Five
SORA
Going solo isn’t just about saying no to dates. It’s really all about saying yes to yourself.
—SOLO FEBRUARY CHALLENGE
My chance meeting with Jack reminds me why I should be glad I’ve pledged to go solo for the month. Sure, meeting Jack felt almost like fate, somehow. But then Mal showed up. Leggy, blond, and gorgeous. They probably have piles of inside jokes, and spend all their time snort-laughing over takeout and wine, while clad in matching couples’ pajama onesies. Either way, one day they’ll have beautiful babies who will star in diaper commercials.
I mean, it all tracks. And now I know that Jack is into tall Scandinavian models, ergo the opposite of me. Not that—let’s be honest—Jack’s even remotely in my league anyway. I still can’t get over Jack’s transformation. I mean, wow. Like, really … wow. So many muscles. That chiseled chin. Those broad, beefy shoulders. And he bakes! I pop another one of the man’s amazing tortes in my mouth and sigh. Does Mal even appreciate what she has? These are delicious.
Feeling nostalgic, I head to the study in my condo and dig through the piles of boxes. I find one in the corner marked “School Stuff.” This is it. I tug off the lid and find my old cap from college, my diploma in a cardboard sleeve, and beneath that, a stack of old yearbooks. I grab the one marked “fifth grade” and open it up. I find Jack’s picture first.
Aw, what a cute kid. Big brown eyes. Chubby cheeks. He was sweet, I remember. He would always let me borrow his pencil when mine broke. And he was sometimes hilarious. Like the time he did the actual worm on the playground on a dare. And, yeah, he was a little overweight, maybe. His eyes are the same, and his nose. Not to mention his bright smile. I feel bad for believing that he stole my candy, when probably that bully Boyan Debnar did.
I check out my picture and cringe. Why am I wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt on picture day with a My Little Pony choker necklace? Why am I smiling so hard it hurts? I’m hopeless.
I flip to the back of my yearbook where there are tons of squiggly signatures. Jack signed it. He wrote, “Have a fun summer. BEE cool.” And he drew an actual bumblebee wearing sunglasses, except the drawing is kind of skewed and hilarious. The bee looks half smashed, and one of the sunglass lenses is way bigger than the other. I take a picture of this with the intent of somehow sending it to Jack just to relentlessly tease him about it, except that I can’t. Because he has a girlfriend.
And I pledged to give up flirting for February.
Larry pads into the study, curious about what I’m doing in the Room That Shall Be Ignored, and sniffs at a dusty box. Then he promptly sneezes.
“You’re right. I shouldn’t be in here,” I tell Larry, and give him a pat. “We can’t live in the past.”
I stand, put the yearbook back in the box, and return to my open laptop on the kitchen table.
I know some of you will think this Go Solo challenge is just nonsense. That the phrase “It’s about time I date me!” sounds trite and ridiculous and would be accompanied by a dozen gross selfies of me grabbing fro-yo, or riding a tandem bike alone, or toasting myself with a flute of pink champagne. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
We’re all so focused on becoming one half of a pair, of making ourselves fit another person, that we don’t spend nearly enough time figuring out who we are, what we want, or what we even like before we jump headfirst into a relationship. I’ll be honest, I spend so much time feeling desperate just to BE with someone that I’m willing to overlook anything that seems bad. I’m even willing to convince myself that something I didn’t want is what I wanted all along. (A man who never lets me see him on the weekend? That’s totally fine, Dan. I’ll adjust. Really. It’s what I want, too!)
Or I’ll even be okay with being with someone who doesn’t even really want to be with me. (Hey, Marley, I know you only married me for a pregnancy scare, and are staying with me for convenience and because I paid all the grocery and utility bills, and that’s completely fine. Because we had a real, practical marriage and that’s totally better than one that’s about head-over-heels love, because who wants a soul mate when you can have the practical choice?)
Solo February is really about giving us the time and space to really think about who we are all on our own. How do I even know who I should be with, if I don’t even know who I am by myself? And, really, aren’t I better off alone than settling for something I don’t want? Rather than settling for men who don’t deserve me, I really ought to wait for the man who does.
I stop typing long enough to think about Jack. Those eyes. Those shoulders. Those baker’s hands. The easy flow of conversation. The way he makes me laugh. His ridiculous and hilarious bee drawing in my yearbook. No. Stop thinking about Jack. He’s just another escape hatch, another (incredibly handsome) distraction. And he has a girlfriend. A capital “G,” Louis Vuitton–toting girlfriend.
Larry whines then, walking over to what he thinks is the front door, but is actually the entryway table leg. He’s about six inches off. Poor guy. He needs to go out. I fetch his leash. The front door sticks a little, and I tell myself I should have someone in to fix that. And to fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom. And the uneven floorboards in the corner of my bedroom. Then I have a flashback to when Marley lived here. He would’ve taken care of those things. Marley didn’t pay his share of condo expenses, but he did putz around and fix things. Not always perfectly (he once accidently superglued the light fixture to the “on” position when he was trying to fix a broken light plate), but still.
Marley and I bought this condo the second year we were married, sometime after the pregnancy scare, but before the sexting scandal. The condo was just a flimsy excuse to stay together. If we weren’t going to be parents, then we could at least be property owners, because we could qualify for a mortgage together that we never could have qualified for alone. I’ve never really loved the condo. It’s a seven-hundred-square-foot, two-bedroom walk-up, with no central AC, no bathtub (sad because I so, so miss bubble baths), no washer/dryer, and no parking, but it had “a cool vintage vibe” and exposed brick, which Marley was all about. In the fury of the divorce, keeping the condo just somehow felt like winning, even though I’m pretty sure Marley didn’t even want it in the end.
I’m on the first landing, when a door pops open and I see the orange face of Pam. She’s addicted to spray tan, which makes her look like a walking clementine. Marley sent her a lewd photo after a condo meeting where everyone had too much wine and not enough cheese. His excuse was that he actually meant to send it to someone else. Pam informed me of said picture, and I stupidly apologized, even though I had nothing at all to do with it. The Pam Incident set off a spiral of discoveries about just how Marley had been using his phone, including several active profiles I found on dating apps, which eventually led to our split. Pam and I should’ve bonded and been lifelong friends, except then I adopted Larry to fend off the loneliness draining my will to live, and Pam hated him on sight. It’s been war ever since.
“Oh. Pam.” I keep forgetting Pam works from home now. Has since the first shutdown during the pandemic. It’s the worst.
“I’m glad I ran into you,” she says. That’s a lie. “Did you leave the Green Gleam at my door?” Pam notices Larry for the first time and ducks behind her door a little, uneasy. I make sure I stand between Larry and Pam, a protective shield.
“Yes,” I say, thinking it was kind of a nice olive branch, me bringing it inside, instead of tossing it into the dumpster in the alley around back. “Just trying to be a good neighbor.” I say this brightly, without sarcasm, and I’m proud of myself for that.
“The produce almost spoiled,” she snaps. “You need to tell me it’s here, so I can put everything in the fridge.”
“Oh. Sorry?” I was just trying to be nice.
“I mean, this box is expensive.” She is actually, seriously, annoyed with me. I can tell, because her clementine face is turning a deeper shade of orange.
“I was just trying to help, making sure it wasn’t left outside.” I guess no good deed really goes unpunished.
“It would’ve been better outside.”
O-kay then.
“Also, while I have you, I wanted to talk to you about your dog.” She spits out the words as if they’re poison. She glares at Larry, who hides behind my legs. “He makes a lot of noise.”
“He barely barks.”
“When he walks in your condo.” Pam rolls her eyes. “I have a lot of meetings, and it’s unprofessional to hear him galloping all over the place like an elephant.”
Behind my knees, Larry whines, worried. I tighten my grip on his leash.
“He really doesn’t walk around that much,” I say, defensive. Larry sleeps twenty-three of twenty-four hours a day.
“I just need quiet during the workday. That’s all.” Pam narrows her eyes at me. I narrow mine at her.
“I’ll do what I can,” I say, and by that, I mean absolutely nothing.
“See that you do,” she adds, meaning that she doesn’t really even care if I keep Larry quiet, because she’d rather have something to lord over me, fuel for our feud.
We glare at each other for a beat. Then Pam slowly withdraws into her condo and shuts her door, without a goodbye. Because, I think, it’s her way of saying she’s keeping an eye on me. It’s never really goodbye with her.
Nice to see you, too, Pam.
Seeing Pam reminds me that I should sell my condo and move. I could roll the equity from this one into a new one. One with a bathtub. And no Pam. Yes, yes, I’ll get to it. I will. Some day. Just like looking for freelance jobs that are a bit more serious. With a bit more … integrity. I’ll do it. Just not right this second. Because like finding new writing gigs, selling my condo seems like … a giant ask. I’d have to spring-clean. I’d have to stage it (I doubt anyone would buy it with all my boxes in the study). I’d have to find a real estate agent, I’d have to find a new place. So many steps. And it’s easier … not to do all the steps. But I will. Someday.
Outside, Larry finds his tree, does his business, and I tie up the evidence in a plastic doggie bag, even though if I were a worse person (like the ones down the street), I would just kick some snow over it and call it a day. When the snow melts in the spring, sometimes it feels like a slow reveal of this mountain of literal shit around the base of every tree down the block. I buzz open the locked entry door of my apartment building and head up the stairs, Larry in tow.
I get inside and unbundle myself as Larry shakes off a bit of snow from his fur just as my phone rings. I see Mom’s picture pop up on the screen.
“Mom? Hey. What’s up?” I answer.
“Have you gone keto?” For a second, I have no idea what she’s talking about. Mom speaks quickly—as if worried she’ll get cut off mid-sentence. Mom, born in Hawaii to Japanese American parents, moved to the mainland for college in Iowa, where she met my Scottish American dad. In case you didn’t know, I’m literally a walking mini melting pot. Think of me as human fondue.
“Have I … gone what?”
“I’m keto, too! We can do it together!” I realize, belatedly, she means the carb-free diet. I sigh and roll my eyes. Mom never asks me to do anything for fun unless it’s dieting or exercise related. I’m a size fourteen. Mom is somewhere above an eighteen, though relentlessly yearns to be a size two, and talks about it endlessly. In all honesty, I’m fine with being a size fourteen. I’ve long since made peace with the fact that I’ll never be a two, but Mom somehow thinks we’re both on the same page. Yo-yo dieters forever. No matter how often I try to tell her to stop roping me into her fad diets, she does it anyway.
“Mom, I’m not on the keto diet.”
“But you are all about bacon. Instead of men?” Oh no. She’s been reading my articles.
“Yes. I’m giving up on men. I’m eating bacon. Donuts. Whatever I want. I am not dieting. That’s kind of the point.”
“No!” Mom gasps like I just confessed I’m a cannibal. “But your sister’s wedding is coming up? The pictures?”
“Yes, I know. I’ll just have to be a fat whale in them, Mom.”
Mom sucks in a breath on the other end of the phone and then barks a laugh. I can always make Mom laugh. It’s a superpower. “Sora!” She chuckles. “You know that’s not what I mean. You are not a fat whale.”
“More like a porky porpoise, then?”
“No, no, no.” She laughs some more and backtracks. “I need to lose weight.” Mom and I have always shared the exact same body type. So, when she tells me she needs to lose weight, she might as well be telling me the same thing. “I just thought it’d be something fun to do together. We big-boned girls have to stay together!”
I hate it when she tries to lump us together as two hopeless fatties. And here, I’ve already called myself a fat whale to distract and divert. But Mom won’t be waylaid. Years of resentment bubbles to the surface. I remember the Christmas that she got us both matching Fitbits, even though I didn’t ask for one. Then there was the time she signed us up for a joint gym membership for my birthday. When I was fourteen.
“How about we just go see a movie instead?”
Mom laughs as if I’m joking, but I’m not joking. “But the popcorn! So many calories.” She clicks her tongue in disapproval.
“Mom—” Here’s where I need to tell her that I’m done with her fad diets, that if she feels the need to do it, great, but—then I hear my dad’s voice in my head.
Sora! Be nice! This was Dad’s constant refrain. He usually yelled it, because he was the only man in a house full of women, and all he desperately wanted was peace and quiet and no drama. Which he never got. And this made him short-tempered, or maybe he was just short-tempered to begin with, or maybe it was his on-call, all-hours-of-the-day-or-night job running his small plumbing business that kept him perpetually grumpy. I don’t know, but from the time I was little all I remember was that he ended every argument, even if he never started them.
Dad died last year of a heart attack, but I still feel like he’s right here with me, ready to shut down any disagreement with a barked command. I learned early that dissent wasn’t worth enduring Dad’s stormy looks and gritted teeth. Don’t be the nail, indeed.
“You’ve got a responsibility, Sora. You’re the maid of honor.” She says it as if the title is actually an honor. “You can’t give up, sweetie. Your sister’s wedding is less than a month away.”
“I know, Mom.” I pace in the kitchen next to my open laptop. I accidentally hit the squeaky board. I know that will make Pam, below me, fume.
“Have you found a date yet?”
I sigh. “No, and I probably won’t, either.” Now I suddenly see the genius of Solo February. I kill two birds with one stone. Nami is getting married the first weekend in March. If I’ve sworn off men for work, then I don’t have to worry about scrounging up some awful date, either! Genius!
“Oh, don’t talk about yourself like that. Of course you will. Besides, there’s always one of the groomsmen. I think one or even two of them are single.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Mitch’s friends are…” I struggle to say something that’s not too critical but also honest. I don’t need to set Mom off. I try not to criticize Nami to Mom. Mom never tolerates me critiquing anything Nami does. But Mitch and his friends … ugh. I remember meeting a couple of them at one of Nami and Mitch’s Super Bowl parties last year. They talked entirely in memes. Mitch is definitely the only tolerable one in the bunch. And that’s only because he doesn’t talk much. I suspect his mind works in the same way as his friends’ in that he’s motivated solely by beer, ass, or football. Not necessarily in that order. Mitch just has the good sense to keep his mouth shut. In that way, he’s only slightly better than the rest of his friends.
“Mom, you don’t understand.” Time to play the trump card. “I’m not going to be looking for one. I’ve vowed to go solo for February. It’s my assignment. For work. That means no dates. No men. For February.”
Mom falls silent. All I hear are my own squeaky floorboards beneath my feet as I pace. Distantly, below me, I hear Pam retaliate by blaring her favorite Jock Jams Volume 4 mix. The warbled sounds of Chumbawamba drift up through my uninsulated floor. This makes me want to get Larry’s ball out and play fetch in the hallway, but I refrain.
“But you need a date for the wedding. And it’s technically the first weekend of March.”
“Yes, true. But I’d rather not try to scramble to find one in a week, and I’m not even looking for one in February. Besides, Mom, I’m tired of roller-coaster relationships.”
“You don’t need a relationship. You just need a date. Nami will want you to have one.”
“Nami won’t care!” At least, I hope she won’t.
“Why don’t you tell her yourself Saturday?”
Now I’m on high alert. “What’s Saturday?”
“FlyFit class, remember? Nami is coming.”
“Uh…” I don’t remember agreeing to any kind of fitness class, but that’s probably my fault for tuning out things I don’t want to hear.
“I’ll text you the address. See you at eleven!” she sings, and then hangs up before I can back out.