The Girlfriend Stage

by Janci Patterson

  “No,” I say, “I do.”

  “Whoa,” Ben says. “Really? You’re admitting that?”

  That’s warranted. Ben calls me a serial dater for never getting serious with the girls I date. I pretend I like it that way, but I know Ben sees through me. “Yeah,” I say. “I really do.”

  I’m becoming alarmingly aware of all the implications of this on the drive here. It’s hard for me to imagine giving up my basement, or living with someone who resents it, or frankly even telling a girl about it. In college I didn’t hide it as much, but in the six years since I joined the Hollywood scene I haven’t known many people I can geek out with about things that aren’t cars or clothes or net worths.

  “Anna-Marie isn’t a basement girl. But I enjoy her company, and we laugh a lot.” It’s more than that; it’s a genuine pleasure every time I get to see her.

  “And yet you can’t tell her your lobster joke.”

  I groan. I do this impression of a lobster that Ben mocks me unceasingly for. All lobsters are French, and my French accent is terrible, but I’ve been laughing at my own joke since we were in high school and I’ll probably never stop. I may have totally choked last week when Anna-Marie and I were waiting to be seated at Le Papillon and we were watching the lobsters jockey for position in the tank. She turned to me with that dazzling smile and those gorgeous blue eyes of hers and asked me what I thought they would say if they could talk.

  I brushed her off, and Ben is never going to let me live it down.

  It’s embarrassing how hard it is for me to even directly admit to my best friend that I want more with this girl. “I’ve been thinking a lot lately that maybe this is what it would feel like to find somebody I could actually be serious with, even if she’s not into all the same things I am, you know?”

  “That’s awesome,” Ben says. “But she really doesn’t know you’re coming?”

  “She said I’m welcome to come try the hot dogs, but she clearly didn’t think I would. I told her to save some for me. Honestly, I didn’t think I would either.”

  “But now you’re in Utah.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Tell me I’m crazy.”

  “You’re crazy,” Ben says. “Hey! Cut that out. No, I’m not talking him out of it.”

  “You can’t,” I say. “I’m already gone.” And this is exactly why: if I was still back in LA, Ben would be talking me out of this without giving it a second thought. With the distance, he still could, but only if he thinks I’m making a truly terrible mistake.

  Given his reaction, I’m gathering he expects this particular mistake to be only mildly humiliating—something he’ll mock me about for years, but only after the sting wears off.

  “For what it’s worth,” Ben says, “Wyatt thinks this is impossibly romantic.”

  From the sound of it, Ben does, too, though he’d never admit it. “Too bad I’m not trying to impress you or Wyatt.”

  “Yeah, sorry, man. But you’re not my type.”

  That’s been a running joke since Ben came out when we were fourteen—after I’d been watching him be twitchy and terrified to tell me for months, even though I already knew.

  “I’m scared,” I say.

  “Yeah,” Ben says. “That and you being in Utah are pretty good signs you’re in this deep.”

  That only makes the whole thing scarier. “I have no idea if she feels the same way.”

  “Yeah. I remember something about that. I also remember the advice you gave me.”

  “Just talk to him already before I punch you in the face?”

  Ben laughs. He told me to shut up every day for four months when he dragged me to the pool hall where Wyatt worked and proceeded not to talk to the guy.

  “How the tables have turned,” Ben says.

  “All right,” I say. “If we’ve reached the gloating part of this conversation, I’m going to crash before I drive to Wyoming tomorrow and probably scare off Anna-Marie for good. Have fun with my sheets. Leave Harry and Hermione alone.”

  “Just for that, I’m going to make Ron watch.”

  I hang up on him, which is how many of our conversations end. Just one of the many reasons he calls me a diva.

  I stare at the blank ceiling and stretch out on the empty bed. I wish Anna-Marie was here, something I’ve been thinking increasingly, even at night in the basement. Last night after I dropped off my client Macy after the movie premiere—where she flirted and made in-roads with everyone in the room, just like I knew she would—I’d gone back to my basement and let myself imagine what it would be like to curl up with Anna-Marie in the La-Z-Boy and read a book together.

  I know if that’s what I want, I shouldn’t be dating actresses. But the truth is, I want it all. I’m a romantic, and watching Ben and Wyatt fawn over each other doesn’t help. I want what I have with Anna-Marie—a woman I can take to premieres and clubs and dance and drink with and laugh about the absurdity of all things Hollywood. But I also want someone who’ll watch Star Wars and read Harry Potter with me without mocking or acting put out about it.

  If I’m honest, I’d like someone who’d enjoy quiet nights at home as much as going out and being seen.

  I know I can’t have all that, but being with Anna-Marie makes me want to let some parts of it go—not like settling, but like giving up old dreams in favor of new ones. But as with everyone else I’ve dated, our conversations never seem to veer toward the serious—with the exception of that last one—and I’m colossally bad at guiding them that way.

  I wish I had the first clue what she was going to think about me showing up out of the blue, or a much shorter drive between here and there during which to sweat about it. I wish I’d gotten a plane ticket, but the closest major airports were still hours away.

  It doesn’t matter now.

  Whatever’s going to happen, by tomorrow night, I’ll know.

  Six

  Anna-Marie

  Gummy bears?” I say. “Still?” Shane pulls himself through the window, his shirt catching on the latch like it always did, pulling up to expose his abs.

  Which are more defined than I remember. Apparently Shane has taken to working out.

  He frees himself, and bounds to his feet with the careless grin that has always been his trademark, along with those bright blue eyes. “It felt fitting. I can’t believe the grocery store still carries those things. They’re clearly toxic. Gummy bears aren’t supposed to do this.”

  He holds up his fingers, which are stained with unnaturally bright candy colors.

  “Please.” I fold my arms across my chest. “Don’t pretend that’s not why you started using those off-brand radioactive hazards in the first place. You wanted me to have to get up earlier than my dad to wash the gummy rainbow off my window before he saw.”

  His smile becomes all feigned innocence. “I thought it was a cute, fun quirk in a relationship filled with cute, fun quirks. If you want to read malicious intent into my actions . . .”

  I laugh, then sit back on my bed against the frame again, drawing my knees up to my chest. He sprawls out across the foot of my bed, propping his head up on his elbow. He’s wearing faded jeans and some t-shirt for a band I’ve never heard of. His straw-blond hair flops over his hand and he grins up at me.

  The déjà vu is so strong, I may have actually traveled back in time.

  Except now, I can’t help but think of Josh in bed, his head propped up like that. Smiling over at me.

  “Shane Beckstrom,” I say, firmly pushing away thoughts of deep brown eyes and baseball games and whether he’s eaten hot dogs with Asia or Macy. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Five years, just about,” he says. “Crazy, right?”

  It is. Shane and I were such a constant in each other’s lives, even as we broke up and got back together over and over again through the years, that even when I abruptly
packed up and left for Los Angeles—and hadn’t seen him nearly for a year before then—I don’t think I could have imagined five years would go by without us running into each other somehow.

  “How did you know I’d be back?” I can’t help but ask. I didn’t tell anyone but Dad. And Patrice.

  Before he even speaks, I know the answer.

  “Seriously?” he says. “You don’t think Aunt Patrice was telling everyone in town about how ‘our little Anna-Marie’ was finally coming to the reunion this year?”

  I groan, but laugh a little too. Because obviously she did.

  “I mean, it’s not like she told me directly,” he says with a smile that says he couldn’t give a shit if Patrice talks to him or not. “But word gets around. It’s Everett. What the hell else is there to talk about?”

  “Sounds like about how I left it.” I smile back, because however he found out, and despite all the mess of our past, it is good to see him again. “So how are things? How’s the band? Is Mikey still an ass?”

  “Ha. Well, yeah, probably. But he left us a couple years ago. I think he’s in rehab now? Anyway, not my shit to deal with anymore. We have a guy named Dylan on drums now. He whines about his girlfriend constantly, but otherwise he’s pretty cool.” Shane shrugs. “But no, the band is doing great, actually. We just got back from playing in Denver. This massive show with some really big-name groups. It was kind of mind-blowing.”

  “Nice!” I’m impressed, but not overly surprised. Shane and I had started dating soon after he first formed his band, Accidental Erotica, and so I was there from the humble garage beginnings. Which mainly involved a lot of noise masquerading as music and Mikey drinking too much and throwing his drumsticks around when he got pissed. But by the last time Shane and I broke up, they had gotten legitimately good, and were starting to play in places that weren’t predominantly cattle-populated.

  “Well, it’s nothing compared to Everett’s real shining star,” he says, raising an eyebrow. “Maeve LaBlanche.”

  “Okay fine, make fun of the soap opera actress. She’s an easy target.” I poke him in the chest with my toes.

  “I’m not making fun of you! God, you’ve become paranoid.” He smiles, and grabs my foot, holding it in his hand. He rubs the arch with his thumb, and a shiver runs up my leg. “No, I’m really proud of you, Anna. You’re making it. I never doubted you would, you know.”

  “Oh, come on.” I shift my foot to poke him again. “You can’t say that. I didn’t even decide to try for the whole acting thing until well after we’d broken up.”

  “Okay, fine, I didn’t exactly know you’d be some big Hollywood actress. But you were never going to stay here forever, no matter what you thought. You’re Anna-Marie Halsey. You were going to take over the world, one way or another.” He gestures back at the shelf of trophies and dangling medals lining my wall. “The rest of us just needed to stay out of your way.”

  I should feel good about his confidence in me, but I think of Josh saying that I should be auditioning more and for some reason the thought scares me.

  I think of that phone call, and it’s not only the thought of auditioning that scares me.

  “Staying out of my way? Is that why we broke up? Because I seem to remember it having more to do with a waitress in Lander you couldn’t stop flirting with.”

  Shane groans. “Yeah, I suppose that may have had something to do with it. I didn’t sleep with her, you know.”

  “Really.”

  “Well . . .” He scrunches up his face. “Not until after you and I broke up, anyway.”

  “There it is.” I laugh, and am happy to find I don’t have to force it. This was a common thread back in the day, Shane’s wandering eyes—and occasional hands, I assumed, though he’s always claimed he never actually cheated on me. He did manage to make the most out of the short gaps in which we were broken up, though. Not that I didn’t do the same myself, mostly to get back at him.

  God, it’s good to not be emotionally invested in that kind of thing anymore.

  He tugs on my pinkie toe gently. “I heard about that Reid guy you started seeing after. Sounds like a dick. Is he why you left Wyoming?”

  Reid. Ugh. I haven’t thought about that bastard in a long time.

  “I don’t know. He was part of it, I suppose. Like why I left then, at least. But I just needed to get out.”

  Shane nods. If there’s one thing he and I will always have in common, it’s that neither of us ever felt like we fit in Everett. We’d talk about that sometimes, in our more introspective moments, when we were done groping each other behind the bleachers. How we felt too big for this town, how we sometimes felt like we couldn’t breathe here, no matter how much open sky Wyoming held.

  I left, and only regret I didn’t do it sooner. Shane is still here, and even though things are going well for his band, I feel bad he hasn’t fully made his escape yet.

  “So tell me about what life is like for a TV star,” Shane says, the grin creeping back onto his face. If he resents me for getting out before him, there’s no way in hell he’s going to tell me.

  “Hmmm. Well, I wake up way too early to get to hair and makeup on time, and then spend most of my day in uncomfortably tight clothes waiting around on set for my scene to be up. I work with lots of hot people who are all primarily concerned about how hot they are relative to everyone else. I live in a shitty apartment in a shitty part of town with my awesome roommate, and I probably drink too much because god knows I can’t eat too much or I won’t fit into those tight clothes again the next day. I think that about sums it up.”

  “And you love it.”

  “I do,” I agree, grinning back at him. “Though I just found out that my awesome roommate is going to be moving in with her boyfriend soon. So that’s going to suck.”

  “Really?” His lips twist, as if considering something. “So you’re going to be needing a new roommate.”

  “I don’t know, I pay most of the rent myself anyway, since she drives me—wait. Are you trying to get at something here?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe. The guys and I have been talking about moving to LA, getting more exposure. Kyle and JT want us all to get a place together, but I see enough of these guys as is, you know? I love them, but I don’t need to stare across the breakfast table every morning at their ugly faces.” His eyes glint. “Especially if I could be staring at a face that’s way better looking.”

  I shake my head incredulously, and shove his chest with my foot. “You’re insane. You and me? Roommates?”

  “Why not? No matter what, we’ve always been friends, haven’t we?”

  “Friends who haven’t spoken to each other in like five years.” But I get what he means. Like how even after five years, we can still hang out like this and it feels . . . I don’t know, familiar.

  “Yeah, so?” He dismisses that half a decade with a wave of his hand. “It’d be fun. And I’d pay my fair share of rent, and you wouldn’t have to live alone in some shitty apartment in a shitty part of town. We could help each other out, you know?”

  When he says it like that, like it’s the easiest decision in the world, I can’t help but be the tiniest bit tempted. The thought of going back to my Gabby-less apartment, watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer alone on our weekly Wine and Doritos night—which will no longer be a thing, I’m guessing?—even not having to smell the god-awful scents of whatever Fong’s daily special she’s brought home . . .

  My gut twists, not just because of how lonely that sounds. But because I suddenly can’t help imagining Josh there on my crappy wine-stained couch with me, cuddled up while watching Dollhouse and talking about how much better the last movie premiere we’ve been to would have been if Joss Whedon had written it. Coming back from a fun night at the latest trendy club and then playing Death Arsenal, him listening to me rant about the latest DA forum debate.

 
Josh Rios.

  Yeah, like that could happen.

  Although he does like hot dogs, apparently. Which doesn’t really have anything to do with my geeky interests, but—

  “Unless,” Shane continues, breaking into my Josh-related speculation, “you’re worried I’ll intimidate your boyfriend.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend,” I sputter, and feel my face flush. Sputtering is not the most convincing way to say something. Even if it is true.

  “Yeah? Not even that agent guy?” When he sees my surprise, he grins. “I might have Googled you when I heard you were coming back to town. You looked great in that red dress, by the way.”

  “We’re . . . it’s super casual. He’s not the kind of guy that does serious. And neither am I.”

  Shane raises an eyebrow. “Really? I don’t remember you having problems being serious with me.” His fingers tickle the side of my foot and up my ankle.

  I pull my foot away then, too fast, and his smile slips. “Hey, I’m just playing. It’s cool. If you want me to go—”

  “No,” I say. “No, it’s just . . .”

  What? What is wrong with me?

  It’s just that I miss Josh. It’s just that I wish he was the one joking with me and touching me and I wish he wasn’t probably doing that with some other girl right now and—

  And I can’t think that, because I know where it all leads. I’ve seen it, over and over and over again.

  I can’t and I won’t.

  “It’s nothing,” I say, forcing a smile, as I scoot closer to Shane. “Want to get out of here?”

  I pull a hoodie on over my cotton tank top and pajama shorts when Shane and I leave through the window. Shane puts a finger to his lips and points upward as he climbs out the window. I lean out to see who exactly he thinks is going to hear us from up on the roof, and spot a family of bats just spreading their wings for the evening.

  Lovely. I’m so happy to be back in Wyoming, where the rodents have wings. I duck my head and I lower myself onto a thick branch—and as my top gets tugged up a couple inches by a smaller branch, I note Shane’s unabashed appraisal of my bare stomach. Yes, I have been kicking ass on the Roman Chair, thanks.