Free Good In Bed by Jennifer Weiner

ventured. I really wanted to get off the phone. I had three baskets of laundry reposing in the trunk of my car. I wanted to get out of the office, go to the gym, wash my clothes, buy some milk. “Like a pale green, I guess.”
    Sandy sighed. “See, that’s not it,” she said. “It’s really more blue, I think. The girl at the Bridal Barn said the color’s called seafoam, but that’s really more of a green-sounding thing, I think.”
    “We could say blue,” I said. Another sigh from Sandy. “Light blue?” I essayed.
    “See, but it’s not really blue,” she said. “You say blue, and people think, you know, blue like the sky, or navy blue, and it’s not, like, dark or anything…”
    “Pale blue?” I offered, running through my bridal announcement-gleaned gamut of synonyms. “Ice blue? Robin’s egg blue?”
    “I just don’t think any of those are quite right,” Sandy said primly.
    “Hmm,” I said. “Well, if you want to think about it and call me back…”
    Which was when Sandy started to cry. I could hear her sobbing on the other end of the phone as the soap opera droned in the background and the child, who I imagined, had sticky cheeks and possibly a stubbed toe, continued to whine, “Ma!”
    “I want it to be right,” she said between her sobs. “You know, I waited so long for this day… I want everything to be perfect… and I can’t even say what color my dress is”
    “Oh, now,” I said, feeling ridiculously ineffectual. “Oh, listen, it’s not that bad”
    “Maybe you could come here,” she said, still crying. “You’re a reporter, right? Maybe you could look at the dress and say what’s right.”
    I thought of my laundry, my plans for the night.
    “Please?” asked Sandy, in a tiny, pleading voice.
    I sighed. The laundry could wait, I supposed. And now I was curious. Who was this woman, and how did someone who couldn’t spell seafoam find love?
    I asked her for directions, mentally cursed myself for being such a softie, and told her I’d be there in an hour.
    To be perfectly honest, I was expecting a trailer park. Central Pennsylvania has plenty of those. But Sandy lived in an actual house, a small white Cape Cod with black shutters and the proverbial picket fence out front. The backyard boasted a plastic orange SuperSoaker, an abandoned Big Wheel, a new-looking swingset. There was a shiny black truck parked in the driveway, and Sandy stood at the door— thirtyish, tired-looking around her eyes, but with a tremulous species of hope there, too. Her hair was pale blond, fine as spun sugar, and she had the tiny snub nose and wide cornflower-blue eyes of a painted figurine.
    I got out of the car with my notebook in my hand. Sandy smiled through the screen door. I could see two small hands clutching her thigh, a child’s face peeping around her leg, then vanishing behind it.
    The house was cheaply furnished, but neat and clean, with stacks of magazines on the pine-veneer coffee table: Guns & Ammo, Road & Track, Sport & Field. The ampersand collection, I thought to myself. Powder-blue wall-to-wall carpet lined the living room floor; fresh white linoleum— the kind you roll down in a single sheet, with patterns stamped on it to make it look like separate tiles— covered the kitchen. “Do you want a soda? I was just about to have one myself,” she said shyly.
    I didn’t want soda. I wanted to see the dress, come up with an adjective, hit the road, and be good & gone by the time Melrose Place was on. But she seemed desperate, and I was thirsty, so I sat down at her kitchen table under the stitched sampler that read “Bless This Home,” with my notebook at my side.
    Sandy took a gulp of her drink, burped gently against the back of her hand, closed her eyes, and shook her head. “Excuse me, please.”
    “Are you nervous about the wedding?” I asked.
    “Nervous,” she repeated, and laughed a little. “Honey, I’m terri-fied!”
    “Is it…” I wanted to tread carefully