Not Quite A mom

by Kirsten Sawyer

  Tiffany seems completely weirded out by my new attitude, but I’m not letting that dissuade me. I realize that I hadn’t been exactly nice to her after she ruined my life—something that I now recognize wasn’t even her fault—so I understand that the adjustment to the “new” me is going to take her some time. The truth is that she’s a great kid…it’s understandable how Buck could have grown so attached to her so quickly. She’s so great, in fact, that I’m feeling pretty confident that when I win Dan back, he’ll quickly grow to adore her, too.

  Sunday morning I wake up to the smell of coffee brewing. For a split second before opening my eyes I think I am in my own bed and that Dan is making coffee in the kitchen. He has never made coffee before, but in that hazy place between sleep and waking I forget this fact. When I open my eyes, it takes me a beat to remember where I am. From the double bed, I can see Tiffany asleep on the air mattress on the floor below me. Saturday had been exhausting for her, and I am glad to see her getting some rest.

  I silently swing my legs over the opposite side of the bed and tiptoe out of the room, which is very cramped with two beds, a desk, and our bags of stuff, in search of the coffee. Still not completely awake, I follow my nose directly into Buck’s kitchen, pausing only briefly to pat the bear-size dog still asleep on the couch as I pad through the living room. I am inside the kitchen and eagerly staring at a full pot of black coffee before I realize that I am not alone.

  “Morning,” Buck says, and I visibly jump at the sound of his voice. My first instinct is a swell of disdain for him, but then I quickly remember my new life resolutions and my attitude softens—after all, I am in his house because he had been kind enough to invite us to stay after we showed up on his doorstep yesterday afternoon.

  “Morning,” I reply.

  “Coffee?” he offers, and I readily reply, “Please.”

  He reaches into the cupboard above the coffeemaker to retrieve a mug, having to stretch over and around me in the process. He looks down as he effortlessly reaches and I suddenly feel self-conscious about standing in his kitchen in boxer shorts and a well-worn UCLA T-shirt. I pull the T-shirt down, avoiding his gaze, and when I look up, he is holding a cup of steaming coffee in front of me.

  “Oh, um, thanks,” I say, taking the black Fiestaware mug from him and thinking how his whole home is different than I’d imagined. It’s certainly not well decorated, but it’s also much more put together than I would have expected. I am secretly impressed with his matching dish set.

  “Milk?” he asks, motioning toward the refrigerator.

  “Please,” I say, and then we both make a move and almost collide. Suddenly, we are caught in one of those situations where every time one of us moves, the other moves in the same direction, and we are trapped, unable to move in the opposite direction of freedom. After exchanging embarrassed smiles with each move, Buck finally puts both hands gently on my shoulders and says, “I’ll get it.”

  “Thanks,” I say with an embarrassed smile, and then, for some inexplicable reason, I move again and spill the hot coffee on Buck’s bare foot.

  “Aaargh,” he grunts in pain.

  “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” I gasp, setting the coffee on the counter and bending down toward his scalded foot.

  “I’m okay,” he says at the same time, also bending down.

  Kneeling on the floor of his kitchen, we suddenly make eye contact, the burned foot between us and Buck’s blue eyes twinkling as he says with a smile, “I’m gonna make it.”

  It is the strangest thing, because even though he is the injured one, my knees get weak and I am relieved to be so near the ground already. I return the smile, trying to remember if his dimples had been so pronounced back in high school. For a minute, or maybe just a second, time stands still and I think he is going to kiss me. I actually want him to. My lips are tingling with prekiss energy and I feel my head tip to one side.

  Before I feel his lips on mine though, I hear a groggy “Morning” from behind me, causing me to jump farther than Buck’s greeting had—in fact, causing me to jump so far that my head catapults up and into Buck’s nose.

  “My nose,” he groans, grabbing his face as blood starts pouring out.

  “He burned his foot!” I exclaimed to Tiffany, who hasn’t asked what we were doing, and although she doesn’t seem to care, I feel the need to explain. “Oh my God, you’re bleeding!!” I practically scream, suddenly noticing the bright red blood covering Buck’s face and chest.

  I truly want to die of embarrassment. I have burned the man’s foot and almost broken his nose, all within a few minutes—and thought that he wanted to kiss me in between! As he lies on the couch with a tissue clamped around his nose—a tissue that Tiffany has provided, since all I could do was stand there and shriek, “You’re bleeding!”—I repeat, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” until he finally says with a smile peeking out behind the tissue, “It’s okay.” Except it sounds like, “Itch bouquet,” because he has to keep pinching his nose to stop the bleeding. The sight of the dimples on either side of the tissue causes my knees to weaken again and I realize it is time to get out of Victory.

  As Tiffany and I speed back to Los Angeles, the moment on Buck’s kitchen floor plays over and over in my head. Was he going to kiss me? Did I really want him to? What would it have been like if he had? The thought of Buck’s lips on mine sends an unexplainable shiver through my body.

  “So, tomorrow you start the plan to win Dan back,” Tiffany says from the passenger seat, breaking into my fantasy (by now Buck and I are doing more than kissing on his kitchen floor) and causing my cheeks to flush from being caught.

  “Absolutely,” I agree, pushing any and all thoughts of Buck Platner out of my mind.

  Visiting Victory and making my peace with the town was one thing, but I can’t abandon my plan altogether. Daniel McCafferty is the one I want—he is the one who fits into my picture of perfection. I have to focus on him and getting him back, I instruct myself, fighting not to think about Buck’s big burned foot and the other things they say are big on a man with big feet. (Dan wears a size nine.)

  24

  We arrive back at my apartment Sunday night, and as soon as we walk through the door I am overwhelmed by how much I want—no, need—to get back together with Dan. What actually overwhelms me is the smell in the apartment. The roses from my engagement night, now over a week old, have rotted and filled the entire room with the stench of their decay. I remove the once crimson red roses that have turned black and drooped over, while making a dramatic connection in my mind that the roses represent my relationship with Dan. Unlike these blooms, though, our relationship will be glorious again soon.

  I open the windows and light a pink, rose-scented candle to try to freshen the apartment’s air. Since Dan is so good about bringing me roses, I am an expert; I know that they aren’t as fragrant during some seasons as others. When they don’t smell as good, I light the candle to assist them. I marvel at how lucky I am to have (had) a boyfriend so attentive that I am an expert on rose scents—I absolutely have to spend the rest of my life with him.

  We aren’t home fifteen minutes when Courtney arrives at my door. She had gotten wind that we are about to begin scheming, which is her number one hobby, and she refuses to be left out.

  “Hello, team,” she says, breezing in with a devious smile, dressed in a white tank top, floor-length peasant skirt, and gold flip-flops. Her curls are exceptionally wild and her thin arms are wrapped around two brown paper bags from Gelson’s. “I’ve got supplies,” she informs us, setting the bags on the table.

  Tiffany immediately gets up and starts poking through them.

  “There should be three pints of Häagen-Dazs in there,” Courtney says, pointing to the bags.

  “I’ll put them in the freezer,” Tiffany offers, and quickly separates the ice cream from the Pepperidge Farm Milanos, peanut-butter-filled pretzels, and Doritos.

  “I thought you were going all organic,” I say, s
urveying the feast of junk food. The last time I’d talked to Courtney she’d explained to me that her body was a temple and she would no longer pollute the temple with anything unnatural.

  “Yeah…that was a pain in the ass. It was completely inconvenient to try to get to Whole Foods all the time, and Gelson’s is, like, right around the corner…blah-blah-blah,” Courtney says and shrugs. This isn’t the first diet plan she’s started and stopped. “So, how was the funeral, et cetera?”

  “It was actually really good—obviously sad, but it was good for me to visit home,” I say.

  Courtney throws her head around, causing her curls to spring up and down, and gives me a look. “I’ve never heard you call Victory ‘home’ before.”

  “Well, it was different this time,” I say, not really wanting to get into all the details right now.

  Thankfully, Courtney’s attention span is limited and there are other topics that interest her much more than my emotional growth.

  “Did you see Buck?” she asks in a girlish way as Tiffany is walking back into the room carrying a bowl of dulce de leche.

  “We stayed with him,” she says nonchalantly, as she digs away at a caramel swirl.

  “It was no big deal,” I say, my cheeks flushing. “My parents turned my room into an exercise office and he has a guest room.”

  I quickly cross over to the partially unloaded Gelson’s bag and busy myself pulling out more junk food in hopes that nobody will notice that I am bright scarlet.

  “Soooo?” Courtney asks, dragging out the “o.”

  “It’s no big deal,” I reiterate, trying not to sound uncomfortable, but of course coming off like I’m extremely uncomfortable (which I am). Why did Buck Platner have to come up, and why is the thought of him evoking this type of reaction from me? Especially when I’m on the cusp of getting my life plan back on track!

  Courtney looks confused for a split second before specifying her question. “Did he ask about me?!?” she practically shrieks as her own cheeks blush a pretty, feminine pink.

  Oh God—I’d forgotten that Courtney had set her sights on Buck. Not only did I have an inappropriate almost-moment and mental fantasy about someone other than my ex/soon-to-be-reunited-with fiancé, I’d done it with the person that my best friend is interested in!

  “Um, no…sorry,” I say, not actually feeling sorry that this information wasn’t what Courtney wanted to hear.

  “Hmmm…he didn’t? I wonder why not?” she asks out loud, but the question is probably directed inward. It is incomprehensible to Courtney that the person of the minute isn’t as instantly infatuated with her as she is with him.

  “You can ask him yourself, he’s coming down this weekend,” Tiffany says with a mouth full of ice cream.

  “He is?!?” Courtney and I shoot to attention in unison.

  Tiffany starts nodding “Yes” before moaning, “Brain freeze,” and burying her head in her hands.

  Seeming satisfied with the information that Buck will be within her clutches in less than a week, Courtney grabs a bag of Pirate’s Booty. “I think these might be organic,” she says, while shoving a fistful in. “Anyway, let’s get scheming,” she says mischievously.

  Tiffany and I join her on the floor. Courtney pulls a yellow legal pad clipped to a SparkleCourt bedazzled clipboard from her black Furla bag and takes the top off a silver Tiffany pen.

  “Ideas?” she asks looking around the circle.

  I can’t help but giggle because I feel like I’m at a meeting of the Baby Sitters Club or something; but then I quickly pull it together because this is actually of the utmost importance.

  “I have some,” Tiffany says confidently, and begins to list them. A handful I feel like she saw on the show Friends—although I’m not going to discount them, since Ross and Rachel did get together in the end. I certainly don’t want to wait eight years or whatever it took them, but as long as I don’t sleep with anyone else while Dan and I are on this little break, it shouldn’t be an issue.

  The thought of sleeping with someone else momentarily sends a flash of Buck’s heart-stopping smile into my mind, but I chase it away with a thought of Dan’s sweet grin and the house behind a white picket fence that life with him will provide. Life will be like it was in the beginning of American Beauty before everything got all fucked up, I promise myself. Now a vision of myself in Wellington gardening clogs from Smith & Hawken peacefully fills my mind. My attention is snapped back to the Baby Sitters Club when I hear Courtney explaining one of the many approaches she has used to get a boyfriend back.

  “You know, after Pietro broke up with me, we not only got back together, we got back together with an engagement,” she tells Tiffany with an all-knowing wink.

  Before I can protest, since I already know the story of Courtney and Pietro, she is explaining. Courtney met Pietro at Lake Como in Italy while taking some time off after her failed legal career and before her failed acting career. Supposedly Pietro’s lineage was Italian royalty, but he had been educated in the United States since middle school and was also vacationing on Lake Como when he and Courtney met. As is always the case with Courtney, she was madly in love before she could pronounce his last name and spent four weeks having nonstop sex with him. At the scheduled end of his vacation, he said good-bye with little more than a pat on her head. This obviously devastated Courtney.

  Apparently there had been quite a lack of communication between the two, since Pietro thought they were simply having a fling and Courtney thought she had discovered her soul mate. Pietro returned to New York City and the kind of life that Americanized Italian royals can live there, and Courtney returned to Los Angeles devastated and determined to show Pietro what she knew in her heart. A week later, she showed up in the lobby of his Park Avenue apartment house (how she got the address she has still never admitted) and announced that she was pregnant with his child.

  As any noble, royal Catholic would do, he immediately proposed marriage, which Courtney gleefully accepted. She had already met with Mindy Weiss four times when Pietro figured out that she wasn’t currently nor had she ever been pregnant with his child. The engagement didn’t even last as long as the fling, but—and it’s the end here that creates an aura of awe around Courtney Cambridge—when he confronted Courtney about the fake pregnancy, she became outrageously indignant, broke up with him and threw the seven-carat canary yellow diamond engagement ring he had given her out the window of her Wilshire Boulevard penthouse, screaming that it had “always looked like piss!”

  That’s a Courtney patented maneuver: she never gets dumped. The thing is, she actually gets dumped all the time, but always manages to get the dumper to take her back for just long enough so that she can dump him. Obviously, Courtney’s version of the Pietro story is a bit skewed, and she is just getting to the part about throwing the ring out the window as a wide-eyed Tiffany stares in either horror or amazement (or maybe both). Finally I have to cut in.

  “That won’t work in this case,” I say matter-of-factly, and Courtney shoots me a dirty look for ruining the climactic finale of her story.

  “Why not?” she asks, annoyed.

  “Dan broke up with me specifically because he doesn’t want to have children and thought I was hiding one from him. I don’t think saying I’m pregnant is going to make him come back to me. I think it’s only going to reconfirm his suspicions and make him resent me more.”

  Courtney takes a second to process this information before nodding in agreement, “Okay, you’re right. Let’s start with one of your ideas then,” she says, turning to Tiffany.

  Tiffany smiles nervously at me and then the two girls explain step one in the plan to get Dan and me back together forever.

  25

  Buck was actually on the verge of giving up on Lizzie. Here he’d spent his entire adult life thinking about what he’d missed with her and how no woman could ever measure up—and then they were miraculously reunited and she turned out to have become a total bitch. The girl he remem
bered from high school was gone. Sure, Lizzie was beautiful back then and now, but there was something else about her that made her uncontrollably attractive to Buck. Unlike so many girls, she was confident and driven. She didn’t sleep around—she didn’t sleep with anyone, focusing instead on her dream of going to college and becoming a news reporter. She participated in life at Victory High, but almost as if she were a visitor to the campus, never fully giving herself to anyone or anything in Victory…except her best friend, Charla. It was her fierce loyalty that Buck admired most about her.

  When Buck learned that Charla had named Lizzie as her daughter’s guardian, he was impressed that even though (to his knowledge) Lizzie had never come back to visit her hometown, she and Charla had remained best friends. Obviously, he quickly found out that this was not the case. The Lizzie he encountered in Los Angeles was a shell of the person she had been, but Buck couldn’t let go of his belief that the old Lizzie was still there.

  After the funeral, Buck’s faith was restored, as the Lizzie he remembered suddenly reappeared. Not only was it an enormous relief that she was finally stepping up to her role as Tiffany’s godmother, it was a huge turn-on, too. Buck’s feelings for her soared once more. Saturday evening, spent only eating pizza and reminiscing about Victory and their high school days, felt like a dream come true. Sunday morning there had been a moment in the kitchen when he felt like he and Lizzie were on the same page and he was about to kiss her, but when Tiffany walked in he couldn’t do it. Now all he could do was wait until the following weekend when he’d told Tiffany he would come down to L.A. Obviously, checking on the teenager was important to him, but it was seeing Lizzie and hopefully getting a private moment (or more) to pick up where they left off in the kitchen that was at the forefront of his mind all week long.