ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For Lorraine Goldstein, the bookworm

The Singles

Table of Contents

Hannah

Vicki

Rob

Nancy Phil

Joe

Hannah

Joe

Phil

Rob

Hannah

Phil

Rob

Vicki

Hannah

Joe

Vicki

Phil

Vicki

Joe

Phil

Vicki

Joe

Rob

Joe

Rob

Hannah

Phil

Hannah

Acknowledgments

Twenty-nine-year-old bride-to-be Beth Eleanor Evans, a slender, freckled, strawberry blonde whom people called Bee because of her initials, stood in front of the whiteboard she’d purchased that day at the Target off Route 103.

The board was the type of accessory one might find in a university lecture hall or on the wall of an executive meeting room at the Hampton Inn. But at her parents’ house on this steamy late-September Thursday in historic Ellicott City, Maryland, Bee used the dry-erase board to put the finishing touches on the plans for her wedding, the most expensive celebration the Tower Gardens Country Club would host this fall.

Bee had spent more than an hour decorating the board’s surface with an array of circles, squares, names, and numbers. The result of her work looked like a football play or a math equation left for Matt Damon’s character in Good Will Hunting. But the design represented a seating chart, Bee’s last remaining task before her extended family would arrive for her wedding, which was now less than forty-eight hours away.

Bee tucked a loose curl behind her right ear and leaned forward anxiously. The board showed thirty circles, each containing a number. Extending from each circle like spokes on a wheel were blue lines that held the names of coupled guests.

“Cousin Wesley and wife Katie,” said one blue spoke. “Mr. Barocas from Dad’s work with wife, Yvonne,” read another. “Jimmy Fee and date.” “Mr. and Mrs. Rodman (neighbors).” “Ed and Elaine Ryan (accountants).” “Dr. Weihong Zheng and husband (pediatrician).”

In the top right-hand corner of the board was a list of names written in bright red ink and all-capital letters: “HANNAH MARTIN, ROB NUTLEY, NANCY MACGOWAN, VICKI CLIFFORD, JOE EVANS.”

Above the names, in the same crimson print, Bee had written the word “SINGLES.”

They were the only guests to RSVP for Bee’s nuptials without using their plus-one invites, and now they were the only names Bee hadn’t yet placed on her seating chart.

It would have been acceptable in a recession for Bee to invite singles to the wedding alone, but Bee wanted every guest to have the option of bringing a companion. Still the singles had chosen to come alone, and Bee just couldn’t understand it.

When she was single, Bee resented brides who didn’t give her a plus-one invite simply because she didn’t have a serious boyfriend. Bee vowed that when she got married, she’d send plus-ones to everyone. No one would have to be alone.

Almost everyone on the invite list had taken Bee up on her offer. Except for the singles, who, in Bee’s opinion, were adrift not only on her dry-erase board but also in life.