HOLLY
The three of us spent the next few hours setting up for tomorrow night’s “soft opening,” which is sort of like a dress rehearsal for restaurants. We extended our invitations to friends who we’ve supported over the years by going to every insufferable ninety-nine-seat theater play, pseudo-intellectual art gallery opening, book party, and bad movie premiere they had ever done.
Now it’s payback time.
We’re expecting over a hundred people during the course of the night. Plus, the bar will also be open to the public, so I am hopeful we’ll have extra business.
By the time we close up Wednesday, All for Wine and Wine for All! looks like a real bar. The interior’s a lot of exposed brick (and some fake exposed brick, Los Angeles being earthquake territory and all), with wood beams and exposed pipes. One wall is the floor-to-ceiling wine refrigerator that Nat’s new boyfriend managed to fix. The wine chandelier Nat found looks like a piece of modern art, bathing the middle of the room with a romantic glow. And scattered throughout the place we have wooden signs in various colors that say things like IT’S WINE O’CLOCK, WINE: THE WAY CLASSY PEOPLE GET TRASHED, and COME. SIP. STAY.
We did it. We actually pulled it off.
I feel like such a grown-up.
And if Jessie’s right, in less than twenty-four hours, the next phase of my life begins.
That’s exciting. Or scary as hell. Either way, the not knowing what’s happening next is rather thrilling. This is the most alive I’ve felt in years.
I hate Pollyannas who say things like that, my brain points out.
Now normally, I would cow down to that inner voice. But just for today, I’m going to listen to Jessie instead.
And that night, armed with my newfound courage to quell my inner voice, I do something I consider very brave: I Facebook Sven Erikkson, with two k’s, and friend request him.
I then reward myself with two cupcakes and a can of pink frosting I find in the back of the pantry. I’m following the unspoken rule every woman knows: A girl can be brave for only so long, and then she needs a treat. Because in this day and age, bravery isn’t about storming out onto the battlefield; most days it’s just about putting yourself out there. And that frequently requires frosting.
I hear my computer ding, and can’t help but run back to it, my arms full of the modern girl’s dating provisions.
Oh, my God! He accepted my friend request! Gorgeous neighbor accepted my friend request.
Within ten minutes!
Paydirt!
I suppress the urge to hide under my desk. Shit just got real.
No. I have my cupcakes and my frosting—I can do this. Time for some recon, Sweden Boy!
I immediately click on his page to discover that his relationship status is single (hallelujah!) and that he really is in San Francisco on business. One of his male friends checked in at a local bar and tagged him. Five guys and a girl—and the girl has her arms around a different guy. I move my head toward the screen to get a closer look at the girl. It looks like she’s wearing … Yes! An engagement ring! Which means she can’t be with him, or he’d have changed his status.
Then I begin reading his previous posts. He was recently in New York for a wedding, he recently became an uncle for the third time (very cute baby pic), and he is inexplicably a San Francisco 49ers fan. (Not that I don’t like the team, but how did a guy from Sweden become a fan of a football team that doesn’t use a soccer ball?)
As I am going through his old pictures, I see a message pop up in my in-box.
From Sve … Get the fuck out of here—no way!
I click on the message box to read:
Hey! Was trying to figure out how to e-mail you yesterday. I saw you on TV.
He saw me on TV? Crap. Doing what? Please not the show where I kill my boyfriend and they only discover it because of my nail polish. That might send a bad message about how I feel about men who work late. And not the one where my little Half Asian self inexplicably has an Irish accent. A baaaaddd Irish accent.
I bite the bullet and ask,
One of the CSI ones?
No. You’re a firefighter, and you’re the girlfriend of that guy who’s now the sexiest man alive.
St. Louis Fire. Wow, I haven’t thought about that job in years. Okay, that’s not a bad one. I was off dairy for five minutes and kind of looked okay back then.
Pointed to you on the television at a pub I was at with my friends earlier tonight. I said, “That’s my neighbor!” I haven’t been on Facebook in several days. Glad you caught me.
Pointed me out at the pub? To whom? Maybe to the girl with the engagement ring? Okay, that’s a good sign, right? I mean, pointing out a girl to an engaged person must mean something.
So what did your friends think of me
Michael, who just moved here from London, said if the women in Southern California look like that, he needs to make sure his transfer to America is permanent.
I grin at the screen. Ahhh … England. An entire nation of men who look and talk like James Bond.
That’s very sweet. I’m sure he’ll do great here, if for no other reason than his accent is an aphrodisiac.
Well, that’s why I moved to Los Angeles. There, my accent is an aphrodisiac. (Even if no one seems to know what it is. One woman asked me if I was from Brooklyn!) Maybe I should go to where you’re from. Do you think my accent could be an aphrodisiac?
It took until after I hit Send to realize how ballsy I was sounding.
He immediately writes,
Indeed. The men wouldn’t know what hit them. You would kill it, in London, Sweden, San Francisco …
I don’t have an accent in San Francisco
I type back, a little confused.
You don’t need to. You are the aphrodisiac.
Okay, that was fantastic. I will be dining out on that in my head for at least a week.
And then the flirting continued—for five hours.
Nat has this thing she calls “the phone test.” Basically it just means that if a man really likes you, he’ll want to talk to you on the phone all night. She has this theory about how you should never have sex with anyone unless you’re both so into the other person that you talk until the sun comes up.
And because I stopped listening to my inner voice long enough to take a risk, Sven and I talk (well, type) until the sun comes up. For hours and hours. we talked about everything and nothing. I learned that he hates vanilla ice cream, and he learned that the first time I tried to golf I accidentally hit myself in the head.
The evening flew by, and it felt both exciting yet effortless. It was so easy to talk to him. Somehow, just typing (instead of actually talking) allowed me to write whatever I felt like sharing. I didn’t second-guess myself at every turn, because I wasn’t staring at a great-looking guy, stressed out about the outcome. And I listened, really listened, to what he had to say.
I passed Nat’s phone test.
You know, I hear a lot these days about how society is wrecked because people aren’t going on real dates anymore, how they aren’t seeing each other face-to-face, and they’re all on their phones at dinner. And that might very well be true.
But, for tonight at least, it sure was a relief to hide a bit. Because it gave me the courage to be myself. To admit, “Here’s me! I’m weird.”
Which allowed me to find someone I didn’t want to hide from.