Results May Vary by Bethany Chase

Author:Bethany Chase
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2016-08-09T04:00:00+00:00

18

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Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know.

—Leo Tolstoy to Valeria Arsenev, November 2, 1856

The Monday after Diana’s visit passed without event, but on Tuesday afternoon as I was getting ready to leave work, Neil called my desk line.

I pounced aggressively on the phone. “Did you hear from her?”

“No. I was checking to see if you did.”

“You told me it was going to take a while!”

“Yeah, but I was still hoping you might have heard something. Hope springs eternal blah blah blah.”

“I know, I know,” I laughed. “Me too. But I figured I’d give her till next week and then check in.”

“That sounds like a plan. Hey, listen,” he said, and suddenly I was certain that whatever he was about to say had been the actual reason for his call all along. “This might be too soon for you to consider it, and if it is, then ignore me. But…would you ever feel like grabbing a drink after work sometime?”

I stared at the phone console in confusion, as though it were responsible for clarifying to me what exactly had happened. Did he just ask me out?

He gave a nervous half laugh. “Caroline?”

“Sorry,” I said, struggling to recover. “Uh, sorry, you kind of caught me by surprise.”

“No worries,” he said instantly. “No worries at all. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have put you on the spot like that. Forget I said it. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay? Have a good night.”

The line clicked off. As I sat there holding the receiver for a good twenty seconds, staring witlessly at my computer screen, I was increasingly sure that, at the advanced age of thirty-three, I had just been asked out by a fully grown adult man for the very first time in my life. And I was also increasingly sure that I had whiffed it. My dad, no doubt, would have had some sort of on-point metaphor involving a wide receiver and a football. But any way you chose to phrase it, I had definitely screwed it up.

Neil from Development! Had asked me out! It was just so unexpected. I mean, I had recognized in the abstract that, since I’d released myself back into the wild after Adam’s defection from the Vagina Republic, some sucker might eventually decide that I and my naked left hand were of interest. I just had never imagined that it would happen so soon. Or that it would be Neil who showed the interest.

And yet, I thought, he had. Rank novice though I was, even I could identify that. And I had—what had I done? Confessed that he’d completely startled me, and let him hang up before I even considered the question of whether “grabbing a drink” with him was something that held any appeal. So, I considered it now.

On the one hand, it had never even occurred to me. I’d always vaguely registered him as a good-looking guy—he had the easy smile and relentless symmetry of an L.

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