Wendy Markham - Slightly Single

“No, let’s try your place. I’m always up for something new. Hey, I’m spontaneous, remember?”

I grin at him, and note that he’s wearing another crewneck sweater with his jeans. “I see you went with the beige today.”

“What can I say? It was a beige kind of day. Apparently, you beg to differ. Do you always wear black?” he asks, eyeing my outfit.

Black jeans. A black long-sleeved tunic-jersey-type shirt that camouflages my thighs—or so I like to think.

“Always,” I tell him.

“Any particular reason?”

“It’s slimming,” I say promptly, and he grins.

“And here I thought you were trying to make some kind of political or artistic or spiritual statement.”

“Me? Nope, I’m just a full-figured gal trying to pass for a waif.”

We splash out into the rain and cross the street against the light. Two minutes later, we’re sitting on barstools at Frieda’s, this semi-cool dive Will and I come to sometimes. They have awesome potato skins with cheddar and bacon, a fact I mention to Buckley pretty much the moment we sit down.

“You want to order some?” he asks.

“After all that popcorn?”

“You’re too full?”

“See, Buckley, that’s the thing. I’m never full. I could eat all day long. I’m always up for some potato skins. Hence the flab.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself, Tracey. It’s not like you’re obese.”

“You’re sweet.” Too bad he’s gay. “So tell me about your failed relationship.”

“Do I have to?”

“Nah. Not if you don’t want to. We can talk about something more upbeat. Like…where are you from?”

“Long Island.”

“You’re from Long Island?”

He nods. “Why do you look so surprised?”

“You just don’t have that Lo-awn Guyland thing going on. You know…the accent. You don’t have one.”

“You do,” he says with a grin. “Upstate, right?”

“How’d you know?”

“The flat a gives you away. You said ay-ack-sent. So where are you from?”

“You never heard of it. Brookside.”

“I’ve heard of it. There’s a state college there, right?”

“Right.”

“I thought about going there.”

“You’re kidding. Why?”

“Because it was as far away from Long Island as I could go and still be at a state school. My parents couldn’t afford private college tuition and I didn’t get any scholarships.”

“Really?”

“Why are you surprised?”

“Because…I don’t know. You just seem like the studious type.”

He grins. “Trust me, I wasn’t. With my grades, I barely made it into a state school.”

That really is surprising, for some reason. He just seems like the type of person who would do everything well. I like knowing he was just an average student, like I was. It doesn’t mean he isn’t smart, because I can tell that he is.

“So where’d you end up going to college?” I ask him.

“SUNY Stony Brook. I wound up staying on the island and living at home.”

“Why?”

I catch a fleeting glimpse of unexpected emotion in his expression. When he speaks, I understand why, but his face is carefully neutral. “My dad died the summer after I graduated from high school. I couldn’t go away and leave my mom and my sister and brother on their own. So I stayed home.” He says it like it’s no big deal, but I can tell that it is. Or was.

“I’m really sorry about your dad.”

“It was a long time ago.” He bends over and ties his shoe, his foot propped on the bottom rung of his barstool. I wonder if the lace was untied, or if he just needed a distraction.

“Yeah,” I say, “but that’s not something that goes away, is it?”

He straightens and looks me in the eye. “Not really. Sometimes it’s still hard when I let myself dwell on it. Which I usually don’t do.”

“I didn’t mean to bring it up.”

“You didn’t know. And anyway, it’s okay. I don’t mind talking about it.”

I don’t know what else to say, so I ask, “What happened? To your dad, I mean.”

“He had been having stomach pains, and when he finally went to the doctor, they found out it was pancreatic cancer. By the time they found it, it was too late—it had spread everywhere. They gave him six weeks. He died five weeks and five days later.”

“God.” I see tears in his eyes and feel a lump rising in my throat. Here I am, wanting to burst into tears for the loss of somebody I never even met—the father of this guy I barely know.

“I know. It was horrible,” Buckley says. He takes a deep breath, then sighs. “But like I said, it was a long time ago. My mom is finally getting over it. She even went out on a date a few weeks ago.”

“Her first date?”

“Yeah.”

I try to imagine my mother going on a date, and it’s all I can do not to shudder. But then, maybe Buckley’s mother isn’t a four-eleven, overweight, overly pious, stubborn Italian woman in doubleknit pants who doesn’t bleach her mustache as often as she should.

“Did that bother you?” I ask Buckley. “Your mother dating?”

“Nah. I hate that she’s alone. My sister just got married and my brother’s in the service now, so it would be good if she met someone else. I wouldn’t worry about her so much.”

What a guy. I find myself thinking that maybe he’s too nice for Raphael. Not that Raphael isn’t wonderful, but when it comes to romance, he can be sort of fickle. He’s broken more than a few hearts, and I can’t stand the thought of nice, sweet, noble Buckley getting his heart broken.

Which reminds me—Buckley’s ex. I wonder what happened there, but I couldn’t ask for details when he’d already shown a reluctance to talk about it. Just then, the waiter appears. He’s flamboyant and effeminate, and he’s practically drooling over Buckley as we order a couple of beers and the potato skins. The thing is, Buckley isn’t movie-star handsome. He’s nice looking enough, but something about him is even more appealing than his looks. Maybe it’s the warm expression in his crinkly Irish eyes, or his quick smile or his genuine Mr. Nice Guy attitude. Whatever it is, it’s not lost on the blatantly gay waiter, and it’s not lost on me.

Too bad he’s not straight.

It’s becoming my new mantra, I realize. If Buckley weren’t gay, and I didn’t have Will…

But if Buckley weren’t gay and I didn’t have Will, we probably wouldn’t be here together, and I sure as hell wouldn’t be ordering potato-cheddar-bacon skins or blabbing about my excess flab, which is what I do when I’m with Raphael or Kate.

Anyway, I doubt I’d be Buckley’s type.

Then again, it still amazes me, three years later, that I’m Will’s type. After all, he is movie-star handsome, and I’m no goddess. Luckily, relationships go deeper than looks. At least, ours does. Physical attraction was a huge part of why I was drawn to Will, but I think he was drawn to me because I was one of the few people who ever understood his dream of breaking out of a small midwestern town and making it in New York. That burning ambition to escape the mundane lives to which we were born was the thing we had in common, the thing that ultimately brought us together.

Now it seems to be driving us apart. Christ, Will is leaving me behind. Maybe not for good, but for now, and it hurts. It hurts enough that when the waiter leaves and Buckley looks at me again, he immediately asks, “What’s wrong, Tracey?”

I try to look cheerful. “Nothing. Why?”

“You’re down about something. I can tell.”

“I’m not surprised. I can never hide anything from you, Buckley. You always have known me better than I know myself,” I say in mock seriousness.

He laughs.