Lost and Found (3 page)

I stood in front of the bathroom mirror with a box of Clairol. In LA I went to a salon every few weeks to get my white stripe dyed the same color as the rest of my hair, effectively camouflaging it, but I’d let it go since things had melted with Cliff, and it was back with a vengeance, just like the rest of my life. I’d taken to not even looking in the mirror, maneuvering around it in every bathroom by averting my eyes. I’d grown accustomed to avoiding my face the same way I’d started to like soft foods when I had braces. I ate meals of applesauce and porridge so often I eventually craved them. When the braces came off, it was a shock to chew gum. Gum was simply a freedom I hadn’t known.

It had been years since I’d really examined my face, and seeing
myself was much worse than a gum-less life. I opened the box of dye just as my phone rang. I picked it up from the side of the sink. “Hi Mom.”

“When are you going to let me see your new apar
tment?” she said.

“Not today. I’m busy.”

“Doing?”

“Dying my hair, actually.
You’d be pleased.” My mom made a tsking sound and then said, “Good. People don’t treat those with disabilities the same, you know. I’m glad you’re doing that for yourself.”

“It’s not a disability. It’s just some white hair and some patc
hes.”

“Well, you know I love you no matter how you look,” she said with the cluck of her tongue.

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, remembering the time in high school after Dad died when my mom had looked into cemetery plots. She had bought three. One for dad, one for her, one for me. “Because you’re probably not getting married,” she’d explained. “And it’s cheaper to just do it now.”

“I have an idea,” Mom said. “I’ll come over and dye your hair for you. I do a better job an
yway.”

“Right,” I said, eyeing the box like a new enemy. A rebellious streak bubbled in me and I said, “Act
ually, Mom, I think I’m going to leave it white.”

“But what will people think?” she said.

“Their thoughts, Mom, just like they always do.” I tossed the box in the trash, even though I wanted to fish it right back out after I got off the phone with my mom. Not dying my hair might make me miserable to look in the mirror, but at least it would make my mom miserable, too.

***

I sat across from Ursula and Emily with a plate of mushroom pizza at The Cannery. “I am
so
sorry,” Ursula said. “I forgot you used to work here in high school.”

“It’s not a problem.” I picked a mushroom off the slice and popped it in my mouth. “I think the flashbacks of oven burns are gone. It took me two years before I could eat pizza, but I’m fine now. It’s not like you made
me go back to the high school.” I shuddered and Ursula nodded somberly. “Yeah, that place is a black hole of souls. I get a chill whenever I drive by it.”

“Plus, I’m a carb-
atarian. I can live off of anything starchy,” I said as I dipped a crust into ranch dressing.

“I wish I could,” Ursula said. “I blow up like a ba
lloon when I eat like that.”

I surveyed her tiny waist, her thin legs protruding out of her red pencil skirt, and then glanced up at her angular cheekbones and jutting colla
rbone. “Sure,” I said.

“Right?”
Emily said, waving her fork manically. “She’s practically invisible and she’s always on a diet!”

“That’s not true. I used to be big. You guys know that.”

Ursula did not used to be big. She used to be a curvaceous size twelve in college, when she went from a starving emo teen to one who realized her financial aid paid for unlimited trips to the cereal bar for Froot Loops. She was happy and beautiful until she decided the reason she couldn’t get a date was because of her weight. Pretty soon she’d lost twenty pounds, three dress sizes, and thousands upon thousands of personality points. She constantly talked about what foods she couldn’t eat, which foods were unhealthy, and the glycemic index of everything, including, once, an observation that paper was carb-heavy. That was right before I’d left Prairie Glen, and I was still adjusting to Ursula’s thinness. She’d gotten even thinner, and now she looked like a half-deflated balloon.

“I thought you wanted me to bring in cookies to work,” I said.

“I do! Yum!” she said with fake enthusiasm.

“How’s Sam?” I asked Emily, eager to steer the co
nversation away from diets.

“Sam is the same as he always is. You know that,” Emily said.

I sighed. “He is so amazing. How did you find the perfect man so easily? Who stays with her high school sweetheart?”

“Me, when it’s Sam,” she said.

“Mmm, Sam,” Ursula said, and Emily murmured her assent, her lids half-closed as she bit her lip.

“Miss him?” I said. She shook her head and said, “Uh, it’s just been a while.”

“I understand,” I said.

“He’s always saying just the right, enlightened things, too,” Ursula said. “The last time I saw him he told me that he appreciates how I approach life so honestly. I’d never thought of myself like that.”

“Where is he, anyway? I hardly ever see him,” I said.

“Traveling.
He’s always traveling for work,” Emily said.

“Well, he’s a travel writer,” I said.

“Yeah,” Emily said glumly.

“Does it get lonely?” Ursula asked.

“Yes,” she said, picking at her pizza. “And this is making me sad. Let’s talk about something else. I want to know about Jackass.”

“Blah.
No,” I said.

“I miss my boyfriend and I want a good story.” She clapped her palm on the table. “Please?”

“Okay,” I said.

“So, talk. Did you run into Jackass again today?” Em
ily asked.

“I still prefer Douche Nozzle, sexist or not,” Ursula said.

“Jackass,” Emily insisted.

“You know what?” Ursula said.

“What?” Emily and I both asked her in unison.

“My cousin lives in that building. That’s how I found out about the apartment. I should talk to him about teaching this guy some manners.
Or kicking him in the ass.”

“I don’t need your cousin to do any ass-kicking,” I said, and Emily said, “Because I’m going to do it for her.”

“No. I can handle bad manners and a man not being attracted to me,” I said, trying to sound strong, even though just thinking about his insults made anxiety flutter through the empty spaces of my chest. “It sounds kind of perfect, actually. That way I won’t make bad decisions concerning which men make good friends.”

“You don’t make bad decisions concerning men,” Emily said. Then she hedged. “Well….”

“
Cliff
?” Ursula’s eyes widened. “How could you consider
Cliff
not
a bad decision? He was…he was…”

“A terrible boyfriend,” Emily finished.
“But maybe a mistake to learn from?”

“Yeah, exactly.
He was a great friend, but not much more. He’s
still
a great friend, but it taught me that I am not designed to be paired with another human being,” I said. “So it wasn’t a bad decision. It was a learning experience.”

“You made the decision to cut off all men because of Cliff?” Emily leaned in my face, her wine sloshing in her glass. “No, Laney. NO. You’re great. Don’t sequester
yourself because you don’t want to be hurt again. Learn from the experience, like you said, and try again.”

“It was five years of experience,” I said. “And there’s nothing criminal about not wanting to be hurt.”

“You’re just hiding,” Emily said. “You’re afraid of rejection, just like with that Special Collections job.”

“There’s nothing wrong with hiding,” I said, touching my for
ehead.

“Yeah,” Emily said, eyeing my hair and my patch. “It’s working really well for you. Speaking of, how’s your mom?”

“That was low,” Ursula said to Emily, and I nodded.

“It’s my right to be a spinster if I want to be a spinster, and to e
njoy that the hot guy across the hall is a jackass,” I said, still hurt.

“Wait!” Ursula
said, her hands in the air. “You never told me Douche Nozzle was
hot.
I mean Jackass. Whatever his name is. Now I really need to go to your place.”

“Oh yeah.
He’s got this dark hair and this sharp, angled jaw. And these searing blue eyes.”

“Oh?” Ursula said, her eyes widening. Emily said, “And his body is shaped like a V. Seriously. I do not
get
how some men do that. He’s like a funnel. You’ve got to see him, Urs.”

Ursula twisted a napkin in her hands and looked around the room, her eyes not landing on anything, roa
ming. “Laney, what’s this guy’s name?”

“Oliver.”

She groaned and put her face in her hands. It sounded like she said, “Blarfle.”

“What?” I said.

Her head came up and she repeated miserably, “Oliver is my cousin.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Well, your cousin is hot,
Urs,” Emily said.

“Wait, I thought you thought he was a jackass,” I said.

“I did. He’s still hot,” Emily said.

“I should talk to him about being nicer to you,” Ursula said. “I can come over today.”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Tonight I have to ask him about property damage.”

Later that evening, I was balancing a warm cherry pie on my palm and knocking on his door with my free hand, plastering a smile to my face before he opened the door.

But he didn’t open the door. A miniscule brunette in a Metallica concert t-shirt and nothing else yawned and then looked up at me. “Yeah?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, this is for Oliver.” I handed her the pie, which she took, staring down at it like she didn’t u
nderstand the meaning of dessert. Taking in her spindly legs poking out from under the shirt, she probably didn’t. “And, I mean, you too. I’m just trying to be neighborly, you know.” I widened my fake smile.

The brunette cocked her head. “Where are you from?”

“Across the hall, but before that, around LA.”

“Ah.”

“So, anyway, I’m Delaney, and I live across the hall, and your boyfriend? Or husband? Or…” I trailed off, hoping she would help me out, but she simply stared at me blankly. “Um, there’s a bike repair I need to talk to Oliver about.”

“Oliver’s fixing your bike?” she said, narrowing her eyes at me.

“I hope he’s fixing my bike,” I said, and when she looked wary, I added, “Platonically. Anyway, would you let him know?”

She nodded, and as I turned to leave, Oliver appeared behind the brunette, shirtless, wet, with a to
wel wrapped low on his waist. My eyes dipped to the towel, near the indentations on his hips, and then quickly traveled back up. I tried very, very hard to not register his abs, or his pecs, or his smiling face.
Why were the jerks always so attractive?
I thought as I clenched my legs together at the sight of him.

“Delaney.” He sounded chipper for once, probably because of the tiny brunette and what she’d been doing b
efore the Metallica t-shirt was on.

My cheeks heated as I looked at his abs again. There had to be more than six there. Did he buy them in bulk at Costco? They went on forever. I said, “Nothing. Sorry to bother you,” and made for my door, stepping backwards.

He quirked an eyebrow at me and said, “But you knocked.”

“Right.”
I pointed to the brunette holding the pie and then looked down. “Um, when you, um, get a chance, I was wondering, about my bike? The light and the tire were broken? From the phone?”

I turned and scurried toward my door, more than flu
stered, and said, “Anyway, nice to meet you!” I waved without looking and ducked into my apartment, and then leaned against the closed door in relief.

But a few minutes later there was a knock, and I had to pick my boneless pile of goo for a body up off the floor and open the door, knowing it was Oliver.

“Hi,” I said. I focused on his bare feet and the hem of the jeans he must have tugged on. A quick glance confirmed that he was, in fact, still shirtless. I kept my head down.

“Delaney. I can’t accept your pie.” He held out the pie plate to me.

“Sure you can. I made two. I have one just for me.”

“Delaney, I’m not a very nice person, and bri
bing me with baked goods is not actually going to make me any nicer,” he said.

“Okay. But maybe your girlfriend wants some?” I pushed the pie back toward him.

When he didn’t answer, I looked up to see him with a furrowed brow. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“Wife?”