I arrived home quite safely, because Betty was a . . . well, consistent mode of transportation. What she lacked in beauty she more than made up for in reliability. When I got inside, Feather Locklear loudly announced that the Yankees sucked, with my grandfather telling her she was a good, smart girl, that they did suck, and I headed straight up to my room.
The glitter had indeed metastasized and still lay all over my floor, like a shimmering snowstorm that had been localized in my bedroom, but I had to ignore it for now.
I desperately needed Catalina’s guidance. I curled up in a ball on my bed, pulled my covers up, and called her. She picked up immediately.
“I cannot believe it has taken you this long to call me back. There should be some kind of friendship fine you have to pay when you leave people hanging like that.”
“Hello to you, too,” I said.
“There is no time for that!” she said. “I have so many questions. Hang on a second—I need to grab my notebook.”
“You took notes?” I asked.
“Yes. Why?” She said this like I was the weird one for asking.
“No reason.” I paused. “Do you think I should be taking notes?”
“You’re a chemist. I think you know the answer to that.”
She was right. I should be taking notes. This whole thing with Marco and Craig wouldn’t be much of an experiment if I didn’t document all of it.
Catalina kept talking. “Okay, before we get started and you give me every single detail of your encounter with Marco Kimball that apparently lasted for hours, we have to talk about last night. First, I’m sorry I wasn’t at the party. You almost died in a hotel bathroom, and I should have been there.”
“I didn’t almost die,” I said. “Not even close. But why didn’t you go? It’s not like you to miss a work event.” Especially given her long-standing crush on Zhen.
“So get this. I was planning on going with Steve as my date. He called last minute and told me he couldn’t make it because he wasn’t feeling well. I decided to stop by and surprise him with some chicken soup, only I was the one who was surprised when his pregnant girlfriend answered his door.”
“Uh-oh. Is he still alive? Is that why you’re telling me this? Am I supposed to be your alibi?”
“He’s still breathing,” she said, her disgruntled tone evident. “But obviously, we’re completely over. See? This is why I told you I have to stop dating hot guys. They’re all the worst. My abuela keeps telling me that I just have to wait, the right guy will find me, and this is where I end up.”
I didn’t think it was wise to remind Catalina that she was the one who had pursued Steve. “I’m with your abuela. I kind of hope the right guy does find you, because I got to tell you, it seems like all the wrong ones have built-in infrared homing devices designed to track you down.”
“That is unfortunately true. And that’s why I’m moving on. I don’t believe in waiting for someone. I’m too proactive for that. Zhen is the kind of guy I should be dating.”
“You’re right,” I said. I wondered whether she should take a minute before jumping into another relationship, but given the intensity in her voice, I figured it would not be wise to say anything in that moment.
She continued. “Zhen’s smart. And he’s cute without being he-will-cheat-on-you hot. And he’s such a nice guy.”
This I could point out. “He is. Which is why this is doomed. You don’t date nice men.”
“I do now,” she insisted. “No more hot guys and, by extension, no more jerks.”
“I’m with you on that one.”
“Not if you’re in love with Craig still. That guy is the tooliest tool that ever tooled.”
“Catalina!” I protested.
“Fine, fine, I’ll stop. But it’s true. Anyways, that topic isn’t actually in my notes. Well, I guess it is a little. Because I want to know why Craig was hitting on you yesterday if he was already engaged.”
“I thought you said that it was nothing and I was imagining things that weren’t there.” She didn’t get to have it both ways.
“Regardless of what I may or may not have said while I was trying to protect you and your feelings, there was something going on. He was definitely leaning toward you in an ‘I’m interested’ kind of way.”
“Aha! I knew it!” That gave me hope that I hadn’t felt since yesterday, before Craig made his announcement. And it made me think that I’d made the right decision when it came to Marco’s plan. If there was a spark there, a tiny bit of fire that could ignite and turn into something bigger, didn’t I owe it to myself to do what I could to make that happen?
“But the point is that he was engaged while doing whatever it was he was doing with you.”
“I don’t—” I stopped for a second because I realized I didn’t know when he actually got engaged. Not knowing things was a feeling that I did not enjoy. I assumed he’d gotten engaged at the party, which didn’t really seem like an ideal place, but my memory of his words was spotty at best due to the copious amounts of alcohol that were still making me feel achy all over.
Craig and Leighton could have gotten engaged sometime before the party and just made the announcement there. Which could mean that Catalina was right and Craig had been flirting with me while engaged to another woman.
“I don’t know the technicalities of the timeframe—”
She cut me off. “There is no technical issue here. Even if he wasn’t engaged while he was hitting on you, he was serious enough about someone that he was set to propose to her. Either way, he’s a slimeball.”
“I—” I tried to say something but couldn’t find the right words. What could I say? She wasn’t wrong. Either way did not look great for Craig.
And I didn’t like that feeling.
I got out of my bed, wanting to pace, but the second I put my feet on the floor, I was met with glitter. I let out a groan.
“What is it?” she asked.
“There’s an ocean of glitter on my floor,” I said. “It’s a long story.”
“If it involves Marco, and if you don’t tell me everything, I swear by all that is holy that when I die, I will come back and haunt you. And I believe in ghosts, so please know how serious I am when I say that. And before you do anything else—send me a picture. I want to see how that professional photo of him compares to regular life.”
“I don’t have a picture of him,” I said.
“You forget that I have hung out with you when you’re drunk. You most definitely have a picture of him on your phone. Check your gallery.”
“Hold on.” I took my phone away from my ear and opened the app. Sure enough, there were at least a half dozen photos of Marco. I wondered when I had even taken them. Most of them were blurry, but there was one good shot of him that I forwarded to Catalina.
“Sent.”
She let out a long string in Spanish that I couldn’t interpret. Then she demanded, “Tell me what this delicious man was doing in your messy room, right now. Wait! Before you do that, though—I need to tell you that I did a deep dive on him online.”