Page 26 of The Do-Over

“Did you say you’d do it?”

He ignored me. “I thought getting drunk and finding someone to make me forget her seemed like just the thing. Besides, that was my New Year’s resolution, anyway. What better time to start than now?”

The New Year’s resolutions. I’d avoided looking directly at the piece of paper hanging on my fridge. Something about them made me uncomfortable—like being judged about how I was—or wasn’t—living my life every time I walked into the kitchen. They taunted me: I will not try to lose weight. I will not try to be more confident. I will not put more effort into my job. I will not date. I will not try to be a better daughter and sister. I’d tried to throw it away more than once and couldn’t bring myself to do it.

“Fine. Let’s do it,” I said. “You didn’t answer my question, though. Did you say you’d do it?”

He sighed. “Of course I did.”

I dropped my forehead on my desk. “Is that a good—”

“Be ready at eight. I’ll pick you up.”

I sighed. “Fine.”

“And Perci, wear something that doesn’t look like you’re going to a funeral?”

ELEVEN

“You lie with dogs, you get fleas.

You lie with liars, you get crabs.”

—MIMI

Mathias arrived promptly, took one look at my outfit—a pair of wide-legged black pants, white button-down, and cardigan—and marched me back into my bedroom. Then he spent twenty minutes complaining about the state of my wardrobe.

“I wish you’d let me take you shopping.” He held up a shapeless dark wool suit—thanks, Mom—and grimaced. “What is this?”

I opened my mouth to answer.

“That was a rhetorical question. The answer is the same for everything in this closet. It’s sad.” He shook his head and pulled out a dark purple pencil skirt from the deep recesses of my closet. “This isn’t hideous.”

I crinkled my nose, remembering when I’d purchased it during a shopping trip with my mother. In a rare act of rebellion, I’d refused to buy it in black or brown. That shade of purple was gorgeous, deep, sultry—the opposite of me. When I got home, though, I hid it in the very back of the closet, never even took the tags off. “Why can’t I keep on what I’m wearing?”

He shoved the skirt in my hands. “Put it on. Take off that cardigan. Where did that even come from? The Mister Rogers’ Collection at Target? Keep the shirt but tuck it in.”

I rounded on him in horror. “But then people can see my butt.”

Instead of answering, he glared at me with the steely-blue eyes of a man who’d reached his limit. I didn’t argue further.

The SoHo was a new, trendy bar located close to downtown. It was more club than bar with a wide, central dance floor and pulsing music played in thirty-minute intervals. Clubs were not my friend. On a list of Reasons I Didn’t Like Clubs, number one was the dancing. All that writhing and gyrating. The casual way people flitted from one person to the next. The sweat.

No, thank you.

I perched at the bar on the far end with an unobstructed view of the whole place. Mathias had parked me here before surveying his options. He worked the room before settling on a petite brunette with a pixie haircut and muscular shoulders. The exact opposite of Phee.

The bartender hovered ten feet away. I tried to catch his eye and when that didn’t work, I waved my hand in the air to get his attention. I was certain he saw me, but he turned and ambled toward a group of giggling college-aged women.

Someone bumped my shoulder and a deep voice muttered, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said.

Although the guy next to me didn’t say any more, I could feel the weight of his gaze on me and when I looked, my mouth dropped open. It was him, my non-handsome neighbor, Nate. In a dark green t-shirt and heavily worn jeans, he was clearly not going out of his way to impress anyone. His head tilted and his eyes honed in on me.

“Hey, it’s me, Perci. Remember? I live down the hall from you.”

An eyebrow hitched over a murky-colored eye. “I remember.”