"Well, I was supposed to get married yesterday, but instead I went on the job interview."
I gaped at her. "Wow, Bold Books really must be your dream job."
She laughed, then sobered up. I wanted details, but she was looking out the windows through the burglar bars the way I always did when I was down in the dumps, and I got the feeling I shouldn"t pry. Yet. That was what later was for.
"I should warn you," I said. "If we do end up working together, we"ll be roommates and coworkers. What if we hate each other"s guts? There"ll be no escape."
"I could never hate anyone wearing such a great outfit," she said, blowing her nose.
I laughed. I was still wearing yesterday"s clothes, the ones Lucy insisted I change for my date with Phineas.
I had a feeling Roxy Marone and I would get along just fine.
While Roxy checked out her new neighborhood, I walked to the coffee lounge to meet Colin. Please be normal, I prayed to the Fates of the universe. Just let me have one normal date. If he"s normal, I promise not to think about Gabriel. I promise not to talk about Gabriel. I promise not to tell anyone"s current girlfriend that I"m sleeping with her boyfriend, especially when it isn"t true.
I recognized him the second I pulled open the door. He didn"t look like Colin Farrell. He looked like Colin Firth! He was tall and lanky and adorable. Dark wavy hair. Brown, sweet, smart eyes. Double dimples.
"Miranda?" he asked in a hopeful way.
I nodded. "Colin?"
He nodded. "I saved us a couch in the back. Unless someone stole my jacket and someone else stole the seat." I smiled and he led the way to our overstuffed sofa. "Why don"t you make yourself comfortable, and I"ll go get us some coffee and something delicious. What"ll you have?"
"Surprise me," I told him.
He came back with two peppermint mochas with whipped cream and two decadent treatsa scrumptious-looking brownie and a huge berry scone.
We sipped and tasted and then talked. "So I hear you"re an editor."
"I"m just an a.s.sistant," I said, beating him to it and bracing myself for the disdain. "To the editor of romance novels."
He beamed. "That sounds fun. Is it?"
So he wasn"t Phineas! "Well, it would be if I wanted to be an editor."
"What do you want to do?" he asked.
"I have no idea. I only know I like to talk."
He laughed. "It took me a long time to figure out I wanted to be a doctor. It took a friend getting diagnosed with cancer at age thirty. Before that, I floundered. I was a stockbroker, a financial planner, I even went through a year of law school."
I was in love. He was a former flounderer!
We tasted more of our treats, then talked movies we"d seen, songs we liked, restaurants we ate in. Suddenly I saw us dancing cheek to cheek at the Bold Books company Christmas party, which was in a couple of weeks.
"Your brother-in-law didn"t mention how pretty you are," he said suddenly, waving a piece of brownie in front of my lips.
"My brother-in-law didn"t mention how charming you are," I said.
He smiled and clinked his coffee mug against mine.
I am over you, Gabriel Anders. Miranders is no more!
I woke up with a huge smile on my face on Sunday morning. Life was looking up. I had a roommate. And I had a second date with Colintonight!
I grabbed the phone and called Lucy. "I owe you. I"m in love."
Dead silence. "Are you being sarcastic?"
"Not a drop. He"s so cute. So nice. So funny. So smart. So normal. So interesting. So everything!"
"Hallelujah!" Lucy shouted. "Miranda, I"m thrilled. Oh wait a minute, Amelia"s grabbing the phone."
"Hey, kid," I said.
"Can I come over this morning?" she asked. "I hear you have a new roommate."
"That"s right," I said. "Sure, come on over. You can help me plan a new outfit for my hot second date with Colin tonight. We"re having dinner!"
"Ooh, I want to hear all about him," she said. "See you in like twenty minutes."
Lucy was back. "Wow, so you just saw him yesterday and you"re having dinner tonight?"
"We just clicked. Really clicked. Amelia"s coming over. That"s okay, right?"
"Are you kidding?" Lucy said. "Of course she can come over. You"re actually excited about a new guy for the first time in six months. You"re going to talk about something other than Gabriel. One day you"ll talk about something other than a guy, but we"ll save that. I"m really happy for you, Miranda."
Yahoo for me! After we hung up, I bounced out of bed and headed into the kitchen to make coffee, but Roxy had beat me to it. A Post-it note pointing to the pot said: Just Made. Hope you like it semi-strong!
Wow. Thank you, powers that be, I said to the ceiling. Seth never made coffee. Or washed a dish.
The doorbell rang, and Roxy poked her head from behind her screen.
"That"s my niece," I told her, heading to the door to buzz in Amelia. "And guess what? I have a second date with the guy I met yesterday!"
"Wow, that was fast," she said, smiling.
Amelia bounded in. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. She took off her coat and threw it on the couch. "Oops," she said, eyeing Roxy. "I"m so used to Miranda"s old roommate. Seth was a total slob and didn"t care where I threw my jacket."
Roxy smiled and put on her own coat and headed for the door. "And neither do I. Nice to meet you, Amelia. See you two later."
Amelia went over to the window and stared out.
"Everything okay, Meems?" It wasn"t like her to have nothing to say about a new roommate. Especially one who looked like an actress.
"Lizzie"s parents are officially getting a divorce," Amelia said, her voice quiet. "It was supposed to be just a separation, some time apart. But they told Lizzie last night that they"re filing for divorce."
I squeezed Amelia"s shoulder. "How"s Lizzie doing?"
"She"s really upset. I couldn"t even make her feel better. She was crying her eyes out. For Thanksgiving, she had to go to two dinnersone with her mom and one with her dad. She was barfing by the time she got to pumpkin pie at her dad"s. And her mom cries all the time." She suddenly burst into tears.
I brought her over to the couch and sat down next to her, my arm over her shoulder. "Meems, what is it, honey?"
"Mom and Dad are gonna get a divorce. I know it. It"s just like what happened with Lizzie"s parents. Lizzie"s dad started acting really weird, and then one day he just moved out. And now they"re getting divorced. That"s what"s going to happen to Mommy and Daddy."
"Sweetie, your mom and dad are fine," I said, then felt a twinge because I didn"t know if that was true at all.
She threw herself back on the sofa. "Then why aren"t they even talking to each other?"
"They"re not talking?"
She shook her head. "They walk past each other without saying a word."
"They"re probably just still in a little fight over what happened on Thanksgiving," I told her, pushing an unruly curl behind her ear. "I"m sure it"ll blow over. Tell you what. Why don"t I come over and hang out with you tonight. We can rent Princess Diaries one and two and get Jiffy Pop."
"Every time you make Jiffy Pop, it never pops," she said. "And what about your hot date? I thought you were having dinner with what"shisname. What is his name, anyway?"
"Colin," I breathed. "Colin the cute."
"Colin? Like Colin Hanks?"
Who? "Like Colin Firth."
"Who"s that?" she asked.
Ah, the age gap.
She leaned back against the sofa, holding a throw pillow against her stomach. "Well, you might as well not go on the date anyway, because ten years from now you"ll be having Thanksgiving dinner and he"ll push the turkey off the table because you used paper plates and plastic cups and then you"ll yell at him in the kitchen and then you"ll get divorced and your kid will be really depressed."
"Sweetie, your parents aren"t getting divorced. And they"re not in a fight because your mom yelled at him. Your dad"s just acting a little odd because he misses sugar and white bread and Doritos. I"m sure everything will go back to normal in a couple of weeks, when his body adjusts. Your dad was a total carbaholic!"
She didn"t look convinced. "Why do people break up? How do you go from loving someone so much to not wanting to even live with them? I don"t get it."
"What about that girl you used to be friends with in fourth grade. Diana?"
"Dana."
"Well, weren"t you best friends in fourth grade?" I asked.
"Yeah, but she changed. She started smoking and wearing really weird clothes."
I nodded. "That"s what happens sometimes. People change. Or we change. Sometimes it"s no one"s fault."
"Lizzie"s mom caught her father in bed with another woman," Amelia said, her expression somber. "Her mom followed her dad one night when he said he was going to the gym in their building to work out. But she followed him to the fourteenth floor and saw him go inside an apartment. She knocked on the door and said, "I know you"re in there!" and then she heard the woman saying something like, "I"m not dealing with this." And her dad came out and they were fighting right there in the hallway. His pants weren"t even zipped!"
"Amelia, how in the world do you know all of this? Better questionhow does Lizzie know all this?"
"Her mother whispered the whole thing on the phone to her sister, and Lizzie had snuck out of bed and listened. I don"t want Mom and Dad to get divorced," she said, letting out a deep breath. "I"m gonna sneak some sugar in dad"s coffee tomorrow morning. Sugar withdrawal is making him too weird. I want things to go back to how they were before."
"Careful," I said, tapping her nose. "He"ll accuse your mom of sabotage."
She smiled. "Yeah, you"re right. Maybe I"ll just leave him one of my Mallomars to tempt him. Mom hates Mallomars. He"ll know it wasn"t her." She sat up. "So you really like this new guy, huh?"
"So far so great," I said, wiggling my eyebrows. "Meems, if you want me to come over tonight, I"ll cancel him in a second."
"Nope," she said. "I have a plan now. Operation Sugar Sneak."
Her crisis at a more comfortable place in her head and heart, she pulled Are You There G.o.d? It"s Me, Margaret out of her backpack. She held the book in one hand while flapping with her other arm, then switched hands and flapped the other arm.
I had to be careful with what I said to Amelia. I didn"t think Larry and Lucy were headed for a separation, but you never know. I didn"t think Gabriel was going to dump me, and he did. And during my entire childhood and teenage years, I expected my parents to announce every week they were splitting up, yet they never did. You just never know.
Love and life were just plain unpredictable. The entrance of one adorable, smart, funny, sweet guy named Colin into my life was proof of that.
You know those couples you saw kissing in public? I was now officially half of one. Our first kiss was over a pot of four-cheese fondue and white wine. Our second, right in the middle of Second Avenue. And our third, fourth, fifth and sixth were rolled into one in front of my apartment building.
Mmm...Colin was such an amazing kisser!
"I can"t stop kissing you," he said. "But it"s freezing out here."
How to ruin your second date: invite him upstairs too soon! I decided not to listen to every magazine article I"d ever read. I smiled and invited him in. He smiled and we ran upstairs.
The moment we got into my apartment, he kissed me again. We even managed to take off each other"s coats while lip-locked.
While I sent him off to the hall closet with our coats and scarves, I ran around the apartment to every photo of me and Gabriel and threw them into a drawer.
And then we shared a gla.s.s of wine. We kissed. He told me a funny story about his sister, Claudia. We kissed some more. And more. His lips were on the back of my neck and his hands were on the clasp of my supers.e.xy black lace bra when the phone rang. For the first time in six months, I didn"t lunge for it in the hopes it was Gabriel. I actually let the machine get it.
Hi, it"s Miranda. Leave a message. Beeeeeep!
"Miranda, this is Amy Eames, your ex-boyfriend"s fiancee. Focus on the word ex. And now focus on the word fiancee. Yes, fiancee. Your pathetic little ploy to break up me and Gabriel backfired in your ugly face. He proposed to me last night to prove just how much he loves me. We"re getting married this fall. So if I were you, I"d stop calling him. I"d stop the cards and letters and stalking. I"d stop being so pathetic. It"s over, honey. Enjoy your night." Click.
I stared at the phone.
Colin was looking at me as though I had four heads.
You are on a date with a nice, cute, funny, smart guy. Get your act together, moron!
But the more I tried to force my expression into something other than an about-to-crumble quivering mess, the more my lower lip trembled.
When I"m ready to get married, I"m sure you"ll be the one...
"I just don"t get it," I whispered. "Why not me?"
Colin gnawed his lip. "Um, Miranda, I"m not so sure we know each other well enough for this conversation."
"I just don"t understand," I said, tears falling down my cheeks. "We even look alike, the fiancee and me. Same blond hair. Same blue eyes. Same body, even though she"s taller. Why her and not me?"
Colin stared at the floor, the ceiling. The windows. "Love works in mysterious waysisn"t that what they say?"