Chapter 6

Chapter Six

My apartment is silent.

Too silent. A completely quiet moment is rare in a Manhattan apartment, no matter how late it is. Even when I'm stumbling to the bathroom at three in the morning, I can usually hear someone partying right outside my window. That's why the quiet when I open the door unsettles me.

"Hello?" I call out in a hoarse voice.

In response, a siren rips through the silence, tearing down the street right outside my window. I stand there for a moment, waiting for the bleating sound to disappear into the distance before I let out a little sigh of relief.

Everything is normal here. There are no intruders, no signs of breaking and entering. The city is its usual level of noisy. Nothing to worry about.

I enter my small apartment. And by small, I mean tiny . An apartment in Manhattan is considered big if you can fit a table in the kitchen. You can't fit a table in my kitchen. You can barely fit a person in there—my biggest motivation to keep my weight down is knowing I won't be able to fit in my kitchen or bathroom if I put on too many extra pounds. But, on the plus side, it's not one of those micro-apartments where you can't even stand up straight and your oven doubles as a refrigerator.

I drop my purse in its usual spot on the bookcase next to the front door, which is stuffed with trashy romance novels that have lead characters who look very much like Mystery Man. Romance novels give you an extremely unrealistic concept of romance. If I were a character in one of those books, our meet-cute would have quickly been followed by Mystery Man ripping off his T-shirt to reveal gleaming, rock-hard abs and then thrusting his throbbing loins against me.

My apartment is quiet, with no signs of anyone lying in wait to murder me. The living room is sparsely furnished with a sofa from IKEA, a wide-screen television, and a desk with my laptop on it that I have been using with increased frequency since I started mostly working from home during the lockdown.

My first stop is the bathroom, so I can check out the damage to my forehead. The cut itself is small, but thanks to my faulty clotting factors, it's bleeding quite a lot. I look quite frightening—no wonder Mystery Man hightailed it.

Since this is a frequent occurrence, I have a well-stocked first aid kit. I grab some gauze and keep pressure on my forehead. After I sop up most of the fresh blood and clean up what has already dried, I tape a pressure dressing in place. Hopefully by tomorrow it will have stopped bleeding enough that I can make do with a Band-Aid.

Stupid Kevin. I'm going to write a lengthy complaint to Cynch. I should have called the police after all.

After the dressing is secured, my eyes drop down to the rest of my face. I look pale and tired. I recently turned thirty-four, although most people think I'm in my mid twenties—but right now, I could pass for forty. I'm not beautiful the way Bonnie is, but a lot of men find me attractive. My brown hair has natural blond streaks, my eyes are an intriguing gray color, and a little mascara is enough to make my usually invisible light-brown eyelashes stand out. When I smile, I have a hint of dimples, and my teeth are the pleasing result of three years of braces from ages eleven through thirteen.

And yet, I can't manage to find a decent guy.

I get the feeling that Bonnie is picky, but I'm not. I'm not looking for the most gorgeous guy on the planet. I'm not trying to marry a millionaire. All I want is a decent man who doesn't have a drinking or a gambling problem, who is fun to talk to, who has a nice smile, and who likes me as much as I like him.

Is that really such an impossible dream?

I suppose it must be, or else I wouldn't be alone right now.

While I am busy feeling sorry for myself, my phone rings in the other room. I retrace my steps back to where I left my purse on the table next to the front door and dig my phone out from inside. For a split second, I get excited that maybe Mystery Man tracked down my phone number and is calling to ask me out on a date.

But no. It's the worst possible alternative to that—it's my mother.

I can't think of anything I am less excited to do right now than talk to my mother, but it would be cruel not to pick up the phone. She worries a lot about me going out on dates, even though I assure her that I always meet men in public places and that they don't know where I live. Of course, given what happened tonight, her concern isn't unjustified.

She's worried even more the last few years, since my father died suddenly from a heart attack. He used to keep her calm, but now that she's retired from her teaching job and is living all alone, I'm pretty sure all she does is sit in her house and worry about me. If I lived anywhere besides Manhattan, she would surely sell her house in Connecticut and move in right next door to me. But she finds the city intimidating, so I'm safe from having my mother as my next-door neighbor—for now. Although, if I told her about Kevin, she would probably put her house on the market tomorrow.

"Sydney!" she cries before I can even say hello. "Did you have a date tonight?"

"Yes." I take my phone into the kitchen to grab that glass of wine I was craving at dinner. "But it's over."

"Oh." I can't tell if she sounds relieved or disappointed. Probably a little of both. "How was it?"

"Eh."

"Is that good or bad?"

I tip about half a cup of red wine into a plastic glass—no point in being fancy if I am all alone. Hey, at least I'm not drinking straight out of the bottle. "I don't think there will be a second date."

The understatement of the century.

"I just don't understand it," my mother says. "You are such a beautiful girl. The boys should be lining up for second dates with you!"

I wonder how old I will have to be before my mother stops calling the men I date "boys." I imagine if I'm single when I'm fifty—which is starting to feel increasingly likely—she will still be referring to them as boys. By then, she'll probably be living with me. We'll probably be sharing the same bed.

"It's a mystery," I mutter as I take a long drink of wine.

"Oh, but I have some good news!"

Please not a setup. Please not a setup. "Um, what?"

"My friend Susan's daughter just had a baby!"

I take another swig of wine. "Wow. Fantastic."

"No, you don't understand," my mother says. "She's thirty-eight! She is thirty-eight, and she was still able to have children. And you're only thirty-four, so you've got at least four years of fertility. More, if you freeze your eggs."

"Wonderful." I drain the rest of my wine glass. "Listen, I'm kind of tired, so I'm going to go now."

"Don't be mad at me, Sydney. I'm just trying to show you that you have options!"

"I'm not mad. I'm just tired."

It takes another minute of reassuring my mother to get her off the phone. Even though talking to her gives me a slight headache, when I hang up, the apartment seems deafeningly silent again.

Why is dating so hard? Why can't I just find a great guy, marry him, and live happily ever after? Is that really too much to ask for?