by Lynn Costa
Occasionally, if you were on a project with particularly long hours the firm would put you up in a hotel a night or two each week even if that project was “local.” That’s what happened to me on my very first project, last November and December while I was still in the corporate apartments. I was on a project way up in Ventura but wound up staying up there at least two nights each week because I would work until 8:30 or 9:00 each night and then have to be back onsite by 8:00 the next morning. So rather than drive all the way back to my apartment – seventy miles each way, which was typically an hour and a half even with traffic “light” by L.A. standards – it made more sense for me to stay up there rather than waste all that time driving back and forth all over the Valley.
At that same time, Dustin was on a project down in Orange County, in Newport Beach. His drive was a little better than mine, but not much: about 45 miles each way. So once a week, sometimes twice, he would do the same thing I was doing at the time and stay in a hotel down that way. We would try to time our hotel nights away from our apartments to be the same if possible so we would be both be back at our apartments on the same nights, otherwise we would never see each other during the week even though we lived only one floor apart in the same apartment building! And for those first couple months, the last thing we wanted to do was be apart from each other. We got along great and had a lot of fun together... when we saw each other, that was.
We caught a bit of a break after New Year’s. I shifted to a project up in Thousand Oaks and Dustin was assigned to a new client up in Burbank, which meant that at least we were now on the same side of the gigantic L.A. metro area. We started spending even more time together, and near the end of March we each took a week of vacation and went down to Cabo; sort of spring break for us, finally getting away for at least a little while from our jobs being such a major part of our daily lives.
In April, though, we both finished those projects and this time we weren’t so lucky when it came to our next assignments being close to one another. I wound up spending the next four months in Phoenix of all places, while they sent Dustin to San Francisco for the same length of time. So we spent much of the spring and all of the summer seeing each other only on weekends back home in L.A., though we each did take a couple days of vacation at different points so I could visit him in San Francisco and he could come see me in Phoenix. When he came to see me I of course had to take him home to meet my parents and my sister, as well as a few of my college friends who were still in the area.
Dustin was originally from Minneapolis and had gone to school at the University of Wisconsin, so he was totally unprepared for our blazing Arizona summer temperatures when he came to visit in early August.
“How the hell does anyone live here?” he asked in all sincerity, as if he simply couldn’t imagine that more than three million people in the Phoenix metro area did just that. Of course, the day he made that particular complaint was one that the temperature had topped off at 117 degrees and was over 90 degrees by 5:30 in the morning. So I could see how someone from Minnesota who had gone to school in Wisconsin and then had settled in L.A. could be incredulous about what we Arizonans took for granted. To us, it was mostly an annoyance for a couple of months that we put up with in exchange for temperatures often in the comfortable 70s during the winter months.
Despite his frequent complaints about the weather, my parents seemed to like him, and Lauren did as well. After he went back to San Francisco I was at my parents’ house for dinner one night and my mother, nosey as ever, asked:
“So where do you see things going?”
Before I had a chance to answer, Lauren responded for me:
“Oh Mom, just leave it alone. Lindsey is only 23 and she’s been out of school for just over a year. The chances of Dustin being the one she’s going to marry are pretty low, wouldn’t you agree?”
At first I was just about to jump all over my sister. How dare she! But just as fast as I got angry, that fury evaporated as if someone had just let the air out of a balloon. I just shrugged at my Mom in response, and my Dad artfully changed the subject to the musicals that he and Mom would be seeing at ASU’s Gammage Hall this fall and next spring as part of their next Broadway Season shows.
Shortly before Labor Day I got word that I would be headed back to L.A. right after the holiday for a new client. Even better, they sent me to the project where I now was, at MetroGen: only about ten minutes from my apartment! For the first time since I had finished the training program I was actually working in what I considered to be a “good” location, geography-wise. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but I was supposed to be at MetroGen for at least four months, so that would take me through the rest of the year.
I had hoped that Dustin would find his way back to an assignment in the L.A. area. It didn’t work out that way, though. Dustin’s San Francisco assignment finished up at the same time my Phoenix one did, but they sent him to the project in Chicago where he now was. Worse, this one was what we had all been warned would be our fate at some point: the project from hell with horrendously long hours for months on end and mandatory weekend work out of town, meaning that coming home on every weekend was no longer a given.
And that’s where Dustin Pearson and I stood at this moment: with him 2,000 miles away and a weekend filled with work ahead of him, and me getting ready for a first date with another guy.
* * *
I was actually finished in the salon by 7:30, and I decided to stop for a quick tanning bed session before heading back home. I checked my cell phone and saw a missed phone call from Dustin, and another from Kensington.
I tried Kensie first, figuring that I wanted to talk through all of my roller-coaster feelings today about my date tomorrow with Zack as well as things with Dustin. But I got her voicemail, left a message for her to call me back, and then figured I might as well call Dustin now. I hadn’t talked to him all day; I hadn’t received a text from him nor had I sent one to him. Out of sight, out of mind? Perhaps, though not nearly as much as tomorrow, I guess.
His phone rang once and then started ringing again for half of a beat and then flipped over to voicemail. He shushed me! I looked at my watch – almost 8:00 P.M. now here in L.A., which meant it was close to 10:00 in Chicago – and was instantly agitated at being shushed on a Friday night.
A half minute later my phone lit up and even without sliding the bottom bar to unlock it, I could read the single line that Dustin had texted me:
Still working gonna b a long 1 will call you later if not 2 late I love you
At least he had shushed me because he was going through consulting hell on this Friday night, not because he was “otherwise occupied” or anything like that. Now the guilty feelings and remorse really started to hit me. Here I was, getting my nails done and tanning for my clandestine date with another guy tomorrow night, and my boyfriend was slaving away out in Chicago very late on a Friday night with – apparently – no end in sight for his workday. And he would still be there throughout the entire weekend, all the way through next week...
I forced the guilty feelings from my mind and concentrated on what he hadn’t typed in his text. True, he had written “I love you” but number one, those words seemed to have been grafted onto the end of his “busy, don’t bother me” message; almost as afterthought. And also, he could have added “I miss you” or “can’t wait to see you” or something along those lines... but he didn’t.
I was probably grasping at little reasons, perhaps even concocted reasons, to justify in my mind where I would be (I looked at the digital time on my cell phone) 23 hours from now. It was easy to demonize Dustin, to blame him for shortcomings he probably wasn’t even aware of, to convince myself that I was totally in the right to go to dinner with a guy I had met only one night earlier.
I shook the thoughts from my head as I started home. Even though my phone had both the ringer and the vibrate turned on, I found myself looking at the screen every fifteen seconds or so the entire walk home, w
aiting for either a text or call from either Dustin or Kensington. But by the time I got to the outside door to my apartment building: nada.
I microwaved myself a whole wheat tortilla with some low-fat cheese, avocado, and salsa; a light dinner, typical of what I usually ate at home by myself. You know: no muss, no fuss. I finished the tortilla in like a minute and thought about making a second one, but instead went to the freezer for some sugar-free chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. (Will the wonders of technology never cease!) I ate a bowl of about three scoops, and then another one with three more scoops. By the time I was finished it was getting close to 9:00 and I felt like doing nothing but soaking in a bath... and thinking.
I sat in the bathtub until the water was cool enough to be annoying, and by that time it was getting close to 10:00. I got out, dried off, blow-dried my hair, and put on my long ASU T-shirt that was part of my sleeping wardrobe rotation (at least when Dustin wasn’t around).
I drifted off to sleep a little bit past 11:00 watching some tearjerker movie I had seen about a zillion times before, and just before I zonked out for good I checked my cell phone for about the zillionth time.
Nothing.
Chapter 3
Saturday, September 14th
Twice on Saturday I came within a split-second of texting Zack to cancel.
The first time, around 10:00 in the morning shortly after I woke up, I had a lame excuse – I mean, a lie – all ready to go. Not feeling well; wouldn’t be very good company tonight; maybe later, but how about another happy hour this week? I figured that standing around a high-top at Cerise or another bar for an hour or two after work was “safer” for me in getting my head around where things with Zack might go; you know, a more measured pace given my relationship with Dustin, right? After all, with Dustin out of town most of the time for at least the next two months I could hold off making the commitment of a one-on-one dinner with Zack until a week or two or three down the road; until the point at which I might be certain that Dustin represented my past and Zack was my future.
The second time, though, right around 3:00 that afternoon, I was prepared with a text message-sized version of how I was really feeling, punctuated by “let’s talk Monday.” But either way, I was so ready to back out of the dinner and slow things down.
But I didn’t. It all came down to one simple fact: I wanted to have dinner with Zack tonight, and the thought of backing out despite the conflicted emotions racing through me made me... sad, I guess. The thought of not sitting across the table from Zack tonight, sipping wine and sharing a delicious meal and getting to know each other better, was simply not one I wanted to contemplate.
And so I did my best throughout that Saturday to forget about my nervousness and disquieting emotions. I went down to my gym and did two circuits through the machines. I thought about going over to Rodeo Drive to see if I could find something new to wear tonight, but instead decided while I was still a little bit sweaty to go for a quick two-mile run. I finished my run right around 3:00, the same time that I came so close to texting Zack that I had changed my mind about tonight; my mind had apparently been whispering to me the whole time I was running that this date wasn’t a good idea.
After I talked myself into not canceling, I decided to do a little bit of work to get ahead of what was waiting for us on Monday morning... plus to try to force my thoughts away from Zack and dinner at Vivant for at least a little while. I was almost certain another wave of indecision about tonight was just about to wash over me; but whereas canceling on Zack at 10:00 in the morning or even 3:00 in the afternoon wasn’t necessarily a deal-breaker for something happening later on with us, doing so at 5:00 might well be.
I was also getting angry with Kensington for still not being available to talk this whole thing through. I had texted her a couple of times earlier in the day and called her twice as well, but no return texts or calls. Finally around 4:30 my phone dinged and I picked it up, and seeing on the alert screen that Kensie had at last texted me back, I thumbed to the messages to read:
Call u in 5 sorry
Realizing that I needed to start getting ready soon I texted her back:
Ok but only have couple min getting ready soon
Sure enough, five minutes later my phone rang and I quickly answered. Kensie started by apologizing profusely for not only not getting back to me last night but for going dark all day today. My irritation vanished when she said that the reason had to do with her younger brother, the one who was a sophomore at UCLA and had been having trouble with an oxy addiction for the past three years.
“Mom called me late yesterday afternoon to say that they went to Jeff’s apartment and made him take a drug test and he showed up positive,” she said somberly. “She was crying and wanted me to go talk to him and try to convince him to go back into rehab, that since the fall quarter hadn’t started yet he could withdraw before classes began and then pick up again in the winter quarter after Christmas. I went there last night and he wasn’t there so I went back this morning and have been there with Mom all day, we just left.”
Kensington continued for another couple minutes with an abridged update of her brother’s situation. The story was one I already knew from what she had told me when she, I, and Courtney had all met and were getting to know all about one another and our families. Fortunately in my family neither Lauren nor myself had ever had any problems with drugs – just a little bit of experimenting with weed for both of us in high school and college, but neither of us was really into using it other than at the occasional party – and of my friends in high school and college, I honestly didn’t know of anybody who had had a problem with oxy or meth or anything like that. But from what Kensington told Courtney and me one night, it sounded like her parents – and Kensie as well – had their hands full with Jeff, dating back to his senior year in high school.
“Anyway,” Kensington changed the subject, “we can talk about Jeff later, I know you have big plans for this evening, right?” Her voice seemed to brighten a bit as she spoke those words, almost as if she were vicariously getting ready for a first date herself, the same that I was.
“Yeah, I guess,” I said hesitatingly. “I almost canceled twice today so far...” I was just about to add “...and I wish you had been around to talk to” but I caught myself, realizing that Kensie had far more serious matters at hand than my yes-or-no decision on whether or not I should proceed with this cheating-on-Dustin dinner date.
“But you’re still going, right?” Kensie interjected, helping to keep me from uttering something selfish like what I had just been thinking about saying before catching myself.
“Uh-huh,” I could feel myself smile as I answered. The reality of my date that would begin in barely more than two hours was enveloping me in delicious anticipation. I proceeded with a highly abridged version of yesterday evening’s preparations after work. I thought about bringing Kensie in on the wax-or-not quandary but since the decision had been made (still no wax) I didn’t see the need to raise that topic... though of course if I had done so the real subject would have been whether or not I should sleep with Zack tonight if things headed in that direction. You know, if we really hit it off and there was all this fantastic chemistry between us, and all of that. But that would have been a topic for a long lunch earlier today, a lunch that we of course didn’t have, and I didn’t want to bring up that subject now with only a few more minutes on the phone; definitely not enough time to fully explore it with my friend.
“If you want, call me afterwards to let me know how it went,” Kensie said. “I might go out but I’m not sure. I’m just exhausted from last night and today, dealing with Jeff, and right now all I want to do is lie down and take a short nap, so I’ll decide later.”
We left it where I would call Kensie tonight after the date had concluded – that is, if the date actually concluded tonight, right? – or if not, then we absolutely, positively would get together for brunch tomorrow to talk.
I told Kensing
ton to hang in there for her brother’s sake and as we ended the call I snuck a peek at the cable box’s digital time, which now read 4:55.
It was time.
* * *
I was extra-careful when shaving my legs in the shower not to nick myself, and the whole time I was very deliberately gliding the razor along either leg my mind insisted on making the comparison between the pace of my actions in this shower versus the “typical” shower in the recent past, whether getting ready for work or to go out with Dustin. Of course I didn’t regularly whirl my razor carelessly down my legs, or under my arms, at lightning-fast speed, leaving a trail of bloody nicks in its wake. But I could tell that I was being extra-careful right here, right now, as I was undertaking this time-honored getting-ready-for-a-first-date ritual. On the one hand, here was yet another sign of the exquisite anticipation I was feeling as dinner with Zack drew closer by the minute. But on the other hand, here was one more crystal clear distinction between my day-to-day life with Dustin versus what I was about to embark on.
Twenty minutes passed; an extra-long shower for me, but that’s partly because I was spending extra time very slowly shampooing and conditioning my hair while my mind was insisting on showing me “sneak previews” of tonight’s date. There we were at Vivant, Zack seated across from me as he had been in yesterday morning’s dream (fortunately no more Zack-and-Dustin-together dreams last night!), and I was asking him where he was from; telling him about growing up in Phoenix; talking about what the training program in Miami last year had been like (but of course leaving Josh and Dustin out of the tale...); a dozen more conversations playing out in my head, some lengthy and others fleeting.
