Perfect Match (3 page)

He was curled up in my arms, making his contented half-snore, half-purr sound (anyone who's met Noodles can attest to the fact that he must have been a cat in a former life). But when I showed him the mocket, his head perked up and he sniffed it suspiciously.

“It's all wrong, isn't it?” I asked, nuzzling his face.

Noodles barked twice in the affirmative. I lay back on my bed and sighed. It was a week and a half until Valentine's Day and after many hours of shopping for Alex I was back at square one. What's more, I was feeling incapable of taking my own advice to Camille. I felt like so much was riding on this gift. Since our
relationship was pretty new and I was still trying to feel things out, I just wanted to make sure to do everything right. The pressure was really starting to get to me.

A knock at my door interrupted my thoughts. “Flan?” My father stuck his head in. “We're ordering from Chin-Chin,” he said. “You want the usual?”

Before he'd even finished his question, I had leapt from my bed to fling my arms around him. “Dad! When did you get back in town?”

More often than not, the rest of my family's professional globe-trotting duties left me sole proprietor of our way-too-big-for-one-girl town house in the West Village.

My dad shrugged. “Bolivia was way too hot for your mother. We flew back this afternoon.”

It only took one look at my father to know that he spent very little time in the city during the winter. His neatly trimmed blond hair framed a face too tan for February in New York. His most recent hobby was buying mansions in foreign countries, declaring them fixer-uppers, and spending all his time renovating them. So whenever my parents made an appearance at our house, it was always cause for celebration.

“That beats the leftover pizza feast I had planned,” I said, breathing in the familiar piney smell of my dad's aftershave. “I thought I was home alone.”

“Far from it.” My dad smiled, ruffling my hair. “We've got a full house, kiddo. Patch got in this afternoon from L.A. and he's meeting Feb at the airport as we speak. I think they're each bringing a
friend
home for dinner.”

“They're not calling them
friends
anymore, Richard.” I heard my mother's voice coming up the stairs. “You're so old-fashioned.” She cupped my face in her cool, manicured hands and kissed both my cheeks. “Hello, darling,” she said. “Isn't the new PC word for one's significant other
partner
? That's what Whoopi calls her boyfriend on
The View
.”

“Wait,” I said, trying to catch up to my in-on-all-the-family-gossip parents. “Patch and Feb suddenly have partners? And they're bringing them to dinner? Why didn't anyone tell me?”

My mother clucked her tongue. “Have you lost your flair for the impromptu dinner party? Didn't your father and I teach you anything? Have we been away too long?”

“No, yes, and yes,” I said. “I'm so glad you guys are back, even if it's only for—”

My dad looked at his watch. “Fourteen hours. Why don't you give Alex a call? See if he wants in on this partners evening?”

When my parents went downstairs to get ready for
dinner, I slid the mocket into my underwear drawer and picked up my phone to text Alex.

DINNER PLANS? CAN I TEMPT YOU WITH GREASY CHINESE FOOD AND MY FAMILY?

I was trying to sound casual, since I knew it was a really last-minute invitation, but when Alex replied: WISH I COULD! COMMITTED TO GRANDMA'S TASTELESS CHICKEN TONIGHT, I couldn't help feeling a little bit bummed. My family was together so rarely that I hated missing the opportunity to have Alex at my side. Especially if Patch and Feb were both bringing home their, uh,
partners
.

Oh well—dinner with the fam, even as the seventh wheel, still beat microwaved pizza.

Soon a mess of voices filtered up from the first floor and I rushed down to meet my siblings, whom I hadn't seen in over a month. When I saw my older sister tripping over her suitcases in the foyer, a big smile spread across my face—then quickly turned into a laugh.

Feb was decked out in head-to-toe safari gear. A tall, blond guy standing with his arm around her sported a coordinating ensemble.

“So that's what you've been doing all month—hunting for ivory?” I joked, giving Feb a kiss.

“Not exactly,” she said, shoving one of three massive
trunks against the wall. “Kelly and I just started a line of activewear with Karl Lagerfeld. It's inspired by the haute Australian bush hunter. You like?” Feb spun around to model, then put her hand on Kelly's chest. “Sweetie, meet my little sister-slash-protégé, Flan.”

“Nice to meet you, Flan,” the haute bush hunter boyfriend said. “And yes, before you ask, it's supposed to be ironic.”

I smiled at Feb. “I like him already. Where's Patch? I thought I just heard his voice.”

Feb rolled her eyes and flung open the door to the coat closet under the stairs. A huddle of bodies, one of which I recognized as that of my older brother, Patch, tumbled out in a lump.

“Remember when we used to wrap fruit roll-ups around our fingers and lick them off?” Feb muttered to me under her breath. I nodded, not sure where she was going with the question. “I think Patch's new girlfriend has him confused with a fruit roll-up.”

I looked at Patch, who was bright red at having been busted making out in the coatroom. He did have a strange girl attached to his neck, but something else was different about him too. He was wearing a fitted yellow button-down and gray pin-striped slacks. I almost didn't recognize my vintage-T-shirt-only-wearing brother underneath the fancy clothes. Only a
girl he really liked could get Patch to dress up for family dinner. At least his hair was still sticking out in all directions—that part I recognized.

Patch pulled away from the girl and gave me a friendly nod. “Hey sis. How ya been? This is Agnes.” He sounded out of breath.

Agnes smiled at me warmly and said hi, but quickly turned her attention back to Patch. She focused on smoothing his hair out and giggling in his ear.

Feb made a gagging motion as my dad's voice called out from the kitchen.

“Mom's threatening to eat all the spring rolls if you kids don't get in here.”

As the five of us headed into the dining room for dinner, Feb took me by the arm and pulled me back. She gestured at Patch and Agnes. “Never, I repeat
never
rent a houseboat off Capri for a week with those two.”

“Why?” I said, wishing I wasn't always in school to miss the fun sibling bonding trips that Patch and Feb took every month. “That sounds so fun.”

“Fun would require your brother to keep his hands off Hag-nes for more than three minutes at a time,” Feb corrected.

“Ah, I can see that,” I admitted, “but double-dating must be fun. Do you go on double dates with your other friends? Have they all met Kelly?”

Feb looked thoughtful for a minute. “To tell you the truth, Flan, since I started dating Kelly, I haven't really seen much of my friends.”

Huh?
But Feb had always been my friendship role model. She was legendary for her elaborate social circles. She had more friends on Facebook than anyone I knew!

“But what about Jade Moodswing?” I asked, remembering how tight they'd been at the French designer's fashion show just last month. “Or Opal Jagger?”

“I dunno.” She shrugged. “We've sort of just … drifted apart. Nothing dramatic. You'll see when you get serious with someone. It's just one of those things.”

I looked at my sister, who was back to giggling with Kelly. I had always looked up to her, but at that moment I found myself hoping I
didn't
end up like her. No matter how great things were with Alex, I never wanted to drift apart from my friends. It just felt so sad. There must be a way to strike a balance, right?

Trying to put her words out of my mind, I headed for my usual seat next to Patch. But Agnes—not surprisingly—had slid in before me.

“Hey Flan,” Kelly said, pointing to a seat between himself and Feb. “Sit here.”

“Everyone settled?” my dad asked. “Let's grub.”

While he distributed chopsticks, the rest of us got to work opening up the stacks of steaming white boxes of food.

“No Alex tonight, Flan?” my mother asked. She'd changed into a black and white silk kimono and laced her chopsticks through her hair. “He's such a hunk, isn't he?”

“He's having dinner with his grandmother,” I said, slurping a bowl of egg drop wonton soup.

“Awwww,” everyone at the table seemed to say at once.

I looked up at them. “What?”

“That's too bad,” my father said.

“Really sucks,” Patch agreed.

“Would have loved to meet him,” Kelly said.

“I'm sorry, Flan,” my mother said, sounding like she'd taken empathy lessons from SBB.

“It's no big deal.” I shrugged. “I saw him yesterday.” I mean, it would have been great to have Alex there, but it wasn't like I couldn't function without him. Right?

“I'm just glad to be with you guys,” I said, convincing myself.

“That's nice,” my mother said. “Isn't that nice, dear?” she asked my father. When he smiled at her across the table, it was hard not to notice the silent closeness between them—between all the couples.

But then, midbite of her scallion pancake, my mother hopped up from the table. “I completely forgot to call Gloria about our donation to the Guggenheim's restructuring. BRB!”

As my siblings and I groaned at Mom's perpetual overuse of out-of-date slang, my dad sighed and picked up his BlackBerry. “Well, if your mother has permission to do business at the dinner table, I'm just going to send one quick e-mail.”

I looked to Patch, who usually harassed my parents when they got bogged down by work during family time, but he was consumed—literally—by Agnes, who still seemed to have her lips attached to his neck.

Geez, if I was looking to my family for examples on how to be in a relationship, this dinner party was leaving me a little uninspired. I turned to Feb and Kelly, the last couple standing.

“So,” I asked, trying to make normal conversation. “You guys have been traveling in the bush? Is it hot there or what?”

“Not really. It cools down at night,” Kelly said.

“Are you kidding? It's been like living in a sauna,” Feb said, oddly riled up. “And you never let us use the air conditioner! You wonder why I always have to wear my hair up!”

“We've been over this,” Kelly said, shaking his head. “I think you know the carbon footprint of the average air-conditioning-using American.”

Whoa, who knew I could hit such a sore spot by asking the most boring question in the world? If Kelly and Feb were fighting over the weather, how did they handle the hard stuff?

To diffuse the tension, I picked up the first tub of food in front of me. “More beef and broccoli, anyone?”

Feb looked at the food and then at Kelly with narrow eyes. “No thanks, Flan,” she hissed. “We're
vegan
now.”

“Oh, just lay on the guilt,” Kelly moaned. “Everything is all my fault!”

A squeaky smooching sound—the parting of lips across the table—put a pause in their argument. Agnes was taking a breather from Patch and had turned to face us. “Could you guys keep it down over there?”

“Yeah,” Patch agreed. “You're sort of harshing our mellow.”

“That's it,” my mother reappeared from the kitchen. “None of the brainiacs in the art world know how to read a simple e-mail. I have to dash uptown to straighten out this mess.” She paused and
looked around the table. “I'm so sorry to have ruined this lovely dinner. We'll reschedule, okay? And next time, Flan, you must make sure your partner can join us! You know what they say—nothing makes a mother hen happier than seeing all her chicks settled down. …”

Everyone around me seemed to take a cue from my mom and started stacking up the plates. Before I knew it, I was alone in the dining room. So much for a fun family dinner.

I was used to being alone at the dinner table, but I wasn't used to being alone when the rest of my family was
home
. I couldn't remember the last time I'd actually ended a family dinner feeling worse than before it. Was it because everyone was partnered off tonight except me? Or was it just because I hadn't had my fortune cookie?

Making jokes out of the cheesy Chin-Chin fortunes was usually our favorite part of the meal. I reached for the bag and pulled out one of the cookies.

I popped open the wrapping and performed my superstitious ritual of eating the whole cookie with my eyes closed before I unfolded the fortune. In a weird way, it felt like a lot was riding on this moment. Maybe if my family couldn't offer me relationship
guidance, a generic platitude would do the trick. Slowly, I looked down at the slip of paper.

Have a wonderful night!

Lame! So much for guidance. I guessed that when it came to navigating relationships, I was on my own.

An hour later, there was a knock on my door. Wondering if it would be the four-eyed, kissing Pagnes monster, or maybe Feb in tears after a blowout with Kelly, or possibly one of my parents checking in on my lonely evening, I opened up the door.

“Guess who?” Alex was standing in the hall outside my bedroom wearing his Hermès navy peacoat and a big grin.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Kidnapping you,” he said. “Come on.”

I glanced back at the chemistry notebook on my bed, and took it as a sign that Noodles had crawled on top of it and fallen asleep. “I'll grab my coat,” I said.

Outside my brownstone, Alex's driver was waiting in a town car. He opened the door for me and I slid in.