Chapter 3 A Non-Pomeranian Predicament
Chapter 3
A Non-Pomeranian Predicament
I finished at work earlier than expected on Friday, so I headed over early to the bar. Tonight’s walk was, luckily, free from ass-oglers, and I’d just downloaded a new queer romance novel to my Kindle app, and so even though I might have spent a large part of the night before—and all of my work downtime—wondering if I had an actual date with an actual woman, I decided to take the signs from the universe and relax. My hair had behaved during blow-drying this morning and fell perfectly into its wavy bob. I was wearing one of my favorite dresses, a blue-and-white checkered fit-and-flare dress that made me look, I hoped, a little sweet and a little sexy and a lot curvy. Other plus-sized women, I knew, complained about what a large percentage of available clothing was darling and twee, and while I supported the criticism, I didn’t mind it. Give me your sweetest checked pattern, your most darling woodland creatures print, your softest lavenders and pinks and lemons and limes. I loved the idea of taking up space, but adorably.
“Hey there,” the hot bartender greeted me. “The new drink? An old drink?”
“The new one’s good, thanks,” I said, flustered already at the idea that, two visits in, I was now some kind of regular at a queer bar, and maybe I was less than an hour away from an actual date with an actual lesbian. Though maybe I wasn’t. What did I want as the answer to the riddle of Chloe Lee anyway? Those good omens that told me to stop overthinking had somehow vanished, and here was everything turning around in my brain again like stones in a rock polisher.
Once my drink was deposited in front of me, I took a sip and told myself to chill the hell out. The good signs were all still present. I’d lived long enough on the Eastside to have picked up at least a little witchiness, recreationally, and I let myself be calmed by the vibes inherent in the easy end to my workweek, this bar, my cocktail.
I read a couple of chapters of the book, and pried myself away after the meet-cute to check my email. Work was quiet—for the most part, the entertainment industry liked its weekends to start by Friday afternoon whenever possible—but I had a forward from Greg in my personal inbox that made me frown before I’d even opened it.
It had been like this as long as I could remember. Greg thought I was ridiculous, I got mad, neither one of us took the other one seriously about anything, rinse and lather and repeat. I kept waiting for something to shift our dynamic, but here we were, hurtling toward our late thirties—Greg had a wife and children, for god’s sake!—and nothing had fundamentally changed between us.
Luckily, the email from Greg was just a forward from Marisol about the list she’d put together and her ideas for who should handle what tasks after receiving the text with my ideas. Because it was the work of my incredibly reasonable and realistic sister-in-law, the division of labor made sense to me and I hit reply-all to fire off an enthusiastic assent. Actually, I nearly hit reply-all, because I caught my name in a paragraph below the list, and I saw that Marisol had included a note to Greg in her original email. It was more than a small miracle that Greg and Marisol had met, that I had someone in my corner when it came to Greg, or at least who knew how bad things could be between us and did her very best to keep the peace. I skimmed her message to see if there was any additional information I’d need to start my share of party-planning, and actually drew back from my phone when I saw it.
Greg had obviously not been meant to forward this, but he did anyway. Was he thoughtless on purpose, I wondered, or accidentally? Which was worse?
It’s so sad for Clementine that Will dumped her. Though maybe it’s for the best since he obviously never wanted to marry her! I’d die if I were over 30 and single in LA but she’s been posting cat pics all over Instagram so I guess she’s made her peace with it. Just make sure she’s not overwhelmed with wedding anniversary tasks that make her think too much about being single. Poor Clem.
I wanted to type a response, but what even was there to say? Greg had already made it clear he didn’t have any respect for me, even when Will and I were still together, so there was hardly anything I could say now that would help. Marisol, though, I’d thought was on my side, or at least as much on my side as a person could be who was married to the enemy. Well, not the enemy , that couldn’t have been a healthy way of looking at one’s own brother. Still. Just because Marisol and Greg had gotten married in their twenties, like a lot of people I knew who lived up in the suburbs, I hardly thought she’d been viewing me as some sad single lady who’d been waiting around for Will to propose. Even though there could be a general small town vibe in the so-called proper time to do things, I hadn’t picked that vibe up in my own family. But it turned out that even when I’d had someone and had not been posting cat photos to Instagram, Marisol had been judging me. It turned out she was decidedly not in my corner after all.
“You’re early.” Chloe hopped on the barstool next to me. I’d hoped her outfit would give me some clue if this was a date or not, but her colorful striped sweater and jeans were both perfectly stylish and fairly casual and I felt no more enlightened to what this evening might hold.
“So are you,” I pointed out.
“And you look pissed.”
I waved it off. “Just family stuff. And I got off work early.”
“Same,” she said, flagging down the bartender. “A Pomeranian with a flaky owner canceled on me, which shouldn’t have surprised me.”
“Why, is that a stereotype of Pomeranian owners?” I asked, and she laughed. I loved how bold it was, a loud ha! that made me feel, at least briefly, like the funniest girl in the world.
“No, I don’t think so, I meant people in LA in general. I’ll have to ponder that, though.” She ordered a soft seltzer and hopped up as soon as it was in front of her at the bar. “Let’s go grab a booth.”
I tucked my phone into my pocket—I only believed in dresses with pockets—and grabbed my drink before following Chloe across the bar to a booth along the back wall. In the short walk I hadn’t thought about how different it would feel to be sitting across from her instead of shoulder to shoulder, but despite that we were now sitting further away from each other, the direct eye contact felt like a move forward in intimacy.
“So I’ve been thinking about your little predicament,” Chloe said, raising her eyebrows.
“I have a predicament?” I asked. “And it’s … little?”
“Your whole being a baby queer with no real-life experience except thinking about how Gillian Anderson tastes, ready to nail down some IRL babe.”
“Oh,” I said, looking down at my diminishing cocktail. The eye contact was definitely a lot, at least when I was being confronted by such harsh truths, including the unspoken fact that this was most definitely not a date. “That predicament.”
I had hoped, of course, that it wasn’t a predicament at all. As overwhelming as the idea of queer dating seemed, after a lifetime that looked pretty straight on the surface, I really had thought that perhaps I’d walked into one queer bar, talked to one attractive woman, and would end up in something that—if not a relationship —would function as the training wheels to my new overtly queer life. Chloe’s words made this idea scramble out of my brain, though, as if the desire was embarrassed of itself and would not be sticking around to assess the reality of the situation.
Though I wasn’t sure, either, if I had actually wished it was an actual date with an actual prospect, and not—well, whatever this situation was. I’d thought about dating women, in general . Somehow, though, I hadn’t thought about specific women. It was a real paradox how I’d somehow overthought everything while simultaneously missing so much.
Also, it hit me that I’d never been on an actual date in my life. Since Will and I had met in college, we’d gotten to know each other at campus events and parties, and by the time we’d wandered off-campus to dinners and movies and concerts, we were already together. I couldn’t believe how unprepared I was for single life—dating someone of any gender. Showing up at a bar. Taking it to some other location, dinner or a movie or wherever people went to get to know each other when it was new. First kiss since Will, first hookup since Will, first person seeing me naked since Will.
“The thing is,” Chloe said, and then took a long, slow sip of her seltzer. I tried not to watch her lips on the rim of the glass. Maybe I did kinda-sorta wish it was an actual date. “I have a bit of a predicament too.”
“Is it related to Pomeranians?” I asked, feeling rewarded by another laugh.
“I guess I have two predicaments, only one being Pomeranian-related,” she said. “A couple of my friends are getting married. Soon. There are all these events, as you might guess.”
I nodded. “Let me guess. Engagement party, bridal shower, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner—wait, is it a destination wedding?”
“Ooh, you’re good,” she said. “It is . So, yeah, there are all these extra dinners planned since everyone will be out of town together. And do you know what I love, Clementine? I love dinner plans! I love going out of town with all my friends! But now that I am literally the only member of my little friend group who’s not coupled-up, I feel like I’ve somehow gotten demoted to, like, the group’s child. Or pet .”
Marisol’s email flashed in my head.
“Why are you grimacing?” Chloe asked.
“Just believe me that I fully understand where you’re coming from,” I said.
“Good, perfect. Because I was thinking that what I need to get through this and rise back from pet to my previous position of peer is a girlfriend.”
It felt like my turn to take a long, slow sip of my beverage, while I wondered what the hell Chloe was getting at. If we were inside of a romance novel, there was nothing else she could have been suggesting besides fake dating , a trope I abhorred. Give me enemies-to-lovers any day, or the mild taboo-breaking of a workplace romance. That fake setup always seemed so bound for disaster that my anxiety would never allow me to relax enough to root for the characters.
But this was real life. So I knew that couldn’t possibly be what Chloe was getting at.
“You,” Chloe said, pointing to me with a little finger-gun gesture I somehow found wildly adorable, “also need a girlfriend. An ex you can reference when you’re out there for real. Someone who can teach you the ropes—so to speak, I’m not running some kind of kink workshop here. So what do you say?”
I took another sip. And another. And kept going until my tumbler was drained.
“I can tell you’re really mulling this over,” Chloe said, jumping to her feet. She was wearing Crocs again, and I was fuzzy enough from chugging my drink to get hung up on the fact that I’d never expected to be attracted to anyone wearing Crocs. “Let me get you another drink. What about food? Do you want some chips and queso?”
“Well, yes , but—Chloe. Are you seriously proposing some kind of fake-dating situation?”
“Exactly,” she said. “Glad we’re on the same page. Are you a vegetarian?”
“No,” I said, and she grinned and practically skipped away from me, back to the counter. When she returned a few minutes later with our drinks and a number card so our food could get dropped off, I was still sitting there with my phone in my pocket, too— stunned? Too something to do anything but sit there in silence.
“You look like someone died,” Chloe said, which made me laugh.
“No, it’s just—we can’t really do this. It’s absurd.”
“Clementine, that’s been my whole life,” she said. “ Oh, Chloe, don’t do that, it’s absurd! Look at me, though. I’m doing great, absurd for three and a half decades now.”
“In books, whenever people try some kind of fake-dating shenanigan, it always eventually goes sideways,” I pointed out.
“Yeah,” Chloe said with a scoff, “in books! In real life it probably happens all the time successfully, but why would they put that in books? It’s too boring.”
“Wait,” I said, and took a sip of my drink. A long sip. “So you think, in real life, people are fake-dating each other all of the time, and most of the time nothing goes wrong and whatever end-goal was set is achieved?”
“Nailed it,” she said, holding her glass in the air. “That is exactly what I think.”
“Since I’m not sure how I would fact-check that … let me ask how this even works? People know us, if by tomorrow we say, oh, I have a girlfriend you didn’t know about—”
“Please!” Chloe gestured wildly. “We’re queer women. People expect us to U-Haul after a couple dates. Call someone your partner after a month. No one’s going to bat an eye, I promise.”
“I … people … it’s …”
Chloe looked lit up from within. “Oh my god, did I break you?”
“I’m glad you’re enjoying this so much.”
“No, no, of course,” she said, back to making big gestures again, her hands waving around wildly. “No one’s going to bat an eye at Chloe , you’re thinking. You were practically secret-married to some boring man and people are still expecting you to mourn the death of your heterosexual happily-ever-after and not emerge smiling with a woman. Everyone’s eyes will be batting at you .”
“That’s very accurate, actually,” I said. “While somehow also being wildly inaccurate.”
“Story of my life.” She leaned forward and grinned widely. “I’ll make it easy on you, though. Look at how bossy I am! People will believe I cajoled you into something.”
I found myself laughing. “I don’t know. I have pretty firm boundaries. People won’t think I let someone steamroll me into queerness.”
“Well, yeah,” Chloe said with a shrug. “It sounds like you’re going to have to come out to people. But that’s all rolled up in your predicament already, right? This lets you come out to people without the pressure of also maintaining a new relationship. You know I’m your fake girlfriend no matter what. I’m not going anywhere, at least until my friends are married and on their honeymoon.”
I thought about that, saying the words aloud, I’m bisexual , for real, the way I’d rehearsed them. It wasn’t that I’d never; Will knew from early on, and I’d casually said it here and there, often only in Instagram DMs or other slightly anonymized places. Oh yeah, I’m bisexual but I’m with Will so it doesn’t come up much , or of course I mainlined all of the new League of Their Own , I’m bisexual after all , or yeah, I heard the new Fightmaster single, I am a bisexual with a premium Spotify account . It had always been a kind of throwaway comment, even though I’d taste the lie in that as I threw it away. My identity was bigger than gay storylines and not hidden away by a relationship with a man, but I’d never treated it that way. If I started dating women, I’d have to start saying those words for real, full of all the meaning they actually held, and in more situations than the ones I’d already listed in my head. It probably wasn’t the best move, on a deep and symbolic level, to start openly and sincerely discussing my identity via a fake girlfriend and fake relationship.
Though, of course, it was flattering. When I’d headed to Johnny’s the other night, I hadn’t only worried that I wouldn’t look queer enough. It was all the other stuff too, that I was in my mid-thirties and sometimes looked tired even when I wasn’t. And even though I liked my curvy body and how it looked both in adorable dresses and without any clothes on, it wasn’t as if fat girls had ever had an easy time of things. Now that I was ready for whatever was to come, would anyone even want me? So, no matter what a bad idea this was, to be wanted, even on a completely fake level, felt not terrible .
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I said, and Chloe frowned. “Not to sound too self-help-y, but I’m entering this new phase of my life, and I should probably do it with as much honesty as possible.”
“That’s incredibly mature,” Chloe said. “Which is not the descriptor people tend to use for me.”
“Well, me either ,” I said, and we both laughed, right as a waiter dropped off a tray of tacos and chips with queso. “Ooh, I forgot food was coming.”
“This is what kind of fake girlfriend you just turned down,” Chloe said, leaning forward to unwrap a taco from the tray. I loved people who ate enthusiastically, who all-but-literally dove into delicious food. In LA I saw so much of the opposite.
“No, I get it, you’d keep me ensconced in queso, all I’d have to do is lie to everyone I cared about, and, truly, when I put it that way, it doesn’t sound like a bad bargain.”
“I’m telling you,” she said, dipping a chip into the thick queso. It was homey, Tex-Mex style, not some watered-down hipster version with real cheese instead of the perfection of Velveeta. “Oh my god! The Pomeranian’s calling.”
“How does he dial with his little paws?” I asked, and Chloe made no attempt to hide her laughter as she answered the call.
“Sunset Junction Pet Spa, Chloe speaking. Uh-huh. Yes, I do understand, but the shop closes at six, so once you were …”
I pulled out my phone as Chloe patiently explained why she wasn’t waiting around Sunset Junction Pet Spa, and refreshed my email. Nothing, not even a desperate-sounding sale email from Unique Vintage, had come in, and so Greg’s forward of Marisol’s email still sat right at the top of my inbox.
“Sorry,” Chloe said, stowing her phone. “He tried the set-my-alarm-for-a.m.-instead-of-p.m. excuse on me, like I’ve never heard that before. I practically invented the a.m.-instead-of-p.m. excuse.”
“I’ve done it before,” I said, “for real. And you can’t tell anyone, because it sounds like such a lie, even when it’s true.”
“See, now I’m wondering something,” she said, and finished off a taco before reaching for another. “Maybe you being afraid to be my fake girlfriend has nothing to do with your morals and ethics. Maybe you’re just a bad liar.”
I opened my mouth to protest but—“You’re not not right. I am a bad liar. But I still think it’s bad karma.”
“Fine, fine,” she said, though she grinned. I doubted much kept Chloe Lee down for long.