The Girlfriend Stage

by Janci Patterson

  “That’s great,” I manage. Tanya’s lips twist to the side in a knowing smile.

  “They have awards for soap operas, don’t they?” Dad asks. “I imagine you’ll be getting one of those soon.”

  The thought of me getting a Daytime Emmy—something Bridget Messler herself has yet to achieve—is crazy laughable. Which isn’t to say I haven’t, on occasion, practiced my acceptance speech in the bathroom, holding a bottle of conditioner like it’s the golden statue.

  But I can’t exactly tell my dad how unlikely the possibility is. He’d never believe me, anyway.

  “Maybe,” I say.

  There is an awkward pause, which I know I should fill, but I’m still trying to do the math on Tanya’s age and my brain seems to be stuck on my mom’s bitter voice on repeat: He keeps finding them younger and younger, doesn’t he?

  “I’ll just go help Byron with the luggage,” Dad says, as if he thinks I’ve brought my entire apartment’s worth of clothes with me, and flees the scene almost as quickly as Byron. My dad is not great with awkward pauses.

  “I’m sorry, I just—” I start, but Tanya shakes her head.

  “Really, it’s okay,” she says. “I know I look young. And I figured you’d be kind of shocked by that. I’m thirty-two. I had Byron when I was sixteen.”

  “Wow,” I say, though I’m not sure if I’m saying that to the fact that my soon-to-be stepmom was eight years old when I was born or that she had a son herself only eight years after that.

  “I know, right? And don’t worry, I’m not going to try to be like some kind of mom to you. That would be weird.” She wrinkles her nose, and I smile.

  “Yeah, maybe a bit.” I’m surprised by how much I like her already.

  Surprised, and a little concerned.

  After all, she’ll be my dad’s fourth wife. And just like each of his wives has been younger than the one that came before, each of his marriages has been shorter. I love my dad, but he doesn’t have a great track record when it comes to his romantic attention span.

  Never trust a man, Anna-Marie, I can hear my mom say, her words slurred by too much wine. You’ll give them your best years and they still go screw the one auto mechanic in town with big tits.

  I need to get out of here.

  Dad and Byron shuffle back in with my suitcase and purse, and I see a temporary escape.

  “Thanks, you guys, you’re the best. I’ll take that,” I say, grabbing both items from their hands before they can protest. “Am I still up in my old room?”

  “Yeah,” Dad says, looking a bit surprised by my haste to escape. “Of course. Just the way you left it.”

  I dearly hope my room hasn’t been sitting there gathering four years of dust and rats. Though since the one thing Wyoming doesn’t lack for is space, this house, like most others, is enormous enough it’s possible Dad hasn’t needed it for anything, even with Tanya and the kids living here, and Patrice and Joe and Grandpa staying for the reunion. “It’s great meeting you, Tanya,” I say. “I’ll go get settled in, and we’ll chat more later, yeah? Fabulous.” This is the same idiotically breezy tone industry people use as brush-offs at parties, usually followed by some quick air kisses and a “darling” or two.

  I have a feeling she’s smart enough to pick up on this, but all I care about right now is hauling ass upstairs and closing myself off in my old bedroom. Which I do. The moment the door is shut behind me, I can breathe again.

  I leave my suitcase and purse by the door and sit down on my bed, just taking in the room I haven’t seen in years. It looks exactly the same as before—same sky-blue bedding on the brass-framed bed, same long-expired bottles of perfume and pots of makeup on the dresser, same tiny holes in the walls from where I took down my Death Arsenal and Firefly posters the day before I moved. Same row of shiny trophies and dangling medals on a special shelf Dad built for them.

  Clearly someone has cleaned in here since then because it doesn’t smell like four years of trapped air and I’m not choking on dust, but other than that it looks like the room is being kept in some weird stasis. A memorial for someone who is never really coming back.

  I walk to the large mirror over the dresser and run my fingers over the photographs shoved into the edges. Younger versions of me, smiling back. Me and girlfriends I wasn’t actually that close to. Me holding trophies that now sit on that shelf. Me graduating as salutatorian (damn you, Kelsey Sprack, for edging me out by one one-hundredth of a point). Lots of me and Shane.

  My phone buzzes in my purse, shaking me out of my thoughts. Gabby, most likely, checking to make sure I haven’t already turned tail and headed back to LA. I grab my phone, and my heart pounds harder when I see that it’s not Gabby calling me.

  It’s Josh.

  Four

  Anna-Marie

  I stare dumbly at my phone. Why is Josh calling me? Not that we never talk on the phone, but it’s mainly to arrange our next date. In lieu of having Gabby around to debate with, my brain chooses to argue with itself.

  Me: Maybe he’s calling to break up with me.

  Also Me: How can he do that? You aren’t his girlfriend, remember? There’s nothing to break up.

  Me: True. But maybe he decided he wants someone else to be, and so he’s just giving me the heads up. Maybe he really wants to be serious with Macy.

  Also Me: Macy? Really? She didn’t look that good at the premiere.

  Me: Maybe I should just answer the damn phone and stop being an insane person who talks to myself.

  Also Me: Yeah, okay.

  And with that matter settled, I answer the phone.

  “Hey,” I say, as if I haven’t just had a brief mental breakdown, likely from being back in Wyoming.

  “Hey,” he says back, and I can hear the smile in it. Just that one word, and something tight in my chest eases. Talking to Josh is kind of like that. “So I take it you made it to Wyoming okay?”

  “I did.” I settle onto my bed cross-legged, leaning against the brass frame. A familiar position from years of phone calls with cute boys. “Already regretting it, though,” I say with a small laugh. “Please tell me something about Los Angeles that will make me not want to drive back tonight.”

  “That doesn’t sound in my best interest,” he says. “But sure, okay. How about this—I spent my whole day in meetings about volumizer. Volumizer, Anna-Marie.”

  I laugh. “What? Have you started taking on stylist clients now?”

  “God, maybe I should,” he says with a groan. “So one of my clients has a clause in her contract about how nothing irreversible can be done to her hair. And she calls me at five in the morning, all hysterical about how the volumizer they’ve started using is damaging it.”

  “Five? Were you even able to have a coherent conversation at that ungodly time?” I try not to think about some other girl having brought him his mug of coffee, taking a shower while he talks his client down off the hair-emergency ledge.

  “Probably not. Though she wasn’t exactly coherent herself, so I doubt she noticed.”

  “Well, that helps.”

  “So I schedule meetings with the heads of wardrobe and cosmetology on set, in which they’re bringing me long lists and charts of the chemical breakdowns of their products. And I have to actually pay attention to this shit, and all the while make sure they know how hard I will fight to protect the ‘integrity of my client’s hair’”—I can practically see the air quotes from his tone— “even though both they and I know she’ll be totally over this tomorrow.”

  I groan in empathy. And decide never to tell him how mad I got when Will used up the last of my shampoo. “So what happened?”

  “Well, I’m a little worried I’m going to be blackballed in the hair-care community from now on. But they agreed to switch product lines.”

  “You really are a good agent. Brent would tell me to br
ing my own damn volumizer to work if I cared about it that much.”

  “Having second thoughts about my offer?” he says, a note of teasing in his voice.

  I am, but the reasons I declined him originally are all still unfortunately valid. “Your concern for the integrity of my hair is tempting. But maybe you’d be the one having second thoughts. After all, you don’t know what kind of demands I’d make on you.”

  He laughs, clearly picking up on my suggestive tone. “I think I have a pretty good idea. And you haven’t heard me complaining.”

  I picture myself pressing up next to him in bed as he says this, his hand trailing lazily along my back.

  I stretch out in my own bed. “Well, you’ve clearly failed at one of my demands. Because all of that still sounds way better than being here.”

  There’s a pause. “Has it really been that bad? You’ve only been there a day.” He doesn’t sound judgmental, just curious. Which makes sense. He knows the basics about my family, like I do about his—two brothers, parents still married, a few nephews and a newborn niece—but we haven’t really talked about family stuff in depth. I don’t talk about family stuff much with anyone, if I can help it.

  Also, I remember that because I lied to him about the movie premiere, he thinks that I’ve been here nearly a full day, not twenty minutes.

  “No, I mean . . .” I shrug, even though he can’t see it. “I don’t know. My family isn’t terrible, it’s just . . .” I trail off, thinking of how best to phrase what I’m feeling.

  “You don’t have to talk about them if you don’t want to,” he says cautiously. Which is the perfect excuse not to.

  But surprisingly, I kind of do. “It’s not that. I just don’t know how to describe it. Being back here and seeing them again.” I pause. “I told you my dad’s getting re-married, right?”

  “Yeah. Part of why you needed to go was to meet her. Is she awful?”

  “Actually, no. Like, I think she’s the kind of person I could be friends with. Hell, she’s not much older than I am. But I can’t, because . . .” I let out a breath. “She’ll be his fourth wife, you know? And other than to my mom, he’s never been married longer than a couple years. He’s not great at it.”

  “At being married?”

  “At not being a cheating asshole would be how my mom and his other ex-wives would put it, but yeah.”

  “Yikes. Yeah, that sounds difficult.” His voice is gentle and sincere, and I find myself continuing, possibly against my better judgment.

  “I love my dad, and I think he goes in each time with the best intentions. But it’s frustrating. Like getting to know these women and their kids, and . . . I tried before, you know? Like I tried to be the good stepdaughter and stepsister and be family, and . . . why bother when I’ll never see them again?” I sigh. “Sorry, I don’t mean to be all heavy about it.”

  “God, no, it’s—I’m happy to listen. Really. Is your mom there, too? Is she remarried?”

  “No way. To both. She stayed here in Everett in a house at the edge of town until I graduated high school, and then she got about as far away from my dad as she could. She lives in Connecticut now, in some community that as far as I can tell is at least half lesbian. She’s not gay herself, but she’s pretty much sworn off men and dating entirely, and she’s insistent that life is much better that way.” I smile despite myself. “Clearly, I don’t share her views.”

  “Well, I’m glad for that.” But he still sounds troubled, and I wonder what it is I’m doing, telling him all this. Really, if I need to unload all this stuff, I should do so with Gabby, not the guy I’m casually dating. Though Gabby’s moving, and I don’t know how much I’m going to get to see her anymore, since most of our interactions revolve around her giving me rides or being my roommate. And Josh is—has always been—really easy to talk to. I suppose this doesn’t hurt anything, really.

  “What about the rest of your family?” he asks.

  “They’re fine. I mean, my dad’s sister Patrice is well-meaning but super offensive to pretty much every race, religion, and heavy-set person in existence. And my cousin Lily hates me. And my teenage soon-to-be stepbrother won’t stop staring at my chest. But other than that . . .”

  He laughs, though it’s in clear sympathy. “I’m sorry to hear all that. The only thing about my family that really compares is their constant harping on me being a college dropout.”

  I hesitate. I’m pretty sure Josh graduated from UC Irvine. “You dropped out?”

  “Yeah, right after getting my bachelors degree. You haven’t finished school in my family until you have a PhD. My little brother Adrian at least got his MBA, so I’m the family deadbeat.”

  I can’t tell if this bothers him or not, so I try not to laugh. “You’re way up on me. I never went to college.”

  “And in a normal family, that’s not a problem.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call my family normal.”

  Josh makes a sympathetic noise. “I wish you were having a better time. There’s got to be something good there. Otherwise, I’m really going to have a hard time making LA seem like a worse place to be.”

  He’s already lost that battle. If I was home now, I’d be out to dinner with him and we’d be laughing about his client’s hair crisis over Thai curry, or getting ready to go to some club, where we’d dance close for hours and go back to his place to dance even closer. Or I’d be at my apartment watching some romantic comedy with Gabby and we’d be criticizing Reese Witherspoon’s inability to choose between hot men (though Gabby and I would vehemently disagree on which hot man she should pick).

  All of these options sound like bliss. But I do love my family, and I can’t just leave a half hour after I got here. He’s right. There’s got to be something good.

  And then I think of it.

  “Hot dogs,” I say. “My uncle Joe makes the world’s best hot dogs.”

  “Wait, what? Are you serious? That’s a pretty big claim.”

  “I stand by it. Every year at the reunion, we have the Halsey Grillmaster Championship, and Uncle Joe always wins. He makes these amazing hot dogs, that he’s marinated in like, I don’t know, unicorn tears and crack or something. He won’t tell us.”

  “I feel like unicorn tears and crack sounds like a reasonable assumption,” Josh says, and I can practically hear the wide grin. “These sound incredible. I’m not sure you know this, but I’m a bit of a hot dog snob.”

  Now I’m incredulous. “You. A hot dog snob.”

  “It’s true. Not to disparage the Halsey Championship, but the best hot dogs in the world are actually at the ballpark. I have clients who give me box seats sometimes, and I think they’d be horrified to know that what I’m excited about is going there for the food.”

  “I’ve never seen you eat a hot dog. Not once.”

  “Yeah, well,” he says slowly. “Maybe you should come with me sometime.”

  “To watch a baseball game. And eat stadium hot dogs.”

  “To eat the best hot dogs in the world. The game is beside the point. I don’t even know what the hell’s going on most of the time.”

  I grin. It should be hard to imagine, him and me at a baseball game we don’t actually care about, eating hot dogs and waving those big foam hands at all the wrong times. But right now, it’s not. And out of all the options of what I could be doing back home, somehow this sounds like the very best one.

  “I’m in. Absolutely,” I say. “If only to know for sure that you’re wrong and Uncle Joe’s dogs are better.”

  He groans and laughs, all at once, and it’s an adorable sound. “No way, Halsey. Unicorn tears or no, I refuse to believe.”

  “Well, Josh Rios, hot dog connoisseur, you’re welcome to drive out here and try them for yourself.”

  There’s a pause, and then, “Maybe I will. Uncle Joe’s award-winning hot dogs don’t
sound like an opportunity I can pass up.”

  I laugh. “Yes, I’m sure you’re ready to drive all the way out to Everett, Wyoming, on my hot dog recommendation.”

  “You don’t understand how much I love hot dogs. I just might.”

  A knock sounds at my door. “Anna-Marie?” Aunt Patrice calls. “Are you going to join us? We’re setting up Scrabble!”

  I sigh. “I’ll be right there!” I call back. Then to Josh: “Sorry. It’s Scrabble time. I missed Aunt Ida’s funeral, and if I also skip reunion game night, there’ll be serious hell to pay.”

  “I wouldn’t want that,” he says. There’s a moment where neither of us says anything, and I realize I don’t want to say goodbye. Like it will physically hurt to say the words.

  I miss him.

  The silence stretches on, and my heart pounds.

  “Save some of those dogs for me,” he eventually says.

  “Will do,” I reply, though my mind is racing through the ramifications of that single stark thought, and suddenly I do want to say goodbye. I need to say goodbye. “I’ll talk to you later,” is what I actually say, and barely hear his response before I hang up.

  Then I toss the phone on my bed and stare at it like it’s some kind of giant hairy spider that just crawled out of the shower drain.

  How can I miss him? I haven’t been gone that long. It’s not like we haven’t gone days without seeing each other before, and I’ve been fine. More than fine.

  It’s just being back here, back with my crazy family and stiflingly small home town. I’ve barely been here thirty minutes and it’s messing with me already. Missing someone like that after only a couple days, wishing you could talk and talk and never have to say goodbye—that’s not how I am. That’s for serious relationships with labels and commitment and joint rewards accounts at restaurants. And that’s not what I do.

  Josh is a great guy and we have fun and we have incredible sex, but that’s it. We both know this. And that’s all either of us wants. It’s a good thing, what we have. No pain, no jealousy, no expectations.