Chapter 5 European Sodas
Chapter 5
European Sodas
I n the bright light of the morning, the night before seemed more like a hijinks-filled dream and in no way something that had actually happened. Quickly, though, the facts flashed back, not in the ephemeral haze of something my subconscious cooked up overnight, but in the stark details. I was due at Loupiotte for brunch with Chloe and her friends at ten, and finding the whole thing poorly thought-out did not make this fact any less true.
Last night had been panicky, desperate, stupid. Now I was supposed to meet a bunch of strangers while pretending Chloe was my girlfriend, even though I not only barely knew Chloe, I’d never even had one single date with a woman? No, no, no.
We’ve rethought this by now, right? A rush of relief settled upon me once I’d texted. Chloe, sure, emanated more chaos than your average individual, but it was hard to imagine she hadn’t awoken with the same regret. Meeting the friends was something you built up to, right? You didn’t just dive into a group of complete strangers.
Her response came back fast. I’ve rethought nothing. Except that I should pick you up. It’ll look weird if we arrive separately.
I had to admit that she was right about that much, and texted her my address before reviewing myself in my full-length mirror for approximately the hundredth time that morning. I’d never really done one of those meet-the-friends brunches before, considering that Will and I met in college when we were too broke for brunch and usually slept too late anyway. I hadn’t had to think much about whether or not I was good girlfriend material, or whatever your significant other’s friends were supposed to evaluate. Will and I just were . And now that we weren’t , I was up for judgment. I had both no idea what Chloe’s friends would think of me, and no idea when the I-never-had-to-think-about-this-before-I-broke-up-with-Will milestones would end.
For a split second I wondered if having the life you didn’t want was worth having far fewer awkward interactions. It probably wasn’t, but I definitely hadn’t weighed this aspect in my breakup decision-making, that was for sure.
I ended up wearing a midi-length dress in a bold geometric print that I’d paid too much for because ads for it haunted me on Instagram until I gave in. Still, it hung well and, I thought, hit the sweet spot between generic and insufferably twee, where my needle usually landed. Not that I minded looking twee, but I was determined to make a decent impression on these strangers and so my best—or at least most expensive—dress it was. I had no idea if I looked queer enough, or queer at all , or even how to evaluate those standards, but since I was queer, I decided whatever I wore became inherently queer in the process.
Hopefully.
Anyway, if this whole thing was a disaster, which seemed likelier than not, I’d bail. Chloe and I hadn’t actually worked out any parameters yet, and it wasn’t as if I’d signed a contract. I’d do this brunch and if it was clear that this was as terrible an idea as I assumed, I’d get out of this. I’d probably have to stop going to the queer bar, but there had to be other ways to meet women. I’d be fine.
Hopefully.
My doorbell rang, which was so unexpected I looked at my phone as if maybe I’d misheard my text notification sound and not that Chloe Lee was at my front door. But when I looked out the peephole, there she was.
“Hi,” I said, opening the door. Chloe wore cutoff coveralls in a shade of bright pink that was somehow a bit punk rock and not at all sweet. A broken-in pair of black motorcycle boots completed her outfit, and I hoped mine looked halfway as good. I’d kill for effortless style; suddenly I worried I was more like effortful .
“I didn’t know you were coming in,” I said. “Sorry if it’s messy or if there’s cat fur everywhere.”
Her brown eyes practically literally lit up. “You have a cat? Like a stereotypical cat who’s hiding from me, or one of those dog-personality cats who’ll meet me and let me pet them. If you couldn’t tell, I’m hoping for the second.”
“I’m … actually not sure, we’re still new to each other,” I said. “Me and the cat, that is. Will was allergic, so—”
“Of course he was,” Chloe said, looking around my front room. It was, a lot, I knew. So many people shied away from bright pinks and vibrant greens and oranges that were just shy of neon, but I never felt so much like myself than when surrounded by color. Will had never dissuaded me, the guy whose dorm room never had more on the walls than a faux vintage Die Hard poster, but still. I didn’t need to ask him to know there was a limit, and so I stayed on the safe side of the invisible line.
Will gone, though, meant my browser windows were replete with open Target and Etsy tabs, my walls were rapidly filled with framed prints, and a huge pink and red rug was unrolled in the middle of my living room. I couldn’t justify a new sofa (yet), but a couch full of Opalhouse by Jungalow throw pillows? Easy breezy.
“Your condo’s cute. I’ve been, like, halfway looking, and it turns out that a lot of them are terrible.”
“ Terrible ,” I agree. “Like paying all the money in the world for what amounts to a sad apartment that’s now yours forever. It took me a while to find this place, so hang in there.”
“Oh, shit ,” Chloe said in an awestruck tone, and I realized that it was because Small Jesse Pinkman had darted into the room. “Will he let me pick him up? Never mind, you don’t know, this baby’s new, your boring ex was, amongst the lengthy list of flaws, allergic.”
“He seems up for it,” I said, and watched as Chloe leaned over to scoop him up.
“I want to bail on brunch and spend the rest of the day holding this kitten instead,” she said, rubbing her cheek against Small Jesse Pinkman’s fur. “What’s his name?”
“Before I tell you—”
She burst into laughter. “I love names that require disclaimers. Remember, I work with pets for my job. I’ve seen everything you can imagine, and then some.”
I held my hands out to my side. “I don’t know much about cats. When I got him, he already had a name, and I didn’t know if it was confusing for him or bad karma to change it. So, with that, I introduce you to Small Jesse Pinkman.”
Chloe laughed even harder. “You know what? Perfect. Let’s help him start a little catnip empire.”
“See, it’s cute when it’s catnip.”
She kissed the top of his head and set him down on the third level of his cat tree. “I guess we should go, even if this would be more fun. Can you drive? My car’s full of dog hair.”
“When you put it like that, sure,” I said, and grabbed my key ring from the hook. “Do I need to know anything about your friends in advance?”
Chloe turned to me, her lips curling up in a smirk. “Queer Brunches 101? The Care and Feeding of Millennial Lesbians?”
I rolled my eyes with deliberate casualness, even though a ping of worry bounced through me that there were indeed things I needed to know that I hadn’t even thought to ask. My dress being queer enough was only the tip of the gay iceberg.
“That isn’t what I meant,” I said. “Like, ‘Fiona’s a great person even though she’s such a capitalist so just don’t bring up all billionaires being unethical because that’s her life goal.’”
“A completely hypothetical example, I’m sure,” Chloe said with a snort.
“Don’t worry, you won’t have to meet my friends,” I said, and then pictured their ravenous faces desperate for even morsels of details I could offer them. “Probably.”
Chloe followed me out and then down to the parking garage. “I don’t think I have too much to prepare you for that you don’t already know. I kind of hate my friends’ dog, but maybe that’s more of a warning about me than them.”
“Or the dog?” I asked, which earned me another snort as we got into my Prius.
“Don’t laugh,” Chloe said, “but my dog is my best friend. I have to pretend dog mortality doesn’t exist just to get through each day. He’s a snarly asshole, and I love him to fucking death. Then my friends get this perfect dog—in fact, I helped them get this perfect dog, since I knew they were looking and because of my job I’m always hearing about dogs who need homes. But I didn’t know she was some poster child of perfect dog behavior, and now it feels like no one has patience for Fernando anymore. Like they all learned well-behaved dogs exist so it must be something I’m doing wrong that mine’s not.”
I was quiet for a few moments. “ Are you doing something wrong?”
“Oh my god, fuck you,” she said, and we both cracked up. “And, probably! Hard to look at the evidence and not think I’m at least partially to blame. He’s a good dog, though. Just annoying sometimes.”
“I mean, aren’t we all.”
She grinned at me and it felt like a ray of sunshine zapping right into my chest, warming something deeper than whatever fake thing we were up to. I reminded myself sternly that we were indeed up to something fake and also not to dwell too much on how her thighs looked disappearing into those cutoffs.
“Are your friends suspicious?” I asked.
“Probably,” she said, and I shot her a look so quickly I nearly ran a red light. “Calm down, Clementine. Not that this is an arranged situation. How would that even come up? Are you two only pretending to be together so that people stop treating you like you’re sad and lonely childish losers? If anyone asks that, I’ll obviously say no.”
“You know what I mean,” I said. “I don’t make a habit of pulling shenanigans on people. And you’re the one who said your friends would probably be suspicious.”
“I only meant that I never bring girls to brunch,” Chloe said in an infuriatingly chill tone, “so it’ll, at the least, pique their interests.”
“Is brunch a big deal?”
“For these queers? It’s the biggest.”
My heart rate skyrocketed, and my car’s Bluetooth chose that moment to connect, blasting “Do You Hear the People Sing?” from the musical Les Misérables , which I hadn’t even been listening to.
“Sorry,” I said, hitting the power button as quickly as it was possible to hit a power button.
“For what? I love singing the songs of angry men,” she said, and we both laughed. “Clementine, if you think I’m not some musical theatre–loving person, we should get that cleared up now. I totally am .”
“Me too,” I said, “though my phone does randomly decide I want to listen to things from my music library without consulting me and it’s always exactly as jarring as that.”
“Yeah, one night I was hooking up with a girl and I had my music on shuffle—”
“Such a risky move!” I said. “My heart started pounding the second you said the word shuffle .”
“Correct, because it turns out that Abba’s ‘Super Trouper’ is not an inherently sexy song, though not the worst, unless your shuffle algorithm’s gone rogue and follows it up with nine more Abba songs.”
I laughed so hard that tears dotted in the corners of my eyes. “Did you count ?”
“Clementine, I did.” She gestured out the window. “I doubt we’ll find a better parking spot than that one.”
I swerved to get to it, and Chloe cracked up.
“Is that how you park?”
“Parallel parking’s hard! I’m from the suburbs. The outer suburbs.” I backed up and pulled out and kept going until my car was comfortably mostly parallel with the curb.
“I know that queer people are objectively worse at parking, but this is really something,” Chloe said as we got out and headed across Kingswell toward Vermont Avenue.
“Should we hold hands or something?” I asked, realizing this was all about to happen. We were steps away from Loupiotte Kitchen.
“Nah, no one would expect that from me,” Chloe said. “Though who knows what they’re saying in the group chat they definitely started without me the second I said I’m bringing someone.”
“Oh yeah,” I said, “my friends definitely have one of those too. I think it used to be about babies and pregnancy, but now I assume it’s devoted to my relationship status.”
“Outside-the-group-chat solidarity,” Chloe said. “Anyway. I’m not really squishy with people I’m seeing, so we’re fine.”
“By ‘squishy,’ do you mean does-a-lot-of-PDA?” I asked.
“Yeah, why?”
I fought back a grin that felt … well, like something this definitely wasn’t. “I don’t know. It’s cute.”
Chloe elbowed me sharply. “I’m many things, but not cute.”
“Sorry, charming. Is charming one of the things you are?”
She shot me a smile I would have categorized as both cute and charming, but before I could sort out what it meant to see the shape of my fake date’s mouth as either of those qualities, I spotted something far more distracting.
Phoebe, my boss, was standing in front of the restaurant next to her wife, Bianca. Phoebe didn’t step out of the way as we approached, as I would have done, and anyone watching could probably see exactly what was happening. But, no, I was like the idiot in a horror movie who kept going further down into the basement while everyone watching the movie screamed at her not to.
“Oh,” Phoebe said, an undefinable emotion—confusion? suspicion?—coloring her gaze as we made eye contact. “Clementine—”
“Clementine!” someone called, and I turned around to see my former coworker Nina walking toward us as well. She was trailed by her fiancée Ari, who was holding the leash of a very cute Border collie. “It’s so good to see you.”
“You too,” I said, briskly, waiting for her to step aside as well, despite the mounting evidence that my solid boundaries between my work life and my everything else were liquifying at record speed. I remembered, in a white-hot flash, meeting Chloe at that company party years ago. I’m friends with the boss , she’d said dismissively before steering conversation back to the hors d’oeuvres, so dismissively that I hadn’t thought to log that comment until this very moment. I don’t think I have too much to prepare you for that you don’t already know , she’d said, minutes ago in her car.
“I’ll check in for our table,” Phoebe said, as it lodged in my gut that when she said our table that really meant our table. I was our!
“I thought they didn’t take reservations for brunch,” I said, because most Angelenos had a running list of restaurants in their head with pertinent details about hours and reservations and parking, and for some reason my brain had decided to focus on that instead of the horror unfolding here.
“Oh, god,” Bianca said, smiling widely at me. I hadn’t been surprised when I’d met her that Phoebe’s wife was gorgeous—dark, wavy hair like she’d always just left Drybar, eyes that were more gold than brown, a gleamingly bright smile; after all, I was pretty sure Phoebe could land anyone she wanted. But Bianca was also always extremely friendly, in our limited interactions, and even though she was about a hundred times more glamorous than I was, I loved that she was plus-size like me. After working this long in a size-obsessed industry, I did feel something comforting about knowing that my boss had married someone who took up as much space as I did.
“Don’t get us started,” Bianca continued, rolling her eyes in Phoebe’s direction, and I snapped back to the reality in which my entire world was dissolving into a fizzing liquid of panic. “She’s befriended multiple members of the waitstaff so they hold a table for her whenever she wants.”
“You should be happy about this,” Phoebe said to Bianca, though her gaze dragged over me and then abruptly away. “Who wants to wait in line for brunch?”
“It’s because you’re too happy about it,” Bianca said, but she shot Phoebe a smile I recognized, the exhaustedly delighted feeling when your significant other did something both annoying and thoroughly them . “But, sure. Go check in.”
Everyone—everyone but me, obviously—laughed as Phoebe walked into the restaurant. Another obviously queer couple walked up to us, and I wondered just how large this friend group was. And was it all couples? Suddenly I had a lot more sympathy for Chloe, navigating this on her own. I’d only been single for a very short amount of time, and it had taken no time for Fiona and Hailey to demote me to a sadder human, but at least our hangouts were just us, not me and multiple happy couples. We had occasionally hung out in couples, all six of us, but it had hardly been the regular.
“It’s so good to see you, Clementine,” Nina said. She looked the same, glossy brown hair like a brunette Disney princess, a flowy floral maxidress, and no-nonsense Birkenstocks.
“You too,” I said, genuinely. I’d been suspicious the other year when Phoebe had let me know she’d hired a friend as a marketing coordinator when a position on the creative team opened up, but Nina had been so friendly and funny whenever we ran into each other around the office—plus we had similar taste in style, which was sometimes the quickest way two plus-sized women bonded. BME was also a small company, so word spread quickly regarding just about anything. This meant that, not long after she’d started, I also found out that she was exceedingly good at her job. Somehow, though, it wasn’t until that season’s Oscars when Nina took a bunch of time off work and then showed up in the televised audience kissing the best supporting actress winner that office gossip caught up on the fact that she was in a relationship with an indie film darling. It surprised none of us when, not too long after, she left BME for a TV-writing gig. The news of her engagement reached me—not on social media, of course, I valued my work/life boundaries way too much for that!—via entertainment news reporting Oscar winner Ari Fox’s engagement.
“You’ve met Ari, right?” Nina continued.
“Holiday party, yeah,” Ari said, stepping around Nina and passing off the dog’s leash to her so she could shake my hand. “Good to see you.”
Ari Fox, it should be said, was extremely attractive. Movie star attractive. Cheekbones that could cut diamonds, sleek asymmetrical haircut, skin without visible pores, a smile that felt like a secret just for you. It was overwhelming. She was overwhelming. And also just, apparently, a regular member of Chloe’s friend group. The group that also included my boss and a former coworker. This ridiculous fake-dating scenario was nothing, as I’d obviously hoped, like the queer training wheels I needed to ride a gay bike or however I should finish that metaphor. This was like the LGBTour de France.
“And this of course is Cristina,” Nina said, gesturing to the dog. “Cristina, meet Clementine.”
The dog—Cristina?!—held up a paw to shake.
“Oh my god,” I said, shaking her fluffy paw, “so cute. It’s nice to meet you, Cristina.”
“Traitor,” Chloe mumbled, and I barely swallowed a laugh.
“I think we’ve met, too,” said one of the people who’d just arrived. “I’m CJ, they/them pronouns.”
I shook their hand, vaguely remembering their expensive-looking buzz cut—how did a buzz cut look expensive?—and the way their button-down-over-jeans look was somehow a little preppy, a little rumpled, and very queer all at the same time. I worried I should have remembered everyone better. And I worried—for the eighth or ninth time today—that I didn’t look queer enough to be taken seriously here, but among this group I didn’t really stick out, at least visually. Everyone absolutely had their own look going on.
“I’m not sure we’ve met,” said the person who’d arrived with CJ. “I’m Sofia, she/her pronouns.”
“Clementine, she/her as well,” I said, shaking Sofia’s hand. Her black hair was curly on top and faded to a buzz on the sides, probably by the same expensive and queer barber who’d done CJ’s hair, and her striped T-shirt, faded jeans, and perfectly-creased-at-the-toe Doc Martens were both an impeccable 90s look and a perfect complement to CJ’s outfit. I wondered if Chloe and I made sense together aesthetically. And then I wondered if that mattered. I never minded that Will had a perpetual jeans-tee-hoodie situation, never thought I needed to complement or contrast. Was it different? Was this something I could also frantically google?
And also why was I worrying about something literally surface-level like clothes when my boss was here ?
Phoebe returned with a server who led us to a table for eight, magically held as promised. I ended up between Chloe and CJ, and directly across from Phoebe.
“Should I order some wine for the table?” Ari asked.
“As long as Chloe has something to drink,” I said, almost automatically, and then felt strange for bringing up a small and specific and potentially sensitive detail.
“I’ll be fine,” Chloe said with a hand wave, and I saw the couples exchange little smiles. As a former-but-recent member of a long-term couple, I knew the look well. I knew, mind-blowingly, that all the real couples thought that this fake one was adorable.
“They have those European orange sodas I think,” I said, which made Chloe laugh.
“I figure out what to drink all the time, you know,” she said with a well-placed elbow to my side.
“Sorry, I made it weird. I actually really like those sodas.”
“Well, me too,” she said, rolling her eyes, though I could see a smile sparkling behind the expression. “European sodas are all better than American.”
“That’s true,” Nina said. “Diet Coke is so good over in the UK.”
“I can’t believe you spent your European vacation drinking Diet Coke ,” Phoebe said.
“Not exclusively Diet Coke,” Nina said. “Most countries have Coke Zero.”
“Yeah, picture it, Sicily, last year, my beautiful and sophisticated fiancée bypassing a local red for a can of European’s finest Coke Zero,” Ari said with a heavy sigh, and the whole table cracked up. Even the dog seemed amused.
“I also drank the red,” Nina said, which just made us laugh even harder.
And then the waiter came and we ended up with two bottles of wine for the table, and orange soda for everyone, and as everyone laughed at Nina listing the beverages she’d consumed in England, France, and Italy, I felt something relax in me. Seated across from my boss or not, it was a hard group to hang out with and manage to stay too much in one’s own head.
“How’s business, Chloe?” Phoebe asked, once we’d all put in our orders. From the way everyone looked her way, I could tell she was basically the president and CEO of this group as well.
“It’s been good,” Chloe said with a shrug. “It’s always steady.”
“Have you thought about ways you could grow it?” Phoebe asked, and even though others were turning and leaning to start other side conversations—and even though I was eager to be part of something here that didn’t have to do with Phoebe—I couldn’t pull my attention away to focus on anyone else.
“I’m just one person, remember,” Chloe said. “I’m good.”
“As long as Pomeranians don’t flake,” I said, and then worried I shouldn’t have butted in. Not just to any conversation here, but one with Phoebe, specifically.
But Chloe laughed. “As long as that, yeah.”
Phoebe still looked serious. I’d seen this narrowed gaze countless times in meetings when clients were eager to bring up nonsense and she needed to keep the room on task. “You wouldn’t have to just be one person, though. You slowly expand your workforce, you add people who groom cats, you up your advertising budget—I’m sure Clementine has already suggested ads on Meta, Nextdoor, even—”
“No, Phoebe, believe it or not,” Chloe said with a patient smile, “that hasn’t yet come up between us.”
By now everyone’s focus had shifted to us, and, this was it, and so quickly! An opportunity was here already: the friends would see through this charade, Phoebe in particular would finally voice the strangeness that was the two of us in this social situation together, and not only would this be a temporarily humiliating situation, I’d probably have to quit my job and then move to some remote village where no one had ever heard about fake dating and my participation in it.
But the entire table sans Phoebe burst into laughter, and it was obvious from the direction that laughter was facing that it was at Phoebe’s expense and not Chloe’s and mine.
“I remember early on in our relationship,” Nina said, her eyes darting between Ari and Phoebe, “all those romantic texts we sent each other about digital marketing.”
“Constantly,” Ari said, completely deadpan, and even Phoebe joined in the laughter this time. Chloe and I were off the hook!
“Wait, I have a question,” CJ said, their tone serious, and my heart sped up yet again. Was this it? CJ seemed so quiet and contemplative; was this what was going on in their head this whole time? “Is flaking a Pomeranian thing?”
“Oh my god, I asked the same thing the other day!” I said, relief flooding my system and amping up my tone more enthusiastically than the situation called for. CJ, though, high-fived me, and then the rest of the crew was making up fake dog stereotypes. (“Nothing bad about Border collies, though, right?” Ari asked in a tone that seemed earnest.) Our food arrived and almost before I knew it, we were back on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, and it was all but over.
“We should relieve our sitter,” Phoebe said, as Nina and Ari were asking their dog to shake hands goodbye with everyone. This time, I nudged Chloe and she shot me a tiny but clear side-eye, and we managed not to allude to any more than that until we had said goodbye to all the humans as well and had gotten back into my car.
“See?”
“The dog is … a lot,” I agreed. “But …”
“But she’s cute and who doesn’t like to shake hands with a dog so I should just get over it?”
“Well—” I started, and we both laughed. “No, Chloe. Did you not think it was important to warn me that one of your friends is my boss ?”
She raised her eyebrows as I swung the car out of its spot. “That’s how we met.”
“Sure, a work party is how we met. That doesn’t automatically translate to have brunch with me and your boss and her wife and also your former coworker and her Oscar-winning fiancée .”
“Who else’s wedding situation would I need a plus-one to?” she asked in the most this is so obvious tone, and something jolted in my chest.
“And that was also information you didn’t think was important?”
“No, that was information I assumed you already knew,” she said, casually.
“So this whole arrangement is so I’ll travel with you and my boss to some destination wedding where a celebrity is marrying someone I used to work with.”
“You’ve summed it up well, Clementine,” Chloe said.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I couldn’t think of what to say that would make it more obvious than it already was. Part of me was convinced that Chloe had withheld all of this because who would agree to it otherwise ? But her manner was seemingly so blasé and also unrehearsed that it was hard to believe she’d trapped me here on purpose.
I knew that I didn’t want to believe she’d trapped me here on purpose. Because what kind of person did that make her? And what kind of person did that make me , because maybe I’d let myself get trapped anyway.
“Thanks for driving,” Chloe said as I pulled up to my condo. “Next week you can meet me at my place and meet Fernando and then I’ll drive.”
“What do you mean, next week?”
“Brunch is weekly,” she said with a shrug before hopping out of the car. “Good first one, though!”
She slammed the door before I could respond, which for all I knew was the traditional ending for a fake date! And that was probably for the best, because what could I have said anyway? I can’t wait to meet your dog, I do not care that he doesn’t shake hands like a tiny businessman.
The thought made me laugh, so I texted it to Chloe as soon as I pulled into my parking space. She tapped the haha reaction on my text almost immediately, and—despite every single reason I shouldn’t have smiled at anything to do with this situation—I grinned at the thought of making Chloe Lee laugh yet again. Somehow I’d managed to finish the LGBTour de France after all.
Though normally when people made it across that finish line, they weren’t less than twenty-four hours out from rehashing the details with their boss —not that this metaphor was holding very well. All I knew for sure was that I didn’t feel anything like a winner.