One consequence for Cindy having recently broken up with her fiancé, James, was whether to keep the New Year’s Eve dinner reservation at her favorite restaurant. Except now the reservation would be a table for one.
Cindy knew the stigma about New Year’s Eve. That’s when society expected you to celebrate the occasion with either family members, a significant other, or friends. To sit by yourself at a fashionable restaurant on that special night: wouldn’t that make her feel too self-conscious? That people would pity her? Even as you told yourself to have the courage and self-confidence not to care what people thought that maybe she had no friends. A loser that nobody wanted to know.
She had been to this restaurant before with James, and they both liked its food and appreciated the good service. The heck with it, she said. She wouldn’t cancel the reservation. What was the alternative? To sit at home and mope that things hadn’t worked out with the fiancé.
It was actually Cindy’s decision to call it quits with James. He was generally a kind and generous guy. But he and her apparently wanted different things out of life. For instance, she wanted to travel to places like the Greek Islands or Africa. Meanwhile, he was content to play golf with his buddies on weekends and holidays or go down to the garage at home and get his 1957 Ford Thunderbird in tip-top shape to enter a classic car sweepstakes.
When Cindy told him she was calling off the wedding, James said that broke his heart. He’d never get over it. Cindy had a conscience. She felt guilty. But she knew she was doing the right thing for herself. Even as she thought of an old Dean Martin song that went, “everybody loves somebody sometime.”
Before New Year’s Eve, Cindy had been a solo traveler for her job where she had to figure out her dinner plans in a different city. Eating alone during the trip didn’t carry the same weight as during the holidays. Rather than not going hungry since she had no one to eat with, she’d get carryout Chinese and bring it back to the hotel where she was staying. Or she’d eat in a fast-food restaurant where other customers also were eating alone.
She entered the restaurant, and a hostess showed her to a table for one by the corner with a window view of the city’s office towers. She heard “Auld Lang Syne” playing softly overhead. That was supposedly to help you ring in the new year.
Then it happened: Another woman, probably Cindy’s age of about 30, was shown to her table for one across from Cindy’s table. After surveying the menu, the woman made eye contact and raised her champagne glass in a toast to Cindy. Cindy raised her glass back and mouthed the words “Happy Holidays.” It made Cindy feel she wasn’t alone on this New Year’s Eve.