Parker had no idea she’d just made me feel nice. She snapped her fingers at me. “I need his number.”
All I could think to say was “Why?”
“Because I’ve decided he’s my future husband.”
Hey. That was my thing. I was the person with a future husband.
“Future husband?” My body was suddenly filled with tiny firecrackers: a flash of jealousy; a flash of protectiveness; and then a final flash of Hell, no.
Now, I didn’t know Joe all that well. And it’s fair to say I’d had a lot of conflicting feelings about him since that red-and-white bowling jacket of his came onto my radar. And my jury was still out on whether he was a good guy or the full opposite.
But I would never in a million years sic Parker on him.
That was just basic human decency.
“I think he’s dating someone,” I said.
“So?”
“So, I think he’s taken.”
“So?”
“So…” The fact that I had to explain this was the exact reason why she was never getting his info. “It would be morally wrong of you to pursue a man who’s already seeing someone else.”
Parker did not take kindly to my obstructionism. “Are you the cheating police?”
“I’m just not going to help you with anything, Parker. Ever. For any reason.”
I could feel more than see Parker narrowing her face in suspicion. “You like him, don’t you?”
What? “No.”
“The way you say no is a clear yes.”
“I am protecting that guy from you the way I would protect any random stranger off the street.”
“Any random stranger you had a thing for.”
“No.”
“Oh my god!” she said then with a thrilled gasp. “Is he the one who stood you up?”
“No one stood me up,” I said.
“You’re a hilariously bad liar.”
Why was I even talking to her? I should have left the second I sensed who she was. “Just—fuck off, Parker. Okay? Can you do that?”
“Not until you give me his number.”
And that’s when we both heard a ding coming from my little purse, which had been hanging mutely from my shoulder this entire time, with the zipper unzipped and my cell phone sticking partly out. And the screen now lit up for us all to see.
There was a text on the screen: This is the front desk at Petopia Vet Clinic.
Then another quick ding: An emergency case came in just as Dr. Addison was leaving.
Then a final: He asked us to let you know.
This was the text I’d been waiting for the entire eternity of the last hour—but I didn’t even have time to respond before Parker reached out to try to snatch my phone. Like it might be a message from Joe.
Just as I realized what she was doing, I spun away.
Without even skipping a beat, as if she were perhaps a person who stole other people’s cell phones all the time, Parker lunged again in a one-two—this time around my other side, and with a lot more force.
It might even have worked—how hard is it to overpower someone in a coffee shop, after all?—but in the end, it didn’t. Because just at that moment, a woman with very unfortunate timing was walking toward us, and when Parker lunged to my side, she slammed right into her hard enough to knock her to the ground.
I remember it in slo-mo. The oof the woman made as her bottom hit the floor. The sloosh of her cold brew spilling. The tintinnabulation of ice cubes hitting the tile. Her shocked, shallow breaths at the cold shower of it all.
In the aftermath, we both stared at the woman, her white linen outfit now saturated brown with iced coffee like a sopped-up paper towel—and then Parker did the most Parker-esque thing a person could possibly do.
“Hey!” Parker said, checking her clothes for coffee splatters, like she’d been the victim all along. “Watch it!”
And then, done with both of us, she sailed out.
Anyway, that’s when the woman in the white linen dress started to cry.
I bent down beside her. “Hey. Are you okay? Bet that was cold.”
“I’m okay,” she said.
“I’m so sorry about that,” I said then, helping her up. I glanced at the doorway Parker had just blown through. “She is the actual devil.”
Once she was vertical, the woman looked down to survey the damage—and started crying harder.
“Can I run up and grab you some sweatpants or something?” I asked. “I just live upstairs.”
But the woman said, “I don’t have time. I have to get to the airport.”
I shook my head. “You can’t go like that.”
We both stared at her coffee-drenched clothes. “I have to go,” she said. “I’m late to pick up my boyfriend.”
“You can’t pick up a boyfriend like that, either,” I said.
She started crying harder. “I know.”
“Okay,” I said. “Two minutes. Let’s get this solved,” and I pulled her by the hand behind me toward the bathroom.
There I toweled her off while she just stood there like a little kid. And I thought—as I often did—about how my mom would handle this situation. “Let’s switch outfits,” I said. “We’re about the same size.”
She hesitated like I was nuts.
“It’s fine,” I said. “I live right upstairs. I’ll just pop up and change.”
She wasn’t sure, but there was no time to argue, and before she fully knew it, we were in our underwear in side-by-side stalls, flopping our clothes over the divider.
“Are you sure?” she asked as I watched my dress slither away and disappear on the other side.
“I’m sure,” I said, wincing a bit as I slid my arm into her cold brown linen sleeve. “And, anyway, there’s no time to argue.”
“But … you looked so pretty in this.”
“Ha!” I said, the way women do, like she couldn’t possibly mean it, just as her compliment took its place as the best moment of my entire night. Then I went on, trying to stress how totally okay it was for her to walk out of the Bean Street bathroom in my favorite dress. “That dress was twenty dollars at Target,” I said. “It was on super clearance.”
“That just makes it more valuable,” she protested.
Good point, in fact. She wasn’t wrong.
When we stepped out, I covered how wet and cold I now felt with massive enthusiasm for the sight of her in my dress. “You look phenomenal!” I practically sang. “You were born to wear that dress!”
“I’ll return it to you,” she said. “I’ll have it dry-cleaned and bring it back.”
But now I’d been swept away by the general joy of generosity—and the specific high of channeling my mother’s wisdom and kindness. “Keep it,” I said. “It really does look amazing.”
I mean, anybody would look amazing in my favorite dress. But still.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely,” I said, missing it already, even as I nodded.
We both turned to give her a final once-over in the mirror.
“I look better than I did before,” she said, looking herself over. Then she turned to me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“You weren’t even the one who knocked me down,” she said.
But then something occurred to me. “It’s really okay,” I said. “It’s nice to have a reason to do something nice.”
And I meant it.
Fourteen