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Bird and his muscular arms were flirting with me again and my eyes were flirting back.
“Sure,” Ian interrupted, poking his head between us—me and the arms. “Hey, ‘Miss Lady,’ can I talk to you in private for a minute?” he asked. “Bird, it’ll only take a moment, then she’s all yours and you two can talk about whatever you like.”
Bird nodded and Ian pulled me into the parking lot.
“Talk about desperate,” Ian said, after pulling me halfway across the parking lot.
“He’s not desperate,” I said. “He’s just country.”
Bird was still standing in front of the truck waving at me.
“I wasn’t talking about him!”
“What?” I looked at Ian. “I am not desperate! According to you, I’m dating someone. Right?”
“What?”
“That’s what you told Scarlet.”
“Oh, that was nothing. She was trying to hook you up with some dude.”
“And?”
“And I knew you wouldn’t like him, so I told her you were dating someone.”
“How could you be so sure I wouldn’t like him?” I asked.
“He’s a plastic surgeon. One of Scarlet’s dad’s golf buddies. Has his own practice.” Ian was trying so hard to make all of these traits sound uninteresting.
“And? Sounds like prince charming to me!”
“You don’t like those types of guys,” he said. “He’s too successful for you.”
(If I’d had a burning poker, Ian would be missing an eye right now. )
“What the fuck is that bullshit supposed to mean?”
“Whoa!” Ian threw up his hands. “Don’t shank a brother in the West End now. I didn’t mean it however you took it.”
“There aren’t too many ways to mean it and take it,” I pointed out.
“You know what you do with types like that,” Ian said. “Like that last guy, the doctor from Morehouse . . . What was his name? Prescott? The one who was all ‘doctors without borders’ and ‘try to save the world’?”
“Preston Alcott,” I answered.
Ian stepped back and smiled before we started laughing. There was no need to retell the story. I fell hard for Preston Alcott on the first date. He had a fast car, and like Tracy Chapman, I wanted a ticket to anywhere he went. He knew fine art, fine food, history, politics. He was rich. Had manicured hands. Good teeth. Great bones. Curly hair (I’m country, so I like curly hair—whatever). He wasn’t like anything I knew. A lot of men in Atlanta have money now. A lot of men in Atlanta drive Bentleys and live in penthouses. But Preston didn’t do it like it was new. Like it mattered to him. He was just prime rib. And he liked me! Now, I admit that I slept with him on the first date—but it wasn’t for naught. The next morning, before he drove me home, he asked me out again. He was going to the mayor’s ball and wanted me to be his date. I nearly died. Nearly fainted and just died. I was a long way from Chauncey and that pickup truck. Of course I said yes. The only problem was that while Preston had been asleep, I’d gone through his house (just a little detective work to see if he really was who he’d claimed to be) and found pictures of his former fiancée. She was a pretty thing. A long neck and cherry-shaped eyes. What bothered me, though—and I suppose I was looking because Preston had called me “thick” in bed—was that she couldn’t have been over a size 0. Her arms looked like golf clubs. Her fingers, cocktail straws. And there Preston was, sliding a huge rock on one of those straws in a picture he’d stashed in his desk drawer. I wanted a huge rock! I looked down at my chubby fingers and thus began the craziness. I had ten days to lose twenty pounds for the mayor’s ball. I’d make my grand, high-society debut on the arms of The Dr. Preston Alcott! Krista suggested I try this lemonade and cayenne pepper diet. It was ridiculous, had me dreaming of cheeseburgers and fried eggs all week, but I kept Preston in my mind and I did it. I lost the twenty pounds in ten days, and the morning of the dance, I was model gaunt and could fit into a size 6. I shimmied into Preston’s arms and thought I was Halle Berry. Until the middle of the night. Then I was feeling lightheaded. Then I fainted.
“That situation is in the past,” I protested the memory of Preston looking so embarrassed as he helped get me onto a gurney in the middle of the dance floor at the mayor’s ball. “It was just too much pressure to be perfect.”
“Pressure you placed on yourself,” Ian said.
“Men like Preston expect that. They want you to be perfect,” I said.
“I (You) hate them,” Ian and I said together.
“So what am I supposed to do? Be single for the rest of my life?” I asked.
“No, you got me!” Ian answered. “And I’m a doctor, too!”
