This year, I’m going to be good to myself. I’m going to do things differently. I’ll go on a date and Get back out there, queen! the way every millennial lifestyle website is telling me to. Maybe I’ll learn how to do this casually and I’ll be okay with Friday nights alone, the way my mother so rarely was.
If I’m casually dating, I don’t have to tell anyone about my family or my prescription or my dark days. Because even if Garrison threw all of that into question, I still have no idea how to talk about it with someone. On the third date? The seventh? Right before you sleep with someone? It’s never felt right, never felt natural, and that makes me think it’s never going to.
So I reinstall the app Garrison and I matched on, the one I deleted a few weeks into our relationship. And when Alex texts me asking if I’m free to see our mother after the KSEA retreat next week, it must be the newer version of myself who responds, Okay.
I decline a New Year’s Eve invitation from him in favor of self-care. I’ve never eaten in a restaurant by myself that wasn’t fast-casual, but I make a reservation at my favorite Italian place and simply shake my head when the server asks, “Are we waiting for one more?”
“No,” I say. “Just me.”
I force myself to leave my phone in my bag to savor the atmosphere and the independence. And . . . it’s kind of great, no pressure to talk as I listen to a string quartet play Sinatra.
Only once, in between courses, do I pull out my phone and find a Happy New Year text from Russell. I parrot it back and add a few emojis, but I hesitate before I hit send.
The revelation about his daughter threw me. I’m ashamed to admit I scoured social media afterward, but I couldn’t find any of his profiles. Smart of him, frustrating for me. Still, he’s not married, I’m pretty certain of that. No ring, no mention of a spouse. Then again, this was the first I’d heard of his daughter.
I push him out of my mind. This could be the year of casual dating, learning how to be single, having dinner by myself.
So I order a double chocolate torte for dessert, and I scrape the plate clean.
* * *
? ? ?
THE FIRST DAY of the new year, I sign up for a Costco membership and buy a sixty-four-pack of triple-A batteries.
9
FORECAST:
Freezing temperatures and warm gooey feelings
WE START SMALL.
At our GM’s seventy-fifth birthday, the one he declined to attend, I learned that Torrance and Seth happen to be the only people at the station with a deep and abiding love for carrot cake. I even wondered if Torrance, who planned the party, ordered it just because she knew no one else would eat it.
Our first day back in the office, Russell orders one from a downtown bakery, propping it up in the kitchen with a note that reads HAPPY NEWS YEAR! beneath a doodle of a TV wearing a party hat.
“There’s carrot cake in the kitchen,” I tell Torrance with a knock on her half-open door, while Russell does the same thing with Seth down the hall. Bonding over their favorite food—it’s got to put them in a good mood.
Later that week, I spend an afternoon at a greenhouse picking out the most attractive and least fussy succulent I can find. The woman loves plants, but the less she has to water them, the better. It’s not cheap, but it’ll be worth it. I schedule a delivery and don’t include a card.
“That’s a nice succulent,” Seth says the next day when it shows up, leaning against the wall outside Torrance’s office. It’s exactly what someone who anonymously sent a plant to her would do, and I send him a thousand mental thank-yous.
“It is.” Torrance rearranges some of her pots to find a place for it on her desk. I can tell it’s taking every ounce of restraint not to ask him whether he sent it.
The problem, though, is that we’re not close enough to either of them to know how they’re really reacting. Whether any of this is making an impact.
At the end of the week, after a near-constant exchange of ideas over text and email, we get lucky.
I loop a scarf tighter around my neck, shivering inside my puffy coat as I scan the rows of seats in the arena. Russell waves me over, and I mutter, “Sorry, sorry,” as I climb over legs and bags and foamy cups of beer to get to him.
“You made it,” he says with a grin. His hair spills out of his knit hat, curling over the top of his glasses. He’s not quite as bundled up as I am, probably because he’s more used to the cold. “I was worried for a moment that you’d changed your mind. Or that you’d gotten lost.”
“I took my niece and nephew to see Frozen on Ice here.” I take the seat next to him and rub my mittened hands together. “Which in retrospect was a little redundant?”
I didn’t think my first foray into sports would happen so quickly, but the game presented itself as a golden opportunity to get to know one half of the Hales—the half I know less about. Seth has two pairs of season tickets he’s in the habit of sharing with the sports desk, and Russell jumped at his latest offer.
I assumed it wouldn’t be very busy the week of New Year’s, but the arena is packed. The whole place buzzes with restless energy, tinged with the salt of stadium food and the brine of beer, and I can’t deny it’s contagious.
“Just know that if you call it ‘sportsball,’ you have to go sit in the nosebleeds,” Russell says.
“I wouldn’t dare. But what about ‘iceball’？”
“While you’re at it, you should yell, ‘GO EDMONTON!’ Especially when Seth gets back.”
I tap my nose. “Got it.”
Seth returns to our section with a buddy of his, a guy named Walt whom he introduced as “my oldest friend,” after which Walt ran a hand through his thinning gray hair and pretended to be wounded.
“What do you think, Ari?” Seth says, nestling his beer into a cup holder on Russell’s other side. “Russ said it was your first hockey game?”
“It’s cold,” I admit, which gets a couple well, duh laughs. “Really, though, I’m excited. Thanks so much for bringing us.”
“I’ll be right back,” Russell says, and I stand to give him an easier exit.
With an empty seat between us, Seth tips his beer at me and gives me an awkward nod. A tight smile. “Everything going all right for you at the station?” he asks. The go-to conversation topic for coworkers who’ve had no reason to spend time together outside of work until now.
“Yep. It’s great.”
“Good,” he says. “And you’re on that billboard up on Aurora? Exciting stuff.”
I nod so vigorously I worry my hat will fly off. I don’t know why people think weather is the worst small talk. Coworkers with nothing in common so they by default talk about work—that’s the worst.
Russell reappears with two spiked hot chocolates and an order of garlic fries, steam rising from the basket and smelling fantastic. I’m not sure who’s more relieved, Seth or me. Probably Seth, who draws Walt into a debate about one of the players.
“They definitely didn’t have these at Frozen on Ice,” I say, marveling at the basket of golden, garlic-flecked goodness. “You are amazing. Thank you.”
“I just . . . really wanted you to have a good time. This is like, a big deal, being part of your first game. This might sound corny, but I’m kind of honored?” There’s a little self-consciousness in the way he says it, and it endears him to me in a way I wasn’t expecting.