Nerd Girl (3 page)

It was all so exhausting to think about.

Being the nerd that I am sometimes, I outlined this chart yesterday to remind me that I was soon going to fall behind schedule. I posted it temporarily on my refrigerator.

I turn thirty in ten months and it’s not looking too good on the husband front. And even if I were to meet someone, the odds that he would be the man of my dreams have got to be less than one percent. One percent! What a depressing thought. No wonder I focused so much on my career. If I was being tracked on my relationship performance, I would never be rehired for new opportunities.

All things considered, I thought of myself as a healthy, well-adjusted person. I’m still in my twenties, I own my own condo, and I’m moving up the corporate ladder at a satisfactory pace. I had a great career, working for one of the most sought after companies in the world, and I was earning a six-figure salary. I didn’t think I was bad looking and some people might think I was even pretty. I’m 5’5” and petite, I kept fit by running and not eating junk food, I had long, thick, dark brown hair that fell just past by shoulders and brown eyes, I had good skin, and I had a good personality … I considered myself an attractive, smart, fun, mentally stable, successful woman.

So why couldn’t I find the right guy?

Or in my case, why couldn’t I keep the guy interested? I was afraid of becoming that woman you meet at parties or family gatherings where everyone says, “Why is a pretty and smart girl like you still single and not settled down?”

Why did people ask that, anyway? It’s not like single women
chose
to be in this position. Did they think that asking us that pointless question would somehow make us feel better? Didn’t they realize that I was wondering the same thing about myself already? People always had a little bit of pity reflected in their eyes and just a hint of sympathy in their voices when they asked about my love life—it always made me feel so good about myself that I wanted to eat another piece of cake before heading home. Alone. Regardless of how smart and pretty I was.

If everything I observed about myself was true, the only reasonable conclusion to my constant singledom was that there was something wrong with me. Maybe I was one of those women who just didn’t see the obvious in themselves. I didn’t know what that was, though. Time and time again, I was unlucky in love, and I don’t think it was because I alphabetized my cereal boxes or because I snored sometimes when my allergies were bad. Success in matters of the heart was my Achilles heel. For someone who was always in control of her life on so many other levels, I couldn’t seem to control the one thing that I really wanted.

Love.

Anna and I were fraternal twins. Even though we looked different, growing up, people tended to lump us into a single identity, “the twins,” and often forgot which name belonged to whom. Since twins occurred in only three percent of natural births, and especially less when we were young, being a twin gave us some minor local notoriety. Because of this, Anna and I learned at a very early age that our relationship was different than the sibling relationships our friends had.

As a twin, there was always a natural tendency to compete with one another and to stand out as an individual. From preschool and onward, Anna and I always made an effort to be different from the other. If Anna liked purple, I liked pink. If I liked Cinderella, she liked Belle. If Anna wanted a pink bike, then I wanted a blue one.

As we reached our teenage years and onto adulthood, our differences became even more pronounced. Anna always got in trouble growing up, I always followed the rules. The only time I really got in trouble was when Anna had something to do with it.

Anna was the cheerleader and the pretty one. That, of course, made me the smart one. The paradox of being twins was that even though people tried to lump you together, they also always compared you to your twin, even when they weren’t conscious of the fact.

We each had our strengths and we never held it against the other for our own weaknesses. If Anna got more attention and more dates in high school because she was prettier, that was okay with me. I took pride in my 3.9 GPA and had passed three AP exams for college credit. Besides, saying that I was less attractive than Anna was putting it mildly. It’s not like I was on the other end of the beauty spectrum or anything; I didn’t turn heads when I walked into a bar, but I like to think that I’m a relatively attractive person. It’s just when compared to Anna, she’s the “prettier” one.

We’re a quarter Korean, from our maternal grandmother, and shared the same light olive complexion. Our hair was dark brown, but Anna’s a shade lighter. Anna was more ethereal looking than me; her eyes were a unique shade of gray mixed with green and light brown. I just had plain brown. Anna had the classic, thin runway model body, whereas mine was more athletic. She always wore the latest fashion trends and I went for the more classic, girl next door look. I was preppy and Anna was a specialty shop, cool vintage clothes sort of girl. I loved reading for pleasure; Anna only read if school required it or if a book was being made into a movie. Of course, our tastes in men were different, too. She had always preferred the more artistic type and I went for the cleaner-cut professional type.

Our Venn diagram would look something like this:

Even in our effort to be our own people, we had deep empathy and loyalty to one another; we had that “special twin relationship” people always referred to. I recalled times as a child when one of us would get hurt, the other would cry alongside. If I got a lollipop from my eye doctor, I would insist on getting one for my sister as well. I preferred the pizza crust over the toppings, so she would always save her crust for me and I’d trade her a neatly stacked pile of pepperoni.

Things hadn’t changed much. If one of us had a broken heart, we would hold the other all night, as Anna did two weeks ago when I learned of Andrew’s recent engagement. I realized that Andrew actually did want to get married, he just didn’t want to marry me.

Anna was my best friend, my sister, and my other half. She was my twin and we had shared not only our mother’s womb, but nearly every single life experience together, literally, since birth.

I took a seat at the bar and looked down at my watch. It was 6:20. To offset my perpetual timeliness, Anna was always late. While she wasn’t late
yet
, I had every confidence that she would be. Our habit had always been to arrive thirty minutes before Happy Hour ended, which ensured we could get the cheaper drinks before we were moved into the dining area. I was starting to get worried she would be stuck with full-price cocktails.
Come on, girl.
I heard my phone ring and looking down at the lit screen. Anna.

I heard her voice before I could even say hello. “Jules, you’re going to kill me.”

“You’re going to cancel on me, aren’t you?” I didn’t even sound that surprised; only mildly irritated. Last minute cancelations were nothing new for us.

“But I have a really good excuse,” she countered.

Of course she did. I sighed, resigned to a celebratory evening alone. The bartender had just placed my wine in front of me, which at least softened the blow.

Anna continued arguing her case. “The Edgewater Hotel called me just now and said that they could do a tasting tonight after all. Since the wedding is in less than a month, I really want to get this out of the way.” Anna was getting married at the end of August. I was tired of hearing about it.

“Couldn’t you have called me earlier? I just waited twenty minutes for you and already ordered my drink,” I said, trying not to whine. This was so Anna.

“I’ll totally make this up to you. How about we go for brunch on Sunday somewhere?”

“Fine, that will work. I’m making you buy, though.”

“How about we do Macrina’s around ten?”

“Okay, sounds good. See you then.”

“Love ya, sis. Bye!” she chimed.

“Love you too,” I said begrudgingly, taking a sip of my wine to ease the blow.
Sisters.
As I swallowed my first sip of the Oregon pinot noir, I noticed a gentleman sitting a couple of seats to the right of me. He was staring at me and he wasn’t being very subtle about it, either.

I looked over.
Son of a gun.
It was my blue-eyed stranger.

“Hey, it’s you,” he said accusingly, narrowing his eyes at me. “Do you remember me?”

I just stared at him, utterly surprised that the man I’d been daydreaming about like a teenager for the last four days was sitting two seats down from me. What were the odds? I quickly recovered and found my voice. “Now that’s a pickup line I haven’t heard before,” I replied, proud of my witty response.

His face froze and then looked crestfallen.

I instantly felt bad for teasing him. “I’m just playing with you,” I added quickly and gave him a little smile. “Of course I remember you. It’s hard to forget the guy who hit you with his car.”

He winced at my reminder and then gave me a deprecating smile. He was about to speak when his phone rang; he held up his index finger for me to
hold on
. I took another sip of my wine and sneaked a peek at his profile while he spoke on the phone. It might’ve been because I hadn’t just been knocked into confusion from being hit by a vehicle, but he was more attractive than I remembered. He wore a light blue button down shirt that brought out the blue in the eyes I couldn’t forget. I could tell he took care of himself because his designer jeans hung nicely off his lean hips. His sandy brown hair was cut close but still had enough length for it to be a little messy on top. I imagined running my fingers through it.
Did I just think that?
Trying to shake that image from my mind, I continued to study him. He had a strong, masculine jaw with a day’s worth of stubble on it. I bit my lower lip as I watched him. He was definitely sexy …

I could wax poetic about why shoes were an early indicator of the type of man that wore them. A man’s shoes could tell you if he was trying too hard or if he was clueless about fashion. They told you if he was conservative, trendy or artsy. In our younger days, Anna and I made judgment calls on whether or not to date someone merely by his shoe selection. Yes, I knew this was shallow and I’d like to say I’ve come a long way from that, but some old habits were hard to break. His shoes looked expensive; clean and black with a little metrosexual style going on. In translation, he was successful, confident, casual, and not completely clueless about fashion.