‘Yes, sir.’ If this was my karmic gift for getting my shit together after Angie’s big Jeff announcement, I was fine with it.
‘She’s the best,’ Angela confirmed. ‘New York’s finest tour guide and roommate.’
‘You’re looking for a roommate,’ Sigge nodded. ‘This is what I heard when I was coming out of the nail salon. I am looking for somewhere to live.’
Ahh, maaan. Hopes dashed. Heart broken. Everything falling into place. Dude needed a place to live, not me by his side, forever and ever.
‘Anyway, could I have your number?’ He asked. I tried not to show how badly I wanted to get up and punch karma in the balls. Not cool, karma, not cool at all.
‘Sure.’ Scribbling my cell down on the receipt from the ice-cream place, I handed it over with as much of a smile as I could muster. ‘I’m around Friday if you want to come over then?’
‘Friday is perfect,’ he replied. Seriously, I was so the New York welcome wagon. Except, uh, that didn’t sound ok. ‘And I am so sorry, I did not get your name?’
I closed my eyes and smiled politely. ‘Jenny. Jenny Lopez.’
Awkward pause.
‘Like the pop singer!’ He tucked the number into the back pocket of his pants. ‘She is one of my favourites.’
‘Yeah. She’s great.’
One day, when I was the new hipper, hotter Oprah, I would destroy the producers of American Idol for resurrecting that woman’s career. Doesn’t matter how cute you are if every time you introduce yourself to a guy they immediately compare you to People magazine’s most beautiful person on the planet.
‘I am so glad I got my manicure here today.’ He leaned down to kiss me on both cheeks. Forward, but still, if we were going to be roomies … ‘Friday.’
‘Partyin’ partyin’ yeah,’ I sighed.
As soon as Sigge’s perfect ass had disappeared around the corner, Angela burst out laughing.
‘Oh maaan,’ she said, in between fits of hysteria. ‘You’re really going to move in with a gay male model who cares more about his cuticles than you do?’
‘I care about my cuticles,’ I pouted, reviewing my manicure. ‘And what makes you think he’s gay?’
Aside from the manicure, the fact he’s a male model, a lover of Jennifer Lopez, and that when he walked off down the street every gay man in Williamsburg checked him out?
‘Do I really have to dignify that with a response?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it because he’s really gay?’
‘That’s probably it.’
‘Maybe I could turn him?’
Angela gave me the look. ‘Not even you, gorgeous.’
She eyed my ice-cream casualty on the sidewalk and handed over the remains of her cone.
‘I really did think the universe had come through for you,’ she said. ‘When he said hello, I nearly wet myself. Tall, blond, tanned. Too handsome, obviously, but still. It was like you’d manifested the man.’
‘Cosmic ordering,’ I agreed. ‘Note to self for next time. Must specify, not gay.’
‘It helps,’ she nodded. ‘It helps.’
CHAPTER THREE
I crashed through my apartment door the next morning after my run, and threw myself into the refrigerator. It was hot as balls outside and it wasn’t even nine a.m. Pulling out my earbuds, I dropped my iPhone on the counter and my ass on the couch. I would never be one of those girls who loved to work out – every step was agony for me – but, as my mom liked to remind me, it took the right kind of bait to catch the right kind of fish and there was a whole heap more bait in NYC than there were fish. And so I ran.
My list of chores for the day was unbelievably long and so, instead of even looking at the pile of laundry in the corner, the dishes that needed doing, the cheques that needed mailing, I grabbed my laptop and rested it on my not-quite-as-flat-as-it-could-be belly. Tomorrow I’d run another mile.
Sigge the Sex God was coming over to look at the room on Friday evening, which gave me thirty-six hours to get the place into some sort of viewing order, but if he was coming from a model apartment, populated exclusively by Derek Zoolanders, I was probably OK as is. Just a quick wipe around and a spritz of air freshener, the place would be a palace. But still, I couldn’t rely on him taking the place. Or me wanting to give him the place. The ladyboner part of my brain rejoiced at the idea of a half-naked man-stud wandering around the place, but the potential spinster section was warning me that having the world’s hottest gay in my apartment while my vajayjay remained retired, was not the best idea I’d ever had. I might as well get a cat and some sensible shoes and just accept defeat.
And so to Craigslist.
‘What am I supposed to write?’ I asked the computer. It whirred a little in response but, really, it didn’t have anything helpful to say. It never did. Instead of putting up my ad, I read a couple of others. Everyone had a relaxing, cosy room to rent. Which my bullshit translator read as dark and small. This was too hard. And besides, if I left it long enough, Angie would totally do it for me. She was the writer, after all. I was the do-er. The planner. The action gal. I was much better at browsing the Bergdorf’s website than I was at finding a roommate. Man, Brian Atwood made some nice shoes. I did miss styling. Shopping for free? Amazing. Even if it was shopping for other people.
‘Speaking of shopping for people … ’ I muttered. Online dating. Everyone was doing it, right? It was no big deal? I pulled up OK Cupid, the site I’d heard most of my friends talk about and entered in my search criteria. There was no box for ‘not an asshole’ so I was on my own with that filter. Huh. Just from the photographs, I could tell why they didn’t offer the ‘no asshole’ checkbox. Because every guy on here was a douche. Any second now I was going to come across Brian Williams’s picture.
‘Asshole … ugly … short … ugly and short,’ I said out loud, scrolling through profiles. ‘Short ugly asshole … OK … OK … dumb looking … can’t spell.’
It was like shopping online for guys but with zero quality control. If you wanted designer duds, you went to the Barneys website, not Forever 21. But online dating? There was everything in here, from Prada to Payless. How were you supposed to choose? But still, it was better than doing what actually needed doing …
Twenty minutes later, oprahlopez2011 had a live profile. The photos were cute, my answers to the dumb-ass questions were brief but fun (‘on a Friday night I am mostly … ’ – surely anyone who could answer that without sounding like a total loser wouldn’t be using an online dating site) and now, to wait. Only, waiting wasn’t something I was good at.
‘How hard can this be?’ The computer still didn’t answer. Ass-hat. ‘I just message them and they message me back?’ I really had to get a goldfish or something, just so I had a living entity to direct my banter at.
