Engaging Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

launched into a call.
    “Don’t listen to her,” Michelle said, waving a hand in Doreen’s direction dismissively before focusing her dark brown eyes on me. “Let me ask you something, Angie. How long have you two been together?”
    “A year and eight months.”
    “That long, huh? Hmm…” Michelle’s well-penciled eyes grew pensive and her glossy lips pursed.
    “You don’t want to marry this guy. Or any guy, for that matter, trust me on this,” Doreen chimed in again. I glanced once again over at Roberta, but she was still on her phone call and would be for some timejudging by the way she was typing furiously into her keyboard. “A man like that will never give you anything you need,” Doreen continued.
    “Well, that all depends on what Angie wants,” Michelle said, her face brightening as she looked at me hopefully. “What do you want from him, Angie?”
    For some reason, her question filled me with a flutter of confusion. What
did
I want from Kirk? Looking into her face, I saw all the hopes and dreams the Comfortably Marrieds of the world felt for the Anxiously Single. Then I remembered that wedding gown—and my amazing climax. Clearly, marriage was something I had been craving. And why wouldn’t I want it? I loved the idea of coming home to someone night after night, someone I knew would be there for me during the rough patches. I wanted to share my life with a man, not just some two-to-four-year interval we would later laugh about over drinks, as I often found myself doing with Josh and even Randy.
    And as my eyes roamed over Michelle’s well-groomed coif and expensive jeans, I realized I wanted something else: a dual income. Could you blame me? Living in New York City was no cakewalk on the measly salary I gleaned from a part-time job and my illustrious role at
Rise and Shine
. This is not to say I didn’t love Kirk. I did. All the more reason for us to combine incomes, phone bills and, even more important, rent, I thought, remembering the sofa-laden flat I shared with Justin.
    “I want to marry him, of course,” I said, as if the answer were self-evident.
    And to Michelle, who had, from age eighteen, plotted and planned her wedding to Frankie Delgrosso, co-owner (with his dad, course) of Kings County Cadillac in Brooklyn, this was not only self-evident but cause for celebration. “Angela is getting married!” she practically shouted before moving seamlessly into “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy…”
    “Married?” Roberta said, now done with her call and swivel-ing to confront me. “To Kirk?”
    “Of course to Kirk!” I replied with a laugh. “Who else?” Beep. “Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy. This is Angela. How may I help you today?”
    Turning away from Roberta’s somewhat confused expression, I attempted to focus on the customer’s question, which had to do with sizing on the slim-cut trousers we’d just debuted in our fall collection. But as I tried to guide the poor woman toward pants that would accommodate the somewhat peculiar proportions she described, I couldn’t help but wonder what had struck Roberta as so odd about the notion of Kirk and me getting married. Frustrated after a solid four minutes of flipping through catalog pages while the customer rejected my every recommendation, I barked somewhat irritably into the phone, “Have you ever considered something with an adjustable waist?” The woman made some equally irritated reply and huffed off the phone. With a quick prayer that no one in the quality assurance department was monitoring that call, I turned to Roberta once more.
    “What’s wrong with Kirk?” I asked, studying Roberta’s expression. After all, she had gotten to know Kirk somewhat during his brief time servicing Lee and Laurie. She had witnessed the flirtation between us, had seen the first fluttering of romance as we began dating, watched as we eased into coupledom. If