” type of contact, so maybe in that way he was ghost number-two behind James. “
Two Ghosts and a Lady.” Now THAT would make a very good movie.

Keeping in mind a casual approach, I acknowledged this latest ghost in a friendly reply.

----------------------------

Hey Erik,

I’m warning you before you read my book, it’s basically chick-lit with some awkward family moments thrown in.

Maybe you should try “Every Man Dies Alone” by Hans Fallada instead. It’s about the Nazi era from the perspective of two Germans, as they try to topple the regime from inside Berlin. Only not with violence…but with words. You would like it.

Seriously, try that instead of my book.

:-)

Romi

--------------------------

I sent the e-mail and closed all
the Internet tabs from my computer. I longed for the days when I would work for two hours and screw around for six. Those were the glory days of planning weekly promotions for Canada’s biggest retailer, at a time when I could actually procrastinate and still get everything done! It was all a distant memory now, since I was six months into a promotion with a totally absentee boss.

His name was Shawn and he was
the most hands-off mofo you would ever meet. He didn’t know anything about anything, and it seemed like he wanted to keep it that way. Ignorance was his bliss, since it allowed him to forward everyone’s problems straight to me. I could manage, but it was strange making presentations to senior management without any back-up. Shawn would just sit in the corner of the boardroom and nod in agreement at everything I said, almost like a bobble-head toy. But if the VPs disagreed with me? Well then he would bobble-head in their direction too, thereby throwing me under the bus. He also wasn’t here half the time, which at first made me think he had a mistress, but now I knew for sure that he was lazy.

I started to answer an e-mail about
a pricing problem Shawn was clueless to, when I heard his distinct footsteps approach my cubicle. There was a clacking to those steps, which could only mean the man-heels that he wore were coming close. His need to “heighten” wasn’t surprising, since he was borderline elf and I myself had started wearing high heels (as part of my enhanced corporate image). Even two-inch heels would bring me right to five-foot-nine, which would’ve made things awkward if he didn’t have “lifts.”

The man-heels slid
to a stop outside my cubicle. My laptop faced the window so I was blind to his clickety-clack presence.

“Hey Romi.”

I turned around to face the forty-something troll-like freckled man and his orange goatee. “Hey Shawn.”

“So...
are you ready for today’s presentation?”

I was c
onfused. “No I think that’s YOUR presentation. The one with the senior VP.”

He bobble-headed a bit
before he continued. “That’s true, but it would probably be better if you led it. Then I can just talk when I have a question.”

“Why would you have a question about your own presentation?”

“I mean if THEY have a question.” He laughed.

“But I don’t
even have a presentation deck for that,” I said. “It’s the one about a long-weekend promotion next May, right?”

He smiled. “Yup,
that’s the one.”

“Right...
but I haven’t done any slides for that. It’s all in the spreadsheets right now.”

“Oh don’t worry about that. I’ll send you the slides I’ve already done. They’re almost finished,
but it’d be great if you added in the numbers.”

He gave me the
“thumbs up” and click-clacked away.

I’d thought my days of being
someone else’s bitch were over with this promotion, but I quickly realized that as long as you were working in a corporation, you were always somebody’s bitch.

***

Thirty minutes later, as I was tidying up some numbers for this random presentation only an hour away, an e-mail popped in from Shawn, containing all the slides he had already worked on.

I opened up the file, and with each click my jaw dropped further.

He’d finished the title slide (
with HIS name on it, of course
), a basic agenda file, but all the other slides just had titles and were otherwise blank.
Latest Results, Analysis, Competitive Activity, Recommendations, Projected Sales Growth…

And I
was supposed to do this in an hour?!

Screwed by the
boss in platform man-heels...

***

Shawn’s presentation and my own the next day had actually gone pretty well, which meant today I could browse some competitive analysis in-between calming sips of tea.
Ahh...

In the midst of my casual read, my cell
phone buzzed with a new instant message from Erik. I really hadn’t planned on ever giving him my phone number, but with free instant-messaging apps that were practically in real time...it was simply more efficient than e-mail.

Sure.

I grabbed the phone to read his message:
“
My favourite quote from your book so far: “His Internet picture is definitely a fake…he’s probably an eighty-year-old serial killer”…hahaha, so, was he an eighty-year-old? And what happens next?”

I started laughing, even though I wanted to scowl. Now that I’
d read the message, Erik could see I was online.
Should I reply right away or make him suffer? I’ll save the suffering for later.
My message back was as direct as an Aries could get: “
BE QUIET and get back to work...or I’ll make sure you get fired and immediately deported.”

I
hid my phone away from view and returned to my competitive reading. I had to stay sharp with an idiot-boss after all…

***

With Shawn constantly breaking new records for hardly ever being at work, I thought I would get some revenge by leaving early.

A
nd I had a plan.

The first part of my plan was a
visit to the museum.
This membership has to pay for itself somehow.

The s
econd part of my plan was a phone call...with Erik.

Every time I thought about Erik, I reminded myself that whatever next piece of contact we had
, it needed to stay as “just friends.” That part was easy, but making sure it didn’t mean anything to me? This part was getting more difficult.

I
climbed the museum’s big swirling staircase, stopping at the renovated exhibit on Ancient Greece. I followed the row of busts all the way to a headless statue of Aphrodite. She was naked from the waist up, with ripples and ripples of intricately-carved marble as her skirt. The lack of head made me instantly stare at her chest for a while. This was a great excuse for males to constantly look at a woman’s breasts, although a headless corpse was less than ideal as a girlfriend.

I wondered what Aphrodite would say about meeting
an interesting guy at the totally wrong time. She would probably tell me to go meet Dionysus, get drunk on all his wine, then go have sex with my brother.

Thanks for nothing, Ancient Greeks.

I found myself as I always did, unwittingly getting closer and closer to
Ancient Egypt. It was all so unassuming; a few clay pots for a start, some hand tools to mark the earlier civilization, the primitive mummification in dirt ditches…and then, before I knew it, I was in a sarcophagi heaven.

After
my morbid tour of the dead, I made it to the very end where Ancient Egypt met Greece, and like always...the epic Cleopatra awaited me.

Making certain that no one was around, I began my
latest discourse with the bust.