flawless coloring—porcelain skin and cheeks that flushed natural y when he was excited. His shirts were never wrinkled. Even untucked at the end of a day, with his tie pul ed loose, he looked staged, like somebody had gotten him a wardrobe for “end of the workday.”
Around him, Isabel a felt sweaty and bloated more often than not. She wanted to apologize when she got a pimple or had to blow her nose. She was fairly certain he never had boogers.
Harrison met new people graceful y, shook guys’ hands and grasped their arm with his left hand. He kissed girls on the cheeks and remembered names. He was always interested in conversation, tilting his head at whoever was talking, nodding and interjecting every so often, but not enough to be obnoxious.
“He’s the one!” Isabel a’s friends said. “We can’t believe you found him!”
The ones with boyfriends and fiances were relieved for Isabel a. She was twenty-seven and they al agreed it was about time. The single ones were sort of happy and a little annoyed. They’d been at the bar that night too. Isabel a was pretty, but not gorgeous. Where had they been when he’d come up to her? (But for the most part, they were happy, of course.)
Harrison knew how to date. He made plans to go to dinner at restaurants where they could drink margaritas and hear each other talk. He took her to movies and then to a diner for gril ed cheese. He always paid. He cal ed when he said he would, and held the door for her. The first night she stayed at his apartment, he woke up early and came back with two cups of coffee.
“I like him,” Isabel a told her friends. She sounded miserable. “He’s real y fun. It makes me feel sick.”
Isabel a knew enough by now to know that this wasn’t a common occurrence. You didn’t just bump into a nice guy that you liked every day. She was positive that she was going to mess it up.
Harrison and Isabel a had been dating for three weeks when he mentioned the ski trip. He brought it up casual y one day, as though the thought had just occurred to him that very moment, asking, “Do you want to go skiing for New Year’s?”
Isabel a was in a panic almost immediately. She had been up most nights wondering if they would exchange Christmas presents, imagining the horror of handing him a wrapped box and being greeted with an uncomfortable look. New Year’s hadn’t even entered her mind yet. She was trying to deal with one holiday at a time.
“Isabel a?”
“What?”
“New Year’s? A bunch of my friends are renting a house in Vermont. It should be fun.”
“Fun” was a relative term, Isabel a knew. Something that seemed fun when compared to doing nothing could real y end up being a horrific mistake. And a weekend with strangers could be up there with a car crash.
“Do I know any of them?”
“Um … I’m not sure. You met Parker, right?”
Isabel a shook her head.
“Oh, I thought you did. Wel , look, they’re a fun group. It’s not that big of a deal. If you want to go, great. If not, don’t worry about it.”
“Do you even want me to go?”
“Yeah.”
“It just kind of sounded like maybe you didn’t real y.”
“If I didn’t want you to go, I wouldn’t ask you.”
“Oh.”
“Stop being so weird,” he said, and poked her in the stomach. “It’s real y not a big deal. Just let me know.”
“Okay.”
Isabel a wondered what it would be like to be a boy. She knew that Harrison meant it when he said it wasn’t a big deal. He real y wouldn’t care. He didn’t have to obsess over her response or if she would go or not. If she were a boy, she would be much more successful. She was sure of it. As it was now, she wasted days at work analyzing things that Harrison had said to her. When he told her it was interesting that she had a goldfish, she lost a week of productivity.
What did she know about dating, anyway? Nothing. She thought back to the sixth-grade sex-ed class they’d had at St. Anthony’s. The girls were put in a room with the school nurse and forced to read scenarios out of an old pamphlet. “Kate and Michael have been going steady for a month,”
the book read. “Michael wants Kate to try heavy petting, but Kate doesn’t feel ready. What do you think she should do?”
The nurse cleared her throat, blushed, and addressed the girls. “So, does anyone have a thought on what Kate should do?” The room was silent.
Final y someone asked, “What’s heavy petting?”
In the other room, the boys told them later, a priest had drawn a large dome on the blackboard. “Do you know what this is?” he asked them. He sounded angry and annoyed. He put a dot on top of it. “That’s a penis,” he said.
