It's Got A Ring To It (5 page)

SIX

The next
morning, I woke up with a renewed sense of self. I la
y
there flipping through the channels of
depressing news updates and reruns of
Law
and Order
, but I had too much energy to sit still.

There were no dishes, so I straightened up the small mess I’d made
getting ready for the club the night before, then put a few loads in the
washer. I’d just closed up the laundry room, feeling accomplished that
everything was already put away and it hadn’t turned into a two-day process,
when the phone r
ang
.
Everyone I knew was programmed in my phone with an assigned ringtone. For my
wild and crazy mom, there was no song more fitting than
“
She’s
A Bad Mamma
Jamma
.
”
Although I might’ve chosen something
different for Lena, she insisted on
“
Girls
Just Want To Have Fun
,
”
her favorite
eighties
song. But, the eerie theme music from
Halloween
sounding incessantly, was for unknown callers.

I answered with a cautious whisper, “Hello?”

“Hey
,
Laila
! What are you up to?”

Recognizing Lena’s voice, I replied with relief. “What number are you
calling me from?”

“I’m on
my
phone, but
I was just listening to my voicemails and returned your message from last
night. I forgot to make sure you made it home safely.”

“Oh. Okay”

“
Laila
, I cannot believe you’re up already,
on a Sunday. It’s not even noon,” she joked at my expense. But she was right
about that. I’d given fair warning to everyone not to call me before lunch on
the weekends. Breakfast is a great meal that I prefer to have in the middle of
the day.

“Well, if you know that, then why are you calling?” I questioned,
fully aware that Lena thought everyone got up when she did.

“Just figured I’d give it a try. I’ve been up all morning working on
a little
project
.”

“I don’t even remember leaving you a message. I was running on fumes
by the time I made it home. Man, I was so tired.” Only silence followed and I
knew she was fishing for me to dig a little deeper. Reluctantly, I bit the
bait. “Ok, Lena. What’s this little ‘project?’
”
Lena
suffers from diarrhea of the mouth, so there was no way I believed she became
so elusive overnight. I knew she was definitely withholding information.

“I was exhausted, too,” she said, beating around the bush. I could
hear her multitasking in the background. Shuffling papers or likely adding tear
sheets to her jumbo book. “I barely remember you helping me into the house last
night. I wish I could sleep as long as you do. After the whole crazy night, I
still woke up at eight o’clock. My body definitely has its own alarm clock.
What time did you get up?”

“Lena, for your information, I’ve been up since eight, too,”
I said,
telling a teensy
white lie. “I’m already dressed from head to toe, laundry’s done, with one cup
of tea down
,
and a
second on the way.”

Between us, there was nothing unworthy of competition. As kids, Lena
and I vied for fastest person to finish meals, best grades, parental favor, and
most talented. If we were going anywhere, we were running, and racing to be
first. Despite our age difference, not even boyfriends were off limits. Older
men had always appealed to Lena. She believed they were more mature and better
established. My senior year, her freshman year, I was dating Luke Blakely. Not
the typical captain of the football team.
Actually, the polar
opposite on a high school scale.
A thespian and
scholar, humble and unaware of his classic, distinguished sex appeal.
He
was the first guy I ever considered giving my flower. Brains never looked so
good. When he talked to me, he had a way of making me feel like I was the only
person in the world
who
mattered to him. His eyes warmed
me and his touch sent
tingles up my spine
. When Luke introduced me as his girlfriend, a sense
of pride came over me. If there was a first lady of high school, I was
she
, minus the pageant wave
and Vaseline smile.

Hence
,
the
reason I doubted Lena when she warned me that he was cheating with
Chrissy
Hamilton, the gymnast. It was too cliché
—
so unoriginal to
cheat with the flexible girl who could give it up with her legs behind her
neck. In my mind’s eye, she was jealous and it was just another reason to
compete. When Lena started spending more time with Luke, I armed myself for
war. She was going to have to take me down to cut me out of the picture. Things
got really ugly for a while as we sabotaged each other’s lives. From syrup in
shoes to the bottom being cut out of a backpack, nothing was off limits. But
when she came to me with
Chrissy’s
underwear and
pictures of them making out, I realized she was an ally and Luke got kicked to
the curb.

That day we made a truce. No matter what the focus of our battles, we
had an understanding that we ultimately fight for each other above all else. We
were still worthy adversaries, just with healthier sibling rivalry. Lena found
her own older, mature guys to love and lust over. It’s no wonder Sam ended up
being seven years her senior.

“Well, good for you. You might get to enjoy more than a few hours of
daylight. I’m still in my pajamas. Been on the phone all morning
chitchatting
. Olivia hooked
up with that one greasy guy and she said it was like watching paint dry.” Lena
burst into laughter, barely able to finish what she was saying. “Apparently
he’s not packing much. She kept saying she’d been deceived. With all those
muscles, she was sure he’d be
well-endowed
, if you
know what I mean. Olivia’s convinced he must be using selective steroids
because that muscle didn’t grow an inch.” All I could hear were vibrations of
Lena’s laughter into the receiver.

“Lena!” She takes it so far sometimes.

“Oh and
Laila
, I found out some
juicy
gossip,” she said in a low
whisper. An image of her looking over her shoulder for eavesdropper
s
came to mind.

“Yeah?”
Nothing better than tittle-tattle with Lena
on Sundays.
It’s like catching up on the latest episode of a favorite TV
show.

“You remember, Gina Reeves from high school?

“Uh
-
huh. What
about her?” I asked, waiting on her to get to the point. Who could forget the
girl, who asked the football captain to homecoming in the middle of the pep
rally and got rejected before the whole
school.
Gina
wasn’t a beauty queen by any means, but she was decent looking. A little thick
around the edges with a mild case of acne, but give her some TLC and she could
definitely turn a few heads.

“Well, Denise knows her cousin, who said Gina had totally given up on
getting married, but she went on this dating site and found someone. Her
wedding is next year and it’s supposed to be this big to-do that everyone’s
talking about. He’s some wealthy guy, who owns like two casinos.”

“Ok
ay
?” I
probed, failing to see why the news was classified as “juicy.”

“So what do you think?” she responded.

“Think about what, Lena? Should I send her congratulations or
something?” I still didn’t understand what I was supposed to think and why Lena
was so excited.

“When I heard that Gina, who is nowhere near as hot as you are, is
going to be married, I thought about you,
Laila
. Just
because the club wasn’t necessarily your cup of tea, I don’t want you to give
up and crawl back into your hole, shutting us all out again. I had so much fun
with you last night. It was like old times.
So…,”
—
I could just feel a
flawed plan coming on
—
“…I
was hoping you might consider online dating, like Gina did.” She literally
exhaled, like she’d been holding her breath the whole time. I knew she was
cringing with her fingers crossed, waiting for me to respond.

“Lena, I don’t know. Last night was fun, if only for the shock value,
but I’m still trying to determine if I want to start all over again. You, of
all people, should know what I’ve been through with Ethan. I don’t feel like I
can bear anything like that a second time. Right now, I’m content to let the
focus stay on you and Sam for a while. One wedding is enough, don’t you think?”

Lena didn’t even acknowledge what I had to say. She just kept right
on trucking toward her mission to get me back in the saddle again.

“You could try it out and see what kind of guys you like within the
safety of your own home. And if no one strikes an interest, just delete them,”
she argued, expertly aligned with my overactive paranoia. The best way to
appeal to me has always been with logic. She never joined the debate team
because she said it was for nerds, but I’ve always believed that Lena could
have been a brilliant
,
well-dressed
lawyer.

“Lena, that’s just not for me.”

“You don’t really have to do anything. Sign up, and they do the rest.
You check your e-mail
every
day
, right?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s the same thing. Just check your inbox, and men that meet your
criteria will be waiting. Basically, online dating is like choosing from a
n
à
la
carte
menu
.” And for good
measure, “Even you can do that,
Laila
.” As if it’s
for dummies and I was the target market. There went another objection she could
check off her list.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” What could it hurt to browse a bit, I
pondered.
She’d gotten to me, but it’s in my stubborn nature
to give at least one last objection, for argument’s sake. “I wouldn’t even know
where to start or which website…”

Knowing Lena, I shouldn’t have been surprised that she had already
done her research. “I thought you’d say ‘no,’ but I pulled together a few
profile ideas just in case.” Her organization never cease
d
to amaze me. It dawned on me that I was her
“little project.” Typical Lena, the
t
inker in her, always needed something or
someone to fix. Might as well take all the help I could get,
so
I relented.

“Which one are we going to use?” I asked, out of objections,
succumbing to the pressure and enlisting her help. I typed in the address for
the website she said, Suited&Paired.com, aptly titled for locals of Vegas.
The cute pictures of kings and jacks weren’t as outlandish as I thought it’d
be. Visions of scantily clad women and
hypersexualized
heathens waiting to lure me into bondage and lust had crossed my mind. Instead,
my curiosity officially piqued enough to dig deeper. All of a sudden, I felt
bold. A little bit more like myself. Entering the site,
I sifted
through men the way I pick
ed
out blinds and tiles
—and it
was
empowering.

There’s something that felt right about being back in command. As a
small child, coy was never a word used to describe me.
Rambunctious,
maybe.
I’d always found it interesting to walk up to complete strangers
holding hands and ask how they’d met, how long they’d been together, and what
it was like being married. Every answer helped shape my own dream of a future
wedding. Somehow, when I was audaciously interrogating couples to get a better
picture of intimacy, I never thought I’d be thirty-one, brokenhearted, and
alone. At that point, I should’ve figured something out. According to my naïve
plan, two
-
and
-
half kids, a chocolate
Labrador retriever, and my devilishly handsome husband should have been playing
within the confines of my white picket-fenced yard, in front of my two-story
c
olonial. It never occurred
to me that finding someone special wasn’t an entitlement.

In my teenage years, growing up in Sin
C
ity meant the buxom blonde was the poster
child for quintessential beauty. Consequently, I was the literal black sheep.
Leveling off just below my shoulder blades, my onyx hair used to make me feel
out of place and freakish, but it got me noticed nonetheless. Getting attention
from boys wasn’t a work of labor. Many times, I considered cutting it and
bleaching it to a
more subtle
mousy
-
brown to fit in, but
conformity never was my strong suit. Sure
,
some guys preferred the sweet cheerleader
type, but most craved the exotic
goth
that oozed from my red bones. It was the implied danger and mystery that
appealed to most guys, along with the curvaceous shape and full lips that I owe
to my mother. Between luring looks and the challenge to deflower me, I was the
chance for a boy to get what all the others wanted.

Being chased was one thing, but chasing gave me a rush. I never shied
away from asking guys to school dances or asking them for their phone numbers.
As I’d come within inches of their ears, suggestively leaning in to let my warm
breath seep in and travel south to get their full attention, I’d sashay away to
allow them to scramble after me, begging for more. That’s all that boys were
for
me, fun and games
.