The Guy Not Taken by Jennifer Weiner

Author:Jennifer Weiner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

THE GUY NOT TAKEN

Marlie Davidow was not the kind of woman who went looking for trouble. But one Friday night in September, thanks to her own curiosity and the wonders of the Internet, trouble found her.

Her brother Jason and his bride-to-be were registered on WeddingWishes.com. Marlie, housebound with a six-month-old, did all her shopping online, sitting on the beige slipcovered couch where she spent most of her time nursing her baby, or rocking her baby, or trying to get her baby to stop crying. So, on that fateful Friday night after Zeke had finally succumbed to sleep, she wiped the fermented pureed pears off her shirt, set her laptop on the sofa’s arm, and pointed and clicked her way through the purchase of a two-hundred-dollar knife set. As she hit “complete order,” she wondered about the propriety and potential bad mojo of sending the happy couple knives for their wedding. Too late, she thought, and rubbed her eyes. It was nine o’clock—a time, prebaby, when a night might just be getting started—but Drew was still at work, and she was as whipped as if she’d run a marathon.

Just for the hell of it, Marlie typed in her name and reviewed her own choices, feeling wistful as she remembered compiling her wedding registry. She and Drew had made outings of it, having leisurely brunches before driving out to the Macy’s in the Paramus Mall to spend hours looking at china and crystal, silver martini shakers and hand-blown margarita glasses from Mexico.

Two years and three months after their wedding, the crystal and the silverware were still in their original boxes in her mother’s basement, awaiting the day when she and Drew would move out of their one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side and into a place with a dining room, or at least a little more storage space. The fancy china had been pulled out twice, which corresponded to the number of home-cooked meals Marlie had made since she’d left her job as publicity director for a small theater company in Chelsea to stay home after Zeke was born.

The telephone rang. Marlie picked it up and looked at the caller ID. WebWorx. Which meant Drew. Who was probably calling to say he’d be even later than usual. She nudged the phone under a couch cushion and then, prodded by an impulse she didn’t pause to analyze, turned back to her laptop, typed the words Bob Morrison into the “bride/groom” blank, and hit Enter before she could lose her nerve.

Nothing, she thought, as a little hourglass popped up on the screen. Over the last four years, on and off, she’d looked for Bob online, idly typing his name into one search engine or another during down times at work. She never found anything except the same stale handful of links: Bob’s name listed as among the finishers in a 5K race he’d run in college; Bob mentioned as one of the survivors in his grandfather’s obituary; Bob and a bunch of other graduates of a summer art institute in Long Island.

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