Nine Women, One Dress Read Online Free PDF Page A

some of whom would ask me out. I heard it all. As Ruthie, my older coworker, would say, they were right off the cob. Lots of corny glove references like “perfect fit” and “looking for the match to this glove” and, the worst and most common, “You know what they say—big hands, big…feet.” Which isn’t even the correct reference, and is so not true, by the way.
    Flip was less cornball than that. I didn’t say yes the first few times he asked me out because he was older than me and short, with bad hair and a bit of a unibrow. But he grew on me. I didn’t say yes the next few times because I liked it that the challenge was making him try harder. I didn’t say yes the few times after that because it was beginning to feel like he wanted me just because he couldn’t have me, like some kind of prize he was trying to win. My gut told me that in the end I might not be enough of a prize for him and I’d get hurt. This isn’t about my insecurities, though I do have them—who doesn’t? I’m pretty enough, and I’m smart and funny and kind, but he didn’t really seem to value those things. He was a fancy lawyer who grew up on Sutton Place and went to an Ivy League school. I was a salesgirl at Bloomingdale’s who had never lived outside Astoria, Queens. I had no desire to leave my comfort zone, and wanted to find a man who would love me for me. But he wasn’t giving up.
    Finally I gave in and we went out, and out, and out, for months and months and months, until one day, long after I had fixed his unibrow and fallen for him, he woke up and told me that something was missing. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. More like something he couldn’t put on my finger, as it turned out; two months later I read in the
Times
that he was engaged. Two months! The bride, I read, had also attended an Ivy League school and was also a fancy lawyer. They instantly fell in love at some fancy lawyer convention where they exchanged strategies, and no doubt bodily fluids. I bet it wouldn’t have been so instant if I hadn’t taken my tweezers to his eyebrow! After memorizing their wedding announcement, I continued torturing myself by writing
our
announcement in my head:
Philip Roberts to wed Natalie Canaras
.
The bridegroom is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Roberts of Sutton Place and Sagaponack. Mr. Roberts attended Dartmouth as an undergraduate and got his law degree from Columbia. He was recently named partner at Hollingsworth, Hathaway, Horowitz, and Holtz, where his maternal grandfather, Frederick Hollingsworth, was a founding partner. The bride attended the school of hard knocks and is a salesgirl at Bloomingdale’s, where her grandmother once successfully lifted a pair of size 6 black patent leather Chanel pumps. Ms. Canaras was recently named Employee of the Month.
    I felt like a fool. He came into the store two weeks later. He was meeting her at the bridal registry. He couldn’t have picked another store? He stood a bit too close to me while he spoke. As if he had a right to. The small talk was running out and I was beginning to feel vulnerable. I excused myself, saying I had to go back to work.
    As I walked away he grabbed my arm. “Maybe we can go to one of the dressing rooms and say a real goodbye,” he said, totally serious. I couldn’t believe it. I had envied this Ivy League girl that he was marrying—now I just felt bad for her. Even with the satisfaction of knowing that he still wanted me, though, I was hurt, and months later I was still feeling vengeful. Tomás, my friend from the dress department, promised that after they registered we would totally get revenge by changing their china pattern every time someone checked something off so they would end up with mismatched place settings and multiple gravy boats. That seemed like fun and all, but my photo in the pages of the
New York Post
with Jeremy Madison was revenge on steroids! I was good enough for a movie star but not for Flip Roberts. For the rest