Chapter Three Amelia

THREE

Excerpt from R.C.’s bullet journal, written in black ballpoint pen

Mission statement: To live each day with courage, compassion, and curiosity. To become a better version of myself each day and inspire others in my path to do the same. (Got to figure out better mission statement, the one that came with this journal is stupid)

Feelings: Stressed. Anxious. Distracted.

Roles I play in my life: Friend, enemy, “frenemy,” vampire, amateur glockenspielist

Today’s goals:

blend in (via F’s boring outfits)

avoid getting murdered

try “Bullet Journaling” (most ideas Cassie thinks are good are actually bad , but what the heck. Nothing to lose by trying).

Tomorrow’s goals: Same goals as today. Also: take out the trash.

Amelia

It took me a lot longer than I wanted to get my strange interaction with Mr. Fedora Asshole out of my head.

I thought about him all the way to the El, despite telling myself to shake it off. But what if he was in some kind of danger? He didn’t seem delusional, despite his other peculiarities. And I didn’t think he had made any of it up; it was far too weird a story for any person’s imagination to have conjured it out of thin air.

I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about him—or, if I was being honest with myself, his striking blue eyes, or the way his broad shoulders filled out that ridiculous shirt he was wearing—until I finally made it to Italian Village, the restaurant in River North my family had picked for this month’s get-together.

I opened the door to the restaurant and was greeted with the pleasant aroma of roasting garlic. My mouth watered.

I was nearly thirty minutes late. Mom would likely have something passive-aggressive to say about that. Probably something about how I was going to make myself sick if I kept working so hard.

While Mom and Dad sort of understood my brother Sam’s interest in being a lawyer, the kind of practical application of math skills I used in my career made as much sense to them as being a jackalope hunter would. They didn’t exactly disapprove. They just didn’t understand why a person would want to do it, least of all someone who was related to them. Especially if it meant having to work inhuman hours several months out of every year.

Hopefully Mom’s comments tonight would not get any worse than passive-aggressive.

Either way, if the delicious aroma that greeted me when I stepped inside the restaurant was anything to go by, at least dinner would be good.

Italian Village was relatively new and had been getting good buzz on social media among people who knew the Chicago food scene. So it was a lot more crowded than I’d have otherwise expected in this part of the city on a Tuesday. The host guided me through the restaurant to a table for ten near the back, where my parents, my brothers Sam and Adam and their respective spouses, my eighteen-month-old nephew Aiden, and my twin eight-year-old nieces Ashley and Hannah were already seated.

Adam’s cell phone rested on the table in front of his kids, who were staring at whatever was playing, transfixed. My brother must have won the argument he always had with his wife, Jess, over whether they should let their children have screen time during dinners out.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, squeezing between the backs of Mom’s and Dad’s chairs and the wall behind them as I made my way to the last empty seat at the end of the table. I almost mentioned the strange interaction I’d had with that guy outside my office to explain why I was late, then decided against it. How would I even describe whatever that was? I barely understood it myself. Easier to fall on the old standby excuse. They were expecting it anyway. “Work is just…you know. Wild these days.”

“We know,” Sam said, giving me a small smile. “Glad you could still make it.”

Sam was a second-year associate at a law firm in the Loop. Like me, he worked very long hours. Unlike me, he still managed to make our monthly family dinners on time. His husband, Scott, likely had something to do with that, though. Scott was an English professor, and with his fastidious attention to detail and legendary calendaring skills, he was the opposite of every absent-minded professor stereotype I had ever heard. And being the daughter of a retired history professor and a retired high school English teacher, I’d heard just about all of them. I suspected Scott actually kept Sam’s calendar for him, with little beeps going off on Sam’s phone anytime my brother needed to be somewhere.

I loved spending time with Sam and his husband. Even though their busy work schedules and mine rarely lined up, we always had fun when we did manage to find time to hang out.

Fortunately, Mom didn’t seem upset with me for being late. She was fully engrossed in conversation with Scott, seated on her other side, and hadn’t even noticed I’d arrived. Mom had a master’s degree in nineteenth-century English literature, which she’d used to teach language arts to high school kids for thirty years, and had been a voracious reader all her life. The first time Sam brought Scott home, I hadn’t even thought Mom could look so happy. Sam liked to joke that of the three of her kids, she liked Scott the best.

Honestly, he may have been right.

“Glad you could join us, Ame.” Dad sat at the head of the table, directly opposite from my nieces. His voice was deep and booming and carried easily over the din of the restaurant. “Tax season keeping you busy, huh?”

It was, verbatim, the same question he’d asked every March and April in the seven years since I’d become a CPA. From anybody else, the repetitive and unimaginative questioning would feel dismissive of my career, and grating. I mean, it was still a little grating and dismissive, even from Dad. But I knew he wasn’t doing it because he disapproved of my job. He just quite literally didn’t know what else to say about my career.

You couldn’t get much farther away from early twentieth- century European history than filing tax returns on behalf of nonprofit foundations.

“Yep,” I said. “Super busy.”

“Good girl.” Dad smiled at me, then turned his attention back to the wine menu he’d been studying when I arrived. “In the mood for some Chardonnay? I ordered a bottle for the table.”

I wasn’t normally much of a drinker. Especially not on a work night. But suddenly, the idea of drinking something with dinner to blur the edges of the day sounded marvelous. “Sure,” I said.

“Me too.” Adam was making silly faces at Aiden, who was no longer interested in the iPhone and looked about thirty seconds away from a total toddler meltdown.

“Me three,” Mom said. She smiled at Dad before turning to the rest of the group. “Also, now that you’re all here, I wanted to see whether you’d gotten Gretchen’s invitation.”

Sam looked up from his menu. “What invitation?”

“Gretchen’s getting married in May!” Mom was beaming. “Your father and I got ours today. Aunt Sue said you’re all invited.”

I fought to stifle a groan.

Lord.

Not another cousin getting married.

Suddenly, the wine Dad ordered couldn’t arrive soon enough. Because now I knew exactly how the rest of tonight’s dinner was going to go. Mom and Dad wouldn’t be gently harping on me about working too hard like I’d worried.

They’d be gently harping on me about being single, instead.

The less of what I knew was coming next that I had to sit through completely sober, the better.

“We got our invitation yesterday,” Jess said. “The girls are looking forward to seeing their cousins again.” If that was actually true, Ashley and Hannah showed no sign of it. They seemed completely oblivious to this entire conversation, having moved on from Adam’s cell phone to a copy of American Girl magazine that sat spread out on the table before them.

The waiter blessedly chose that moment to appear at the table with the bottle of Chardonnay. I made eye contact with him and motioned for him to place it directly in front of me. He gave me what I thought was a nod of understanding before putting the wine right by my plate. Though that might have just been my imagination.

“Wine, anyone?” I chirped. But nobody was listening to me.

“I’m so happy for Gretchen,” Mom sighed. And then she leaned over to me and added, in a sympathetic half whisper, “You know how bad Gretchen’s last breakup was.”

I didn’t know how bad Gretchen’s last breakup was. Other than the fact that back when she was a junior in high school, Gretchen used to sneak out at night to see the nineteen-year-old boyfriend her parents didn’t know about, I knew nothing about her dating history at all. Mom had three siblings; Dad had four. Several of my aunts and uncles had been married multiple times. Our extended family was far too large to keep close track of everyone’s lives.

Gretchen had always seemed nice enough, but I hardly knew her. In fact, the only times I’d seen her since our grandmother’s funeral five years ago had been at other cousins’ weddings.

Of which, in the past five years, there had been more than I could count on two hands.

“Oh, yes,” I said, in a voice I hoped sounded at least passably sympathetic. “That breakup. Terrible.”

“She’d been single for nearly two years before she met Josh.” Mom shook her head, tsking under her breath. “And you know that Gretchen is almost thirty-five. Aunt Sue had begun to suspect Gretchen had given up. It’s so good to see someone who’d given up on romance find love, don’t you think?”

She gave me a knowing look that was all too familiar.

My stomach lurched.

So I guess we were doing this, then.

It wasn’t that I had anything against dating, or the institution of marriage. Or even weddings. Four months ago, I’d attended a bachelorette party in Nashville for one of my old grad school classmates that had featured an endless stream of bars and a drag show at the Ryman that had by itself been worth the cost of the plane fare.

Weddings celebrations could be fun. Love was worth celebrating.

But that wedding trip to Nashville was so much different than this upcoming wedding would be. No one had implied there was something wrong with me for being single, or suggested I needed to do anything to change that. Half of the girls on that trip had been single, too. Or at least, I think they’d been single. In either case, I certainly hadn’t been the only one tucking dollar bills into those male strippers’ G-strings.

I wasn’t close enough to Gretchen to be included in any raucous parties she might be planning as part of the lead-up to her wedding. All I had to look forward to were little needling comments from Mom and her sisters about how I worked too hard and should date more, and a general feeling of being under a spotlight of loneliness.

I liked my life. I loved my career, my cat, my apartment. I loved my friends. And most of the time, I was completely fine with being single, since the last relationship I’d been in ended with more tears than I ever wanted to cry in a one-week span ever again.

Matt had been a CPA, like me. He had thick dark hair, wore these ridiculous librarian glasses that worked for him, and made love the same way he did everything: thoroughly, and with frequent references to the Internal Revenue Code. He was almost unconscionably hot—which was part of why I’d started dating him in the first place—but our relationship left a lot to be desired. So did Matt, I came to find out, both as a person and as a boyfriend. I was devastated when I found out he’d been cheating on me with another woman, who worked at his accounting firm—even if I knew I never wanted to listen to someone talk about step-up basis while I was on the cusp of orgasm ever again.

Regardless, ever since Matt, I’d found all the satisfaction I needed out of life between my career, my friends, and my trusty vibrator.

I couldn’t tell Mom that last part, of course. I just wished she, and the rest of my family, would accept that I didn’t need to be in a romantic relationship to feel complete. My own personal history suggested I was better off on my own.

I didn’t say any of this to Mom, who was still pretending she was only talking about Gretchen’s sad dating history and looking at me expectantly for a reaction.

I went along with it, and pretended not to realize where we were heading. What was the point? I’d been putting up with this in the lead-up to every cousin’s wedding for years. Ever since things with Matt went to shit.

“Single for nearly two years,” I parroted. “Poor Gretchen. Absolutely awful.” I’d been functionally single for at least twice that long, but who was counting.

“Awful!” Aiden cried. He’d apparently lost interest in Adam’s cell phone and was now trying hard to engage with the adults in conversation.

Mom ignored him. “Your invitation should be for you and a plus one, dear,” she continued, oblivious to my mounting irritation, her voice still just above a whisper in my ear. “I double-checked with Aunt Sue. So you can definitely bring along a date. I think that would be very nice.”

Mom knew full well I wasn’t seeing anyone. She also knew I’d never been one for casual dating. Aunt Sue may have said I could bring a plus-one, but everyone in this family knew I’d be showing up alone.

The same way I showed up for almost every family event alone.

“That’s great,” I said sarcastically, and probably a bit too loudly. I grabbed for the bottle of wine again. “If I can bring a plus-one, that means I’ll be able to bring my boyfriend.”

I’d never really experienced a record scratch moment before, where conversations and ambient noise and even time itself seems to grind to a screeching halt. I was experiencing it now, though. No sooner were the words out of my mouth than Adam and Jess abruptly stopped talking. Sam was staring at me, his eyes wide as saucers. Even Aiden wasn’t looking at his dad’s phone anymore. Following the adults’ leads, he’d turned his guileless blue gaze on me.

And Mom…

Mom was beaming .

It took me longer than it should have to realize that somehow, for reasons that escaped me, my family had taken my flippant comment at face value. Was I really so bad at sarcasm that not one person in my family had picked up on it?

“You’re dating someone?” Mom sounded like Christmas had come in March. I barely heard her over the spinning of the wheels in my mind.

I opened my mouth to correct her. To say that, no—I was still just as single as ever—

And closed it again as one of the most ridiculous ideas I’d ever had began taking shape in my mind.

Maybe I really was working too hard and it was getting to me. Perhaps the wine I had only taken a few sips of with dinner had gone too quickly to my head on an empty stomach.

Either way, maybe—just maybe—letting them think I was seeing someone would get them off my back about being single for a little while. At least until after we were on the other side of Gretchen’s wedding, and Mom’s dating-related comments would go back to being occasional annoyances.

The next words out of my mouth shocked me even as I said them.

“Yes. I’m seeing someone.” My voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere outside myself. I thought fleetingly of the interaction I’d had with Mr. Fedora Asshole. It had been so difficult for me to pretend at anything even as it had come as second nature to him. If only he could see me now , I thought, feeling a little unhinged. “I’m so glad I’ll get to bring him to the wedding,” I added, as my family continued to stare at me in surprised silence. “He’ll be thrilled.”

With that, I sank a little lower in my seat and poured myself another glass of Chardonnay with shaking hands. I’d already had more wine than strictly necessary for a family dinner on a Tuesday night. But if I was making questionable decisions, why not go all in?

“Is he hot?” Jess whispered conspiratorially in my ear.

Every single part of me that was capable of panicking was doing it then. “Um. Yeah?” Because in that dizzy moment, it felt like the right thing to say. “He’s…yeah. He’s definitely hot.”

I didn’t sound convincing even to myself, but Jess grinned at me anyway. After a quick glance at Adam to make sure he wasn’t looking, she held up her hand for a fist bump.

Instead of bumping my fist with hers, I pretended not to see it and slunk down farther into my seat.

“I can’t wait to meet him,” Mom said, dreamily.

That made two of us.

I did my best to smile back at Mom, even as I was screaming inside.