4. Paul’s Housewarming Party, June 2011 #3
His eyes returned to the sky above them. “What happened with Liam?”
“It was when Paul moved out. I asked Liam if he wanted to move in. And it would have been fine if he said no. Except he didn’t. He said that his lease lasted four more months, and he couldn’t make a decision that far ahead.”
“Jesus.”
“And I had such a perfect record with men until then, too,” she said with mock seriousness.
He gave her an amused look like he wanted to say something but was consciously holding back.
Something strange was passing between them, and she didn’t know what it was, but she knew it wasn’t safe.
Not for either of them. She carefully rose to her feet and looked at him unsteadily.
“I’m having that drunk feeling where my head seems to be moving very slightly faster than my feet.
You know that feeling?” She took another sip of her seltzer water. “I’m going to go get a taxi.”
“You’re okay to get home?”
“Definitely,” she said. “I’m very good at pretending to be more sober than I am. I just act extremely calm. That’s what I did at all of Kristie’s parties.”
“I was completely fooled.”
“I have skills, Monsieur Durand. Hidden skills.”
He stood up and walked inside with her, his hands in his pockets.
“Five months! Are you serious?” Trish’s voice carried from the living room as Sarah entered. Paola wore a contented smile as she stood at the center of the charcoal accent wall, the whole room buzzing around her with excitement.
“Five months until what?” Sarah asked, looking at Paola, then Paul, then Trish.
“Until the baby!” Trish cried.
Sarah almost asked, “Whose baby?” But she stopped herself.
“Me and this ridiculous man,” Paolo announced to Sarah, waving a hand at Ren, “are having a child.”
Sarah turned to Ren, who looked a bit stunned by the public announcement. “You didn’t tell me,” she chided.
“We’re not announcing it too widely. Although I guess now we are.” He met her eyes and then looked at the floor.
“You’re going to be a great father,” she said with drunken fervor, hoping he could sense that she meant it.
“Let’s hope he is, because I will be working all the time,” Paola said, “so he’ll be home with the baby more than I will.”
There was something wrenching in Ren’s expression as he watched her, and she willed it not to be pity. She didn’t want pity. She didn’t want him thinking of her as the lonely single woman watching everyone else’s life move past her.
She excused herself a few minutes later and wrangled into her jacket, lying to Paul about having a headache. Paul gave her another big hug at the door.
“I’ll call you,” he said. “I want to have a real talk about Liam and roommates and everything else.”
He wanted to have a ‘real talk’ about her break-up, and he hadn’t been able to do it in front of Trish.
That felt significant. She’d been around him all night and he hadn’t even attempted a meaningful conversation.
Maybe he just didn’t want her crying in front of strangers…
or maybe it wasn’t safe for anyone to be a mess in front of Patricia.
Still, Paul looked at home in his new apartment, with the new posters and the new furniture and the new friends.
She hoped that he and Trish wouldn’t get any ideas about imminent babies, though.
Their relationship didn’t seem headed for long-term happiness, but what did she know?
Ren and Paola seemed happy, and she hadn’t gotten a great first impression of Paola, either.
“Goodnight!” Sarah called from the doorway. She saw Ren wave at her from across the room, his eyes full of something. Definitely pity. She closed the door and left them all to their coupledom.
That night, Sarah pulled out her DSLR camera and set up a series of silly photos of herself in various awkward positions, lying upside-down and sideways on her bed.
She shot herself slumped on her comforter, her fancy party clothes looking lumpy, her legs askew.
At first, the photos represented how useless and unattractive she felt, but eventually, she began to exaggerate them even further—flopping herself like a rag doll over the whole bed. Taking up space.
She got a precise mental image of a possible photo and gathered the materials: half-wilted flowers from an old bouquet.
Scented candles. Silky scarves. Romance novels.
All her jewelry. She staged it all around her bed, piling things high, scattering blankets, taping fabrics to the wall, lighting candles.
She put on six different necklaces at once.
Then she put on her ugliest, least sexy pajamas, lay across the entire bed, and flopped her head backwards over the edge of the bed towards her camera, her hair almost touching the floor.
With one hand tucked beneath a romance novel, she tripped a remote trigger to open and close the shutter on her camera lens over and over as she adjusted her pose.
She would call this photo The Single Life, she decided. When she looked at the image, she loved it. It felt like the beginning of a series.