CHAPTER FOUR
I’d like to say that I escaped my dad’s dinner the other night with no other humiliations or poignant conversations, but that wasn’t the case.
At the end of the night, when everyone had had too much wine and had stuffed themselves to the gills, I was accosted by Uncle Al as I was heading back from the bathroom.
“Perry,” he said, placing a gentle hand on my arm. “Could I have a word with you?”
I nodded quickly, knowing that there was something on Al’s mind for most of the dinner but not knowing what it was.
He led me past the kitchen and to the backdoor that let out into the staff parking lot, surrounded by overstuffed garbage cans and a few stray cats hanging around. I crossed my arms against the cold and watched as Al stuck a moldy doorstop into the door so it wouldn’t lock behind us.
“Are we allowed to be back here?” I asked, eyeing a tabby warily.
“This place is like a second home to me,” Al said jovially.
“Are you planning to off me?, I jokingly asked. “Because this is looking like a Sopranos set-up.”
“Nothing like that, I just wanted to give you some advice.” He walked forward a few feet and stopped. The yellow light above the door obscured his face, making him look more and more like a mobster. I knew he was just my Uncle Al but it frightened me how overactive my imagination was these days.
“Perry…” he started and then trailed off. I couldn’t see his expression in the dark but I could tell his eyes were probably closed and his forehead was scrunched up dramatically. “I worry about you.”
Oh, here we go again.
“Not in the way your mother worries about you,” he said quickly. “Just…in a fatherly way. I’m sure if Daniel” (my dad) “wasn’t tipsy right now, and wasn’t so bullheaded about you, he’d be telling you the same thing.”
I shivered against the chilly breeze and took a step away from the shadowy garbage bins. “Sorry, it’s freaking freezing out here.”
“I know, just give me a minute. Just…listen to me. I don’t want you to say anything until I’m done and then we can go inside. You can get all defensive in the warmth.”
I eyed him suspiciously, totally unsure of what he was going to say.
He reached over and pressed his finger into the space above my heart. I looked down at this finger and looked up at him, confused.
“I think you going to Seattle, you staying with Dex and his girlfriend, I think…”
It’s a bad idea, I thought.
“I think it’s a good idea,” he finished. I looked at him, surprised. He put more pressure on his finger. He continued, his voice grave, “You’ve got this hole in your heart, Perry. I can see it on your face. You’re so beautiful, bella, you really are, but you look so…sad. You’ve got this hole, I can see it and it is bleeding out slowly. It’s clotted only by hope. This hope, based on maybes and what ifs, is killing you. This pin is small and it moves quietly. You need a knife. Get over it. Face the finality of it all and move on.”
I was speechless. I stepped back a foot so his finger was no longer above this so-called hole in my heart.
“Are you saying you want my heart to be broken?” I asked incredulously.
“It will heal. And you’ll be stronger for it. Much stronger. If you go, you’ll get hurt. But it’ll be worth it in the end.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t want to believe it. Yeah, I knew that going to Seattle was going to suck in many ways but it was just another thing to “man up” about. I’d get through it. But I didn’t see how my heart was going to be broken. I knew Dex was with Jenn. I knew they had their new apartment and their Fat Rabbit. I knew every night he was going to go into their bedroom with her and…
“See,” Al said. I didn’t want to meet his eyes. I knew the expression on his face.
“Can we go inside now?” I asked meekly.
Al put his arm around me and ushered me toward the door. “You’ll be fine. It’ll be a learning experience. And when you get back, it’ll all be over with. You’ll be bled out and all the better for it.”
And then we went back into the restaurant and joined the rest of the party in saying our goodbyes.
But I had been unable to stop thinking about what Al had said. Did I really keep on loving Dex because there was always that chance of “what it?” What if he broke up with Jenn or maybe if he fell in love with me anyway, or…so many scenarios to even list.
I was even thinking about it as I got ready for my date with Brock on Sunday night. It didn’t help that Ada had brought it up.
“So what are you going to wear to the Christmas party?” Ada asked, watching me apply mascara in our bathroom mirror. Rob Zombie blared from the tinny CD player and a half-drank glass of wine sat on the ledge, my medicine for calming my electric pre-date nerves.
I looked down at my dress, the same black dress I had worn at my dad’s birthday dinner. I figured it would look nice for Brock too.
“This one,” I said.
She gave me the most unamused look. It caused me to put down my mascara and say “What?”
She shook her head. “You are absolutely hopeless. This dress? You look straight out of a Donna Karan ad.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s fine if you’re going to work. In 1994,” she snarled. “Perry, this pains me to say this but your body is way too good for this. How the hell are you going to win over Brock or Dex in this?”
I had to turn around and face her at that. “Win over Dex?”
“What are you wearing to the Christmas party?” she asked again.
“This!” I yelled, pulling at the skirt of it.
“Hold on,” she said and left the bathroom, closing the door behind her.
Hold on? Hold on to what? I looked at myself in the mirror and straightened out the dress. There was nothing wrong with it at all. It was boring, sure, but black was flattering and it matched my hair. It hid my boobs and hips and covered up my thighs. I had a nice face, I knew that, so if that’s the only thing Brock noticed, that was fine with me. Besides, he knew what my body looked like’ he had been berating me as I ran around in Lululemon pants for weeks. I was Miss Muffin Top. I wasn’t fooling anyone.
As for Dex…well, like it or not, Dex had seen me naked, so again, I wasn’t about to fool him. And I didn’t want to anyway. I had never dressed up for Dex and I wasn’t about to start doing it at the Christmas party.
OK, so when I wore that low-cut red top for the shoot at D’Arcy Island, that was a teeny bit for him. But, whatever.
The door opened again and Ada flounced in with something satiny in her hands. She locked the door behind her and thrust a dress in front of my eyes.
“What is this?” I asked.
“It’s what you are wearing to the party.”
My eyes narrowed at her. It was involuntary. I know my sister often meant well, but there was no way in hell I could ever fit in her clothes and she knew it.
Picking up on that, she sighed with keen exasperation and said, “It’s not my dress. I mean, I was sent it as a sample, someone wanted me to wear it on my blog. But it’s way too big for me. I was going to hold a giveaway for it, but I thought maybe you’d like it.”
I gave it the once over. It was strapless and a satiny, almost iridescent, teal blue. A very lovely color actually. But still. My first instinct told me to distrust it. If it wasn’t a statement-making concert tee, it wasn’t “Perry.”
“At least try it on,” Ada said, physically opening my hands and placing the dress in it.
“I don’t want to wear this tonight, it won’t be appropriate for a first date.”
“Fuck tonight,” she scoffed. “I know tonight’s just a distraction. This is about Friday. Dude, nothing matters. You’re going to go to that Christmas party looking like a million bucks and you’re going to show that stupid whore who’s the boss.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at Ada getting all jealous and protective. She looked as worked up as anything, her feverish expressions causing her smudgy makeup to settle beneath her eyes. I didn’t have the nerve to tell her that it wasn’t the point of the trip, that I didn’t have a chance in hell, and that I was, according to Uncle Al, heading straight into heartache.
“Don’t pretend,” she said, coming closer. “Just put the damn dress on and I’ll tell you the truth.”
I sighed and pointed at the door. “Well at least give me some privacy.”