Mary Robb - Down the Rabbit Hole

“Okay, sorry.”

“I did talk to him. First I joked about it. Then a couple of times I asked him to put the phone away.”

“And did he?”

“Of course. But the thing was, the next time we were out it was the same problem. And I don’t want to be that woman, the one who’s always nagging about not getting any attention. If he isn’t into me enough now, at seven months in, to keep the phone holstered, what’ll he be like in five years? Ten?” She poked listlessly at the tablecloth with her fork. “God forbid I’m ever in one of those dead relationships.”

She spoke with assurance, but inside that knot was forming again, the one that tightened every time she thought about Jeremy. There’d been so many things right about him . . . except for the one very wrong fact that he wasn’t into her enough.

That was what it came down to, every time. And it was that which caused the doors of her heart to slam closed. She’d rather be alone than be with someone who loved her less than she loved him.

“Well, all I know is I don’t want to be the one to tell Luther Serafini his baby sister’s on the prowl again.” Carolyn shook her head as she loosed her silverware from its rolled-up napkin.

Macy jerked her eyes to Carolyn. “On the prowl!” she protested.

“Before you met Jeremy you were using a spreadsheet to keep track of your dates, remember?”

Her face went hot. “There was a reason for that!”

“Of course there was.” Carolyn laughed.

“Look,” she said, leaning forward, “here’s the thing. My life coach had me make a life plan, which was great, because it’s only when you know where you’re going that you can make the right decisions to get you there. But I felt like, until I found the right guy I couldn’t get the rest of my life in order. I know, I know, I don’t need a guy to be whole and all that. And I don’t! But I want a guy, I want the right guy. But until I find him I can’t get the whole rest of the show on the road. Do you know what I mean?”

Carolyn looked at her like she had three heads. “The whole rest of the show?”

“Yeah, you know, making sure I’m in the right job, the one with the best benefits, maternity leave and career track. Planning exactly where I want to be on that track when I decide to have children, so I won’t lose ground. Then I can start looking at neighborhoods, think about buying a house, calculate the down payment needed and the payments we can afford. I can research new cars that would be family friendly and could be paid for by the time we have to start contributing to college savings accounts, figure out how to adjust our retirement savings, stuff like that, you know? Just make sure my priorities reflect my goals, the future I’m going to manifest for myself.”

Carolyn was quiet a long moment, fingering one earring, a grave look on her face. “And you say you broke up with Jeremy ? Not the other way around?”

She knew she shouldn’t have confided all that. “What?”

“You just scared the crap out of me , and I’m not even dating you. So, that little speech? Save that for the losers, because it’s the perfect formula to make a guy run screaming.”

“Not the right guy. Not a practical guy.”

“Not a boring guy.”

Macy sat back, conviction warring with confusion. “But that’s who I am, Carolyn. I’m a planner, you know that.”

“Honey,” Carolyn continued, “there’s planning, and there’s crafting a prison sentence. In your plan, the guy doesn’t seem to matter much, beyond setting that whole unbelievably dull-sounding machinery in motion.”

“Of course the guy matters! He’s at the crux of the whole thing!” She bunched her hands together illustratively. Then she looked up. “What do you mean, dull? You’re married, you’ve got kids, you must have thought about all this stuff.”

“Yeah, right.” Carolyn rolled her eyes. “We got together in high school, remember? Back when planning was Hey, who’s getting the keg for this weekend? ”

“Huh. You were lucky. You got the whole thing settled early. My trouble is I keep meeting guys who don’t live up to their billing. They seem great on the outside, and they can maintain that facade for a few dates—or, like in Jeremy’s case, a few months—but then, inevitably, the Problem shows up.” She leaned back. “There’s always a Problem. With Jeremy it was the freaking phone. I mean, who wants to look across the table at the top of someone’s head for the rest of their life?”

“If you’re lucky, it’ll have hair on it.”

“Oh, it’ll have hair. I require pictures of parents and grandparents on the second date.”

Carolyn closed her mouth, gathered her napkin and rose from the table.

Macy laughed. “Carolyn, stop! I was kidding !”

“I’ll be right back. I have to think about an adequate response to all that”—she rolled a hand—“stuff.” She walked off.

Chuckling, Macy pulled her phone from her purse, thinking, See? It’s okay when someone leaves the table to check the phone. There is proper cell phone etiquette, and there is cell phone rudeness. A sigh escaped her as she slid her finger across the screen, entered her passcode and saw that nobody had emailed or texted. She’d sort of expected something from Jeremy, a What’s going on? or Can’t we talk about this? But there was nothing. He must have agreed with her decision . . .

She gazed at the familiar checkerboard of apps. Familiar, that was, except for one yellow icon in the lower right corner that seemed to be throbbing.

She looked closer. iLove, it read underneath it. Inside the box was a red heart, surrounded by a bright yellow sun, which was the thing that seemed to be pulsating. She put her finger to the icon and the app burst into a bright full-screen sun, and then up popped what looked like a dating website. Find a Guy, Contact a Guy, See the Guys Looking at You—all with little red heart icons.

Her mouth dropped open. She hadn’t downloaded that . What, were apps just self-installing now? That’ll be the day, she thought, when she used a dating website. It was scary enough going out with someone you’d already laid eyes on. Setting yourself up on a blind date was an idea beyond horrifying.

She closed the application and deleted it.

Macy’s phone rang again and she nearly threw it against the wall. All day the phone had been ringing, and not once had it been Jeremy.

“Macy Serafini.” She tucked the phone between her shoulder and ear, identified the caller and pulled up the account file on her computer. She was nodding over the client’s points when her coworker April appeared in her doorway. She held up a finger.

“Yes,” she said, nodding, “yes. We can try that.” She waved April in. “Let me put something together on that and I’ll email you Monday, how’s that?”

April settled herself in the armchair across from Macy’s desk and began examining her fingernails.

Macy leaned her head back on her chair and gave a silent scream as the client droned on about things they had discussed multiple times already.

Bud Forester, she mouthed to April, identifying the client who drove them all crazy. April smirked.

If StockSolutions weren’t such an important client, she’d hand the account off to her assistant.

As usual, the conversation went on way too long. Also as usual, he finished by asking her out—even though she’d told him multiple times she was seeing someone. The fact that she wasn’t anymore was something she didn’t even consider telling him.