Page 22 of At First Smile

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Cure-All: a Boozy Brunch

Pen

E ven heartbreak isn’t a good enough reason to cancel boozy brunch with Trina and JoJo.

Though, is this heartbreak? As Trina repeated no less than five times, after JoJo called her to debrief on the drive home from LAX last night, I didn’t really know Rowan.

My heart isn’t computing this fact. Last night after JoJo dropped me off, I sank into the oversized clawfoot tub in my en-suite and lost myself in a good long cry with Adele as accompaniment.

Add a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and I was a crushed-girl cliché.

“No more tears,” I command, my eyes fix on my reflection in the bathroom mirror.

I’ll pack away all the reasons for each tear. Rowan’s deception. My falling for it, for him. The way he left me at baggage claim. Amid all the reasons for my tears, the one that stings the most is that I’ll never see him again.

Dashing away one last tear, I grab the hairbrush off the counter and sweep my long hair into a high ponytail. Perhaps the bouncy hairdo will force a smile on my face, even if it’s the one I reserve for my mother.

When the doorbell rings, I pat my hands against my cheeks, hoping they add some color to my pale face. “You know you’re sad when you can see it on your own face.” My mouth forms a small smile at my bad blind joke. “You got this,” I assure myself and head downstairs.

Boozy brunch started during my junior year, after I turned twenty-one.

Trina flew in to celebrate my birthday. After a night drinking far too many cocktails, me being persuaded to do a blowjob shot on my knees with my hands tied behind my back at a drag show, and flirting with many, many cute boys, we woke up Sunday with the Kilimanjaro of hangovers.

JoJo’s answer, “Pastries and bubbles!” She theorized the best way to deal with a hangover is to push it to the next day.

What started as a hangover remedy has become our Sunday tradition. Trina video calls in from Buffalo with donuts from her parent’s shop and Bloody Marys. JoJo brings the bubbles and pastries. I host.

I open the door and smile. “Hey.”

“Oh babe, you’ve been crying!” JoJo exclaims, a bottle of champagne in each hand and a bakery bag dangling from her wrist.

“Aargh!” I bury my face into my hands. “I shouldn’t be crying this much! Not over a man. I’m a strong ass woman, not a blithering girl-child.”

“Oh, Pen.” JoJo wraps her arms around me, cold moisture wets my dress from the press of both bottles against me.

“Now my dress is wet,” I whine.

“Sorry.” Laughing, she pulls back. “It’s okay to be emotional after what happened. You haven’t been open to dating anyone since Prince Joffrey.”

A wet laugh builds in my throat at just one of the plethora of not-so-nice names JoJo and Trina have bestowed on Alex.

“It doesn’t take my master’s degree to know the tears are a combo of possibly losing someone you really, really like and a tiny bit of fear that this is two men in a row who have disappointed you.”

“Possibly?”

She shrugs. “I’m an optimist.”

“What’s there to be optimistic about?” I wave my hands around as if the movement punctuates how very, very wrong she is. “He hid who he was and then just disappeared.”

“Not to play the sighted ableist card, but you didn’t see his face.

He was conflicted, pained, terrified, and remorseful.

Plus, my spidey-sense and everything you shared last night tells me that he’s not Alex.

I don’t think him withholding who he was had anything to do with manipulation or control. It was about something else.”

Fresh tears drip down my cheeks at the echo of the sadness in Rowan’s voice as he talked about being a disappointment to the people he loves. I’d reassured him that I saw him. The Rowan I saw wouldn’t intentionally hurt me.

Still, he’d said he couldn’t walk away from me, but he did.

“He just left me.”

“Only after he knew I was there. He made sure you had your people. That you weren’t alone.” Her tone soft and coaxing.

But I am alone. My best friends are here for me, but the two people who made me pulse with need aren’t. One I can never have back. The other I fear I’ll never see again and worse, I’m terrified of what will happen if I do.

I swallow thickly. “I don’t want boozy brunch to be all about Rowan. I just want to drink, laugh with my friends, and forget about this.”

“Denial it is.” She sighs. “Go wash your face before Trina sees you or she’ll go all mother of dragons and find out where Rowan lives and burn down his house.”

“She wouldn’t…” I frown. “I’ll go wash my face.”

Face washed; I join JoJo on the patio. Beneath a giant yellow umbrella, we sip mimosas, eat pastries, and grill Trina about her nonexistent wedding plans after getting engaged three months ago.

Her scowly, scrunched face, fills the screen from the laptop we’ve positioned at one of the four place settings atop the circular-shaped glass table.

JoJo tsks . “What kind of high performer are you? How do you not have a venue or a date? I already have my venue selected.”

“And all you need is the fiancé,” Trina deadpans, a smirk replacing the scowl on her lovely face. Like us, she’s enjoying the weather by sitting outside on the back porch of the mid-century farmhouse she’d bought last year – pre fiancé.

“Details.” JoJo bats the air with her hand.

Adding to the many differences between my besties is their relationship status.

JoJo is always single. Despite bad date after worse date, she remains the eternal optimist about all things love.

Trina is a skeptic despite always having a boyfriend.

Marriage is just something to tick off on her life itinerary.

“Cael and I have a plan. Once he’s completed his cardio fellowship next year and I have a year as the attending ophthalmologist at the Retinal Foundation, we’ll plan the wedding.”

“Wouldn’t want something like love to get in the way of your career,” JoJo quips.

“Exactl y .” Trina waves a half-eaten donut in the air. “Marriage isn’t about the fluffy stuff with Cael and me. It’s about partnership. We have very specific career and life goals.”

I kick JoJo beneath the table. I don’t need to see the details in her expression to know a full-on grimace is etched on her face. She almost vibrates with the need to chide Trina for her romantic blasphemy.

I clear my throat. “Speaking of career stuff. I got an email from my boss this morning. He’d like to meet with me first thing tomorrow.”

“Are you fired? Oh god!” JoJo gasps.

“Why do you always think someone is getting fired when their boss asks to see them?” I chuckle.

“An email from your boss to be in their office is the adult equivalent of being called to the principal’s office, which is never good.”

“I was only ever called to the principal’s office for good things.

Winning valedictorian when I graduated at sixteen.

Being selected for Model United Nations.

My almost perfect SAT score. Making it to the final round for a national essay contest.” Trina counts off her many teenage accomplishments on each finger.

“Trina, we’ve discussed being braggy,” JoJo tuts.

“Calling women braggy is a tool of the patriarchy to keep us in a social-construct of appearing modest or dumbed-down, so men feel better about their insecure selves.”

“You found me out.” JoJo raises her hands in surrender. “I’m a patriarchy secret agent.”

I kick JoJo again and mouth, stop .

She chuckles.

“I was just named employee of the quarter, so I’d imagine they’re not firing me.”

“See!” Trina points at me through the screen, as if to reiterate her point that sometimes a brag is okay.

I wave her off. “Jamal has been talking about retiring to spend time with his family. His daughter lives in Chicago and just had a baby. I think he’s ready to retire and may be asking me to step up as interim VP of Voluntary Services.”

While I’m not as goal focused as Trina about my future, I have a plan.

With my master’s in health administration, my goal is to ultimately rise to the level of hospital director.

During chemo treatments, Aunt Bea would gush to the staff that one day her niece might be their boss.

I was both mortified and delighted with her faith in me.

“Pen, this is amazing!” JoJo squeals. “You’d be next in line to be director.”

“If I got the job permanently there’d still be like five layers between me and that job.”

“But if something happened to all five of those people?—”

“Don’t plan the assassinations yet, lady. It’s not the presidential line of succession,” Trina guffaws.

“I would never.” JoJo clutches at her chest dramatically. “Well, unless…verbal winky-face emoji.”

Both Trina and I cackle

Not only does JoJo spell out emojis in texts, she verbalizes them in person to describe some of those little facial tics, like a wink, that I often miss.

When someone sits this close to me with good lighting, I can catch some, but still miss a lot.

Verbal cues are my primary source of the context and subtext communicated by non-verbal gestures and expressions.

“Well, I’m just happy it’s good news. You can’t be fired and have your heart broken in the same week. It’s just rude!” JoJo bites into a vanilla lavender scone.

“She didn’t have her heart broken by the sexy Wayne Gretzky wannabe. It was only thirty-five hours. Pen’s not that foolish to fall for someone she barely knows.” The cringe is apparent in Trina’s disdain-filled tone.

“It’s not foolish. When the heart knows, it knows,” JoJo scoffs.

“Gretzky played center. Rowan is a defenseman,” I mutter.

“Looks like someone did some googling last night.” JoJo leans close and whispers, “Verbal salacious smirk emoji.”

I avert my gaze.

“Ugh,” Trina groans. “New rule, if I can’t achieve-drop, you can’t mention men that hurt our friend. Well, unless we’re planning their downfall.” Her lips purse. “By the way, in your googling did you happen to locate Rowan’s address?”

Oh, my besties. I roll my eyes and pour another mimosa.

After one too many mimosas and enough carbs to start a bakery, I stretch out on the couch. Wind chimes sing in the gentle June breeze. The scent of jasmine floats into the room through the open windows. The sweet scent tickles my nostrils.

It’s just me and all my thoughts. JoJo took a rideshare back to her place in hopes of napping off the tipsy aftermath of boozy brunch. Trina, who switched to coffee after her second Bloody Mary, logged off to go plot world domination or whatever she does on a Sunday night.

Possibly. The word hums inside me with a promise I dare not let myself touch.

I shouldn’t be thinking about Rowan. About seeing him again.

I should listen to Trina, forget him, and move on.

It’s how she’s dealt with past breakups.

Though, with Trina she’s the breaker and not the breakee.

Also, this isn’t a breakup. We weren’t dating. It was just one day.

One amazing day .

Sitting up on the couch, I expel a hard breath. “Ugh!”

Logically I know this is as foolish as Trina cautions. The warning bells that roar with other men have been silent with Rowan. He hid part of himself. He left me. He…

“He’s protective,” I murmur, bending my legs and wrapping my arms around them to rest my chin on my knees. “There’s a reason. There’s more to this. I know it.”

My eyes flick to my mobile in the glittery pink case on the coffee table.

We hadn’t exchanged numbers, but he knows my social media handle.

I shift to sit on my knees and scoop up the phone.

Like a starved woman searching for the tiniest crumb to quell her hunger, I open my phone and pull up Instagram.

Since last night, I’ve not been online. The last post on Cane Austen and Me is a selfie taken with Harley before he performed and a video where Stacy tagged me as I sang. There are also seventy-five notifications, including an alert that @HarleyGuitarGuy is now following me.

I ignore the notifications and go directly to my inbox where ten new messages wait for me. Scrolling, I see that none are from Rowan Iverson. Unless he’s using an alias online.

I open the first message.

Ms. Meadows, my name is Miguel Reyes, I’m a reporter with the LA Press and would like to get a comment on a story I’m writing about the need for universal design in public spaces to support true accessibility.

My understanding is Rowan Iverson assisted you during a recent trip due to accessibility challenges as a visually impaired woman. Would you be open to speaking with me?

“What?” My eyes almost bulge out of my sockets.

I open the remaining messages. All are requests from reporters from various media outlets. Each asking about Rowan helping me navigate airports. Turns out I’m not the new girlfriend. I’m just…

“His charity case.” I toss the phone onto the coffee table. “Goodbye Rowan, or whoever you really are.”