“It’s tough out there, right?” she looked sympathetic. “Hard to find a soulmate.”
That did it.
“Soulmate? You think you’ll find a soulmate?” I repeated, suddenly back on the right track. I was nodding wisely, getting ready for my spiel, when her phone chirped. She glanced down, and stood up, too quickly. Her expensive handbag upended, and the contents scattered under the booth.
Melissa dove under the table, murmuring that she had it all under control -- completely oblivious to the fact that her thong was on display for all the world to see. Embarrassed, I jumped up and stood behind her, blocking the world’s view of her posterior.
When she jumped up again, she smiled at me, rolled her eyes in mock mortification and said, “Sorry, where’s the bathroom?” A second later she was gone, all eyes on her as she made her exit.
A few minutes later my own phone beeped.
“Sorry, so sorry,” the text read. “Just realized I’m terribly late for a date I thought was tomorrow! But thanks so much for dinner and let’s get together soon!”
Wow, so as I stood up to leave, my eye caught a gleam under the table. It was an old-fashioned brass money clip, the kind men used to carry. In the gloom, it took me a few minutes to make out the engraved initials, but in a second I knew it was Chad’s.
I drove home slowly that night, turning the evening over in my mind. I was so confused, in fact, that I stopped at Mom’s. She was settling in to bed to watch a movie, comforter tucked around her.
“Melissa’s mom bought her a red Mustang?” My mother was instantly suspicious. “That doesn’t sound like her. And she’s not going away to college? Very odd.”
I shrugged.
“You know, her mother’s the planning type,” she advised me. “She schemes about every move she’s going to make. And Melissa’s her pride and joy. This doesn’t sound to me like something she would have in mind for her.”
I shrugged again, sardonically. “If she’s so smart, what the hell did she ever see in Dad?”
It was out before I thought about it.
An emotional chasm opened up before me, and I, unmoored, fell in. In an instant, the years fell away and Mommy and I were alone again, abandoned in the world because my Daddy had gone away. The tears rushed to my eyes, unbidden.
I nodded, unable to speak.
“Soulmate? You think you’ll find a soulmate?”
REGINA | 62
REGINA Fiction