Impractically Perfect: A Romantic Comedy Page 15

  When I got back to the car, Toby insisted that he was feeling much better and took over driving, even though I knew it was causing him considerable pain. I was pretty sure that he just feared for his car—and both of our lives. My stick shift skills had hardly improved. At least it allowed me to dive into the backseat and change into my new dress.

  When we arrived back in the city, we were just in time for possibly the worst rush-hour traffic jam I had ever encountered.

  “Fuckity fuckity fuck,” I whispered under my breath, wishing Toby would just run down the cars that had sandwiched us in our lane. It was 5:44, and the gala was supposed to start in precisely sixteen minutes. I was already going to be in buttloads of trouble for not helping set up, but not showing up at all? Not an option.

  It wasn’t until we approached the address of the venue that I had put into my Google Maps that I realized that it looked familiar. Where have I seen this place before? I mused, shuffling through my memories like a Rolodex.

  And then I remembered.

  No. Nononono not here, please not here.

  It was the same place in which my high school graduation had been. One of the most traumatic experiences of my life, one that I had told a grand total of zero people about since it happened.

  Growing up, I had played the oboe. Competitively. My mom, ecstatic that I found something artistic to latch onto, invested in private lessons for me, and I loved it, every moment. I found something I was good at, really good at, and wanted to put all my energy into it, and into making my mom proud. And proud she was.

  I found myself auditioning for all kinds of orchestras, youth and adult alike, and actually being hired to play in many of them. I ended up playing in orchestras, bands, jazz bands, and even a few pit orchestras for local regional theaters. It didn’t take long for the newspapers to learn about me and for people to start hailing me as a brilliant oboe player, the youngest professional our small town had ever seen. A prodigy.

  I loved it—or at least I thought I did. Looking back, I wondered how much I actually loved playing the oboe, and how much it was just loving being good at something, and having everyone tell me how good I was.

  Throughout high school, I maintained my perfect image. My grades soared, as did my oboe skills. I worked hard at everything I did, not because I had anything specific in mind for my future, but because perfection was what was expected of me, and soon became all I cared about. If people weren’t proud of my accomplishments, then what was I, even? And what would Dad have thought of me?

  Everything came to a head at my high school graduation. We had some important people speaking—including the governor. Even better, they all knew who I was. Instead of speaking as the valedictorian, I was going to play a song on my oboe that I had been working on for the better part of the year.

  It was a solo piece, and had several movements—quite a lot to be doing in front of thousands of people. I had performed quite often, but never in such a high pressure situation. This was it—the crowning achievement of my childhood. It had to be perfect.

  From the moment I touched the reed to my lips, I knew I had the audience under my spell. The lights were too bright for me to see Mom and Cam out there, but I knew they would be smiling proudly. Throughout the next seventeen minutes, nobody rustled their program, nobody shifted in their seats, nobody coughed.

  As I approached the end of the piece, my oboe slipped slightly in my grasp and as I jerked to catch it, I bumped my tooth into the reed. I felt the reed split beneath my tongue. I had learned long ago to always bring a second reed onstage with me, because this happened once in awhile—but I was now on the very last page, the gorgeous melodic climax; stopping would completely ruin the flow.

  I muscled through, determined to keep my tone even. My jaw muscles nearly giving out, I finally reached the last line and the beautiful high note—

  And I let out a horrendous, earsplitting squeeeeeeeak that echoed throughout the entire hall, loud enough for many members of the audience to cover their ears.

  I remember sitting there in shock at what had just happened. Never, never, had I messed up a performance before, not even hit a wrong note. Practicing until I was absolutely, completely perfect was what I did best.

  I couldn’t help it; the blood rushed to my face and I felt my chest constricting. I was suddenly very aware that the entire auditorium was pitch black, save for the spotlight on me and a few “EXIT” signs placed around the house. With every breath, my chest felt tighter and tighter.

  I couldn’t move. It was silent, everywhere. A huge clanging sound brought me back to the present, and looking down, I noticed that I had dropped my precious oboe on the ground, where it rolled a few times before settling a foot away from me.

  And then, I ran.

  Still in my graduation robes and the cap that I hadn’t yet switched the tassel on, I ran out the door of the auditorium, as fast as I could in my little flats. This was wrong, this was all wrong. Today was supposed to be about my successes, not my huge, giant failure that everyone would know about. And would be talking about forever, probably.

  I ran and ran, without a clue where I was going, uncaring that I was missing the ceremony, that I was missing my own graduation. This wasn’t supposed to be how things ended. This wasn’t what Dad would’ve wanted.

  It wasn’t supposed to be an end. It was supposed to be a celebration of new beginnings, of the fact that I was going to major in music at one of the most prestigious schools in the country, that I was already making a name for myself that could only get better in the future. And now…it was all lost.

  Mom found me hours later, huddling amongst the statues in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I was curled up in a ball, head between my knees, sobbing even though my tears had run dry long ago. She had put an arm around me, didn’t need to say anything for the longest time, because that was how we communicated. Without even talking.

  She placed my oboe case in front of me. “You forgot something.” She put her hand under my chin and looked at me, smiling. “You sounded beautiful, Penny.”

  Lies. I hadn’t sounded beautiful. I had made people cover their ears. What the hell was she talking about?

  “I’m done,” I whispered, unable to look Mom in the eye. “It’s over.”

  She looked confused, so I clarified. “Music. I’m not doing it anymore, I’m clearly not as good as everyone thought.”

  “Penny…”

  And with that stubborn determination I’ve always had, the determination to practice for hours every day, to study until my eyes hurt, to rehearse every note until I got it just right…I stood up, breathing normally for the first time since the squeak.

  I had missed the rest of my graduation ceremony.

  When I got home, I shoved my oboe into the back of my closet. I hadn’t taken it out of its case since.

  I still went to the same university I had been accepted into, but dropped out of the prestigious music performance program. Instead of majoring in oboe, I decided to go a more practical route. In order to make up for fucking up everything, I was going to make sure that the rest of my life would be not only perfect, but practical, too.

  Dreams, I had decided, are for dreamers. Not for real people. Not for people who mess up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Memories Are Confusing

  Toby pulled up in front of the building, adorned with flags and posters for Tooth and Nail magazine, swarming with camera people, reporters, and very well-dressed, important-looking people. There was even a red carpet. Overkill for a dentistry magazine, don’t you think? I thought, but I found it completely intimidating all the same.

  In a daze, I grabbed my heavier-than-I-remembered over-the-shoulder purse that I had also picked up at JCPenny along with my dress, and stumbled inside. I didn’t turn around to watch Toby as he drove off.

  When I walked into the auditorium, my heart stopped as if it was ten years ago. Memories that I had been avoiding came flooding back to me, came drifting into
my consciousness.

  My chest was constricting, and I tried to hold it in, but that just made it worse. I couldn’t be here, I just couldn’t, this was where my life had fallen apart. Completely. I could feel the sweat dripping from my temples, between my breasts, down my back. The only sound was that of my heart pounding.

  But before I had the chance to even try to catch my breath, or to get a drink of water—or more necessarily, liquor—someone grabbed my hand and dragged me into the women’s bathroom.

  It was Camille. Or Candice, I couldn’t tell.

  “Camille? Why are you here?” I tried to ask, but it came out more like, “Hsmhuufuu?”

  “Penny,” she hissed, eyeing my sweat-soaked dress. “What’s wrong with you?”

  There were way too many emotions going through me to be able to even process her question. “Wha…what are you doing here?”

  With a flush, Candice popped out of a stall. I think it was Candice, probably. “We are here for our podcast! Woah, Penny, you don’t look so good right now.”

  Together, they led me over to the sink and guided me while I splashed water on my face. There. That’s better. The world was starting to come back into focus; the tunnel that had been forming at the edges of my vision had faded, along with the little white dancing stars.

  I leaned against the counter and breathed heavily, allowing my lungs to fill up with wonderful, amazing oxygen. Panic attacks, I decided, are pretty lame.

  “So,” I said, when I had finally caught my breath. “You’re what, documenting this or something? But like…why? Is this really of any interest to your listeners?” Assuming they had listeners, that is.

  “Oh yes,” one of them said, “they love a good—”

  The other one elbowed her in the side. “Yes. They like this kind of stuff, for sure.”

  They stood with me for the next few minutes while I fixed my hair and regulated my breathing. My tears had stopped and my face was a little less red, and I figured I should probably go out there and face the music.

  To use a horrible metaphor.

  Pasting on my bright and happy smile, I exited the bathroom. I vainly began a search for Bernard or Cyril, or hell, even Dr. Booper, but I was having trouble picking out anyone in the sea of long black dresses and tuxes. Everyone looked exactly the same.

  Except me. I was definitely not appropriately dressed. I really wished I hadn’t had to resort to what I now realized was a bright purple, ill-fitting clearance prom dress.

  And just as my mind started to wander again, a perfectly handsome man in a suit sauntered sexily toward me.

  Sven.

  Sven. Crap. I had forgotten he was going to be here. He was supposed to have been working late today, I now remembered, and the plan had been for him to just meet me here after work instead of going all the way to my place to pick me up…

  “Hey sweetheart,” he said, kissing the back of my hand. And then he took a good look at me. “Um. What exactly are you wearing?”

  Not for the first time that evening, I felt my face reddening. “Long story. I uh…I left my dress at home, and I couldn’t get home…so I ended up picking something up instead…”

  He scrunched his eyebrows together. “It’s purple.”

  “Yep.”

  “And sparkly.”

  “That’s right.”

  I looked down. The more I wore it, the more I was starting to kind of enjoy the dress. It was…fun. Sure, maybe it was a little youthful, but it was colorful and bright and shiny and honestly, totally made me feel like a beautiful mermaid.

  “I really wish you had worn a…regular dress, Penny.”

  “So do I.” Except…no. I didn’t. This was the first time I could remember that I was wearing something ridiculous and silly, something that I loved. When you own as many black dresses as I do, it’s hard to get excited about them. But this? This was the most exciting thing I had ever worn, like…ever. Who cares if it wasn’t quite right for this stupid event that I never wanted to go to in the first place?

  “What happened to that dress you were wearing that one night, not too long ago? You know, with the neckline…”

  What? What was he talking about? What neckline…?

  Oh. Of course. My non-proposal dress. How could I forget.

  Somehow, Sven had failed to notice my flushed cheeks and sweaty palms. All he noticed was what I was wearing.

  “Well. I’m going to get a drink,” he said. I noticed that he seemed to be having trouble making eye contact with me. Weird.

  “Oh thank god, that’s exactly what I need right now,” I said. “Would you mind grabbing me a…”

  But he was already gone.

  And again, I found myself totally and completely alone.

  I uncomfortably perched myself at one of the appetizer tables, adorned with piles upon piles of smooshy slug-like things, which I assumed were some sort of edible underwater creatures.

  As people with cameras passed me, I tried to look like I knew exactly what I was doing and smiled brilliantly, showing off what I knew was a perfect row of pearly-whites. Something was tickling my ankles, but I ignored it and kept on smiling. Great advertising for our practice, I knew.

  Except that when I looked behind me, I saw Camille and Candice in their matching dresses and matching snaggletooth smiles.

  The old me would have been concerned that the twins were going to make me look bad; after all, they weren’t exactly dressed beautifully for the occasion in their Pocahontas-meets-Pinocchio peasant dresses, and it’s not like they were the most attractive girls to begin with. But maybe, that didn’t matter. Maybe, despite their fashion choices, Candice and Camille were my best friends here. Gillian would have laughed at me if she could read my thoughts. But wasn’t there a slight possibility that Gillian's opinions were a lot less important than I gave them credit for?

  “Did you try the dip?” Camille asked, holding out a clear plastic plate overflowing with a bit of everything. I was surprised to find myself completely unembarrassed by anything she was doing. I was even more surprised to find that I was sure that she was Camille. Her voice, I had discovered, was a bit higher than Candice’s, and she spoke with a hint of a lisp that Candice didn’t have.

  “It’s really good,” explained Candice, passionately licking some off of her cracker. She was a bit taller than Camille, and her hair had a little more sheen to it. She must have been the “pretty one” growing up.

  There were cameras all around me, but I took my finger and stuck it right into the middle of the plate, grabbing a big glob of the dip for myself. What. Ever.

  I turned around to a horrified Sven, holding two drinks in front of him. A manhattan for him, and a…what was that?

  “A glass of bubbly for you, sweetheart,” he said, thrusting the flute into my hand. I smiled at him sweetly while simultaneously trying not to grimace in disgust. How had he forgotten that I absolutely loathe carbonation?

  Completely ignoring my roommates that he definitely recognized, Sven tucked an arm around my waist and dragged me around the enormous space.

  Even though it wasn’t quite as big as I had thought it was in high school, the auditorium was every bit as overwhelmingly terrifying as I remembered.

  He led me to a very tall, very white group of men, all of them wearing perfectly tailored suits and sipping on identical drinks.

  “Boys,” Sven said, and I immediately wished I was drunker so that I could more appropriately laugh at his better-than-thou air that he was putting on, one that he never used when we were alone, “this is my…girlfriend, Penelope.”

  Fucking “Penelope”? Nobody ever called me “Penelope,” it wasn’t even on my driver’s license anymore, for fuck’s sake.

  “Penny,” I inserted, but nobody seemed to be paying much attention to me.

  “She,” Sven continued, “is not only the light of my life, but one of the best dental hygienists on this side of the Atlantic.”

  “When I’m not eating too much candy!” I
joked lamely, but none of the tall white guys were even looking at me.

  “She’s the reason I’m here—so thank her for that! Doesn’t she look absolutely stunning in that dress?” He gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  What the hell, Sven. He was showing me off like I was a poodle in the National Dog Show. Ten minutes ago, he was telling me that my dress looked lame, and now…?

  But the men were all eyeing me and nodding, Sven wasn’t looking at me, and I felt that familiar compression in my chest again. Crap. Not again. Please, not now.

  Unfortunately, panic attacks have a fun way of not listening to you when you’re trying to psych yourself out of them, so I faked a contact lens emergency and ducked away from the posse. Sven knew perfectly well that I had 20/20 vision and would rather eat a live scorpion than stick my finger in my eye. Even so, he vaguely waved me away, not even pretending like he was concerned with whatever was bothering me.

  I wanted to just hide in the bathroom for the next half hour or so, but it was all the way at the other end of the auditorium, and the crowd was getting too big and jostle-y. I knew I wouldn’t make it. Which was why I found myself ducking under one of the white-tablecloth-covered circular tables that held a plate piled with at least two dozen different types of cheeses. Focusing my eyes on my knees and trying to breathe, I deliberately ignored the silhouettes of the feet milling about inches away from me.

  Breathe, Penny, I schooled myself, you can do this. But could I? This was my second panic attack in half an hour, and I still had the rest of this horrible evening to get through.

  How did I get here? This was supposed to be an exciting, fun, elbow-rubbing event, and instead it was turning into a demonstration of how I had actually achieved precisely nothing in my life, and how I was incapable of socializing with, well, anyone.

  Hating myself wasn’t going to get me through this evening, I knew. I needed to calm down. Desperately hoping that this wasn’t a completely inappropriate thing to be doing, I pulled my phone out of my boobs, turned the volume most of the way down, and opened up my YouTube app. Maybe I was unable to do things that a normal adult human was supposed to do, and maybe my life had completely fallen apart, but dammit, I still had eyeballs and was perfectly capable of watching adorable dog videos.