“Spinning class,” Stacy said.
Kat rolled her eyes.
“Come on, Kat. The guy takes Spinning classes. What’s next, Kegels?”
It was funny walking with Stacy. After a while, you no longer noticed the stares and catcalls. You weren’t offended or ignoring them. They just ceased to exist. Walking beside Stacy was the closest thing Kat would ever know to camouflage.
“Kat?”
“Yes?”
“You going to tell me what’s wrong?”
A big guy with gym muscles, the kind featuring prominent veins, and slicked-back hair stopped in front of Stacy and let his eyes drop to her chest. “Whoa, that’s a really big rack.”
Stacy stopped too and let her eyes drop to his crotch. “Whoa, that’s a really tiny dick.”
They started walking again. Okay, so maybe they didn’t totally cease to exist. Depending on the approach, Stacy handled the attention in different ways. She hated the showy bravado, the wolf whistlers—the rude ones. The shy guys, the ones who simply admired what they were seeing and enjoyed it, well, Stacy enjoyed them back. Sometimes she would smile or even wave, almost like a celebrity who gave a bit of herself because it was a little thing and made others happy.
“I went on that website last night,” Kat said.
That made Stacy smile. “Already?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. That didn’t take long. Did you hook up with someone?”
“Not exactly.”
“So what happened?”
“I saw my old fiancé.”
Stacy pulled up, her eyes wide. “Come again?”
“His name is Jeff Raynes.”
“Wait, you were engaged?”
“A long time ago.”
“But engaged? You? Like a ring and everything?”
“Why does this surprise you so much?”
“I don’t know. I mean, how long have we been friends?”
“Ten years.”
“Right, and in all that time, you’ve never been within sniffing distance of love.”
Kat gave a half shrug. “I was twenty-two.”
“I’m at a loss for words,” Stacy said. “You. Engaged.”
“Could we move past that part?”
“Right, okay, sorry. And last night you saw his profile on that website?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?”
“Say to who?”
“Whom,” Stacy said.
“What?”
“Say to whom. Not to who. Prepositional phrase.”
“I wish I was carrying my gun,” Kat said.
“What did you write to, uh, Jeff?”
“I didn’t.”
“Pardon?”
“I didn’t write him.”
“Why not?”
“He dumped me.”
“A fiancé.” Stacy shook her head again. “And you never told me about him before? I feel like I’ve been had.”
“How’s that?”
“I don’t know. I mean, when it came to love, I always thought you were a cynic, like me.”
Kat kept walking. “How do you think I became a cynic?”
“Touché.”
They found a table at Le Pain Quotidien inside Central Park near West 69th Street and ordered coffee.
“I’m really sorry,” Stacy said.
Kat waved her off.
“I signed you up for that site so you could get laid. Lord knows you need to get laid. I mean, you need to get laid as badly as anyone I know.”
“This is some apology,” Kat said.
“I didn’t mean to conjure up bad memories.”
“It’s not a big deal.”
Stacy looked skeptical. “Do you want to talk about it? Of course you do. And I’m curious as all get-out. Tell me everything.”
So Kat told her the whole story about Jeff. She told her about how they’d met at Columbia, how they’d fallen in love, how it felt like forever, how it all felt easy and right, how he proposed, how everything changed when her father was murdered, how she became more withdrawn, how Jeff finally walked out, how she’d been too weak or maybe too proud to go after him.
When she finished, Stacy said, “Wow.”
Kat sipped her coffee.
“And now, almost twenty years later, you see your old fiancé on a dating website?”
“Yes.”
“Single?”
Kat frowned. “There are very few married people on it.”
“Right, of course. So what’s his deal? Is he divorced? Has he been sitting at home, still pining like you?”
“I’m not still pining,” Kat said. Then: “He’s a widower.”
“Wow.”
“Stop saying that. ‘Wow.’ What are you, seven years old?”
Stacy ignored the mini outburst. “His name is Jeff, right?
“Right.”