Free Life From Scratch by Melissa Ford Page B

call any minute. I think that’s why people love to check email or go to their mailbox—just because the chance of human connection exists. But what married people forget is the anxiety that creeps into that space, the self-doubt, the frustration as the minutes tick over to that next chunk of the continuum—the five-day-post-telephone-number-exchange window.
    I grab some bags of frozen berries out of the freezer case and toss them into my basket, wondering if it would be too forward to call Gael and invite him over for cake even though this cake may be a complete disaster. I take out my cell phone and the scrap of paper I’ve been carrying around in my pocket in case an emergency occurs where caller ID does not record his phone number, and I am unable to call him back if I have bad reception at the grocery store. (I am also in that window when you plan for any possibility no matter how far-fetched.) I call Arianna instead, which is the safer choice.
    “Any word?” she asks.
    I can hear the sewing machine humming in the background. In addition to her freelance work for the designer, she is a sought-after seamstress, hemming the swingy pants legs of many a New York socialite. Beckett gives his greeting by screeching in the background.
    “Nothing yet. Can I come over tonight with an angel food cake?”
    “You’re baking? Good for you. Why don’t you come over after Beckett goes down, and we can eat it and get fat together. I’ll take you down with me if you’re going to ply me with sugar.”
    “It does have a lot of sugar. An inordinate amount of sugar for something that is supposed to be angelic,” I say, glancing at the shopping list. “If I stay home, I’ll just stare at my cell phone and the clock.”
    “Then come over here. Are you in the zone?”
    Arianna, of course, knows all about the zone. She is the one who labels every increment of time from the moment you hand over your phone number to a period of time two weeks later without a phone call.
    “I am in the zone, and I’m alternating between humming and feeling dizzy.”
    “That’s bad, sweetie,” Arianna tells me, and I know that it’s true.
    This is very very bad.
    A single, divorced woman, not completely over her ex yet, pining after a Spanish photographer.
    This is bad bad bad.
    He calls while I am reading the recipe for the third time, moving my lips as I go through each step. Preparation is the key to success , my high school gym teacher once told us, as if knowing the rules of field hockey would get us anywhere in life. But it’s not terrible advice over-all, especially in baking, where it’s sort of in the same genre of “Measure twice cut once.”
    I stare at the caller ID, heart pounding. Gael Paez. Two days. In zone terms, this is perfection. Any time before the second day and the guy seems too desperate. Rob Zuckerman, for instance, started calling the day after our date. I have been letting his calls go to voice mail for two weeks because I am too chickenshit to pick up the phone and tell him that while he is really nice, I’m just not interested in dating another lawyer-trying-to-make-partner. Perhaps I should come up with a better strategy than avoidance, since five phone calls later he still hasn’t gotten the message.
    I’ve already fallen back into bad dating habits of wanting the kind of man who makes me wait.
    Gael says hello as if he isn’t quite sure whose number he has called, and my heart sinks. “Hello?” I ask back. There is a moment of silence and then Spanish spoken at rapid speed and finally, his voice returns to the line at full volume. “Right as I dialed your number, a friend asked me directions. Hello, Rachel Goldman, how are you?”
    “I’m fine, Gael Paez,” I say, closing my cookbook and sitting down on the stool in my kitchen. We are on a full-name basis. Which can be formal or it can be intimate. I decide that I’d rather have it be intimate. I wonder if Gael still smells like cinnamon and sex.