by Lisa Ferrari
Bye-bye four-book deal and ebook rights.
Bye-bye to seeing my books in Walmart and Target.
Bye-bye New York Times bestseller list.
Bye-bye to Oprah’s Book Club.
Kellan reads the three texts over my shoulder. “Oh… Interesting. Looks like Stacy has competition.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means Stacy is trying to get into my pants and Hamburger Wellington is trying to get into yours.”
“He’s not gonna.”
“Neither is she.”
“You promise?”
“I promise. You promise, too? You’re not going to let Mister Big Shot New York Agent Douchebag Extraordinaire sweep you off your feet and onto his tiny little dick?”
“I promise.”
Kellan and I hold one another for a nice, long moment.
“How do you know he has a tiny dick?” I ask.
“I don’t. It was just a cheap shot.”
It didn’t feel tiny when Nathan was ramming it against my butt crack at Upskirt. But I don’t tell Kellan that.
“So, listen,” Kellan says as he steps away from me. I hear Trainer Kellan in his voice. “Why didn’t you train while you were in New York?” He sounds pissed again and I immediately feel attacked and defensive.
“I didn’t have time. Okay? The stupid plane was delayed because of bad weather and people were throwing up and we had to sit on the ramp for forever and the whole plane smelled like puke and by the time they let us off I had to go straight to the meeting, and we talked for a long time and when I got back to my room, I had barely sat down to pee when you and I spoke and I saw Stacy was with you. Which really sucked. So when Nate offered to show me the sights, I said yes. And then I spent the rest of the night skyping with you. And then he offered to buy me breakfast in the morning so I said yes again. Sorry I didn’t tell him to piss off so I could do a million burpees in my hotel room. Sorry if I was excited to be in New York talking to a real agent about my shitty little writing career actually amounting to something. Besides, when we Skyped and you were in the car with She Who Shall Not Be Named, I said ‘I Love You’ and you interrupted me and hung up on me.”
Kellan takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I did?”
“Yes. You did. I felt really bad. Especially after you made such a big deal about it when you said it to me at the Del Coronado and I didn’t say it back and you explained how much it hurt your feelings.”
“I see. I’m sorry. But, honestly, I didn’t hear you. The connection was bad, there was a horrible echo, we had the windows down and the radio was on and Stacy was jabbering a million miles an hour…. I’m sorry. I would never, ever, ever do that intentionally.”
“But you did.”
“Why didn’t you train in Manhattan?”
“I told you! My flight was delayed and I was with Nate the whole time and Skyping with you. There was no time for training.”
Kellan leans back against the refrigerator and folds his arms across his chest.
I lean back against the stove and fold my arms across my chest.
We stare at one another in silence.
Kellan eventually walks out of the kitchen, into the bedroom, and closes the door.
I BAIL. I get the fuck out of there.
I grab my laptop and my purse and my phone and I leave. My work clothes are still in the washing machine. My gym clothes are in the closet. But I don’t care.
When I get outside, I open the door to my shitty, filthy little Toyota with the yellow, discolored headlights.
I drive out of Los Gatos, never to return.
Fuck all of them. Fuck Kellan, fuck Nathan, fuck Stacy, fuck the movie, fuck everyone.
I UNLOCK THE door to my apartment and stumble inside, slamming the door behind me with my foot and trying not to drop the plastic bags full of groceries that are digging into my fingers.
I guess if I’d been working out as Kellan has instructed, the calluses on my hands might be thicker and the plastic wouldn’t hurt so much.
I dump the ice cream and pizza and chips and cookies and everything else all over the kitchen counter and start eating.
I remove the baking sheet from the oven and slam the door as I set it to preheat.
While I wait for the DiGiorno pizza, I open the tortilla chips and the jar of salsa. My stupid fat fingers won’t fit into the mouth of the stupid jar, so I dump the salsa in a bowl, spilling a bunch of it on the countertop.
“Fuck!”
I scoop the salsa off the counter with chips, eating each one, one at a time.
The salty chips make me thirsty and the salsa is burning my mouth so I open the top on the half-gallon carton of Chocolate Silk soymilk and chug it straight from the carton.
I belch loudly. It feels good.
I put the pizza in the oven and sit on the sofa watching TV and eating more chips and salsa while it cooks.
An agonizing fifteen minutes later, I’m shoving it into my mouth, burning myself on the hot cheese and sauce.
I eat the entire pizza easily.
I should be a competitive eater. I don’t know if Kobayashi or Joey Chestnut compete against girls, but a fat cow like me could make those guys my bitches.
After the pizza, I tear into the Oreos, dipping them in a glass of chocolate soymilk.
The Kardashians are on TV. But I don’t change the channel. Kim seems nice and what I saw at the Del Coronado seemed innocent, but I can’t help but wonder if Kellan filled her full of come and told her he loved her, the way he did me.
I go to the kitchen and grab a bowl. I crush Oreo after Oreo in my bare hands. I’m shaking and on the verge of raging tears. I spoon the entire pint of Chunky Monkey onto the crushed Oreos and go back to the sofa with spoon and bowl in hand.
I eat the whole damn thing.
Kim puts gas in her shiny black SUV three times.
Sometime around midnight, I run out of food. I ate both the Lean Cuisines. The ravioli one was better than the chicken and rice one, which reminded me of those stupid cold ready-meals I ate on the plane to New York. The entire bag of tortilla chips is gone. There’s still salsa but what am I going to do with half a jar of salsa? Drink it?
I turn on Conan O’Brien. But his name reminds me of Conan the Barbarian and that reminds me of Kellan and that pisses me off and makes me want to cry. So I switch to something else, channel surfing through more than a hundred channels of crap I’m paying for but never watch.
When I get to HBO, I realize it’s Sunday and Game of Thrones was on and I missed it. I didn’t DVR it, either.
I’m now at an all-time low.
I STUMBLE TO the kitchen on the verge of tears the way a cranky five-year-old would. I open the fridge and grab the one last item I bought tonight…
Cookie dough.
Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip cookie dough. And not those little squares on the white cardboard tray. And not the log of cookie dough I usually buy.
I have the big plastic tub. The big one.
I had planned to save it, knowing I would need comfort food either in the middle of the night or perhaps in the morning or maybe tomorrow afternoon and most assuredly tomorrow night when I’m sitting here doing nothing when I would normally be at Kellan’s sucking his dick and having him make sweet, wild love to me in his Jacuzzi as he tells me over and over and over again that he loves me.
Oh well.
I grab a spoon and return to the sofa. I eat the cookie dough like a starving dog, eating spoon after spoon, forcing more and more of the sweet, doughy, grainy goodness into my mouth.
I resign myself to the fact that food is the only thing I’m going to be wrapping my lips around from now on. It’s no wonder Tommy Warcraft pushed his cock so far down my throat that I puked on him. I’m sure I was so unbelievably bad at blowing him that eventually he became frustrated because he couldn’t climax through my inept attempts at oral intimacy. I would’ve done the same.
By the time I�
��m scraping the spoon against the bottom of the white plastic tub, I have it all over my mouth and my clothes. My fingers are covered in greasy cookie dough.
I lick them clean as I peruse the label. It looks like about 2500 calories for the whole tub. Good. Plenty of riboflavin, too. It says Do not consume raw. Too late.
I think HBO airs Game of Thrones again on Monday night. I resolve to sleep until then.
I get up and go to bed. I do a piss-poor job of washing my hands and face and of brushing my teeth. My toothbrush bristles turn brown from all the chocolate.
I go to bed.
Alone.
In the dark.
By myself.
IT’S QUIET.
A dog barks somewhere outside.
A loud car drives past my building. Girls get out, laughing and talking loudly and making a bunch of noise, disturbing all the sleeping residents such as myself. Bitches.
I secretly hope Kellan texts or calls or Skypes me so we can make up and have cybersex again. Something. Anything.
But he doesn’t.
All I hear are the clickity-clicks of the noisy girls outside making their way from their car to their apartment in their pointy heels, probably returning home after a night out dancing and flirting and getting lots and lots of digits.
My stomach hurts. I contemplate vomiting. How many times do you have to binge and purge before you’re officially bulimic? How many times can you do it before your stomach acid messes up your esophagus and teeth?
My phone pings.
Oh God.
Please let it be Kellan please let it be Kellan please let it be Kellan please let it be Kellan…
It’s Kellan.
Just got off the phone
with Aaron.
They want you and me
to come to L.A.
tomorrow morning
for a meeting.
I’ll pick you up
at 4:00 a.m.
SHARP.
PS Why did you
LEAVE?????
Holy canary crap.
And then some.
I don’t know what to think, what to feel.
Yay because Kellan texted me but holy cockadoodledoo because we have to go to L.A. in, like, three hours. And what did he expect me to do after he abandoned me in the kitchen and slammed the bedroom door in my face?
Okay, so he closed the bedroom door softly. But he still left me standing there like an idiot in the middle of an unresolved discussion pertaining to our future together.
I can’t decide what to do. Call him? Text him? Skype him? None of the above?
I opt for a text, since that’s what he chose to use to contact me.
That’s in 3 hours.
Good, Claire. Way to address the issue at hand.
I know. Meeting at 10.
Minus an hour drive from LAX = 9:00
Minus 1 hour flight = 8:00
Minus 2-3 hours for security = 5-6
Minus an hour to pick you up = 4:00
OK?
I don’t know what to say.
I stare at the ceiling.
Someone is pounding on my front door. Kinda loud for one o’clock in the morning. I roll out of bed like a hippo and look through the peep hole.
It’s Kellan.
WTF?
I open the door.
Kellan looks amazing. As effing always. He’s wearing torn white jeans and black three-quarter boots, a blue-and-white pinstriped button-down shirt, and a black blazer. His clothes look expensive. He looks like a million bucks.
“I thought you said four,” I blurt, sounding bitchier than I intended.
“It is four.”
“No it isn’t. It’s one. You just texted me.”
“No, that was three hours ago. Did you fall asleep?”
“No.” We both know I did.
“Can I come in?”
I step aside and he enters. He scans the room, the kitchen, both of which are littered with the aftermath of the self-indulgent culinary face fuck I gave myself earlier.
“Gee whiz, Claire. Is this how a Navy SEAL behaves?”
“I’m not a Navy SEAL.”
“You certainly seemed like one down on the beach in San Diego. Get your bag, let’s go. We don’t want to be late.”
“I’m not packed.”
“What?”
“I’m not going.”
“What?”
“I’m not going. Fuck them and their stupid movie and their stupid six-hundred million dollars and fuck Stacy and her giant fake tits and cheap imitation pearl necklace and just fuck it all. I have a book contract now. I don’t need any of that shit.”
“Including me?”
I have no answer.
Kellan sighs. “Don’t make me bust out the Nietzsche quote from Regarding Henry about he who is silent is understood to consent. Look, you’re not thinking clearly, okay? You’ve been off your meal plan and your exercise regimen for almost a week. We had an unresolved argument earlier. And you’ve clearly had an epic fourteen-thousand-calorie bender here tonight. All that junk food and lack of exercise have left you endorphin starved, depressed, and confused. But most of all, you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
“Of course you are. You’d be stupid and probably dead or comatose if you weren’t. I’m scared. That fear is making you angry. The trick is to harness it and channel it for growth, not for retreat.
“Look, I’m sorry I haven’t been more attentive. I’m sorry we argued earlier. You’re doing your best, you’ve been busy and overwhelmed too, the same as me.
“I’m sorry.
“I should’ve realized that this is a bit more difficult and more terrifying for you. Both of us going out of town and getting out of sync didn’t help. Clearly I should have canceled my business trip and stayed with you and gone to Manhattan to meet Mister Beef Wellington so we could’ve stayed on target.
“But, look, you told me you wanted this movie role more than anything in the world. I feel the same way. You can do the movie and do the publishing deal at the same time, assuming Nathan actually steps up and offers you a contract and not just his penis wedged into a first-edition print of Moby Dick. I’m pretty sure the White Whale is not his tiny little wiener. Now, before you get indignant about that, we need to be realistic about him. We’ll continue to be optimistic about you getting a book deal. But in the meantime, the safe thing to do is to behave as though it’s not going to happen. That means going full-speed ahead for the movie.
“So, here’s what we’re going to do. You are going to go take a two-minute shower, you are going to get dressed up, and we are going to fly to L.A. and have this meeting.”
“Don’t tell me what to do. Maybe my mom and sister and Denise were right about you always bossing me around and trying to control me and make me into something I’m not. I’m a writer. I was born to write. And it’s not wise to try to change what the good Lord hath wrought.”
“That sounds like something your mom said. And while I tend to agree, I also believe that the good Lord wants us to be happy and to prosper and to enjoy all the things this beautiful planet has to offer. So get your sexy little butt in the shower and wake yourself up so we can go to L.A., talk to Aaron and Rami and Sheila and Heather to find out how we can salvage our places in this project so we can make lots of money and increase our exposure so we can increase our ability to enjoy all those things the Lord hath wrought. Think about how many orphans we can take to the race track once we get real A-list-level exposure for our charity. And you know, I was thinking, we had such a good time at Disneyland, what if we added that to the places the kids can visit? Riding in cars at the race track is great, but a whole day of getting to run wild around Disneyland would be epic.”
“And how much money are you going to make off this movie if you get the part?”
“I have no idea. But I’m willing to work for scale if it helps me get the part.”
“What is scale and why would
it help you get the part?”
“Scale is the minimum wage for actors on a union-based film production. Last I heard it was something like eight-hundred bucks a day.”
“Eight-hundred a day? I don’t make that in a week.”
“It’s not bad but it’s not like making twenty million per picture like Will Smith or Will Ferrell or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Julia Roberts or Demi Moore. We can talk about this on the plane. Come on, let’s go.”
Kellan begins to physically guide me into the bedroom and toward the bathroom.
I stop and refuse to go any further. “You haven’t even kissed me or said hello since you got here!”
“Oh, shoot. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
Kellan takes me in his arms and kisses me. It’s a wonder he can still get his arms around me after all that food I inhaled earlier.
“Hello.” He smiles.
He places his forehead against mine, closes his eyes, and exhales a loud, contented sigh.
Suddenly, I melt. All my stubborn resolve dissipates. I feel stupid. I see that Kellan is right. I should go back to ignoring my family and their snide remarks about my love life and my career. I should fight for the role and write my books at the same time. Assuming Nathan does in fact come through with a contract.
And Kellan has a point; Nathan does seem flirty, and I don’t have a contract in my hands yet.
Kellan is really all I’ve got.
I grab him, hard, and crush my body against his. “I miss you.”
“You just saw me less than eight hours ago.”
“I know. But we’ve been disconnected since last week.”
“You want to have a quickie right here on the bed?”
The thought of Kellan seeing me naked after I ate all that food is a frightening one. But I’d still like to do it. “Or maybe in the airplane bathroom?”
“That would be fun, but I can barely fit in there. There’s no way we can both get in there together.”
“Well, can we drive down to San Diego and stay at the Del Coronado, like we did last time? I need…”
I don’t know how to finish my sentence. I need sex. I need love. I need closeness. I need to laugh. I need to relax. I need him.
“I would love to,” Kellan replies, “but I can’t. I have a photoshoot tomorrow in San Francisco, so we have to fly home later today after the meeting.”
