“What’s going on?” Amy asked gently.
“I can’t do this.” Eva’s voice trembled.
“Do what?” I was confused. “Drink? Dance? Have fun?”
“I can’t DATE,” she exploded. Amy jumped, splashing vodka on herself.
“What do you mean? Of course you can! Don’t you want to find someone?”
Eva looked at me like I had sprouted a luscious beard from each nostril. Her eyes were red and her mascara had smeared (which, if I’m being honest, gave her a sex-kittenish look).
“Are you as stupid as you are gorgeous? Of course I want to find someone, Rachel!”
“Well, then?” I glanced at Amy for help, but she was dabbing paper towels on her arm where she’d spilled.
“No one wants to findme! There’s something wrong with me.”
“Don’t say that!” Amy and I shouted over one another.
“You take that back! You’re a perfect human being.”
Eva pressed the paper towel to her face and sagged against the (filthy) sink.
“It’s true.” Her words were muffled. “Everyone I’ve asked out this year has said no.”
“What? Who—?” I’d wanted to say,Who are these Tinder girls who rejected you and where can I find them to beat them up?but Amy interjected.
“That’s not true. What about Erica? And the other girl?”
Eva cast a dark look over the both of us.
“If they go out with me, have sex with me, andthenghost me, it’s evenworsethan saying no in the first place.”
I blinked. Her words had rendered me speechless. My mind grappled with competing thoughts:There is no way anyone in their right mind could dislike my best friend; I must shout down her harmful self-talk at once; Is it possible she has a point?But—no! It was too much for my brain to handle, the reality of the beautiful human standing before me and the indisputable fact that she had been rejected.Multiple times.
I mouthed silently, looking to Amy for help. Her lips were pursed, her brow creased, and I could tell she was undergoing the same painful internal dilemma as me.
“It just… It makes no…” I trailed off, thinking of my own problems with Stephen—dicknotized—and Amy’s inexplicable problems with Ryan. I got the sudden feeling that I was facing a difficult question in a field in which I was not, as I had thought, an expert.
“Everyone in the world is insane except us,” Amy whispered, and I nodded my agreement. The fact that we were four flawless women and the world was not throwing itself at our feet was just—well, perhaps Sumira was different. In fact, maybe she would be able to offer us some—
“Christopher,” Eva croaked, straightening herself up with an air of resolve.
“What?” I was aghast.
“Let’s ask Christopher what to do.”
I felt my eyes widen in shock as I held out my hands defensively.
“Look, Eva, I don’t think that’s really—”
“She’s right.” Amy stepped forward so she was shoulder toshoulder with Eva, the two of them facing me down like bullies in a schoolyard. “We have no idea what we’re doing. But Christopher does. His advice helped me; it got Ryan to initiate sex, for God’s sake. Only a couple times, but still.” She set her mouth in a hard line, and I was distracted for a moment by my poor, sweet Amy who clearly hadn’t had sex in at least a week, and who could be more deserving than her? But I would have to come back to that thought.
“Do it. Ask him.” Eva’s tears had subsided and her cheeks were turning pink; she was shifting from distraught to excited, and there was no way I could say no to her now.
I let out a long-suffering sigh my mother would have been proud of.
“I don’t have his number.”
