“What? This old thing?” I say playfully, pointing to my lacy lingerie and pretending to talk to Jason. “I had it made especially for our honeymoon. Only had to diet for six weeks to get it to fit. Thanks for noticing.”
“Daddy?” Malika says, walking in through our (what I thought was locked) connecting door.
“Ah!” I scream, immediately putting down my champagne flute and throwing the curtain around my barely there lingerie.
Malika turns to me. “I had a nightmare. Can I sleep with you guys?”
I look over at Jason. He is snoring so loudly, he sounds like he just oinked. There will be no joy in Mudville tonight.
“Knock yourself out,” I tell her.
Malika’s face lights up. “Yay!” she yells, as she runs to our bed and leaps onto it. “You’re the best bonus mom ever.”
“And you’re the best bonus kid,” I tell her from behind the curtain. “Now could you do me a solid and go get me one of the hotel robes from the bathroom?”
Twenty-nine
Melissa
An hour later, Jim and I are in the middle of dinner at one of the city’s premier steakhouses, and the conversation is flowing even easier than the bottle of Opus One cabernet Jim has chosen for us. I’ve learned that Jim helps run the studio his father owns, in that he handles all of the money. He plays hockey—as in ice hockey—on Saturdays in a league, loves to travel, and has a wonderful sense of humor.
If I’m not in love, at the very least, I’m in heat.
“So, where do you see yourself in five years?” Jim asks me, as he tops off my wineglass.
“Wow. I’ll take ‘conversation killers’ for a thousand, Alex,” I say.
“Why?” Jim asks, taking a sip of his wine. “I can tell you where I see myself in five years.”
“You’re a good-looking man with a ton of money,” I point out. “You can see yourself wherever you want in five years.”
“I don’t have a ton of money,” Jim corrects me. “My parents have a ton of money.”
“Now see, that’s something only rich people say. Although I do appreciate it. My ex-boyfriend used to brag about his money all the time. It was so…” I search for the perfect word. “… degrading.”
Jim tilts his head to the side. “Degrading? How so?”
“Well, for example, where he lived. He used to tell people he owned a house in Brentwood. In reality, it’s a very nice condo south of Wilshire. But that’s not Brentwood, and it’s not a house. Or he used to name-drop the kind of car he had, but he’d say it was a 2010, when it was a 2008. Little things like that.”
“Okay, so he wasn’t trustworthy,” Jim says, taking a small french fry from his plate. “But why is that degrading?”
“Because it means that whatever he had was never enough. Therefore, I was never enough.”
Jim reaches over and takes my hand. “I think you’re enough.”
I smile and squeeze his hand.
“Well, isn’t this rich?!” I hear a woman snarl next to me. I turn to see a voluptuous dark-haired beauty with a body and an attitude that could make Eva Mendes feel like a skinny fifteen-year-old wallflower.
“Sarah!” Jim stammers, immediately pulling away from me and standing up. “What are you doing here?”
“Having drinks with friends,” Sarah hisses. “We’ve only been broken up for two weeks. How could you be dating already?”
“Dating? Sweetie, this is Mel. I just met her tonight.”
Waiter, check please.
“Is that true?” Sarah barks at me.
“Huh?” I say, surprised she’d address me directly. My experience with this kind of situation is that the slut who’s trying to break up the relationship (Shit! This time, I’m the slut, aren’t I?) doesn’t ever actually speak to the girlfriend. “What?” I say. Then I trip all over my words. “No. I mean, yes. What? You thought I was with him?! Lord no. He’s soooo not my type.”
Sarah eyes me suspiciously.
So I finish my word jumble with, “I’m gay.”
“Wait a minute!” Jim says to Sarah, suddenly growing a backbone. “Why does it matter anyway? I thought you never wanted to see me again.”
“I never said that,” Sarah tells him quickly. “I just said I didn’t want to marry you.”
Jim throws his cloth napkin down on the table in frustration. “You know what? When someone you’ve been dating for four years says they don’t want to marry you, what they really mean is they never want to see you again.”
“You want to get married that much?” Sarah says angrily. “Okay, FINE, I’ll marry you.”
And the backbone turns to jelly. Jim suddenly gets all weird and doormattish. “You will?”
“Even though I’m not ready to get married!” Sarah practically spits out at him. “Even though I’m only doing it to keep you from dating some slut who only wants you for your money.”
“Thank you,” Jim says to her. He pulls Sarah into a hug, then turns her back to me so that he can silently mouth over her shoulder, “I’m sorry about that.” Then he starts shaking his head madly as he mouths, “Nobody thinks that.”
Sarah pulls away from the hug, grabs his hand, and angrily says, “Let’s go plan this fucking wedding.”
“Yes, dear.”
“I want it in Hawaii and I want it in June.”
“Anything you want.”
“And we’re getting a surrogate,” Sarah tells him. “There’s no way I’m destroying this body just because your father wants an heir.”
And they’re out of the room, leaving me to sit at the table by myself. I stare at my half-eaten rib eye, and avoid eye contact with any of the restaurant’s horrified patrons.
Plus I get to pick up the check. Great. I wave to a seventy-something couple at a table near me, then take a big gulp of wine.
Yup. I love it when a plan comes together.
Jim comes racing back in. “Mel, it was so nice meeting you. Here’s my card. Please come to the wedding. Check’s taken care of.”
And he races out the door just as quickly as he came in.
I look at his business card. On the plus side, maybe he knows some single man …
Oh, fuck it. I rip up the card, finish my steak, and go home.
Thirty
Seema
Right after Britney left a few hours ago, I opened with the most failed attempt at nonchalance. “So that was quite a kiss. Did your heart charm come true?”
Scott smiled downright bashfully and said, “Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Wow,” I said, pretending to be happy for him. “I had no idea it had gotten so serious so quickly. How come you haven’t been talking about her more?”
Scott took a bite of tempura shrimp and told me, “Don’t do that. I don’t want to jinx it. If I talk to you too much, you’ll jump ahead and assume we’re getting married, and for right now I’m having a lot of fun just…” he takes a sip of beer, “discovering her.”
“I don’t always jump ahead in your relationship,” I say a bit defensively.
“Sure you do. And I’m glad you’re always so optimistic that everything will work out. But it makes me all … I don’t know, weird. Men don’t go on dates thinking it’s going to lead to marriage. We go on dates hoping it leads to bed. When you start acting like this is the one, it makes me have to think long and hard—is this the one? And this girl might be the one, but I don’t want to put any pressure on anything. It’s like, you don’t decide to have a baby thinking ahead to the day he moves out to college. You shouldn’t start a relationship just to see if there’s a wedding involved.”
I could feel my shoulders tensing up. “Hmm.”
“Hmm,” Scott repeated, amused. “That’s a very judgmental ‘Hmm.’ ”
“No, it’s not,” I insisted, quickly taking offense. “In fact, I would say you’re the one being judgmental. I don’t always jump ahead.”
“Sweetheart, you treat every date like it’s an international summit,” Sco
tt said only half jokingly. But before I had time to take offense he put his hand over his heart and said, “I love you, and it’s all good. But let’s face it—if you have sex with a guy, he better be committed. He better be onboard, he better not look at other women, he better have his shit together. You’re like ninety-nine percent of the women out there. I love being with the one percent who’s not seeing a future me, she’s just seeing me.”
At the time, Scott rendered me speechless. I kept trying to have a sentence come out of my mouth, but depending on the moment, I was either angry, hurt, or confused. Finally, I said, “I don’t think wanting a commitment from someone before sex is a bad thing.”
“It’s not a bad thing at all. But it’s not always a good thing,” Scott answered at the time. “For example, you’re amazing, and you deserve an amazing guy. But he better be on point—no screwups. You’re not the kind of girl who allows a guy to have a little fun now and figure things out later.”
I didn’t know what to make of anything Scott said at the time, and I still don’t hours later. He called me amazing, and he basically said I’m not a slut who jumps into bed with a guy on the off chance he’ll have enough fun to stick around. Neither of these things were insults, yet somehow the way Scott said them made them sound like insults.
“You know what? You’re right,” I conceded, taking a bite of tuna sushi. “If a guy doesn’t know for sure he wants me, I can’t be wasting my time.”
“Exactly,” Scott agreed. “And that totally works for you. But for me, it’s been nice to have a woman around who I’m not worried is going to think I’m screwing up. Who pursues me once in a while. Who’s in my field and gets what I do for a living, gets my passions. Who shows up at two in the morning, drunk, horny, and happy to see me. I love that. It’s really working for me. And, you may very well be right, this is the one. But I don’t want to think about it yet.”
I smiled, took another bite of tempura, and said, “Fair enough.”
I decided to drop the subject of Britney, mostly because where else were we going to go with it? He’s happy with her. She’s everything I’m not.
So, we ate Japanese food, I drank wine while he drank beer, and then we worked on Chode as well as another installation, Anticipation, which is a collection of children’s toys dating back to the 1950s set among Christmas decorations from various decades.
Finally, around midnight, once we were emotionally spent from re-creating his work and a little tipsy from his booze, we settled in on Scott’s bright red couch to watch a Blu-ray of When Harry Met Sally.
Normally, Scott hates it when I talk during a movie, and he always wants to see the whole thing before either of us says anything. But I have told him in advance that I want to hear his reaction to various opinions being said by the characters, and he has agreed to oblige me, provided that I oblige him with not talking the next time we watch reruns of the British version of Life on Mars.
Scott throws some microwaved popcorn into a bowl and we take our drinks to the couch and settle in for the night.
I begin grilling him after the scene in the car where Billy Crystal tells Meg Ryan that a man and a woman can never really be friends, because the man still always wants to have sex.
I hit pause, and while I walk over to his kitchen to grab him another beer and get myself some more wine, I ask, “Do you agree with what he said?”
“About what?” Scott asks me.
“That a man and woman can never truly be friends.”
Scott grimaces as he looks at his sixty-five-inch plasma TV. “No, of course they can.”
Rats.
“But when you’re twenty-two, you don’t know that yet,” Scott continues.
Huh. I decide to dig deeper. “So, when you were twenty-two, would you have secretly wanted to sleep with me?”
“Not secretly!” Scott says immediately. “I banged pretty much all of my female friends back in college.” He thinks about his statement for a moment. “Oh. I suppose that proves his point, doesn’t it?”
I am in love with a man who uses the term “bang” to refer to sex. Perfect. When exactly did my life veer so off course?
“Hey, is there any wine left?” Scott asks me. “I think I want to switch.”
“I just killed the bottle. Should I open another?”
“Depends. Are you spending the night?”
“Um … Isn’t Britney spending the night?” I say awkwardly.
“No. She texted me when you were in the bathroom to say she wanted to stay over at Roger and Roger’s.”
Britney isn’t spending the night, even though she knows I’m here? This relationship is way further along than I thought.
“I’d love to. But I don’t have any pajamas.”
“I’ll loan you a T-shirt and boxers,” Scott assures me. “Open the Australian one.”
We’re splitting a bottle of wine, and then I get to spend the night. That’s a good sign.
Oh, who am I kidding? That’s not a good sign. That just means it’s Saturday.
I open the bottle of red, pour Scott a drink, then bring the bottle and the filled glasses to the coffee table.
Scott hits play, and we begin the movie again.
The next time I hit pause is after Harry explains to Sally that after sex all he’s thinking about is leaving.
“Do you think that’s true?” I ask Scott.
“Of course not!” Scott practically belts out. “What kind of an idiot doesn’t spend the night after the first time?”
Yay!
“A woman who’s just started seeing you is still good to go in the morning,” Scott continues. “Sometimes even for round three.”
I give Scott my facial expression for a heavy sigh. “Oh please,” he says to me. “Like at three months in, women don’t start treating the flag at full mast at seven A.M. as an annoyance. A guy’s gotta take that seven A.M. lovin’ when he can get it.”
Well, he’s not wrong. I shake my head, and turn the movie back on.
I spend the next ten minutes watching Scott as he watches the movie.
He looks so beautiful. I wish I could move over, lean my cheek against his chest, and relax into the warmth of his body.
My God. Has there ever been a guy I felt more excited to be with? If there has been, I can’t remember now. Somehow, high school boyfriends just seem like playtime to me now. Even men who broke my heart seem so insignificant. More like some story I watched happen to someone else. Could I have really cried caring about what some other guy thought of me? Could I really have pictured myself spending my life with any man but the guy sitting next to me?
Scott turns to me. “What?”
“What … what?” I ask.
“You’re looking at me funny.”
I’m caught off guard. “Oh, I was just thinking about how nice it would be to snuggle.”
The look on Scott’s face says it all. “Did you just use the word ‘snuggle’ in a sentence?” he asks me teasingly.
“I meant because I’m cold,” I quickly add.
Scott smiles and jumps off the couch as he pauses the TV. “I’ll grab a blanket.”
Scott pulls the red bedspread from his bed, then carries it to me. He makes a show out of leaning back against the couch, then patting the spot on the couch next to him, signaling me to move in.
I scoot over to him almost timidly. Scott opens his left arm out and pulls me in toward him.
It’s a friendly gesture. And yet …
I’m in!
Scott turns the movie back on, but from that moment on, all I can focus on is how he smells, how he feels, and how nice it would be to kiss him.
I try to focus on the scene at the bookstore, but instead I just inhale the Calvin Klein cologne for men I bought him for his birthday. Without thinking, I burrow my head farther into his chest.
Scott responds by pulling the blanket in closer, then slowly stroking my back.
I completely forget the movie. His fingers feel amazing.
I can’t look at him yet. If I do, I’ll want to kiss him, and I have to figure out how best to do that.
Hm. Look up at him and let him kiss me? Begin kissing his neck (since that’s where my lips are anyway?) then work my way up?
Turn my body one hundred and eighty degrees, straddle his lap, put my arms around his neck and brush my lips against his …
The buzz of his building’s intercom breaks my concentration.
Scott turns to me. “What time is it?”
“A little after one,” I say, trying to control my inner panic as I pull away from him. “Do you think that’s Britney?”
“Nah,” Scott says as he gets up from the couch. “She already told me she wasn’t coming over.”
I watch Scott walk up to his intercom, press the button, and speak into it with the voice of Lurch from The Addams Family, “You rang?”
“It’s me!” I hear Britney’s slurred voice announce through the intercom. “Are you decent?”
“Some say I’m kind of cute,” Scott jokes, then presses the button to let her in.
Shit.
Scott unlocks and opens his door, then walks back to the couch. He sits back down, smiles at me, grabs my knee playfully, then turns the movie back on.
Wait. Are we going to watch the movie with a drunk, horny blonde glaring daggers at me?
Britney stumbles through the door just as Billy Crystal tells Meg Ryan she may be the first attractive woman he has not wanted to sleep with in his entire life. “Hiiiiiii…” she slurs happily. “Did you miss me?”
“Always,” Scott says. “We’re watching When Harry Met Sally. Come sit.”
“Can’t sit!” drunken Britney tells him as she points her fingers up to the ceiling. “Too drunk. Must go to the kitchen and get more beer.”
Scott glances at me with one of his unreadable expressions, then asks Britney, “So, how was Library Bar?”
“Good. Crowded though. Much more fun with you on a Monday night,” Britney says casually as she pulls a bottle of beer out of Scott’s refrigerator, and pops the top with the bottle opener she effortlessly fishes out of his top drawer. “Roger and Roger both said I was too drunk to drive,” she slurs as she avoids our couch to head to his bed. “They told me I could stay with them tonight. But their place is a loft like yours, and I’m pretty sure they’re going to have sex, so I had Roger drop me off here instead.”
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