What was worse, the list of questions didn’t even help. Sure, I went on fewer dates, but they were equally pointless because the men Ididmeet up with had either lied their socks off, been strategically dishonest, or I had zero chemistry with them.
I was sick of it. And sick of being the butt of my family’s dating jokes. Lucy had found her soulmate, Quinn, in high school; Tim and Delia had been together since college and for some (sexist) reason, my brothers’ love lives were never of much interest; and Daisy was too young for them to even contemplate having romantic feelings for someone, so I got the full brunt of it. They even had labels for the types of men I apparently went for, with equally disastrous results. Was it a Type A failure or a Type B?
Mom shook her head a little and relaxed again, now she was convinced there was no threat to one of her children for her to worry about. ‘I don’t understand online dating. Whatever happened to just letting fate take a hand? What’s the rush?’
I made a vague sound. In principle I agreed with Mom. I knew at twenty-nine I wasn’t old. I knew that even if I didn’t meet someone for another decade it needn’t mean my hopes of starting a family of my own were scuppered. Mom had fallen pregnant with Daisy when she was thirty-nine and I’d delivered many a baby to healthy, happy new mothers in their forties.
But.
My record for meeting good people through a dating app was so dire, I’d chosen to delete them all. My prospects of finding that needle-in-a-haystack person the old-fashioned way was even harder. When you work from home and have ninety percent of your free time taken up by events where you are surrounded by relatives, it doesn’t offer a lot of opportunities for meet-cutes. I hadn’t been on a date inmonths.
‘You know what you should try,’ Tim announced, no doubt about to gift me with some classic mansplaining. I loved him butas the eldest brother he had this way of thinking he knew best, even though Lucy and I were older than him. ‘Blind dating.’
‘I know a guy. Is he allowed to bring his guide dog?’ Uncle Joe joked, always eager to bust someone’s balls. He meant no harm, it was just his way, but I was feeling too crabby from my bad editing news, and bad dating memories, and the heat, so I didn’t even bother to retort. Choosing to put this show on in a parking lot was a nice, gritty touch but my God it was baking hot.
‘All right, Joe, put a sock in it. Elle will find her guy soon enough,’ Mom said. ‘Now, sweetheart, have you got Brigid’s christening in your diary?’
‘Of course. August 18th.’ I’d had it in the diary since she was two weeks old. I was going to be godmother, but I appreciated that Mom’s change of subject was to help me out.
‘And you’re coming to my softball jamboree next Sunday?’ Daisy asked.
‘Definitely.’
‘And the week after that we’re having a barbecue. To celebrate the end of school,’ Mom added.
I nodded, suppressing a sigh. I wanted to do all those things with them. But there were somanythings to go to and do when it came to my family. It was like an exponential growth of obligation. As soon as I attended one event, I got invited to three more. Every moment I wasn’t doing something to fix my book made me panic. And if dating was a mess that I was just going to have to leave to serendipity, then my writing career was all I had. I couldn’t lose my grip on that.
Maybe itwasa good idea to meet up for drinks with Keisha. If I ever made it out of this car park and I hadn’t been fried into a walking piece of bacon, some alcohol and a sense of perspective were definitely in order.
Chapter Five
Stephen
When I left, the lanes were packed full of cars moving in and out of the city on Friday night but my Uber driver assured me taking FDR Drive and winding our way along the island up to the Upper East Side, beside the river, was the quickest option. The water was a deep indigo expanse, dotted with shimmering lights, and the dark giants of the bridges stretched up beside the roads as we drove under viaducts and alongside the piers.
The city was always hectic but in the heat of the day it was a grudging kind of bustle, a stubbornness to get through with the business of the nine-to-five, which permeated the heavy air. Now, with the sun setting, taking a break from beating down on everyone, the liveliness, the electricity, was returning.
I had wondered at my firm not wanting to have drinks somewhere more convenient to the financial district…until I arrived. Fifth Avenue was everything I’d ever pictured about New York. The classy old architecture, the views of the Empire State Building and the Met, the lush expanse of Central Park. The hotel the bar was part of, belonged in a classic film my nan would watch, all sophisticated glamour and old money. After navigating the labyrinth of the lobby on the ground floor, I found the right lift to take me up…and up…and up.
The first thing I noticed, when I stepped out into the bar’s dark wooden interior, varnish gleaming softly in the ambient lighting, was a breeze. Through the foliage of numerous potted ferns and brown leather seating areas, liberally peppered with cushions printed with Chinese Dragons, I could make out the perimeter walls to the terrace. And they were not tall.
A wave of dizziness threatened me, and my pulse beat hard in my throat.
Walking slowly, parallel to the bar, I looked for a gap to slide into and order a drink, whilst also keeping an eye out for familiar faces. I’d already spotted a large group of my work colleagues seated on a corner sofa at the far end of the roof, but at that moment, a million pounds in cash waiting wrapped up for me with the keys to a Lamborghini on top wouldn’t have enticed me over. I kept scanning and walking and then – jackpot – I recognised Logan, an analyst, waiting for his turn at the bar.
‘Evening,’ I said, turning away from the views and focusing on him, and the solidity of the glossy bar, and the rows of glittering bottles behind it. I willed myself to ignore the exposed feeling at my back, the sensation that the floor was going to crumble away like something in a video game and send me plummeting downwards…
‘You made it. We were wondering where you’d gotten to.’ He held up his hand, elbow resting on the bar in a pseudo arm-wrestling stance, his overworked bicep bulging in his shirtsleeves. I obliged and clapped my hand into his as a greeting. He tried to squeeze my bones to mush for a few seconds, but I kept smiling and waiting for his need to feel dominant to pass. Luckily, he didn’t seem to notice how clammy my palm was.
‘The night is still young,’ I said, as he released my hand.
‘Sure, but with the strength of these cocktails? It doesn’t take long for most of the guys to hit the deck, y’know? Half of them are already smashed, and not in the way I’m here for.’ He sniggered and nudged me in the chest with one of his massive guns again.
I forced a smile. Clearly I was going to need to get my game face on to deal diplomatically with a bunch of new colleagues who were already three sheets to the wind.
‘Do they serve food here?’ A solitary banana was not an adequate dinner and if I ordered food it gave me an excuse to wait around at the bar longer.
‘Just snacks. You worried you’ll need to soak up the alcohol or you’ll make a fool of yourself?’
