“Wow.” Amanda hooked her bra, then gave the underwires a little tug, getting everything in alignment. “That’s exciting.”
She grabbed her panties—they were black and high-waisted, with stretchy lace panels on the sides—and pulled them on. She felt a little better now that she was decent, glad it was a good underwear day.
“Do you work in the movie business, too?”
“I was a PA for a while, but now I teach at Soul Cycle. Probably do it for a few more years, till we’re ready to start a family.” Trish shrugged, not unhappily. “You?”
“Single,” Amanda said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “Just getting my life in order. I’m the events coordinator at the Senior Center. They actually have a pretty good lecture series.”
Trish nodded, but there was a faraway look in her eyes, as if she wasn’t really listening.
“This is so weird,” she said. “I still think about you sometimes.”
“Me?” Amanda gave a puzzled laugh. She and Trish had barely exchanged two words in high school. “Why?”
“To be honest?” Trish said. “You kinda freaked me out. You were always staring at me like I was this horrible, stuck-up, shallow person, and I couldn’t understand why you hated me so much.”
“I didn’t hate you,” Amanda said. “I didn’t even know you.”
“It’s okay,” Trish told her. “I had this epiphany in college. It just hit me one day, like, Fuck, I was a mean girl! That’s why she hated me! Sometimes, even now, I wake up in the middle of the night, and I’m just so ashamed of the way I treated people, how fucking selfish I was, such a little princess. So when I saw you here, I just thought I should come over and apologize. Make things right.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“I am so sorry,” Trish said, and the next thing Amanda knew they were hugging, Trish’s proud little cheerleader boobs mashing into her chest. “I am really and truly sorry for the person I used to be.”
*
Eve couldn’t remember the last time she’d gone to a restaurant by herself—not a coffee shop or a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria, but an actual sit-down restaurant with waiters and cloth napkins, a place where the other diners glanced at you with pity when you were first seated at your table for one, and then did their best not to look at you after that, as if you were disfigured in some way, and shouldn’t be made to feel self-conscious about it. And that was actually preferable to seeing someone you knew, giving them that sheepish little wave across the dining room—Yup, here I am, all by myself!—and then keeping your eyes glued to your plate for the next half hour, until either you left or they did.
But Eve had decided to do it anyway, to lean into the awkwardness and try to conquer it. Her inspiration was an article a newly divorced acquaintance had posted on Facebook—Going Solo: Fifteen Fun Things to Do by Yourself . . . for Yourself!—that had pointed out that too many single women deprive themselves of all sorts of pleasures out of simple fear of embarrassment, of being seen as less-than because they weren’t part of a couple or a friend group. Just face up to this fear, the article suggested, and do what you want to do, and you might come to realize that there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place.
Go ahead, the writer concluded. I dare you!
Some of the suggested activities seemed lame—Take a Long Hot Bath; Cook Yourself a Gourmet Candlelight Dinner—and also beside the point, if the point was to overcome the stigma of being a woman alone in public. Others seemed unduly ambitious—Go Kayaking; Run a Marathon—or financially infeasible—Take a Caribbean Cruise; Visit a New Continent. But there were a few that landed right in her sweet spot—simple, inexpensive ways to treat yourself that required little more than the courage to get out of the house: Sing a Song at Karaoke Night; Go to a Bar and Order a Fancy Cocktail; Take Yourself Out to Dinner.
The restaurant she picked was Gennaro’s, a homey red sauce Italian place on Haddington Boulevard. It was Brendan’s favorite, always his first choice on those nights when Eve had worked late or was too tired to cook. The hostess, a high school girl with glamorous false eyelashes, led her to an out-of-the-way table near the rest room hallway. Eve didn’t mind the subpar location. She was happy just to be there, surrounded by the familiar décor—the lovingly, if inexpertly, painted mural of the Neapolitan coast that took up an entire wall, the framed photographs of a Vespa and a bunch of grapes—and the comforting hum of other people’s dinnertime conversation.
She wished she’d thought to bring a book for company; next time she’d know better. For now, she was reduced to perusing the old-school paper placemat—it hadn’t changed for as long as she could remember—featuring a map of Italy, illustrations of the Leaning Tower and the Colosseum, and a handful of helpful facts about the country.
Population: Sixty Million
Religion: Roman Catholic
Language: Italian
Brendan had always gotten a kick out of that last one. What a shocker, he’d say. Italians speak Italian. Never woulda guessed. Thinking he’d appreciate the reference, she texted him a picture.
Dinner at Gennaro’s, she wrote.
Cool, he replied, with gratifying promptness. Who with?
Just me. Wish you were here.
Me too I miss that chicken parm!
It got easier once her wine arrived, a house chianti as unchanging as the placemat. She’d only taken a couple of sips when Gennaro emerged from the kitchen and made his way through the restaurant, going table to table like a politician. He was a sweetheart, a diminutive, blue-eyed Italian with a ruddy complexion and a thick head of silver hair, one of those slender continental types who managed to look elegant even in a dark green apron. When he spotted Eve, his face broke into a big, incredulous grin.
“Ay, long time no see. Where’s your boy?”
“College,” she told him. “Freshman year.”
“Smart kid.” Gennaro tapped his skull with the tip of his index finger. “How’s he like it?”
“Pretty well. Maybe a little too much for his own good.”
Gennaro waved his hand, as if batting away an insect.
“Ah. He’s young. Let him enjoy himself.” He peered at Eve, his eyes narrowing with concern. “What about you? What’s new?”
“Not much,” she said. “Just work. Keeping busy.”
Gennaro shrugged with good-natured resignation.
“What can you do? Gotta pay the tuition.” He patted her supportively on the shoulder. “Nice to see you, pretty lady. You come by anytime, we take good care of you.”