I turn to him, naked, emotionally and physically, and tell him the truth. “I want you to be someone you’re not. I want to have a baby with you. I want to wear the white dress and go to Hawaii with you. I want to meet your mum.”
The words don’t come out angrily: Unlike so many times before, I am neither picking a fight nor avoiding one. I’m just not hiding the real me anymore.
Marc sits there on the bed, looking just as pained to hear the words as I am to say them.
I retrieve my clothes from the floor. Marc is silent as I dress.
Once my second heel is strapped on I say, “I guess I should call Uber or something.”
Marc forces himself to move. “Don’t be silly. I’ll drive you home.”
“No, I think…” My sentence peters out. We stare at each other again in silence. “I think I should be by myself,” I finally say.
Slowly, I walk out of his bedroom and head to the front door. Alone.
Finally, clearly after some debate on his part, Marc emerges from his bedroom. “I have to go to London,” he says in a rushed tone. “Come with me.”
Of course he didn’t tell me that last night when we were making out like teenagers. “For how long?” I ask.
He doesn’t answer. Just smiles apologetically at me.
Shit.
I nod slowly. “Wow. That long.”
“I took a new job,” he tells me. “Producing a British version of a new game show, which we hope to bring to America in a season or two. Part of the reason I took you out last night was to offer you the job as the show’s head writer.”
I can feel my eyes widen. “You took me out on an insanely romantic date because of work?”
“No. I took you out because I miss you and want to be with you. The job was just a good excuse to see you.”
“Except you never offered me the job.”
“I got sidetracked.”
“‘Sidetracked’? Is that supposed to be cute, Marc? Am I supposed to be flattered that you see me as fuckable before you see me as employable?”
“Of course not,” Marc says, coming up to me and gently taking my hands. “I’m not offering you the job because of us. You’re really good at what you do. And this is an incredible opportunity.”
I shake my head in disbelief. “So … when I was telling you all about my new business, and my new life, you thought … what?”
“Come on, Nat. You’re a writer, not a bartender.”
I pull away from him, stunned. Too much is happening. I feel like my brain is about to explode. “Now I really need to be alone.”
“I’m offering you weekends in Paris,” he rushes to tell me. “Theater in the West End. A pub crawl in Dublin. Hiking on a cliff in Ireland. A romantic gondola ride in Venice.”
“Are you offering me a baby?” I blurt out before my brain has a chance to stop me.
That gives him pause. Marc has to think about his answer. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
I walk over to my purse and pull out the envelope he gave me last night. The one with eight weeks’ pay.
“Sweetheart, don’t…”
“When your ‘maybe’ changes into a real answer, give me a call,” I tell him as I scribble something down on the envelope and leave it on the side table by his door. Then I turn to him. “You have no idea how lucky you were.”
Then I silently open his front door and walk out of his life.
I only wrote three words on the envelope: Don’t follow me.
He didn’t.
Chapter Sixteen
HOLLY
I miss my dad. I’ve managed to go seven months without talking to him, but I still feel like an addict missing her hit of heroin or cocaine. I’m a Dad addict. I just need one hit of Dad. Just five minutes with him, and then I can go another seven months without talking to him. I just want to really quickly catch him up on everything going on in my life. Let him know that I dumped that guy he couldn’t stand, that I’m taking a break from auditions, and that I’m opening a bar with Jessie and Nat. That I got off the antidepressants. I want him to make a joke about the week I tried yoga because, let’s face it, nothing about my personality says, “Breathe.”
I want him to know that I have a huge crush on a guy whose last name is Erikson, and that I’m the worst stalker ever, because I can’t even figure out how to Google him. And that I’m so shy I’ve never even spoken to him. I want to bore Dad with details about how I went jogging one morning just because I saw Mr. Erikson stretching outside, and that after he smiled at me and said “Hi” as I passed him, I was so nervous, I gave a quick wave, then broke out into a run down the block that caused me to pull a hamstring, and surreptitiously limp back home once I knew he had left.
When I tell my story while getting my five-minute fix, Dad would laugh and shake his head. He would listen to me drone on about the guy, then hear me vent about how hard it is to date nowadays, because between texting and carrying our phones with us at all times, and Instagram and Facebook and that new site that a twenty-year-old at work told me about, now we girls have to wait by the phone 24/7. Dad would tell me that I sound ridiculous—that I might as well be one of those old biddies who said the world of dating had gone to hell now that men couldn’t stop by their homes with calling cards. He then would remind me that I am worth at least four goats, two chickens, and a mule, and to not stress out so much, because any guy worth his salt is going to do everything he can to be with me.
My father was my biggest fan in the world. He was always convinced that if the men didn’t know what they had, they didn’t deserve to have it.
This time, during these five minutes, I wouldn’t roll my eyes when he told me that I was as pretty as my mom. (I remember as a teen thinking that was the worst compliment ever. Yeah, Dad, genetics. Duh.) Instead, I’d say, “Thank you. I look like you too.”
And then, I would ask for Dad’s advice about the guy. And he would tell me to just talk to him. He’d say, “Just get on with it! Go smile and say hello to the guy. We really don’t like being the aggressors. We may say we do—we lie. Really, we want the beautiful woman to think we’re amazing, right off the bat. Most of us just want to know where our chair is. We want to ask you out. But in order to do that, it would be nice to get a little encouragement.”
Yup, that’s what Dad would say.
But, truth be told, if I had those five minutes, I wouldn’t talk about dating or finding a new man. I’d still ask for his advice, but it would be about a different man. It would be about him. And I would ask, “How do you ever get over losing your first love?”
And he would say, “You’re being a martyr. Knock it off. Life is for the living. Go open that bar. I’ll be there that first night, beaming with pride.”
There’s not a doubt in my mind, that’s exactly what he’d say.
I look over at his urn, a dark wood cube with a picture of a sailboat carved on the side. I kiss my index and middle fingers, and put them on the urn, then I sadly rest my head on the urn.
Yeah, Dad, I know: I am being a martyr. And an addict. Because I would still give anything for just five more minutes.
Chapter Seventeen
HOLLY
A few days later, it is early evening, and I am at our dining room table with Jessie and Nat, pouring a flight of wines for us to taste. Nat has a pad of paper in front of her (how retro!) and has just crossed off another suggestion from her list. “Okay, Holly’s idea, ‘Once Upon a Wine,’ is out, as is ‘The Vintage Point.’” Nat looks over at Jessie as she continues, “You also killed my idea, ‘Que Syrah, Syrah.’”
“Because we’re not serving only one type of wine,” Jessie pipes up defensively.
“Which is the same reason you didn’t like ‘Don’t Get Me a Cab,’” Nat says as she crosses out another line on her page.
“No, I just found that one to be a passive-aggressive snipe about my taste in wine.”
“I don’t think it was passive…” I think aloud.
Nat co
ntinues reading from the elimination round. “Holly made a face at ‘Wined-up Dolls.’ And ‘It’s Ireland Somewhere’ doesn’t even make sense—they don’t make wine in Ireland. Next.”
My face lights up, “How about ‘Corkscrewed’?”
“We are not putting the word ‘screwed’ in the name of our bar,” Jessie tells me firmly.
“Why not? People will want to go there either because they already feel that way…”
“Too dark…” Nat says, shaking her head.
“Or they want to get—”
Jessie shuts me down with, “I’ll give you a thousand dollars not to finish that thought.”
I shrug, finish pouring a Meritage from the Central Coast of California, then watch quietly as Nat and Jessie take a minute to stare into space with writer’s block. We’ve been working on the name of the bar since the day we bought the place. So far, we could have started each morning with a pitcher of margaritas and a TV remote ready to hit “Play Next Episode” twelve times in a row, and been at the same place we are now with the name.
Some days the Muse not only refuses to visit, she texts you to say she went to Cabo for the week.
Dead silence in the apartment. I separate my index and middle fingers into a V, press down on the bottom of the wineglass of a relatively young Pinot Noir from Oregon, swirl the glass a few times, and stick my nose in the bowl, giving myself something to do while I rack my brain for more ideas.
“‘Pinot envy’?” I ask, raising my voice an octave at the end.
Nat winces. She absentmindedly runs her fingers through her shiny, dark brunette pixie cut as she stares off into space, thinking.
I realize I am absentmindedly twirling my own long straight hair.
I take a sip of the Pinot. “This one needs a few minutes to breathe.”
Nat sniffs it. “That one needs a bottle of orange juice and some brandy, fruit, and ice cubes.”
Jessie eventually snaps her fingers. “Oh. How about ‘A Clean, Well-Lighted Place’?”
“You want to name the bar after a short story about the inevitability of death?” Nat asks, mildly horrified. “Why don’t we just call it ‘We’re All Gonna Die. Everybody Drink’?”
Jessie’s eyes widen. “Wait. That’s what that story’s about?”
“Yeah. Remember, the old man sits in a corner by himself getting drunk, and the young waiter with the hot wife waiting for him at home just wants to call it a night, and the middle-aged guy is all pensive because he knows he’ll be the old man one day.”
Jessie looks crestfallen. “Crap. How depressing. See, this is why we shouldn’t read the classics at sixteen. No one should take AP English until they’re thirty. How about ‘Grapes of Wrath’?”
Nat narrows her eyes at her. “Honestly, would you ever go into a bar with the word ‘wrath’ in its name?”
“I would before I’d go to one with ‘screwed’ in its name,” Jessie counters. “‘Grape Expectations’?”
“Do you want to know what that book’s about?” Nat asks in an almost threatening tone.
“I’m gonna say no,” Jessie answers tentatively. “‘Waiting for Merlot’?”
“I am seriously going to make you take an English class,” Nat threatens.
Jessie shrugs her shoulders sheepishly, then takes a sip of one of the reds. “This one’s good. We should definitely have it on the menu on opening night.”
Nat barely suppresses an eye roll. “A Bordeaux. How original.”
“Don’t give me that look. At least I’ve moved on from Cabernet Sauvignon,” Jessie announces proudly.
Nat sighs. “That particular Bordeaux is made from almost fifty percent Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.” She points to a different glass of red. “Try that one. It’s a Carménère from Chile.”
Jessie sniffs it and makes a face. “It smells like cigarettes.”
“Tobacco,” Nat tells her. “Nicely done. What you’re smelling are notes of leather and tobacco. Now take a sip.”
Jessie moves her glass up to sip, then promptly does a spit take back into her glass. “Ewww!” she exclaims, then grabs a napkin, sticks out her tongue, and scrubs. “Why on earth would someone want to drink tobacco?!”
“For the same reason you might want to taste cow dung. Because it shows you have a sophisticated palate.”
Jessie stops her tongue scrubbing just long enough to snap, “So there are people out there drinking wines tasting like poop to be sophisticated? I call that bullshit.”
“Cow dung,” Nat corrects.
“It’s still on my taste buds,” Jessie howls, grabbing a flute with a small amount of sparkling wine in it, gargling with it to kill the taste, then spitting it in the cardboard spit cup in the center of our table. Jess looks over to me. “Holly, help me out here. Can we agree not to put any wines with cow dung notes on our menu?”
I shake my head. “Are you kidding? A lot of Burgundy lovers like the complexity that it adds, and at over a hundred dollars a bottle, I like the extra tip it adds.”
“Wait. You guys are not seriously telling me we’re going to serve a wine that tastes like cow dung, are you?”
“It’s your third wineglass from the right,” Nat tells her. “Wholesales for thirty-six dollars a bottle, we’re charging twenty-eight a glass.”
“Ka-ching!” I say happily as Jessie takes her third-from-the-right wine stem, gingerly dips her nose into the center of the bowl, and cautiously takes a whiff. She eyes Nat. “I’ll admit I don’t smell poop.” She dips her nose farther into the glass. “But I’m not smelling anything fun in here either.”
“It’s not your thing—that’s totally fine,” Nat says. “There’s no right or wrong wine to love. Everyone’s taste is different, and that’s a good thing. It’s like men: If we all wanted the Jared Letos, the Ryan Reynoldses, and the Idris Elbas would wither on the vine, and that would be a shame.” She pushes a glass of white in front of Jessie. “How about his one?”
Jessie leans in and sniffs. Her face lights up. “Oh, now, see, this one smells like bubble bath.”
“That’s a Triennes Viognier from France, and what you’re getting there is a combination of honeysuckle, orange blossoms, and flowers.”
“Huh,” Jessie murmurs. “Turns out I like white wine too. Okay, more ideas for names. Go!”
“‘Something Fabulous’?” I throw out.
Nat juts her chin back and forth quickly, debating. “It’s like, it’s good, but not great. I’ll date that name, but I won’t marry it.”
“Oh! ‘Nice Stems’?” Jessie suggests.
Nat begins doodling a flower on her pad. “We’re a wine bar, not a florist. ‘Hollywood and Wine’?”
“We’re in Echo Park, not Hollywood,” I point out.
And we’re back to thinking. I take my small pour of Viognier and head over to our living room window. It’s almost 7:05. Time for my nightly peek at perfection. I pull the curtains back slightly to make sure he’s not home yet.
I sniff the white Jessie likes. It’s okay—smells a bit too flowery for me. But, like Nat says, we can’t all like the Jared Letos. My tastes these days run more toward the Chris Hemsworths of the world.
“‘Love the Wine You’re With,’” Jessie suggests quickly.
Nat eyes her dubiously. “Like the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song? What are we? Seventy?”
“No. Like when you come here, we will find you the wine you will love. The wine that you’ve been searching for, dreaming about. Your wine soul mate. You might not like the wine everyone’s drinking this month, the Jared Leto wine, if you will, and that’s okay. When you come to our bar, we will introduce you to the wine you love, your Justin Trudeau wine, or even your Chris Hardwick wine, and you’ll love the wine you’re with.”
Nat makes a face, “Justin … the Canadian prime minister?”
“What? He’s hot.”
“I suppose. Anyway, what you’re saying is the opposite of loving the wine you’re with: It’s being introduced to the
perfect wine. The winning wine—like the winning guy. Oh! How about ‘FTW: For the Wine’?!”
Jessie mulls it over in her mind. “I don’t hate it,” she says cautiously, then turns to me. “Holly, what do you think?”
I look out the window. Still nothing. Maybe he got a last-minute modeling gig that ran late.
I turn to Jessie and pout. “I think that you are so fucking lucky to have a great guy like Kevin, who is a decent human being and loves you more than anything in the world and takes you to the opera, even though he can’t stand it, and who knows to buy you cookie dough ice cream, and makes you breakfast in bed on Sundays.”
Nat points to Jessie and deadpans, “Or we could go with Holly’s suggestion. Maybe shorten it to ‘Cookie Dough Ice Cream.’”
“I’m sorry,” I exclaim in exasperation, “but Kevin’s amazing, yet you’re barely talking to him right now just because he was scared of commitment, which most men are. You don’t even get how lucky you are and the world is so unfair and when is it my turn to be loved?!”
Jessie seems at a loss for words. She stammers a bit, “I told you … after he left town, he called me and we made up.”
I eye her suspiciously. “Actually, your exact words were, ‘We pretty much made up,’ which really means, ‘Yeah, I say he’s my boyfriend, but I’m still pissed, and now, subconsciously, I’m looking. Whether I’ll admit it to myself or not.’ It’s like the opposite of when Nat tells us she’ll never see Marc again: We know subconsciously she’s not looking, which means she’ll see him over and over until someone new shows up unannounced.”
Nat rubs the bridge of her nose, silently wincing at my indiscretion as Jessie’s jaw drops. “You didn’t break up?”
“Yes, we did,” Nat tells her conclusively.
Jessie frowns and asks in an accusatory tone, “Last month?”
Nat shrugs and grabs a glass of wine to hide her face behind. “I may have had a minor slip-up. Hardly worth mentioning.”
Not deterred from my rant, I tell Jessie bitterly, “To paraphrase Paul Newman, it’s like you have filet mignon at home, and even Nat has a fast-food hamburger out. I don’t even have a juice cleanse to look forward to in my life.”
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