The Perfect Date

For a little while after Ross finished his story, nobody knew quite what to do with him. There are stories that end with laughter because laughter is what they deserve, and there are stories that end with silence because silence is what remains when everyone has understood something they were not supposed to understand. Ross had given them the second kind, though Joey, being Joey, refused to allow the evening to become solemn for very long.

“So,” he said, looking across the fire, “you were drunk in Italy, followed some random guy to a fake party, then spend $20 to find out you were gay.”

Ross shook his head. “I didn’t find out I was gay.”

Joey nodded. “Because you already knew.”

“I’m not gay. I was too drunk,” Ross’s eyes desperately search across the fire, hoping for a lifeline, some reassurance from his friends—you’re not gay, you have a smoking hot wife and kids.

Rachel laughed despite herself. Ross looked at her, and for a moment there was something almost grateful in his expression. She was still watching him differently, however. She had known some version of the story before, but never all of it. Perhaps she had always suspected that Ross’s obsession with control was less a personality trait than a defense against the terrifying knowledge that there were things in this world a person could not control, no matter how much money he made, how carefully he dressed, how much he exercised, or how many times he told himself that everything was fine.

Monica was watching him too. Then she looked down at her glass. “I have a story.”

Everyone turned toward her.

Monica smiled faintly. “It doesn’t involve Italy.”

Joey leaned back. “Disappointing.”

“It involves a man.”

“That helps.”

Chandler smiled. He did not yet know what story she was going to tell. He should have.

There are some stories married people know so well that they forget they are stories. They become family mythology, repeated at dinners and anniversaries and drunken evenings with friends, polished by repetition until the embarrassing details have become funny and the painful ones have been softened by time. Chandler had heard this story before, though never exactly like this. He remembered pieces of it. The old Honda. The mountains. The lost road. The hotel. He remembered the night itself better than Monica remembered the story, because he had not been the one trying to make the night perfect.

Monica had been.

She had been that kind of young woman who believed that a successful evening was something that could be engineered if you were sufficiently prepared. Even then, before the marriage and children and the years of becoming the person everyone depended upon, she had possessed the same instinct that still lived inside her: if she knew what was coming, she could handle it. If she made the plan, she could prevent the disappointment. If everything had been thought through in advance, then nothing could surprise her.

This was particularly true when she was trying to impress somebody. And she was trying very hard to impress him.

He was blonde.

That was the first problem.

Not ordinary blonde, either. Not the sort of blonde a man acquires from being outdoors a lot or from having a mother who used too much shampoo on him as a child. He was the kind of blonde that seemed to have been assigned to him by an unfair genetic committee. His hair was thick and light, his eyes were clear, and his arms looked sculpted. He had the sort of six-pack that suggested he had either been born with it or had never once been invited to a restaurant.

Monica thought he was gorgeous. Worse, she thought he was out of her league. This made her nervous. Nervous Monica became organized Monica. Organized Monica became terrifying.

She planned their second date with the concentration of a military campaign.

They would go hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park. Then they would drive to Estes Park and have dinner at a nice restaurant. She had a coupon for the restaurant, which was not merely useful but essential because Monica was living on room and board and had almost no money. After dinner they would drive to a little campground one of her friends had told her about. It was hidden somewhere in the mountains. There were no reservations. No fees. No crowds.

Free.

Monica loved free.

Free was the most romantic word in the English language when you were broke.

She had mapped everything out. She knew the trail. She knew where they would park. She knew how long the hike should take. She had researched the restaurant. She knew what she could order with the coupon without making it obvious that she was using a coupon. This was an art. A person could be frugal without appearing cheap, but only if the frugality had been disguised as sophistication.

She had even calculated how much gas the old Honda would use.

The Honda was twenty years old.

At least.

It had long since stopped being a car and become a relationship between a woman and a machine that had decided, for reasons of its own, not to die.

The date began perfectly.

The weather was beautiful. The mountains were enormous and sky was baby blue. The trail wound through the trees and climbed steadily upward. They talked about everything and nothing. Monica discovered that he was funny. He discovered that she was funny. They laughed. They stopped to look at the scenery. Somewhere along the trail, when neither of them was expecting it, he kissed her.

She kissed him back.

That was not in the plan. It was better than the plan.

Later, after dinner, they kissed again.

The coupon worked. The food was good. He did not seem to notice that Monica had spent half the evening calculating the price of everything.

For the first time that day, she began to believe she had actually done it. She had managed to construct the perfect date. The kind of date that would make a man remember you.

Then they got into the Honda. And civilization disappeared. At first this was not alarming. Monica had directions. Of course she had directions.

The campground was supposed to be down a particular road, past a particular landmark, and then somewhere beyond that, hidden from the main road. The trouble was that the landmark was not where it was supposed to be. Or perhaps they were on the wrong road. Or perhaps her friend had given her the wrong directions. Or perhaps the campground had never existed in the first place.

They drove. They turned. They drove some more. Monica consulted the map. Then she consulted it again. She looked at the road. She looked at the map.

The road continued to be the road. The map continued to be the map.

They drove for another hour. Then another. The sun has long since disappeared. High beams on. The mountains became dark shapes around them.

The romantic little evening that Monica had planned so carefully began to feel like a hostage situation involving an elderly Honda.

She became quiet.

Chandler noticed. “You okay?”

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. She did not.

Another twenty minutes passed. Monica finally pulled the car to the side of the road.

“I can’t believe this.”

Chandler looked at her. “What?”

“I had everything planned.”

“I know.”

She looked at him. “You know?”

“You’ve told me.”

“I wanted it to be perfect.”

He smiled. “It is.”

She stared at him. “We’ve been driving around for two hours.”

“It’s been a nice drive.”

“We don’t know where we are.”

“I know where we are.”

“Where?”

He looked through the windshield “Somewhere in Colorado.”

She laughed despite herself, but the laugh broke apart almost immediately. “I am so embarrassed.”

That changed his expression. He reached over and gestured at the unfolded chaos in her lap. “Okay.”

“What?”

“Give me the map.”

She handed it to him. He studied it. Then he looked out at the road. “We’re going back to the highway.”

“How do you know?”

“I don’t.”

She stared at him.

“But we’re going to.”

He started giving her directions. For the first time all evening, Monica stopped being responsible for what happened next. She drove. He navigated. They made their way back toward the highway, and eventually they found themselves heading toward Boulder.

By then Monica was exhausted.

She was angry with herself. Angry at the map. Angry at her friend. Angry at the nonexistent campground. Angry at the Honda. Angry at the fact that the man sitting beside her was being so calm about everything when she had spent the entire day trying to make him think she was calm.

Then they saw a hotel.

Chandler pointed. “Let’s stop there.”

Monica shook her head. “We can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have the money.”

“I do,” he shrugged. “Not a lot but enough for one night.”

She looked at him. “No.”

“Monica.”

“No. I planned this.”

He smiled. “I noticed.”

She looked away. The tears came then. She hated that.

She hated crying in front of people. She hated losing control. She hated needing help.

“I am so sorry,” she whispered.

Chandler looked at her. “For what?”

“I wanted tonight to be perfect.”

He reached over and gently wiped the tear from her cheek.

“It was.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t.”

“It was to me.”

She looked at him.

There are moments when a person can change the entire direction of another person’s life without knowing that they are doing it. Chandler did not know what he was giving her that night. He thought he was simply helping a woman he liked get a hotel room because she had gotten lost in the mountains.

But Monica remembered something else. She remembered that he had seen her fail. He had seen her frustrated and embarrassed and angry and frightened that she had ruined everything.

And he had stayed.

He had not laughed. He had not made her feel foolish. He had not told her she should have planned better. He had simply taken the map.

He kissed the tear from her cheek. Then he kissed her.

Around the fire, Monica stopped.

The silence that followed was different from the one after Ross’s story. This one was warm.

Phoebe was smiling. Rachel was smiling too.

Joey looked at Chandler. Then at Monica.

Then he suddenly grinned. “Oh.”

Monica looked at him.

“What?”

“I know this story.”

Phoebe laughed.

Chandler’s face began turning red.

Joey pointed at him. “That was you.”

Chandler nodded. “Yeah.”

Joey looked delighted.

“Mr. Six-Pack.”

Chandler laughed. “Please don’t.”

“No, no. I need to hear this part.”

Monica groaned.

Phoebe leaned forward. “I know what happened at the hotel.”

Monica immediately pointed at her. “Don’t.”

Phoebe grinned, “You had to repay him for that hotel somehow. I know you put out.”

Monica held up three fingers, “Three times that night.”

The group erupted.

Monica’s face went scarlet. Chandler covered his face with one hand.

Joey stared at the three fingers, then at Chandler. “Three?”

Chandler laughed.

“Stop.”

Joey shook his head approvingly. “I’m impressed.”

Monica lowered her hand and looked at her husband.

“It was early,” she said. Chandler looked at her.“I knew that night.”

The laughter faded.

Monica reached for his hand. He took it.

“I knew we had a future,” she continued. “Not because the date went perfectly. It didn’t. It was a disaster. I spent two hours driving in circles because I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know where I was. I was crying in an ancient Honda with a man I thought was completely out of my league.”

Chandler squeezed her hand.

“And you didn’t run.”

“No.”

“You could have.”

“I wanted hotel room sex.”

Everyone laughed.

Monica smiled. “You know what I mean.”

Chandler did.

They both looked at one another. For a moment, the years between that night and this one seemed to disappear.

They were young again. He was blonde. She was anxious. The Honda was dying. The campground was nowhere. The mountains were dark. And neither of them knew that the stranger sitting beside them in the car would eventually become the person with whom they would share a house, children, arguments, bills, vacations, sickness, boredom, laughter, and all the thousand ordinary things that eventually become a life.

Monica looked down at their joined hands.

“He handled me at my worst,” she said softly. “Two hours in a car driving in circles, and I was losing my mind. I thought I had ruined the whole night. I thought I had ruined his opinion of me. And he just took over.”

Chandler smiled. “I had a map.”

“You had a map.”

“I was very attractive.”

“You were.”

“Still am.”

Monica laughed. “Debatable.”

The others laughed with them. But something had shifted around the fire. They had begun the night telling stories about mistakes, disappointments, humiliations, and things that had not gone according to plan.

Chandler had wanted a woman who would choose him.

Ross had believed he could charm his way out of a situation he could not control.

Monica had planned an entire romantic evening down to the last dollar and then lost the road.

And yet, somehow, the things that had gone wrong had mattered more than the things that had gone right.

The lost campground had brought Monica to her breaking point. Chandler help keep her together. The man she had thought was out of her league had turned out to be the man who could sit beside her when she was at her most embarrassed and make her feel beautiful anyway.

The fire burned lower.

Monica leaned against Chandler. He put his arm around her. For a moment, neither of them looked at the others. They were looking at each other. Trying to remember.

Not the hotel. Not the three times. Not even the first kiss.

They were trying to remember what it had felt like before they knew how the story ended.

Before they knew they would marry. Before children. Before bills and exhaustion and routines. Before love became something so familiar that they sometimes mistook familiarity for the absence of love.

They looked at each other across all those years.

And somewhere inside both of them, faint but unmistakable, something stirred. Not the old love. Something better. The memory of choosing. The memory of being chosen.

And the sudden realization that perhaps the spark they had spent so many years trying to find again had never disappeared at all.

Perhaps they had simply stopped looking at each other long enough to see it.