Around him, Isabel a felt sweaty and bloated more often than not. She wanted to apologize when she got a pimple or had to blow her nose. She was fairly certain he never had boogers.
Harrison met new people graceful y, shook guys’ hands and grasped their arm with his left hand. He kissed girls on the cheeks and remembered names. He was always interested in conversation, tilting his head at whoever was talking, nodding and interjecting every so often, but not enough to be obnoxious.
“He’s the one!” Isabel a’s friends said. “We can’t believe you found him!”
The ones with boyfriends and fiancés were relieved for Isabel a. She was twenty-seven and they al agreed it was about time. The single ones were sort of happy and a little annoyed. They’d been at the bar that night too. Isabel a was pretty, but not gorgeous. Where had they been when he’d come up to her? (But for the most part, they were happy, of course.)
Harrison knew how to date. He made plans to go to dinner at restaurants where they could drink margaritas and hear each other talk. He took her to movies and then to a diner for gril ed cheese. He always paid. He cal ed when he said he would, and held the door for her. The first night she stayed at his apartment, he woke up early and came back with two cups of coffee.
“I like him,” Isabel a told her friends. She sounded miserable. “He’s real y fun. It makes me feel sick.”
Isabel a knew enough by now to know that this wasn’t a common occurrence. You didn’t just bump into a nice guy that you liked every day. She was positive that she was going to mess it up.
Harrison and Isabel a had been dating for three weeks when he mentioned the ski trip. He brought it up casual y one day, as though the thought had just occurred to him that very moment, asking, “Do you want to go skiing for New Year’s?”
Isabel a was in a panic almost immediately. She had been up most nights wondering if they would exchange Christmas presents, imagining the horror of handing him a wrapped box and being greeted with an uncomfortable look. New Year’s hadn’t even entered her mind yet. She was trying to deal with one holiday at a time.
“Isabel a?”
“What?”
“New Year’s? A bunch of my friends are renting a house in Vermont. It should be fun.”
“Fun” was a relative term, Isabel a knew. Something that seemed fun when compared to doing nothing could real y end up being a horrific mistake. And a weekend with strangers could be up there with a car crash.
“Do I know any of them?”
“Um … I’m not sure. You met Parker, right?”
Isabel a shook her head.
“Oh, I thought you did. Wel , look, they’re a fun group. It’s not that big of a deal. If you want to go, great. If not, don’t worry about it.”
“Do you even want me to go?”
“Yeah.”
“It just kind of sounded like maybe you didn’t real y.”
“If I didn’t want you to go, I wouldn’t ask you.”
“Oh.”
“Stop being so weird,” he said, and poked her in the stomach. “It’s real y not a big deal. Just let me know.”
“Okay.”
Isabel a wondered what it would be like to be a boy. She knew that Harrison meant it when he said it wasn’t a big deal. He real y wouldn’t care. He didn’t have to obsess over her response or if she would go or not. If she were a boy, she would be much more successful. She was sure of it. As it was now, she wasted days at work analyzing things that Harrison had said to her. When he told her it was interesting that she had a goldfish, she lost a week of productivity.
What did she know about dating, anyway? Nothing. She thought back to the sixth-grade sex-ed class they’d had at St. Anthony’s. The girls were put in a room with the school nurse and forced to read scenarios out of an old pamphlet. “Kate and Michael have been going steady for a month,”
the book read. “Michael wants Kate to try heavy petting, but Kate doesn’t feel ready. What do you think she should do?”
The nurse cleared her throat, blushed, and addressed the girls. “So, does anyone have a thought on what Kate should do?” The room was silent.
Final y someone asked, “What’s heavy petting?”
In the other room, the boys told them later, a priest had drawn a large dome on the blackboard. “Do you know what this is?” he asked them. He sounded angry and annoyed. He put a dot on top of it. “That’s a penis,” he said.
That was her education? How was she prepared for this? There was no scenario in that book about starting a new relationship with a Harrison.
There were no tips on whether or not to go on a trip so early in a relationship. (Or if there were, they never got to them. Because once they found out what heavy petting was, they laughed for a week and a half.)
“You should go,” her friends al said. The fact that she hadn’t skied in years and didn’t real y miss it wasn’t something they were concerned with.
The drive up there would take almost five hours. What would they talk about? They had never been in a car alone that long. What if it was just silence? After sleepless nights and countless conversations, she agreed to go. Immediately after, she felt sick.
The ski house was built to sleep as many people as possible. Most rooms had two sets of bunk beds and stairs that led to another room with a futon. When they got there, it was already dark and she could hear laughing as they stood outside the door. It was so cold that Isabel a could feel the inside of her nose freeze when she breathed. The night seemed darker after coming from the city, and it made Isabel a shiver. More than anything at that moment, she wanted not to be there. What had she been thinking coming up here? She didn’t know these people.
Isabel a let Harrison walk in front of her and she walked behind him, pretending to look for something in her purse. There were about a dozen people in the kitchen and living room, sitting around, drinking and laughing. There was a footbal game on the TV, which no one was watching.
Everyone smiled and there were shouts of “Hey” and “What’s up?” Isabel a waited for Harrison to introduce her and then stood there while he pointed to everyone and said their names. She didn’t remember any of them.
Harrison grabbed her bag to take it upstairs and she fol owed him. They peeked in the rooms, looking for an empty one, but there were bags on al of the double beds. The only thing free was a set of bunk beds in the corner of one of the rooms.
“Looks like this is us,” Harrison said. “Do you want the top or the bottom?”
Isabel a wasn’t sure. If she slept on the bottom, she would be eye level with the other couple staying in the room. If she took the top, she ran the risk of fal ing out of bed and paralyzing herself while waking the whole house up.
“Um, the bottom, I guess.”
“Okay.”
Harrison threw the bags on top of the beds and turned to her. “You ready for a drink?” he asked. She nodded and fol owed him downstairs silently.
That weekend, Isabel a sat close to Harrison, holding his hand and resting her head against his shoulder, which she never did. When he left the room for more than two minutes she started to panic at the thought that she was stuck with these strangers. She acted like a different girl than she was. Harrison didn’t seem to notice.
The first night there, Isabel a was cornered by one of Harrison’s friends from col ege. Her name was Jocelyn. She was drunk and a close talker.
“I don’t real y know my dad,” she confided to Isabel a. “He never real y wanted a daughter and I’m not sure he ever loved me.”