I assumed he dressed up for me.
I assumed the hand-holding meant something.
I assumed that a man like Miller Evans looked ata woman like me—box hedge, not willow, unpolishable shoes and all— and saw someone worth wanting.
And then Raquel walked in from marketing in her polished existence, with her cake-related restraint and her elegant relationship with gravity, and Devon said wingwoman, and apparently I was wrong about all of it.
I stare at my cake.
My cake stares back.
And then, from somewhere in the back of my slightly alcohol-soaked brain, a thought surfaces.
Clear and sharp and thirteen years old.
I wasn’t going to let anyone make me feel small.
I made that promise.
I have kept that promise.
I have kept it through bad haircuts and worse job interviews and one extremely ill-advised attempt at a juice cleanse. I have kept it through every meeting where someone talked over me, and every date that went nowhere, and every morning I looked in the mirror and decided I was enough anyway.
I have kept it.
And I am not breaking it tonight because of willowy Raquel and her architectural footwear.
Also — and this just occurred to me — didn’t Isee on LinkedIn last month that Alexa Maddox works in marketing now?
Of course she does.
Of course the girl who made me feel small at a sleepover grew up to be the template for women like Raquel. The universe has a sense of humor, and it has always, always been at my expense.
Fine.
Fine.
I don’t have to tolerate the universe’s sense of humor anymore than I had to tolerate Alexa’s spite.
I set down my cake plate with perhaps more authority than strictly necessary.
If Miller Evans wants a wingwoman tonight, I am going to be the most spectacular wingwoman in the history of the institution. I am going to be so gloriously, outrageously, unapologetically myself that he is going to have to physically shield Raquel from the blast radius.
Go big or go home.
And there is no going home when you’ve already rented a nearby barndominium.
I grab a fresh drink from a passing tray, turn to the woman sitting on my other side—Geeta’s cousin, I think—and then at Maybe Miranda, and say, “Do you want to dance?”
They look delighted. “Absolutely.”
The DJ, bless him, is playing Icona Pop’s “I Love It” like he knew exactly what this moment required.
I crashed my car into the bridge.
I don’t care.
I love it.
