Gayle.”
“Hey, you got to be Oprah last week! It’s your turn to be Gayle to my Oprah.”
“You can call me whatever you like as long as they get Beyoncé to play me when they make a movie of your life.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of Kathy Griffin.”
Margo slanted her an evil look, her embrace tightening into a choke hold. “Do it and I’ll drop-kick your lily-white ass to the moon.”
“You’re right, God love your little heart. On second thought, maybe RuPaul will be available.” Shrugging off her friend’s arm, Abby ducked through the locker room door just in time to avoid the deadly snap of Margo’s gym towel.
Her eyes glued to the Direct Message column on her Tweet-deck, Abby took another nervous sip from the glass of chardonnay perched on the desk next to her MacBook. Given how rapidly it was disappearing, she should have kept the bottle within reach instead of tucking it back in the fridge.
She’d never felt quite so ridiculous. Not even when wearing a bunny costume and reading badly rhymed poetry to a squirming herd of preschoolers.
There was no reason for the frantic fluttering of the butterflies in her stomach. It wasn’t as if she was waiting for a knock on the door or even for the phone to ring. Yet she felt every bit as edgy as she had when waiting for Brad Wooten to pick her up for the junior prom. He had arrived right on time, posed for a few obligatory Polaroids, whisked her off to the prom in his Eddie Bauer Limited Edition Ford Explorer, then dumped her during the second verse of Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” after his pep squad ex-girlfriend whispered in his ear that she wanted him back.
The two of them had celebrated their reunion by slipping away for a quickie in the backseat of that same Ford Explorer while Abby found a pay phone and called her dad to come and get her. She’d managed to gulp back her tears until her father had pulled his battered Toyota into the back of the high school parking lot where they had agreed to meet, pushed open the car door from inside, and said, “Come on, baby. Let’s go home.”
She glanced at the digital clock in the corner of her computer screen. 6:56 p.m. A mere three seconds had ticked away since she’d last checked it. Considering how close she’d come to chickening out of their “date,” it would be ironic if Mark was the one to stand her up. He’d probably found some voluptuous dark-eyed Italian beauty straight out of a Fellini film to help him crush some grapes between his toes and forgot all about her.
Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the screen only made Abby feel sillier. She’d actually traded her coffee-stained sweats for a black silk blouse and a pair of neatly creased linen slacks. She’d loosed her wavy mass of curls from their obligatory scrunchie, applied a touch of peach gloss to her lips, and dabbed a little Obsession behind each ear.
A fitting choice, considering she’d also shaved her legs and traded her comfy granny panties for a wisp of black lace a mere fraction of an inch away from being a thong.
Groaning, she dropped her head down on the keyboard. If there was any hope of holding on to even a shred of her dwindling self-respect, she should do exactly what she knew Margo would do—close the laptop, take her de-scrunchied, perfumed, and nearly thonged self down to the nearest club, pick up the first passably good-looking stranger who asked her to dance, and bring him back to the apartment for some safe but anonymous sex.
Or close the laptop, walk to the freezer, dig out her emergency pint of Chunky Monkey, and wolf it down in one sitting while wistfully watching Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy emerge from the pond at Pemberley for the four-hundred-and-fifty-first time in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice .
Either alternative beat sitting in front of the computer waiting to be picked up for a cyberdate by a man she knew so little about he was beginning to make the
“Hey, you got to be Oprah last week! It’s your turn to be Gayle to my Oprah.”
“You can call me whatever you like as long as they get Beyoncé to play me when they make a movie of your life.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of Kathy Griffin.”
Margo slanted her an evil look, her embrace tightening into a choke hold. “Do it and I’ll drop-kick your lily-white ass to the moon.”
“You’re right, God love your little heart. On second thought, maybe RuPaul will be available.” Shrugging off her friend’s arm, Abby ducked through the locker room door just in time to avoid the deadly snap of Margo’s gym towel.
Her eyes glued to the Direct Message column on her Tweet-deck, Abby took another nervous sip from the glass of chardonnay perched on the desk next to her MacBook. Given how rapidly it was disappearing, she should have kept the bottle within reach instead of tucking it back in the fridge.
She’d never felt quite so ridiculous. Not even when wearing a bunny costume and reading badly rhymed poetry to a squirming herd of preschoolers.
There was no reason for the frantic fluttering of the butterflies in her stomach. It wasn’t as if she was waiting for a knock on the door or even for the phone to ring. Yet she felt every bit as edgy as she had when waiting for Brad Wooten to pick her up for the junior prom. He had arrived right on time, posed for a few obligatory Polaroids, whisked her off to the prom in his Eddie Bauer Limited Edition Ford Explorer, then dumped her during the second verse of Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” after his pep squad ex-girlfriend whispered in his ear that she wanted him back.
The two of them had celebrated their reunion by slipping away for a quickie in the backseat of that same Ford Explorer while Abby found a pay phone and called her dad to come and get her. She’d managed to gulp back her tears until her father had pulled his battered Toyota into the back of the high school parking lot where they had agreed to meet, pushed open the car door from inside, and said, “Come on, baby. Let’s go home.”
She glanced at the digital clock in the corner of her computer screen. 6:56 p.m. A mere three seconds had ticked away since she’d last checked it. Considering how close she’d come to chickening out of their “date,” it would be ironic if Mark was the one to stand her up. He’d probably found some voluptuous dark-eyed Italian beauty straight out of a Fellini film to help him crush some grapes between his toes and forgot all about her.
Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the screen only made Abby feel sillier. She’d actually traded her coffee-stained sweats for a black silk blouse and a pair of neatly creased linen slacks. She’d loosed her wavy mass of curls from their obligatory scrunchie, applied a touch of peach gloss to her lips, and dabbed a little Obsession behind each ear.
A fitting choice, considering she’d also shaved her legs and traded her comfy granny panties for a wisp of black lace a mere fraction of an inch away from being a thong.
Groaning, she dropped her head down on the keyboard. If there was any hope of holding on to even a shred of her dwindling self-respect, she should do exactly what she knew Margo would do—close the laptop, take her de-scrunchied, perfumed, and nearly thonged self down to the nearest club, pick up the first passably good-looking stranger who asked her to dance, and bring him back to the apartment for some safe but anonymous sex.
Or close the laptop, walk to the freezer, dig out her emergency pint of Chunky Monkey, and wolf it down in one sitting while wistfully watching Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy emerge from the pond at Pemberley for the four-hundred-and-fifty-first time in the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice .
Either alternative beat sitting in front of the computer waiting to be picked up for a cyberdate by a man she knew so little about he was beginning to make the
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