thank you,” she mumbled, and slipped butt-first from his grasp. But somehow when she started walking, instead of going toward the restroom in the back, she started toward the door. Some primal fight-or-flight instinct was taking over, and evidently Kelly’s ancestresses had been the ones who bowed meekly before the mastodon and bid it a pleasant day. She was fleeing.
Clearly, she reasoned with accelerating speed, the whole evening was down the toilet anyway (nearly literally). If she turned around and headed back to the table now, Martin would be obligated to ask why she had thought the restroom was somehow invisibly concealed by the front door, like some sort of Platform 9¾ situation. She would be obligated to provide an explanation, which would mean she would be obligated to come up with an explanation, which would mean she would need to think a heck of a lot faster than she was thinking right now. Then the rest of the evening would pass in tense small talk about wine and weather while Martin was obviously fixating on her mysterious lap around the restaurant, and she was obviously fixating on whether or not her mom had paid Martin to give her some human contact, the lack of which in her “already twenty-nine-year-old” daughter’s life Diane was always lamenting, and really, did Kelly want to subject herself and Martin to that? Of course she didn’t. Besides, if she left now, Martin’s pal Tony certainly wouldn’t charge him for her tuna, and he wouldn’t stay for dessert or order another drink without a date, ergo, Kelly was granting him a significant savings by walking away from the night now. Maybe fifty dollars? If he invested that right, it could be five thousand dollars by the time he reached retirement. Clearly, Kelly was taking the only logical course. This was a successful and reasonable termination of the night.
As she pushed open the door, its chime jingling, she looked back just enough to glimpse Tony and Martin gathered by the table, both gaping at her in bewilderment.
Kelly clattered down the sidewalk as fast as she could in her sensible heels, cursing the frigid winter air and the fact that the only parking spot had been on the other end of the strip mall. The faster she moved, the sooner she could get to her car and vent her emotions by blasting NPR. She needed to drown out her thoughts: Thoughts about the million and one more graceful ways in which she could have handled that situation. About how she couldn’t find a plus one on her own and couldn’t even hold on to the one that was handed to her. About how dating, the soul-sapping square dance of trying to find the right guy, sucked. About the fact that she really did still want to find the right guy, in spite of all the bruises that come with cracking your heart from its exoskeleton. About the growing suspicion that she couldn’t find the right guy because she wasn’t the right person.
As she finally reached her black Accord, her still-empty stomach creaked in protest.
As soon as Kelly got home, she stepped out of her dress and unpeeled her swimsuit. It was like skinning a grape. She felt better. Until her phone buzzed. She knew even before fishing it from her purse what the screen would say, and sure enough, it was her mom. Of course Diane would be waiting anxiously for a report of the night’s events, probably envisioning a fairy-tale evening that had ended with Kelly stretching onto her tiptoes for a magical kiss, kicking back one foot like the heroine in a rom-com. Instead, here Kelly stood in her half-lit apartment with a very confused date somewhere alone in another part of the city and a Target Juniors bathing suit around her feet. She couldn’t talk to her mother. Not now.
She walked into the kitchen, pulling up Priya’s contact on her phone instead. Priya she could talk to. Priya she needed to talk to.
Priya shared Kelly’s intellectual curiosity and analytical mind, but not her over-analytical mind. She was relentlessly open, sometimes to the point of TMI, but her endless ability to laugh at herself and others had often sapped the power from Kelly’s neuroses. It was lucky, really, that they were forced to work together for long hours back when they had been paired on the Zed project as AHI’s newest hires. Otherwise Kelly would probably never have attempted to get to know Priya, or been able to let Priya get to know her. But something about finally getting a robot to execute a perfect spin in place, at three a.m., after imbibing enough Red Bulls to make your toes twitch, really cements a friendship. Now, tinkering beside Priya in the lab was one of Kelly’s favorite parts of her job.
Kelly told Priya her tale of woe while she fixed herself a favorite late-night meal: Campbell’s tomato soup with popcorn, and soon Priya’s laughter was coming so loudly through the phone it nearly drowned out the popping from the microwave.
“You just walked out of the restaurant? You literally did that?” Priya gasped.
“I mean, it wasn’t that bad, really. Not as bad as it sounds,” Kelly protested grumpily.
“After you told him you needed to poo?”
“Well, I didn’t tell him—”
“I love you. This is amazing. This is the greatest moment of my life.”
Kelly finally had to laugh. She felt a little better. “But what am I going to do? You know my mom; I can’t just go to the wedding alone, like a normal person.”
“Uh, normal people don’t go to weddings alone, but whatever. Just find a date.”
“Oh, sure, why didn’t I think of that? I’ll just go out and find a date.”
“It honestly doesn’t have to be that hard, Kel. I promise.”
Maybe for Priya. Priya had a mixed history with men, but getting a date was never the hard part. Men found her attractive: her features were unremarkable, but with her good teeth, abundant dark hair, and long legs, she gave a general impression of youth and prettiness. More than that, she was fearless with guys. She never hesitated to ask them out, and it was rare that they didn’t say yes. She loved meeting new people and would give almost anyone a chance.
But once the date began, things tended to go downhill. The same openness and lack of guile that drew men to her like magnets tended to repel them with the same force. She would reveal off-putting truths about herself on a first date. She was ruthlessly honest about her initial impressions of men’s naked bodies. But as often as Priya failed to get the third or fourth date, she forged ahead. She would laugh it off to Kelly, asking breezily why she should get hung up over one guy, anyway, when there were so many others out there to sample? Kelly noticed that she never seemed to learn anything from her failures, but then again, who was Kelly to give dating advice?
“Getting a date is that hard,” Kelly persisted. “Otherwise I would have done it already.”
“Uh, hello, have you heard of Tinder? We literally have an Amazon for lonely penises.”
“I don’t want a lonely penis,” Kelly said.
“For this, you do. Just sign up for a dating website. You’ll find someone in no time. We live in Man Jose. The odds are good.”
“But the goods are odd,” Kelly mourned. “Maybe there’s just not anyone out there for me. Maybe I’ll be a cat lady, except instead of cats, it’ll be those robotic comfort seals from Japan.” She ate a spoonful of soup. “Actually, that sounds kind of nice.”
“No excuses. There is someone out there for literally everyone. Just keep an open mind. Or …” Kelly dipped a piece of popcorn while Priya paused dramatically. “Come out with me! I’ll help you find a man. I’ll get you a whole freaking Boy Scout troop. But, you know, of grown-ups. There’s this awesome new bar in Menlo Park—”
“I don’t do bars.”
“Come on! The night is still young! Get your
