30 First Dates (14 page)

Or as real as she could make it, at least. Sherri was on board as co-host, and for that Erin was grateful. Thanks to her new mound of credit card debt, her budget was stretched as thin as possible, and that was just for the day-to-day essentials. Alcohol, food, possibly a new dress—she wasn't completely sure how she was going to pull it off.

"Who's your date for the evening?" Ben asked.

"I don't know yet," Erin admitted. She'd had her ninth date the Saturday before, with a guy she'd met at a party she'd gone to with Sherri a week after they'd returned from France. This guy, Anthony, worked in marketing at Sherri's firm, and the date had gone okay. He was more interesting to talk to than Mitchell had been, but there weren't exactly sparks flying between them.

She didn't need sparks, though, just dates. With only nine down, she had a long way to go.

"I do have a date with Sherri's ex-boyfriend's cousin in a few days," Erin said, drawing lines in the condensation on the sides of her glass. She smiled wryly. "I'm gettin' 'em where I can find 'em."

Ben harrumphed. "I can't imagine you're having that hard a time."

"Maybe you could set me up with somebody at work? Is there anybody else I can scar for life like Nate?" She smiled sardonically at him.

"I work in a lab full of old, married men," he said. "That would probably make a good story for your blog, but can I assume you're drawing the line at married guys?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. "As long as I can help it."

His face turned thoughtful. "Hey, whatever happened with your job? Did you call your boss yet?"

Erin sighed and put her elbows on the table. "Yeah, I called him. I'm back in. He doesn't like that I'm still blogging, but he said as long as my 'behavior outside the classroom doesn't cause any more disruptions'"—she made air quotes with her fingers—"I'm reinstated with full benefits."

Ben shook his head, seeming confused at her reaction. "And this isn't a good thing?"

"Yeah, it's a good thing." She paused for a beat. "I mean, yes. Yes, it's a good thing."

"That sounded convincing."

Erin paused, staring distractedly over Ben's shoulder as a woman walked by wearing skin-tight turquoise snakeskin leggings and fuchsia booties with five-inch heels. She shook her head and looked back at Ben. "I've just been thinking, while I've been off work, I'm not sure this is what I'm meant to be doing. I love teaching, I really do. I love the kids, and it's challenging, and it's meaningful. But to be honest, I'd been feeling stuck in a rut for a while before this all even happened. I'd always planned to go back to school, and I've taken sort of a longer detour than I banked on when I started Teach for America."

Ben drummed his fingers on the tabletop as she spoke, and then his eyes narrowed. "Well, what is it you think you'd like to do?"

"Believe it or not, I'm really loving writing the blog. I know, I know, I teach math—God knows I've never considered English my strong suit. But I think I'm actually kind of good at this."

He nodded. "You're very good at it." He stared down into his glass for a couple more seconds then looked up. "Maybe you could be like that actress from
The Wonder Years
—What was her name? Winnie?—I read somewhere that she writes books about math now."

Erin laughed. "You have a solution for every problem, Ben Bertram."

Ben tipped an imaginary hat. "At your service, ma'am."

They were both silent for a couple minutes, Ben nursing his beer, Erin mindlessly swirling the last dregs of hers in the bottom of her glass. Finally he looked up at her.

"So you're really thinking of not going back to the school?"

Erin nodded slowly. "I'm really thinking of not going back."

"What will you do?"

"I've been looking into programs in Denton. There's an online course in journalism I might audit, just to figure out if it's something that could work for me. Then I guess I'd go for another master's, because I'm not qualified to get into a doctoral program in that field." The thought depressed her a little bit. Getting a doctorate had always been her dream, though she honestly wasn't sure if it was really hers or her mother's. Her mom had been working on a doctorate in clinical psychology when she left school to have Erin, and she'd never gone back. She hadn't held it over Erin's head, but now that Erin was old enough to get it, she understood she could easily be a source of resentment for her mother, who'd worked as an administrative assistant at an insurance company for years but had never built a professional career of her own.

"What'll you do for money?"

Erin suppressed the fear rising up from the pit of her stomach, trying not to visualize her massive Visa bill. "I'm not really sure yet, but I guess if I go back to school I can put off deciding for a little bit, take out a student loan." She gulped. She'd managed to make it all the way through undergrad without loans, thanks to a scholarship and some sparse but sufficient parental help. And she'd gone to graduate school on a full assistantship. "And I could try to get a job at a newspaper while I'm in school," she said almost shyly, peering at him from beneath her lashes.

He was nodding. "I was thinking that," he said. "You remember my old roommate Kyle, from A&M? He went into journalism and started out at a small town newspaper in his hometown somewhere in West Texas. I know they jumped at the chance to hire him, or anybody with a college degree who was willing. I bet you could get on at the Frisco weekly or something like that."

Erin didn't want to admit it, but she'd already been reading job ads and doing some research online. The prospects looked pretty meager. Newspapers had been cutting staff, not hiring—partly thanks to bloggers like her. People got their news these days from Twitter and from websites like
Buzzfeed
and
The Huffington Post
. The only people who read small town newspapers anymore seemed to be dying off with the industry.

For now, she was still getting paychecks from the school. And maybe she'd stay on for another year while she figured things out. She was thankful she still had that opportunity, tenuous though it was. What she hadn't told Ben was that Dr. McCann said he'd received a couple of "concerned emails" from parents about Erin's influence as a role model, and if anything like the
Page
ad happened again he'd be forced to put her employment status in the hands of the board.

"It's just an idea," she said, shaking off the mortifying thought. "I'll probably just go back to work in a few weeks like the good little teacher I am."

Ben's eyebrows furrowed as he studied her. "If you want to do something different, do it. This is the time of life to figure stuff out. Obviously you've figured
that
out or you wouldn't be writing the blog. So you've already taken some chances. Take another one."

She twirled her glass without saying anything until their server stopped by the table and asked if she was ready for another.

"Sure," she said without looking up. She could feel Ben's eyes on her, waiting for her reaction to his—surprising—advice. Much as Ben had been living the unstructured student life for all these years, he was goal-oriented. She'd assumed he'd tell her to stay the course, maintain stability while she figured things out.

Erin swallowed hard and then raised her head to look at him, not sure if the lump in her throat was caused by the idea of a career change or by the way Ben was looking at her, which made her think of their earlier awkwardness.

"We'll see," she said, and fidgeted in her chair. "How're your parents doing, anyway?"

*  *  *

Later that night, Erin pulled up the blog and scrolled through her latest comments. As always, there were new comments to her posts about Noah, and she'd picked up another 120 followers just in the time she and Ben had been out. She shook her head, letting that sink in.

She didn't feel like answering comments yet, so she clicked to open her email and then set the computer on her bed while she tugged off her boots and got undressed. When she was comfy in her yoga pants and a ratty old sorority T-shirt, she sat down and glanced at her open inbox. Her jaw went slack. She had forty-two new messages since that afternoon, which was shocking in and of itself, but the real surprise was the subject line that immediately caught her eye:
Guest appearance on Wake Up, DFW
.

Wake Up, DFW.
She'd grown up with the early-morning show on in the background while she got ready for school each day. Her mother was a regular viewer. Idly, Erin wondered if her mom still watched it. If she accepted the offer and went on the show, she'd have to figure out a pretty quick way to tell her parents about the blog.

Eh, why not?
Like Ben said, it was the time in life to take risks. Why not put herself out there? 30 First Dates already had an audience that was growing bigger by the day, and she wasn't embarrassed about that, even though a part of her thought maybe she should be. So why not talk to the good people of Dallas about what it was like to dance through the minefield of the DFW dating scene? It could be fun.

She skimmed the other messages in her inbox, deleting the obvious spam and clicking through the remaining emails. Along with the morning show, a regional lifestyle magazine and the
Frisco Enterprise
newspaper had contacted her for interviews.
How ironic
, she thought, reading the email from the Frisco reporter.

Well, it was a networking opportunity, at least.

Erin shifted the computer onto her bed and leaned back into the pillows, her thoughts whirling around the paradox she was living. As a blogger she was more successful than she'd ever thought she could be—if readership was the measure of success. As a teacher she was floundering at best. But as a responsible, thriving twenty-something who had her life together, she was, in her view, a decided failure.
How did this happen?
How had she allowed herself to float, to land in a position that somehow seemed not of her choosing?

This was new territory she was traveling. If anything, she considered herself
too
decisive. As a kid, she made the rules on the playground. In high school she was voted Most Likely to Succeed. And in college she picked her applied mathematics major in her first semester and stuck with it until her degree was in her hand four years later, unlike many of her friends who danced around so many departments they found themselves on the four and a half, then five, then five and a half-year plan. In the past she'd always felt sure of her decisions.

But where had it gotten her? To the ripe, old age of twenty-nine, with no clear career path, no serious relationship, and no idea how to move forward.
Oh, wow, I sound like Ben.
She thought about the conversation they'd had the night of his existential crisis, picturing his face as he leaned across the table in Starbucks. He was unhappy with his path, too. But even though he'd moved forward slowly, at least it was always in the same direction—and for all he claimed to be floundering, he had a job he loved with nowhere to move but up. She was a different story. She felt like she'd been running on the same track for years and suddenly realized it was the wrong track.

"The grass is always greener, Erin," she muttered out loud to her empty apartment. "Get over yourself."

All at once she sat up straight, arranging the pillows behind her to create a cozy seat against her headboard. She pulled the computer onto her lap and opened the email from the Frisco reporter.

TO: Anne Bergeron

FROM: Erin Crawford

RE: interview request re: 30 First Dates

Hi Anne,

I'd be happy to do an interview with you for your article on local bloggers making it big. I'm not sure that's what I'm doing, lol, but at any rate I'd be happy to talk to you and offer any help I can for your story. What day and time would you like to talk?

Sincerely,

Erin

She followed that up with similar emails to the morning show producer and the lifestyle magazine editor. Then she scrolled down in her inbox to find the message from the college reporter and replied to that one, too.

Hell, maybe she
was
making blogging a career without even realizing it, Erin thought. She reached behind herself absently and fished around with her fingers for something she felt poking into her back. When her hand came forward with her crumpled credit card bill, she groaned.

"How the hell can I make a career in blogging
pay
?" she asked aloud, staring at the wall across from her as if it were emblazoned with the answer.

Wind in My Hair

July 25: Date 10

Name:
Elvis*

Age:
    27

Job:   
Bartender and musician

List:   
Feel the wind in my hair (aka No. 24: Ride a motorcycle)**

This one falls into the disaster column. My roommate set me up with this date, who I'm calling Elvis* for various reasons you'll eventually understand. He's her cousin's best friend's cousin or something like that, and he's the drummer in a band that plays in dive bars around Austin. On weekends he works at a club near the UT campus that I used to hang out in when I was in college.

I was excited when I found out Elvis is a biker. It's No. 24 on the list, right there in black and white: Ride a motorcycle. It was almost too easy to strike that one off. He let me
drive
his motorcycle, too, which was definitely a bonus, even though he was sitting behind me and I only controlled the bike for 2.3 seconds on my own. Anyway. Did I mention that Elvis is really, really cute? He has longish blond hair, dark eyes and a facial structure that could have invented the word "chiseled." His body isn't half-bad, either.