The Girlfriend Stage

by Janci Patterson

  “I’m about to go to the grocery store. Joe’s Way and Anna-Marie, are you coming with? Have you decided what you’re grilling for us?”

  “It’s going to be a surprise. I just need a few minutes to . . . look something up real quick.” Josh squeezes my hand and then nods to my dad and Tanya before fleeing the room to frantically Google recipes.

  “Fantastic,” Patrice says, beaming, and heads out the front door.

  Tanya and Dad start to head into the living room. And I know I shouldn’t involve myself any more with her, but I can’t help it.

  I like Tanya.

  “Tanya,” I say. “Do you mind talking with me for a minute?”

  She looks justifiably surprised. “Sure.”

  Dad smiles at me before he leaves the room, probably happy I’m taking the time to get to know Tanya a little better. He wouldn’t be as happy if he knew what I want to say to her.

  But first. “You’ve been sticking up for me a lot,” I say. “My family’s a little crazy, as you well know, and—anyway, I just wanted to let you know I appreciate that.”

  Tanya cocks her head to the side. She’s wearing a different pair of dangly feather earrings today. “Of course. But I have the feeling there’s more you wanted to talk to me about.”

  And there’s part of the reason I like her. She picks up on stuff quick, and she doesn’t seem inclined to hold back what she thinks.

  “I love my dad,” I start. “Like I really love him. And I want him to be happy. But—”

  She narrows her eyes, and I can tell that I’m not saying this right.

  Screw the preamble. “You know his track record, right? How many times he’s been married? How those marriages have ended?”

  She looks down at the floor, scuffs her sandal along a crack in the linoleum. “I do. So is that it, then? Is that why you’re avoiding me?”

  Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve had time to avoid her, what with all the Shane and the Josh of the last two days.

  Except that I have avoided her, and for a lot longer than two days.

  “Yeah. The thing is, you’re awesome. And that’s great, you know, for my dad. But I don’t want to see you or your kids get hurt.” And now I’m staring at the floor too. “Because I’ve seen that a lot.”

  “I’m scared, too,” Tanya says, and I look up in surprise. “Terrified, some days. But he’s a good man, and I love him. And I think that’s worth the risk. Don’t you?”

  I blink at her, stunned.

  Do I? Could I ever?

  I hear myself talking to Josh last night, his arm warm around my shoulders. Sometimes I want to believe . . .

  “Anyway, I appreciate your concern,” she says. “I think you’re awesome, too. And clearly, you have your own romantic concerns to worry about.”

  I really, really do.

  Thirteen

  Anna-Marie

  Patrice takes Josh and me—and unfortunately, Lily, who hops in at the last minute—to Foster’s Food and Feed in her extended cab pickup truck, where we park in the lot next to a half dozen other, similar trucks. Josh spends most of the car ride texting with his assistant—he’s cleared his week of things that require him to be in LA and apparently has some fellow agents covering for him, but he still has a lot of work to do.

  “So what did you decide on?” I ask as we get our own cart and head down a separate aisle from my aunt and cousin.

  “Carne asada. This recipe has like five hundred reviews and looks easy enough.” He eyes the aisle around us. “Why are there so many different exhaust pipes for sale in a grocery store?”

  “What, you’ve never been at Trader Joe’s and felt a desperate need for a new muffler?” I gesture to the other side of the aisle. “Or farming equipment?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “Such a city boy, Rios.” I shake my head in mock sadness.

  He grins. “Says the girl with a designer purse and the world’s most unstable-looking sandals.”

  I laugh and look down at my Tory Burch wedges. “What? They make my legs look good.”

  “Well, I’m not arguing with that.” We’ve made our way into an actual food aisle and Josh picks up a can of chiles, eyeing it thoughtfully. I’m wondering if he has ever cooked anything before when he says, “So your dad was pretty intense.”

  I grimace. “Oh, god, I’m sorry about that. I think he was trying to make up for years of not being able to grill the guys I’m dating—”

  “No, I didn’t mean to me. I meant, you know, with the whole Oscars thing.” He puts the can in the cart and turns his gaze to me. “Did he really mean that?”

  I shrug. “I told you before, he and my mom are both kind of intense. They’re really proud when I succeed.”

  “Yeah, but there’s succeeding and there’s winning an award that statistically an incredibly small number of actors will ever even be nominated for.”

  I can almost hear Brent in my head. Soaps are a good place for a girl like you, Anna-Marie.

  “You don’t think I ever could,” I say, and maybe that’s true, because I find I’m not able to keep the hurt from my voice.

  “That’s not what I mean,” he says quickly. “It’s just—that’s a lot of pressure, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe. But that’s just the nature of my career, you know?” He should know that more than anyone, what the industry expects of actresses—stay young, stay thin, have perfect skin and hair and teeth. Be compliant and simultaneously ballsy. Ambitious yet appropriately reserved. Be the best, always, because you’re forever on a precipice with a row of beautiful women behind you, ready to push you off and take your place.

  A chill runs through my veins. Maybe Brent is right. Maybe I should just be happy with what I have.

  The wheels on the cart squeak as he pushes it a few steps forward. “Is that even what you want, though? To win an Oscar?”

  “Isn’t that something every actor wants?”

  “It’s just not healthy to have your success determined by something you have no control over,” he says. “And I don’t think it’s fair of your father to put that on you.”

  “He just wants me to be the best. He thinks I will be the best. Is that so wrong?” The chill has become a flush of anger I feel all the way to my fingertips, and I stop walking and fold my arms across my chest. I’m not sure if it’s the dig on my father or just more hurt that Josh clearly doesn’t see an Oscar in my future—though if I’m honest, I know how unlikely it really is.

  Josh stops walking, too, and the front of the cart turns a few inches to the side. “Is that why you told him I’m the best? Because otherwise I’m not good enough for you?” He looks back at me, his dark eyes haunted. “Because I’m good, but I’m not the best. And you know that.”

  His words are like a punch in my gut. I gape, not even sure how to respond.

  “I didn’t—that’s not—” I start, but I find myself staring down at my feet. I can’t bring myself to tell him how terrified I am of failing, especially failing in front of Josh—because that leads to all the other things I can’t bring myself to tell him.

  There’s a silence that sits like lead in my stomach. The tinny country muzak piping over the store sound system buzzes in my ears.

  Josh clears his throat. “The recipe says I need flank steak. It looks like the meat counter is over there?”

  I nod and we start walking again. But I feel numb, even as we pick up the rest of the ingredients we need. Even as we start talking again, both of us clearly trying to pretend that whole Oscar discussion never happened.

  Even as we pass Lily, and she picks up the nearest phallic-shaped grocery item—which happens to be a raw sausage she peels from its plastic wrapping—and seductively sucks on the end of it while winking at Josh.

  Okay, maybe the numbness cracks a bit then, but mai
nly because I’m so disgusted. Too disgusted to even be angry with Lily about her increasingly bold seduction attempts. Josh looks like he’s about to start dry heaving as we turn the corner into another aisle.

  “Did she really just do that with raw meat?” He shudders.

  “That girl’s going to pick up mad cow disease. She should really stick to pickles.”

  He laughs, but there’s still something holding him back. And I don’t think it’s the fact I’m related to the girl who performs sex acts on uncooked meats, or even that he really thinks I—a soap opera actress, for crying out loud—would only be his client if he was the very best agent in Hollywood.

  When he referred to what I said to my father, I wonder if he wasn’t thinking about me refusing to be his girlfriend. Him not being good enough for me isn’t even close to the problem there . . . but there’s no way to explain that without telling him all the things I’m afraid to say and think and want.

  And because I’m afraid to say those things—and now to ride home with Lily, because who knows what she’ll try next—I suggest we take a tour of Everett. Josh seems relieved, and agrees, and for once, Lily seems too ashamed of herself to interfere, and heads back to my dad’s house with her mother.

  We spend the afternoon walking around town. I show him the convenience store where the teenagers hang out, especially when it’s too cold to do anything outside. We chat with the old knitting ladies in front of the post office, who are eager to tell us all the gossip about how Pearl Marmon (of Pearl’s Gardening Corner fame) has been “getting her dirt tilled” by Ted Hess, which I assume is a metaphor for sex, but these ladies have a combined age of about two hundred and might actually be scandalized by Pearl outsourcing her tilling, so who knows. We stop in at Sheila’s Bakery and eat thick slices of banana bread and I try not to imagine Sheila—who is significantly thinner than the last time I saw her, thanks to the gastric bypass surgery Patrice mentioned—taping down her skin flaps. We pass Everett’s movie theater, which only has one screen and plays mostly John Wayne movies and, weirdly, anything by Pixar. There’s the high school and various friends’ houses, and I tell him stories about growing up here, and he laughs and shares his own stories.

  But there’s still this weird tension, and it doesn’t help that walking around town is bringing back all these memories of Shane—memories I can’t tell Josh, because I don’t want to hurt him any more than I already have, or make things even more awkward.

  If I were here with Shane instead, this would be easier. Uncomplicated. Shane doesn’t make me feel like Josh does—like I’ve found this piece of myself I didn’t even know I was missing. But being with Shane doesn’t make me panic. It doesn’t make me feel like I have everything in the world to lose.

  I need to talk to Gabby, I realize. Too much has happened in the past couple of days, and my brain feels like it’s spinning but going nowhere, like tires in a patch of mud. And all I’m doing is messing up everything around me the more I try to get myself free. Gabby is really good for this sort of thing.

  Even though Everett’s a minuscule town, we still manage to kill enough time wandering around there that it’s dark by the time we get back to my house. Josh has work calls to make, so that gives me an opportunity to text Gabby.

  I need to talk to you. Are you free?

  About ten seconds after I hit send, she calls me.

  “Anna-Marie, I’m so sorry,” Gabby gushes as I pick up. “Did the landlord call you? I told him not to call you until I’d checked on your shoes.”

  And now I have an entirely different kind of panic. “My shoes? What happened?”

  She makes a verbal cringing sound. “Unnggh. It’s my brother. Felix. He broke into our apartment earlier today when I was at work.”

  “Oh my god. How do you know it was him?”

  “Mrs. Villanova from down the hall saw him leaving and described him to me. It was definitely Felix. Plus, from what I can tell, he didn’t actually steal anything, he just tore the place apart. He must have been looking for his cello.”

  She sounds completely heartbroken, and I wish I could reach through the phone and give her a hug. Or better yet, give her junkie brother a swift ass-kicking for doing this to her. The last stint at rehab didn’t take any more than the first one, and he’s been back on heroin for months now. Before he completely slipped off the radar, he gave her his cello for safekeeping—a job she takes as seriously as if she was keeping the country’s nuclear codes from Russian spies, rather than pawn bait from some strung-out kid. I don’t have the faintest clue where that cello is, and I doubt Will does, either.

  I know she’d desperately hoped that Felix wouldn’t ever get so low as to test her on this. But it appears that he has.

  I groan. “Gabby, that sucks. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. It sucks.” There’s a pause where she draws in an uneven breath. “I really don’t think he took anything. I haven’t checked everything yet, but your Xbox is still here. As well as the Holy Trinity.”

  The Holy Trinity is the semi-joking term for my three most beloved—and ridiculously expensive—pairs of Louboutins. If he was looking for something to sell for drug money, he would have done well to take those, so the fact that he didn’t speaks well for the safety of the rest of my collection.

  “Good. But I’m not worried about that. I’m just worried about you.” If I’m being honest, this is much easier to say now that I know my Louboutins aren’t currently sitting in some seedy pawn shop.

  I shudder.

  She sighs. “I’m okay. I just—I don’t know what to do anymore. Of course he’s not answering my texts.”

  “I think you’re doing everything you can. He knows you love him. He knows you’ll help him when he’s ready for it. That’s why he gave you the cello in the first place.”

  “Right. Right.” But there’s the unspoken worry—that he’ll never be ready for help. That maybe he won’t get the chance to get help before the drugs kill him.

  Now I feel like a total dick for worrying at all about my shoes in the face of that.

  “But you didn’t know about that when you texted, right?” Gabby says. “So clearly there’s something going on in Wyoming I need to hear about.”

  Boy, is there ever.

  “Yeah, but you don’t need to listen to me whine about dating stuff when you’ve got this with Felix.”

  “Oh god, please let me hear about your dating stuff,” Gabby says. “It’ll give me something else to think about while I put our apartment back together.”

  I can see her point. And really, if she needs a distraction, the tale of my last couple days will certainly provide that.

  “And anyway, you have dating stuff to talk about?” Gabby continues. “In Everett, Wyoming? The place you once referred to as ‘the town where dreams go to die a long cowboy-boot-wearing death?’”

  I may be a bit melodramatic at times.

  “Yeah, well, the past couple days have been crazy,” I say, “so you’d better settle in.”

  “I can’t settle in, I’ve got to hang up all the clothes he pulled out of your closet and—”

  “Metaphorically, Gabs.”

  “Right. Got it.” She sighs and I hear the clatter of what sounds like my plastic hangers. I wince at the thought of all my clothes strewn all over, and start spilling all that has happened since I arrived in Everett.

  Gabby may have started out a bit distracted, but it only takes until I’m telling her about Shane climbing through my window (the first time) before I’m pretty certain she’s abandoned her cleaning entirely and has settled in (literally) on the couch with a bag of Doritos.

  “Shane? Ex-boyfriend Shane?” she asks, between crunching sounds.

  “The very same. But wait, it gets better. Or worse. I’m not sure.” I launch into our adventure at the hot springs. She actually chokes on her chips when I tell her
about the Boy Scouts and I have to wait to make sure she’s not actually dying.

  Then there’s the bat attack.

  “Oh my god, Anna,” she says, laughing, after I describe my dad ordering Shane to put on pants and help him. “This all sounds like something that would happen to me.”

  It’s true. Somehow Everett has turned me into Gabby. Which, if we were talking about her generosity or sense of humor or ability to perform CPR on dying soap opera stars—as she actually did once, saving the life of the legendary Bridget Messler—that would be a good thing. But we are not.

  I sit on my bed and continue. “Then, yesterday evening, just as I’m doing this ridiculous fashion show for my future stepsister, Josh shows up.”

  “Josh? He drove all the way to Wyoming? After a conversation about hot dogs?”

  I flop onto my back, staring up at my ceiling, and I can’t keep myself from smiling. “Yeah. He did. And get this, Gabs. We talked for—I don’t know, a long time. And he’s a total geek.” I tell her about our conversation, about Carrie Fisher and Death Arsenal and Dothraki and anime, about how we were one-upping each other and his lobster joke that made me snort-laugh, and his reaction to that and—

  “Wait a minute. He said your snort-laugh is his favorite sound ever?” Gabby says, taking a break from the little squeeing sounds she’d been making at every revelation before.

  I grin. “He thinks it’s adorable.”

  “You need to lock this down, Anna-Marie. Because your snort-laugh is not adorable.”

  Lock this down.

  So much of me wants to. Wants to be with him right now rather than just talking about being with him.

  “Yeah, okay, but there’s more,” I say. And then I tell her about Shane, and our little snit about my dad and the Oscars and the walk through town and all the stuff I didn’t want to bring up because I didn’t want to make things weird anymore or, worse, hurt him.

  “I don’t know what to do,” I say when I’m finally caught up. “There’s Josh and there’s Shane, and . . . I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t sleep with either of them until I’ve decided what I want, you know?” I try to imagine myself telling this to Josh, and my chest aches. He’d leave for sure, then.