“Oohhh, some shrimp fried rice and some pad Thai sounds perfect. Let me go get the delivery menu.”
Giovanni follows me to the kitchen, grabbing me twice to kiss me before we make it to my menu drawer. I open the drawer to grab menus while he grabs his cell phone to order.
“Okay, the better place takes forty-five minutes to an hour to deliver. The faster place…”
I look up to see Giovanni staring at his phone, looking worried.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“Nat left me a message around seven forty-five. Obviously, we were in there”—he motions with his head toward my bedroom—“so I didn’t hear it.”
I take a deep breath, then ask, “Okay, do you want to play it?”
He presses Play, then puts his phone on speaker. “Hey, it’s me. I’m sorry for the rambling message last night, I was totally whacked out on painkillers, and I must not have made much sense. Listen, I miss you, and I really want to talk to you. Are you free for lunch tomorrow? I know you and Jessie have that thing tonight, and you’re probably exhausted from your wine and food weekend, but just, you know, whenever works for you is cool.”
She pauses, and I hope maybe the last sentence will be something straightforward like, “Sorry we broke up” or “You know I was serious about how you should date Jessie.”
Instead, she says, “I just want you to know, I adore you. You’re amazing. Truly.” Another pause. “Okay, so I’m gonna go. Call me whenever. Lots of love. Bye.”
The message ends. Giovanni looks at me, his face saying, What do you think?
“Ffffuuuucccckkkkkk,” I say, falling halfway down. “OhmyGod! OhmyGod! OhmyGod!”
“Okay, calm down.”
“I just slept with my best friend’s boyfriend.”
“Now we don’t know that,” Giovanni says calmly.
“What?”
“I meant the boyfriend part. Remember how we thought she broke up with me?”
“Of course I thought that! I wanted to have sex with you!” I cover my face with my hands and race toward my living room. “This is bad. She’s going to kill me. No. Worse. She’s never going to talk to me again.”
Giovanni follows me to the living room. “Okay, this is not as bad as it seems.”
“It’s worse! I slept with you. Twice! She hasn’t even slept with you once. And to think I judged her for dating a married man … I’m an awful person.”
“Nat is sleeping with a married man?” Giovanni asks.
“No. She used to. And now I’m a fink besides. Perfect.”
“Calm down,” he says, pulling my naked body to his. He rubs my back and says, “Sssshhhh.”
And I melt again. Why does he feel this good?
“Okay,” Giovanni says soothingly. “Let’s order some food. I’ll text her that I’m going to bed early. Then tomorrow, together, we’ll tell her what happened.”
I start to speak, but he says, “It’s all going to work out. Trust me. She’s going to be fine. She’s just going to be mad for a little while, and she has the right to be. But then it’s all going to be okay.”
“You’re sure?” I ask/whine.
“I’m positive,” Giovanni reassures me. “I haven’t known Nat long, but I know she has a good heart and would only wish us well. She won’t hold a grudge.”
He hugs me again, and I mutter, “You don’t know her at all. That woman’s still mad at Shelley Long for leaving Cheers.”
Chapter Forty-seven
HOLLY
“I-18!” Roxy yells out to us, looking fierce in her black-and-white blinged-out minidress and platform heels.
“That’s what she said!” the crowd (including Joe and me) yells back to her.
Ahhh … drag queen bingo. Very few things make me so happy to live in Los Angeles.
Where else can you donate twenty dollars to a charity (tonight the charity of choice is the cat shelter Santé D’Or, and you know the pussy jokes are going to go all night) and in exchange get ten bingo cards and a drag queen with a black strap for spanking people who call false bingo. And drinks. Goblets and goblets of drinks. There is no fine wine here. I just finished off some concoction that as far as I can tell was made with hard liquor and Sprite. And it is fantastic.
Plus some nights, if you’re lucky, you get to sit next to the wall showcasing a bazillion stiletto heels. “Personally, I like the purple paisley pump,” Joe decides.
“No,” I disagree. “If you’re going to go that ridiculously high, you gotta go animal print: the zebra or the leopard.”
“You’re a good influence. That’s the second time I’ve been near something called zebra in two days. Another round?” Joe asks, signaling to our waiter.
“Yeah, but this time I want a Strawberry Tease Me,” I tell the waiter.
“I’ll switch to Coke,” Joe tells him.
“I-29,” Roxy calls.
“Yes I am … and holding!” we all yell back.
“Bingo!” someone yells out and races up to the stage, decorated with a disco ball, tons of red velvet, and a pole (because why not?).
“Okay, baby, let me check your numbers,” Roxy says. The player insists he has them, but she mocks, “I don’t know you from Adam. I gotta check your numbers.” Then she waves and yells at someone across the room. “Oh, hey, Adam!”
“This is really fun,” Joe tells me. “How come I never knew about his place?”
“Neglected youth, I presume.”
“All right, ladies, we have bingo,” Roxy announces. She hands the winner a gift basket filled with board games, then says, “Now run all the way across the bar, then back to the wall of shoes, so the losers can pelt you.”
As the winner runs around the room and back, we all crumple up our losing bingo cards and throw them at him.
He runs past, and Joe quickly crumples and throws.
“Okay, bingo whores,” Roxy calls out. “Now for this next game we’re going to pole-dance!” Her assistant slowly swings around the pole onstage. “This means you have to have your bingos going vertically.”
Joe looks up. “Huh?”
I explain. “Oh, it’s not like regular bingo, where you just have to get five in a row. There are specific patterns they play all night. Each board is different.”
“For our first number, everyone sing with me: Will you still need me…”
And the audience sings, “Will you still feed me, when I’m O-64?!”
“And next: Ladies, what’s the Bo Derek B?”
“B-10!” I yell out.
“Seriously, how do you know all these?” Joe asks.
I hand Joe a yellow sheet of paper that explains all of the bingo games and the callbacks. Soon Joe can answer Roxy when she says, “Not malignant but…”
“… B-9!”
And G-54? “The disco G!”
And some more indiscreet answers I won’t mention. Let’s just say there is an O-69, and it does have a callback.
After the first five games, neither of us has even come close to bingo. But it doesn’t matter, because I don’t remember the last time I was having so much fun. I cannot stop laughing as Roxy flirts with Joe as she walks around the room, mingling.
Joe actually wins game six, Around the World, and the prize is pretty good: two bottles of wine and a gift card to a sushi place.
“Oh. Jealous,” I tell him. “I’ve been dying to go there.”
“Well, what are you doing next Monday?” he asks.
I don’t know why, but somehow him asking me out for a week from now makes me … unsettled. “No, you should take a date. It’s supposed to be super romantic there.”
“Our next card is the ten in one box!” Roxy begins.
Joe looks around. “More romantic than this?”
“The first number’s B-11. Arms to heaven!”
As everyone in the audience puts up their arms, I say, “You know what I mean. You want kids. A boy and a girl. You should be dating, and I’m only a distraction.”
Joe puts down his arms. “I thought neither of us were dating right now.”
“I’m not, because I have nothing to offer at the moment. But you should. You’re hot, and really funny…”
“I’m hot?” he repeats almost jokingly.
“Yes. And you’re smart and interesting to listen to and you’re going to make someone a really good boyfriend, and I shouldn’t get in the way of that.”
“Sure, you should.”
“G-50,” Roxy calls out. “The Sally O Malley G!”
I take a big gulp of … “What the hell is in this?” I ask. “Seriously? I feel like I should be at a fraternity house drinking out of a red Solo cup.”
Joe looks at the menu. “Vodka, peach schnapps, Strawberry Pucker, and Sprite.”
“I can’t believe there is still such a thing as Strawberry Pucker.”
Roxy calls out a bunch of numbers, and the two of us focus on our game boards again.
But after someone at the end of game eight yells out “Bingo!” I return to the dating discussion. “I mean, I’ll admit, sure, I have thought about kissing you,” I tell Joe.
Joe makes a show of resting his chin on his left palm and imitating a gossipy housewife. “Go on.”
“Come on. Do you mean to tell me kissing me has not even crossed your mind?”
“Nope,” he says.
“Oh,” I say, not able to hide my disappointment.
“Wow. You can’t tell when men are lying to you,” Joe says, smiling. “No wonder you’re still single.”
“That is a false bingo!” Roxy calls out. She points to the table the girl walked over from. “Did your friends tell you you have bingo? These are not your friends.”
Everyone laughs at the way Roxy says that. Roxy tells us to uncrumple our cards so we can continue to play. She then gives the girl a spanking and sends her back to her table.
I’m too shy to continue the conversation, so I make a point of staring at my bingo card, acting immersed in the drama of the numbers.
We play the last few games and then it’s on to the “championship” cards, which are for the grand prize of the night. You have to fill out every space of every card, so it takes a while.
And damn if Joe doesn’t win the big prize of the night: an expensive gift card to a Beverly Hills restaurant and another two bottles of wine.
“So what’ll it be?” he asks. “Dinner at an amazing restaurant, or back to my place for wine?”
“I ate way too many mac and cheese balls to appreciate the Beverly Hills place tonight,” I tell Joe as he signs his credit card receipt (I let him pay. Gracious of me, no?), and we each take a gift basket and slowly walk out with the crowd.
“My place it is,” he says cheerfully. “I have nothing there to eat other than a couple of bags of Cheetos.”
“Crunchy or puffs?” I ask in all seriousness.
“Crunchy.”
“Dinner is served,” I tell him happily.
We walk to his car in silence. I think (okay, I hope) we’re both thinking about that kissing conversation we never finished earlier tonight.
“So, next Monday: sushi or California French steakhouse, whatever the hell that means.”
I don’t answer for a while. He should be taking some totally together woman who would be thrilled to have him and could actually contribute something to the relationship. “Sushi,” I finally answer.
We stop at his car. He beeps the alarm but then leans against the passenger’s side. “So, you’ve thought about kissing me.”
I sigh and look away from him. “Well, I’m not dead. Sure, I’ve thought about it. And that stupid Arctic Monkeys song you played for me…”
“Oh, good. I was hoping that would make you think of me…”
“I even put it on our women-singers-only playlist at work,” I admit. “You know that ‘constantly on the cusp of trying to kiss you’ line kind of wasn’t fair, because I swear I thought you were singing that to me. Which of course I’m sure you were just singing along…”
As I talk, Joe puts down his basket, puts his arms around my waist, pulls me into him, and kisses me. I drop my basket lightly onto the grass below, freeing up my arms to put around his neck.
But after a minute, I pull away. “I am just no good to anyone right now.”
He makes a show of a mock-serious face and nodding before pulling me in to kiss again.
Oh, my God, he’s a good kisser. I decide maybe just a few minutes of this will get it out of my system.
About five or ten minutes in, I’m thinking maybe not.
I finally force myself to unstick and breathe. But I don’t pull away so much that his arms don’t stay around my waist. “See, if you keep that up, we can’t be friends. Because now I’m not just thinking about sticking my tongue in your mouth. I’ve moved on to your ears. And maybe licking your neck. And climbing on top of you like a kitten on a scratching post.”
He grins and leans back in. “I like your thinking…”
I pull my head back so he can’t swirl my brain with his kisses again. “But it can’t work. Seriously, I have played out every scenario in my head, and they all end badly. I’m a basket case. I don’t know how to be in a relationship. I have this series of dating failures I can point to, and eventually I’ll let you down and we’ll break up and I’ll be heartbroken. And I just can’t do it again. I just can’t.”
Joe puts down his arms, and I can tell he’s suppressing a sigh. “Okay, how about this? We keep doing this…” he says, alternating his index fingers back and forth at me. “And when you start to freak out, you talk to me about it, and we deal with it. And if I start to freak out, I’ll talk to you about it, and we’ll deal with it.”
That does sound reasonable. “While I think about your plan, can we kiss for a little bit longer?”
He smiles, wraps his arms back around my waist, and brings me in again.
I’ll admit I’m mostly thinking about the kissing. At some point we sort of naturally break. So I decide to use that moment to warn him, “When we have our first fight, I’m going to assume you’re breaking up with me.”
“Okay. I’ll make sure I don’t.”
“And our second fight,” I admit grudgingly. “And our third … Actually, all of our fights. I’m the child of divorce, I always jump to ‘the guy’s leaving.’”
Joe does seem a bit surprised. “Wow.”
“But that’s probably my biggest freak flag,” I tell him quickly. “You know, that and the … well, the ashes were not my finest moment.”
Joe gives me a quick kiss. “Let’s get you home.”
Damn it! I blew it! I just talked this great guy out of dating me. What is wrong with me? I watch him pick up one of the baskets and walk around to his side of the car. “So what now?” I ask him. “You take me home and we go back to being friends? Or is this just it?”
“Not your home. My home,” Joe says. “I totally want to see that kitten thing.”
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the friend-of-a-friend story of the girl who absolutely stopped dating and found a great boyfriend anyway.
Chapter Forty-eight
NAT
Getting ready for my dinner with Marc was … let’s just say tricky. Holly was with Joe, and so I had no one to help me with my red lace bra. Which was probably fine, because I didn’t want anyone to know where I was going anyway, and who shows up to a Writers Guild function in a sparkly red minidress and FM pumps, much less a matching red lace bra and underwear?
I woke up in the middle of the night, still high on Vicodin, from a very disturbing dream. Okay, it was a sex dream, but it was disturbing because when I woke up, I knew I needed to call Giovanni and break up with him. But he didn’t pick up (it was kind of late), so I left him a message. If my drugged-up memory is correct, I might not have been completely clear about my intentions. But I’m not supposed to see him until tomorrow, and I’ll just have to deal with him then. I have too much on my plate.
Chris m
ust have texted at least ten times today, leaving everything from …
I’m texting instead of calling because I’m hoping you’re resting and I don’t want to wake you. But let me know if you need anything. I can be at your house with a double-double in 20 minutes.
Thanks. I’m good.
And …
Take your damn pills! All of them!
I told you, they make me woozy.
So does wine, and I’ve seen you drink that. Don’t be a hero.
But the one that messed up my head the most came at six o’clock, just as I was getting ready to go out with Marc.
Sure you don’t want to go to the Lakers game with me?
I can’t.
I’ll leave your ticket at Will Call if you change your mind.
I don’t take a Vicodin, instead opting for some ibuprofen and the ability to have fabulous wine with Marc. He chooses the newest hot spot in downtown. I tell him I want to meet him there rather than have him pick me up, which isn’t unusual. I never wanted him to run into Holly at the apartment if I could avoid it. But I have another reason to want to meet him there: instinct. Not sure why, but my Spidey senses are up. Chris knows who I am with tonight, and although 99 percent of me is sure he wouldn’t suddenly show up to check up on me, there’s this 1 percent which isn’t sure … Or maybe there’s this 1 percent that hopes he shows up.
I don’t know. I’m such a mess.
I take an Uber and walk in at seven twenty to the most breathtaking restaurant: shiny white marble floors interspersed with cobalt and silver tiles, luscious red tablecloths and booths, sparkly crystal chandeliers. The kind of place that screams seduction. Or maybe whispers it.
As I crane my head toward the bar, looking for Marc, I hear behind me. “You look exquisite.”
I turn around, and there is Marc, wearing his best navy blue Turnbull & Asser suit and looking like the devil would appear if he wanted you to do something really wicked.
“Thank you,” I say, holding up my bandaged left hand. “Hard to get ready in this thing.”
“Well, you’re perfect,” he tells me, giving me an innocent kiss on the cheek. Then he leans in close, whispers, “Truly stunning,” and blows into my ear.
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