A Girl Like You by vinnie Kinsella (good books to read for 12 year olds .TXT) 📕

of a Lamborghini, making a toast with a glass of champagne.

Classy, I thought.

Plus, he replied within a few hours after my boring message: “Hey, I like your car…a bit nicer than my Honda SUV. What are you toasting?”

“Wrapped up a huge deal in Manhattan,” Metro, real name Richard, messaged back. He owned his realty company.

“That’s great. What property did you sell?”

“Uptown condo. Half a mil.”

Half a million? What was his commission? 15%? I had no idea.

We agreed to meet at Hamlet’s Study in Ashton, a new place known for trendy custom cocktails. I wore black dress pants, the wedge heels, and a red-and-black blouse with buttons down the back. Richard was already at the bar, wearing a navy pinstriped suit different from the one in his photos, and a thin paisley tie with a monogrammed clip.

“Hi, Richard.” I held out my hand. “I’m Jessica.”

He took my hand and held it up to his mouth, brushing it with a kiss.

“Well, OK there, thank you.” I slid into the silver filigree bar chair that couldn’t even be called a bar stool because it was so fancy.

“What would you like?” he asked.

There was a four-page menu just for cocktails. I scanned it quickly, looking for something that wouldn’t knock me off my feet after the first sip.

“Vesper Martini, please,” Richard told the bartender. “Grey Goose, hold the lemon twist.”

“A Tom Collins?” I said, defaulting to a drink whose name I could remember. “And no lemon, please.”

Actually I liked fruit in my drinks, but didn’t want to look childish. Maybe holding the lemon was trendy. Richard looked pointedly at my unpainted nails. His own were glossy and better manicured than mine had ever been in my entire life.

“Do you get down to the city often? Which clubs do you like?”

“My daughter and I have a tradition of going to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Show with the Rockettes,” I said. “We like Carnegie Deli; their Reubens are out of this world.”

“Ah,” Richard said.

We sipped our drinks in silence.

“You have really nice skin,” I blurted out.

It was true. His skin was perfect, his pores practically invisible.

“Clinique for Men,” he said nodding, agreeing with me about his complexion. “SPF 30 all year around, charcoal purifying mask weekly, and a monthly facial, of course.”

Of course.

“So,” I began. “Have you met a lot of women on Fish?”

Richard frowned. “I find most of them to be unsophisticated. I’m thinking of dating older women because they may have more class.”

“Excuse me,” I said, making a run for the ladies’ room.

“It’s going terribly,” I texted Maddy. “He’s a snob and I look like a country bumpkin.”

“Then run,” she texted back. “Ian did it, and you can too!”

“I can’t run. He’s sitting right by the door.”

“Is there a back exit?”

“Yeah, probably with an alarm that would go off if I tried to get out.”

“Well, just end it gracefully.”

Richard was texting when I got back to the bar. He took his time finishing his message before looking up at me.

“I have to go now,” I stammered. “My dog puked.”

“All right.” Richard was clearly not disappointed. “I’ll get the tab—you go on ahead.”

“Good luck in your search.”

“Same to you,” he said, frowning again. “Toodles.”

And with that, I ran.

57

Ian came downstairs wearing a button-down oxford shirt, one step up from his usual T-shirt with a band and its tour schedule on it.

“What’s with the fancy shirt?”

“Got a date,” Ian said, smoothing the front of the shirt over his chest. “How do I look?”

“Amazing.”

“Thanks.” He smiled, and I still recognized the fourth-grader who came home with first prize in a spelling bee. He was still an exceptional speller, come to think of it.

“So where are you going?”

“To a play at the Westin Theater.”

“Really?” I was mildly surprised and wished I’d had a date to see a live performance. That was a classy idea; if I ever found someone with class, I’d keep that in mind.

“Met on Tinder?”

“Actually, she’s from my bio class at school. We were lab partners.”

“Wow—she’s smart and has good taste?”

“Why do you say that?” Ian grinned.

“Because she’s going out with you.”

It was quiet in the house after Ian left. Pen-Pen was dozing in her doggy bed that looked like a little blue couch. I made myself French toast and scrambled eggs for dinner and thought about calling Eddie and Donny to come over to play cards. Maybe a drinking game, since it was Friday night.

I walked around picking up Penny’s dog toys: the cow that mooed and always surprised her, the lone red sock, a rubber duck, a hippo wearing earmuffs. Then I went into my room and foraged around in the closet for an Amazon box that held a photo album from my wedding to Adam. The box was lightly coated with dust, and inside, the edges of the album were starting to fray.

When Maddy was eight or nine, she and I used to look through the album and plan her future wedding. There was always a fancy church with pink roses in every aisle, a gown with a train so long it had to be carried by her maid of honor, and a blond man in a white tux waiting for her at the altar. I was always surprised by this, because Adam had dark hair, but Madd was adamant about the light-colored hair.

“I want babies that look like Ian when he was born,” she finally told me, something so heartwarming I never forgot it.

If Adam and I had stayed married, we’d have been together twenty-eight years. For a long time, my wedding day was my happy place. Later, it would be beach vacations with the kids, a song Maddy made up to soothe baby Ian when he was fussy, the time Ian caught a sunfish and cried because it had to go back into the lake because he wanted to keep it as a pet, the white patent-leather Mary Janes I always got Madison for Easter, putting out cookies for Santa, watching the kids play soccer under