Miss Impractical Pants (9 page)

***

With the help of some great coaching from Christopher, Jared hadn’t earned his third strike—yet. And so, in keeping with her promise to Dylan, Katie felt she had no choice but to continue accepting Jared’s invitations for dinner—always dinner, and if he didn’t have an early start the next morning, perhaps a testosterone-packed action movie. They had already been on nine dates in just under three weeks.

“Soooo, how are things going with Jared?” Anna, who was hanging onto her sanity by a very fragile thread, drawled, eager to discuss anything that would make her forget about the two toddlers and the thirty-year-old teenager she’d left at home. She’d called an emergency retail therapy session with Katie and Heather after threatening to dismember her family piece by piece if she didn’t get out of the house.

“You’ve been seeing a lot of each other,” Heather chimed in.
             

“Fine, I guess.” Katie didn’t bother to muster any fake enthusiasm.

“That’s it? ‘
Fine’?
All I get is ‘Fine’?” Anna huffed, massaging her fist into the small of her back as she waddled across the parking garage.

Katie shrugged. “There’s not much more to say. We don’t have that much in common— nothing in common, actually. The only reason I keep seeing him is that everyone insists on it.”

“Not everyone!” Heather argued. “I’ve been against this setup from the start.”

Anna craned her neck to scowl at her. “Why?”

Heather dropped back a couple of steps in response to Anna’s foul temper. She backpedaled. “He just doesn’t seem like Katie’s type.”

“You mean he doesn’t ride a big white horse and live in a castle?” Anna directed her condescending snort toward Katie. “Katie needs to just forget about Prince Charming, because that ain’t gonna happen.”

Katie was warmed to see that Heather looked crestfallen on her behalf.

“Have you guys even kissed?” Anna asked. “Of course, Little Miss Don’t Touch Me Unless You’re Perfect or Gerard Butler, I know you haven’t. I don’t know what you’re waiting for.”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe a spark of attraction? Maybe butterflies in my stomach when I think about him?” Katie retorted.
“Maybe someone who makes me
laugh
or at least crack a genuine smile—”

“Oh please,” Anna interrupted. Her annoyance was a stark contrast to the sympathetic nod that Heather, the lovestruck newlywed, was offering. “When do you see him again?”

“I made a stupid mistake and agreed, completely by accident, to go out with him on Singles Awareness Day.” In response to her friends’ confused stares, Katie clarified, “Valentine’s Day.”

“And that would be a problem because…?” Anna asked.

Katie looked at her as if to say “Duh!” before responding.
“Because Valentine’s Day is such an awkward holiday to navigate.
Now I have to decipher if his asking me out on Valentine’s Day means anything or if it’s just a coincidence. There’s the worry of whether he’s presumptuous enough to get me a gift and should I be prepared with something for him just in case. Buying him a present, even an obligatory present, would be leading him on. But if he has something for me and I have nothing for him, it would make him feel stupid. So is it better to lead him on or make him feel stupid?”

“It’s better not to worry so much about everything,” Heather consoled. “If you lead him on, you didn’t mean to. If his feelings get hurt, that would be unfortunate, but he’ll get over it.”

“I wish it were that simple. I’m the one that has to live with the stress diarrhea.”

“Hurting someone’s feelings shouldn’t cause stress diarrhea,” Anna stated firmly. “You have to get over that. Let people take care of their own emotions.”

Katie shrugged, considering the validity of their advice.

She pondered her situation further in the small boutique’s eveningwear department. “Why is it so hard to find a decent guy?” Katie spun an elegant twirl, holding a shimmery silver gown to her body that she knew she’d never wear, but had to own.

“It’s only hard if you set unrealistic expectations,” Anna snapped.

“I guess getting married to your boyfriend right out of high school makes you the authority,” Katie sassed, annoyed that Anna was making no attempt to curb her foul mood.

“No, but watching you over the last decade has. Just because some guys happen to have receding hairlines, smell like patchouli oil, or wear sweatpants doesn’t mean they’re not decent guys.”

“You’re right. They’re just not right for me.”

Anna snorted. “Wearing sweatpants automatically determines if a man is right or wrong for you?”

“Of course not,” Katie retorted. “It’s the point in the relationship that he chooses to wear sweatpants that is crucial. I’m not wrong for having sweatpants guidelines.”

“Maybe not, but why do you get to have sweatpants guidelines?”

“Because I’ve been in the game long enough now to know what sweatpants mean,”

“Enlighten me, oh Wise One, on the great meaning of sweatpants.”

Katie turned to Heather for backup, only to find that the escalating argument had her withdrawing several racks away.

Plowing through Anna’s biting
sarcasm,
Katie attempted to enlighten her friend. “If a man shows up for a date wearing sweats, it
means two things: One, I will be subjected to watching him rearrange himself all evening because, for some reason, men can’t seem to keep a handle on their junk when they’re wearing sweats. And two, he is going to take me back to his place to watch movies. Where, as soon as the lights are off, he’ll make the predictable move of trying to get into my pants.”

“Ah, yes, the elusive secret garden to which no one, save Prince Charming, shall be granted the key,” Anna said in her most snooty literary voice.

“Exactly,” Katie agreed, choosing not to get riled. “There’s nothing wrong with being particular.”

The last of her impatient straws broke, causing Anna to let out a long, eerie sigh. The unnatural sound disarmed Katie’s defenses long enough to notice how exhausted and worn—well beyond her twenty-eight years—her friend looked.

“There’s a fine line between particular and unrealistic,” Anna stated. “And you have crossed it. I’m done watching you throw aside suitable guys so you can chase fairytales.”

Anna’s narrowed eyes and icy tone announced an end to the debate, leaving Katie to wonder if she should feel mad about Anna’s lack of confidence in her or cry for the hopeless spinster she was destined to be.

“You think I should settle?”

“I think you should compromise.” Anna looked like she wanted to scratch the tears out of Katie’s eyes.

Katie took a step back. Normally she wasn’t intimidated by Anna. But this wasn’t the normal Anna: This was a big, pregnant, sleep-deprived, and hormonal Anna.

“Jared Stone is a nice man with ambition and a good job, and he adores you. Most women would be ecstatic to find someone so eligible. What is it that makes Katie Sutherland so entitled she can turn her nose up at every decent man who shows interest?
Nothing—that’s what.”
Anna pried the impractical gown from Katie’s unyielding clutch, returned it to the rack, then spun on her heels and stalked away.

Katie watched Anna’s retreating back, and then cast another wistful look over the beautiful garment before deciding it was in her best interest to go after her friend.

On the silent drive home, Katie felt a million tiny pinpricks of shame jabbing at her conscience. She wondered if she felt an undeserved sense of entitlement. Was she wrong for dismissing guys who automatically pressed her puke button?

Pulling into Anna’s driveway, she finally found her voice. “So this is an opinion you all share?”

“We’re just concerned,” Anna snapped. “We’re just afraid that—” she broke off as if searching for a delicate way of expressing herself. Since she didn’t possess the art of delicacy, she blurted, “Have you not considered you are all alone in this world? Pull your head out, Katie, before it’s too late and you end up being alone for the rest of your life.”

If Anna had struck her across the face, it couldn’t have hurt more.

Katie opened her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a strangled, high-pitched, “I’m—not—I—.” Even as she was formulating her defense, she thought about Christopher, blissfully married to Heather, who sat stone silent in the backseat; Dylan in D.C.;
and her parents on the Gold Coast. She rarely spoke to her brothers, and Jim and Sheila were now scattered across the country.

Anna and Heather got out of the car. Anna began waddling up the driveway as Heather leaned over to Katie’s window.

“Don’t worry—Christopher told me she always gets mean when she’s pregnant!” Heather called as Katie backed out of Anna’s driveway. “I’m sure she didn’t mean it!”

Katie blinked back tears. With the exception of Anna, who was now pulling the rug out from under her, and Mr. Scott, Katie felt—for the first time in her life—she really
was
alone.

Since their conversation, Katie thought obsessively about Anna’s words, about not chasing after fairytales. She went to bed most evenings with swollen eyes and tear-stained cheeks and woke up with a renewed determination to overlook all of Jared’s faults and embrace his good attributes, superstitious that if she didn’t, the fates would intervene and destine her to a life of eternal spinsterhood. Much like Sisyphus—whom she remembered from her stint as a Greco-Roman Studies major, condemned for eternity to repeat the same meaningless task of pushing a rock up a mountain, only to see it roll down again—Katie would be sentenced to a lifetime of helping loser men realize their potential, only to have them leave her for someone thinner.

It was time to stop dreaming and start facing reality.
Time to get practical.

By the time Valentine’s Day rolled around and Jared pulled into her driveway and honked, she’d armed herself with a new attitude and a new mantra:
Practicality prohibits princes, presents, and perfection.

She cast a doubtful look in the mirror and considered changing into a more substantial sweater. She reminded herself Jared said they’d be indoors all evening. Giving her reflection an encouraging smile, she sashayed to the car in her favorite sweater, an intricately crocheted number that cost
her a
small fortune and which Dylan insisted on calling “The Doily.”

Jared gave her the once-over and smiled. “You look hot.”

Katie kind of suspected that she did, but she had the good manners to feign humility.

Not that looking hot in a thin sweater did her one bit of good when her surprise Valentine’s destination was the ice hockey rink. She forced herself not to be annoyed that sitting by
herself
and cheering for Jared and his team was his idea of a good date.
Or that upon seeing her flimsy sweater, he didn’t think to instruct her to bring a coat.
She reminded herself those issues were small potatoes to the new, realistic Katie, and remembered to see him as something other than an imbecile. Taking Anna’s advice, she focused on the fact he was a decent guy who truly cared for her.

After two hours of the icy air breathing through her doily and the rhythmic
skoosh, skoosh
of skates racing back and forth across the ice, she had fallen into a sort of hypothermic trance. She didn’t even notice when the sharp clacking of hockey sticks being whacked together ceased to echo through the nearly empty arena.