It’s a bad idea, I thought.

“I think it’s a good idea,” he finished. I looked at him, surprised. He put more pressure on his finger. He continued, his voice grave, “You’ve got this hole in your heart, Perry. I can see it on your face. You’re so beautiful, bella, you really are, but you look so…sad. You’ve got this hole, I can see it and it is bleeding out slowly. It’s clotted only by hope. This hope, based on maybes and what ifs, is killing you. This pin is small and it moves quietly. You need a knife. Get over it. Face the finality of it all and move on.”

I was speechless. I stepped back a foot so his finger was no longer above this so-called hole in my heart.

“Are you saying you want my heart to be broken?” I asked incredulously.

“It will heal. And you’ll be stronger for it. Much stronger. If you go, you’ll get hurt. But it’ll be worth it in the end.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe it and I didn’t want to believe it. Yeah, I knew that going to Seattle was going to suck in many ways but it was just another thing to “man up” about. I’d get through it. But I didn’t see how my heart was going to be broken. I knew Dex was with Jenn. I knew they had their new apartment and their Fat Rabbit. I knew every night he was going to go into their bedroom with her and…

“See,” Al said. I didn’t want to meet his eyes. I knew the expression on his face.

“Can we go inside now?” I asked meekly.

Al put his arm around me and ushered me toward the door. “You’ll be fine. It’ll be a learning experience. And when you get back, it’ll all be over with. You’ll be bled out and all the better for it.”

And then we went back into the restaurant and joined the rest of the party in saying our goodbyes.

But I had been unable to stop thinking about what Al had said. Did I really keep on loving Dex because there was always that chance of “what it?” What if he broke up with Jenn or maybe if he fell in love with me anyway, or…so many scenarios to even list.

I was even thinking about it as I got ready for my date with Brock on Sunday night. It didn’t help that Ada had brought it up.

“So what are you going to wear to the Christmas party?” Ada asked, watching me apply mascara in our bathroom mirror. Rob Zombie blared from the tinny CD player and a half-drank glass of wine sat on the ledge, my medicine for calming my electric pre-date nerves.

I looked down at my dress, the same black dress I had worn at my dad’s birthday dinner. I figured it would look nice for Brock too.

“This one,” I said.

She gave me the most unamused look. It caused me to put down my mascara and say “What?”

She shook her head. “You are absolutely hopeless. This dress? You look straight out of a Donna Karan ad.”

“Is that bad?”

“It’s fine if you’re going to work. In 1994,” she snarled. “Perry, this pains me to say this but your body is way too good for this. How the hell are you going to win over Brock or Dex in this?”

I had to turn around and face her at that. “Win over Dex?”

“What are you wearing to the Christmas party?” she asked again.

“This!” I yelled, pulling at the skirt of it.

“Hold on,” she said and left the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Hold on? Hold on to what? I looked at myself in the mirror and straightened out the dress. There was nothing wrong with it at all. It was boring, sure, but black was flattering and it matched my hair. It hid my boobs and hips and covered up my thighs. I had a nice face, I knew that, so if that’s the only thing Brock noticed, that was fine with me. Besides, he knew what my body looked like’ he had been berating me as I ran around in Lululemon pants for weeks. I was Miss Muffin Top. I wasn’t fooling anyone.

As for Dex…well, like it or not, Dex had seen me naked, so again, I wasn’t about to fool him. And I didn’t want to anyway. I had never dressed up for Dex and I wasn’t about to start doing it at the Christmas party.

OK, so when I wore that low-cut red top for the shoot at D’Arcy Island, that was a teeny bit for him. But, whatever.

The door opened again and Ada flounced in with something satiny in her hands. She locked the door behind her and thrust a dress in front of my eyes.

“What is this?” I asked.

“It’s what you are wearing to the party.”

My eyes narrowed at her. It was involuntary. I know my sister often meant well, but there was no way in hell I could ever fit in her clothes and she knew it.

Picking up on that, she sighed with keen exasperation and said, “It’s not my dress. I mean, I was sent it as a sample, someone wanted me to wear it on my blog. But it’s way too big for me. I was going to hold a giveaway for it, but I thought maybe you’d like it.”

I gave it the once over. It was strapless and a satiny, almost iridescent, teal blue. A very lovely color actually. But still. My first instinct told me to distrust it. If it wasn’t a statement-making concert tee, it wasn’t “Perry.”

“At least try it on,” Ada said, physically opening my hands and placing the dress in it.

“I don’t want to wear this tonight, it won’t be appropriate for a first date.”

“Fuck tonight,” she scoffed. “I know tonight’s just a distraction. This is about Friday. Dude, nothing matters. You’re going to go to that Christmas party looking like a million bucks and you’re going to show that stupid whore who’s the boss.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at Ada getting all jealous and protective. She looked as worked up as anything, her feverish expressions causing her smudgy makeup to settle beneath her eyes. I didn’t have the nerve to tell her that it wasn’t the point of the trip, that I didn’t have a chance in hell, and that I was, according to Uncle Al, heading straight into heartache.

“Don’t pretend,” she said, coming closer. “Just put the damn dress on and I’ll tell you the truth.”

I sighed and pointed at the door. “Well at least give me some privacy.”

She didn’t budge. “You’re going to have to get used to people seeing you naked,” she teased.

“I’m already used to it,” I answered without thinking. Her eyes widened.

“What!?”

“Get out, let me change,” I told her, opening the door and pushing her out of it.

“But, but,” she protested and I locked the door in her face.

“Perry!” She pounded on the door. “What do you mean? Who has seen you naked!?”

“Ada, shut the fuck up!” I yelled back, knowing that was the last thing my parents needed to hear.

She shushed up as I quickly stripped out of the black dress and shimmied into the teal one. It was too tight for my liking and I couldn’t zip it up all the way by myself but…

I reached over and opened the door. Ada’s eyes bulged comically.

“Holy shite, where the hell do you get your boobs from?”

I rolled my eyes. “Can you just zip me up?”

She nodded quickly and ran it up the rest of the way. I sucked in my breath and the extra few inches of support made my breasts prop up even more.

Ada was speechless for once. I took a step back from the mirror and tried not to be too critical. The color made my skin glow and my hair seem like rich ebony. The darker edges around my light blue irises looked saturated, like the teal color was leaking into them. It was shorter than I would have liked but at least my waist looked small. My breasts weren’t obscene or anything, but there was no mistaking them. I turned to the side and eyed my butt and hips. Again, no mistaking them. They were both out there for the world to see, like it or not.

“You look like Joan Holloway,” Ada breathed. She apparently watched Mad Men like the rest of the world.

“Thanks. A compliment, right?” Although I found Christina Hendricks sexy, it didn’t mean my waifish 15-year old sister did.

“Of course you dummy,” she said, now turning her attention to my feet. “Are you wearing those clunky black things you wore the other night?”

“You mean the only heels I have? Yes.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Hold on.”

I wasn’t holding onto anything. I was finding myself not only liking the dress but liking the way I looked in it. Wasn’t this what Uncle Al was warning me about, with all the maybes and what ifs?

I shook my head in an attempt to snap out of it. I admit, I did want to go to the Christmas party now looking like a million bucks. It wasn’t to win over Dex. I knew him well enough that the way I looked wouldn’t change anything. But I did want to show to everyone else that I wasn’t some fat, dumpy, stupid ghost show host. I knew Miss Anonymous wouldn’t be there but I still knew that everyone would have read those comments and I needed that one extra push that no, I wasn’t like that at all. Miss Anonymous, what a stupid, jealous bitch, she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

Ada came back in with a computer printout in her hand.

I took it from her and peered at it. “What’s this?”

“I got a gift certificate. Fifty bucks at the designer shoe warehouse. I’m sure there’s one in Seattle. Go and get yourself a sexy pair of shoes when you’re there.”

I looked over the printout and it confirmed what she was saying.

“Ada,” I began.

“No,” she said, closing my hand over the gift certificate. “I have enough shoes.”

“You’re just too good for discount shoes,” I said with a smile.

She smiled back. “You know me too well. Now go break Brock’s heart. You’ll need it for practice.”

And with that, she shut the door behind her, leaving me with the gift certificate in my hand, wondering when my sister had become 23 and myself 15. At least, that’s what it felt like.

~~

The date with Brock went better than expected. He picked me up (I wasn’t about to ride Putt-Putt in a dress, nevermind the helmet hair) in his Honda Civic and took me to a trendy bar in downtown Portland, with a smashing view of the Willamette River.

He was a perfect gentleman. He laughed at my jokes, paid for the food (despite my insistence), and he looked quite handsome in his grey dress shirt, a nice change from his jock outfit.

We talked about a lot of things, though I tried to keep the conversation focused on him. Only near the end did he start asking more and more about the show and ghosts. He was a believer, which was good. The last thing I wanted was to be with someone who just wanted to pick my beliefs apart. That would be akin to a Catholic going out with an atheist.

No, Brock was fine. And he was a good kisser, too, as I found out on my parents’ front stoop. He didn’t seem to want anything more and anything less. It felt good to taste someone else’s lips, to feel someone else’s feelings, especially ones so transparent.

But as I was saying goodbye to him, I had a heavy, sinking feeling in my heart.

For one, there was the fact that he liked country music. The minute he admitted his love for Rascal Flatts, I knew we would never be. And then there was the simple, sad, ugly truth that he wasn’t Dex.