Read Online Table for Two by Marla Miniano - Free Book Online Page B

don’t look back. Minutes later, I get up, too.
    If someone—a childhood
friend, a college classmate—sees me now, coming out of this café with one
hand in my pocket searching for my keys and the other shading my eyes against
the harsh midday sun, he’d say he knew me, but maybe he wouldn’t quite remember
how. He’d notice my hair is shorter, darker, and decide it suits me better.
He’d see that I am dressed differently too, and it is a good different. I am
not laughing, but he’d be able to tell that the way I smile has also changed.
He wouldn’t be sure that I am perfectly happy—maybe I am, or maybe I’m
not, or maybe I’m not yet—but he would say, with utter certainty, that I
look like I am headed somewhere I am meant to be, towards somebody I am meant
to be with. Behind me, the open door slowly swings shut, and stays closed until
someone else comes along.

TABLE FOR TWO

1
     
     
     
    Tonight is going to
be a good night, or at least that’s what The Black Eyed Peas would like Mandy
to believe. She isn’t the slightest bit convinced, at least not while she’s
squished in the backseat of a black car between her cousin Gio and her friend
Penny. Gio is Penny’s ex-boyfriend, and their unspoken tension reaches over
Mandy and tries to grab at each other’s hair and clothes and throat. She wishes
she could tell Penny to pull up her tube dress a bit—her lacey red bra is
already peeking out, and her outfit has sped right past the boundary of sexy
and straight into Slut City. She wishes she could tell Gio to stop talking
about his new girlfriend Yas, who is, of course, gorgeous in a sophisticated,
wholesome way Penny will never be. She wishes, more than anything, that she
could go back in time and tell her college senior self that consoling a
heartbroken Penny (then her seatmate in Theology class) by setting her up on a
seemingly harmless date with Gio (who always made sure none of his strings were
attached, and therefore made the perfect rebound guy) was a very, very bad
idea. The driver cranks the stereo volume up, and Mandy wonders if this is his
subtle way of helping ease her burden.
    She is trying to remember why she
even thought any good would come out of this night when her best friend Diane,
completely plastered at nine-thirty PM , pipes up from the passenger seat,
“You guys, thank you sooo much for bringing me to dinner tonight! This is the
best birthday ever!”
    “You’re welcome,” Mandy says,
knowing this wasn’t anywhere close to being Diane’s best birthday ever—it
was the five glasses of red wine talking, the five glasses of red wine she
consumed with exactly three and a half pieces of ravioli in a span of two
hours. Still, Mandy decides to humor her. “Why is this the best birthday ever?”
    “Because!
You’re all here! And I love you guys! To bits!” Diane yells, all those
unnecessary exclamation points puncturing the air and temporarily replacing Gio
and Penny’s animosity with amusement. Mandy can feel the tension deflating, and
she wants Diane to keep filling the silence.
    “Maybe we should stop for coffee
first?” Mandy suggests. “And probably something to eat?”
    “But I’m not sleepy!” Diane slurs.
“Or hungry!”
    “Yeah, but
you’re like, really wasted,” Penny says.
    “I’m not drunk!” Diane protests,
whipping around to glare at Penny accusingly. “Tell her, Mandy! I’m not drunk!
I’m not!”
    “She’s not drunk,” Mandy tells
Penny, keeping a straight face. Gio snorts and presses his forehead to the
window, his shoulders shaking.
    “Why are you laughing, Gio?” Diane
asks. “Do you think I’m funny? Do you like funny girls? You know, I bet Penny
here is way funnier than Yas. You guys should get back together.”
    “Oh, shut up,” Penny says, but she
is smiling, almost pleasantly. She has been briefed about the situation:
Earlier that night, after four glasses of wine, Diane turned to Mandy and said,
“Hey, we should invite Penny to go