36. Summer

36

SUMMER

“You’re stuck on a stripper pole?”

I rub my ear in case I’m hearing things. Because that just can’t be. How can Roxanne be stuck on a stripper pole? How can anyone be stuck on a stripper pole?

“I’m not stuck,” she says diplomatically.

“Who is, then?” I ask, swiping at the tears pricking my eyes, zeroing in on the Mayday call instead.

“It’s more like the pole is stuck.”

“In your apartment?”

“In the activity room,” she confesses in a hushed voice.

“How is there a stripper pole in the activity room?”

“I had it installed. As part of the bingo revolt.”

“Oh my God,” I groan, rushing to the stairwell and racing downstairs so I can get across town. “I’ll be there in five.”

Once outside, I call a Lyft, which speeds me through the park to Sunshine Living.

I run to the second-floor activity room, blinking when I find Roxanne, a seventyish man named Michael, and a woman Roxanne’s age, tugging at a silver pole.

“Ah, Summer!” Roxanne rises, a little wobbly, setting her puma head cane down. “Be a dear. You’re so strong and young. Can you help us move this?”

I shake my head in disbelief. This is my life? I’m carrying a plastic bag with a sopping wet bridesmaid’s dress inside, and now I have to uninstall a stripper pole, plus the internet hates me, my dreams have been crushed, and the man I love thinks we are a mistake. He didn’t mean for any of it to happen. He didn’t mean for us to happen.

But first things first. Dropping the bag, I rush to the crew who are pulling—to no avail—at a stripper pole installed in a silver base. After a quick assessment, I figure out they were unscrewing it the wrong way. Grabbing the screwdriver, I slide the tool into the base and detach the pole from it, holding tightly so it doesn’t fall. Once it’s detached, the pole comes apart in two pieces.

Roxanne guards the entrance to the activity room, then mouths, Coast is clear. Let’s take it to my place.

I hand her and her friends the pole pieces. “Maybe that’s where it should have been installed in the first place.”

“Live and learn,” she says, then stomps off with her friends.

I sink down on the couch, grab my phone, and stare at my messages, trying to decide what to tackle next.

But really, there’s nothing to tackle.

I can’t undo The Dating Pool ’s decision.

I can’t convince them to requalify me.

And I can’t prove we didn’t lie. We did lie. We were fake, and we won’t ever be real.

But I can at least return my mother’s call.

“Sweetheart. I’m at Mags’s place. Where are you?”

“I’m on my way,” I say, crying for real, and there is nothing fake about these tears.