The Wedding Beat by Devan Sipher

Author:Devan Sipher
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781101580240
Publisher: New American Library
Published: 2012-05-31T21:35:39.697000+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Flying Solo

For the second time in a month, I was flying. Looking out the plane’s window at the grid of snow-flecked ground below, I felt untethered. I wondered where I was going. Not literally. I was on my way to LA for Roxanne and Ari’s wedding, but to what end? I was a bean count away from unemployment. Even if I survived the gauntlet, there was a limit to how many weddings someone single could attend before imploding. The couples seemed to be getting younger and younger, reinforcing my fear that I was past my prime bachelor days and on my way to becoming a male spinster. A spinet. A freestanding male on an interconnected planet.

I was on a path I didn’t recall choosing. Gary was always the one who swore he’d never get married. Not me. Though it was embarrassing to admit, I was the kid who daydreamed about fantasy honeymoons (from watching too many episodes of The Love Boat). I even once made a clandestine list of potential baby names that went well with Greene. When I imagined myself as an adult, I envisioned marriage being central to my existence. And it was. Except it was other people’s marriages and not my own.

I feared I had made a wrong turn somewhere and diverged from my destiny. Perhaps one of the speck-sized houses I was passing over contained someone living the life I had intended. Someone with a ring on his fourth finger and a life companion who offered the affection and ballast that I yearned for—and that I briefly had with Laurel.

I still couldn’t go near the lake in Central Park without my stomach rebelling, and I couldn’t even look at green tea. Ironically, she had been the one to pursue me. She even made the first call. Gary said that was what doomed us. Of course, he also said she was a heartless shrew. But what he meant was that she could be painfully blunt, which was why I trusted her. Right up until the three a.m. newsflash that she had found someone else.

Here it was, more than three years later, and I still hadn’t. Not really. Not unless I counted Melinda. And how could I? I barely knew her. Yet I still caught myself thinking about her, and I needed to stop. I needed to set my sights lower. My new goal was improving my love life and finding someone to marry me before my chest hair turned gray.

Online dating had been a bust. ComeFlyWithMe had flown the coop, and most of the other profiles seemed to blur together. As did my belabored e-mail exchanges about what I liked to do with my free time. Hope said I needed a more positive attitude.

“It’s a good thing A.J. was more optimistic about online dating,” she had said. A.J. was the pediatrician with a penchant for late-night cabernet—more specifically, he turned out to be a Stanford-educated pediatric surgeon and volunteer fireman who had spent two years in the Congo with Doctors Without Borders.

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