by JD Hawkins
I look at Louise, and she gives me the straight-face, the ‘the-time-is-now’ face, the one she uses when she plays sympathetic detectives in interrogation rooms.
“No. I mean…I guess a little? Maybe.”
“See?” Louise says, throwing her arms in the air. “Doesn’t that feel better? Releasing all that truth? I know you used to be the queen of the hit-it-and-quit-it back in college, but that’s just not you anymore. And it’s not like you guys aren’t already super close. Admitting that you’re falling for him is nothing to be ashamed of.”
I look at her and try to match her enthusiasm but I can’t. “Yeah, we’ve been friends for eight years, so of course I like him—he’s a great guy. But thinking of him as an actual boyfriend? I’d be crazy to even try it. I’ve already told you all the reasons why.”
“Why won’t you even consider it?” Louise asks loudly, palms out in a dramatic gesture. “What’s so difficult here? You’ve been friends so long, you know that you get along. And if it doesn’t work out, at least you won’t spend the rest of your life wondering ‘what if…’! I mean, this could really work. And it’s sweet! It’s romantic! God, I would love to have a boyfriend I could call a friend as well. Especially if he looked like Owen.”
“You only think that because you read scripts, and things like this always work out in those. But this is real life—you know, with emotions you can’t control and nine-to-fives and cellulite. In all the time I’ve known Owen he’s never once had a long-term relationship—he hasn’t even had anything you could call short-term.”
“But this is different!” Louise insists. “You guys have something special together. I’ve seen it.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head adamantly. “That’s exactly what every other girl thought in college. Every girl who he let down after they had one date, or two or three, but three was always his max number of hook-ups with the same girl and he never broke that rule. I mean, they would basically fall at his feet, and Owen would just trample over them. And then they’d come to me, asking if I knew what went wrong or how to get him back, because they were so sure things had been going perfectly and they never saw it coming—even though they all knew about his reputation! There was this one woman last year—somehow she got my work number—and she kept calling me, day after day at my desk, begging me to put Owen on the phone. Of course, he’d tell me to say he wasn’t there. And I could just hear the desperation in her voice. For months she did that. I don’t want to turn into that person…I mean, listen to me, I already sound a bit like her.”
Louise shakes her head. “This is different. And besides, you’re too smart to get caught up in anything like that.”
“That’s what I thought with Carl. I thought at one point he was perfect—that we were perfect. Now I wonder how I even stuck with him that long. Brad, too. I thought since we were writers that we both wanted the same thing, that we were so compatible. Now I have to live with his ‘douchebag report’ every time he passes my desk. A constant reminder of how much I keep getting men wrong.”
Louise sighs sympathetically. “Owen isn’t Carl, or Brad. Not by a long shot.”
“In a way he’s worse,” I say. “I’m not saying it wouldn’t be fantastic, for about a day. The sex would be incredible—”
“Sounds like it already was.”
“And we’d probably have fun for a while. But there’s no way it wouldn’t crash and burn. And I’m done crashing and burning.”
“I see.” My sister is quiet for a moment before she asks, “But…do you think he might feel the same?”
I consider it for barely half a second before the memory of me and Owen in his apartment comes rushing into my mind like a backdraft. His mouth on mine, making his desire for me undeniable. The way his hand trailed over mine holding the golf club a little too gently, for a little too long, his full body hug a little too unnecessarily to be pure accident.
“No,” I mutter, to myself as much as Louise. “Or maybe he does. I don’t know.”
“Well you should at least find out, Margo. Before you go making up his mind for him.”
“No. I’ve made up my mind. I need to move on. At the end of the day, it’s not worth risking the friendship. He’s not right for me. And who knows, maybe I’ll even find some nice guy on this stupid video thing.”
“Abso-fucking-lutely!” Louise says, sitting up to fill both our glasses once again, probably hoping her enthusiasm will erase the somber tone of what I just said. “So this show: you get to meet lots of hot guys, right?”
I shrug. “We only just filmed the first episode, and yes the guy was hot, but he had the personality of an exit sign.”
“That was only one guy. Are you going to do it again?”
I let out a sigh. “I have to—it’s a series.”
Louise grins roguishly. “Who’s the next guy?”
“I don’t know,” I say, leaning back against the cushions and looking up at the ceiling, the champagne going to my head a little now. “Owen and I agreed to find dates for each other this time.”
“No way!” Louise says, sitting bolt upright on the edge of the couch now like an excited puppy.
“Yes way,” I say, somehow peeling myself forward and grabbing my phone from the table. I swipe a few times and hand it to Louise. “We’re supposed to use this app.”
Louise looks down at the phone, her mouth open and smiling, knees bouncing with giddy pleasure. “This is incredible! You get to pick Owen’s date? Why didn’t you tell me this the second I came through the door?”
“I forgot, to be honest.”
My sister rolls her eyes. “Yeah, right. Like you haven’t spent day and night searching this site for the worst girl on it.”
“Why would I do that?” I exclaim, shocked.
“Why wouldn’t you?” Louise says, glancing at me for a second, barely able to peel her eyes away from the screen she’s swiping rhythmically now. “You could find some horrible, spoiled, annoying girl—like this one! Look,” she says, holding the screen up, “her profile has more ridiculous demands than a hostage-taker. Six-figure salary…owns his own home…take her on vacation multiple times a year…you think Owen could handle her?”
I groan loudly and set my glass down. “I’m not setting Owen up with a bad date, Louise. Whatever…mess I’m in mentally, he’s still my friend, and I still want to see him happy,” I say, moving closer to Louise on the loveseat. We both lean in to look at the phone screen as she swipes through photos of girls. “Besides, we already promised we’d pick nice dates for each other.”
“You could say it was for entertainment value!”
“No. Seriously.”
“Okay. Hmm,” she muses. “So…what is his type?”
I think about it for a second, then say, “Hot.”
Louise waits for more, then turns to look at me.
“Is that it?”
“As far as I can tell? Pretty much.”
“Come on, give me something else, there must be some type.”
I frown as I think, Louise still swiping occasionally on the phone she’s holding in front of us. A minute later, I try again. “Well, she should be sort of relaxed, chilled-out, you know? Owen hates drama. He needs a girl who can go with the flow.”
“Great,” Louise says, almost triumphantly. “That rules out about half the girls I’ve seen so far. What else?”
I squint at the wall, thinking deeply again.
“Intelligent—that’s a necessity—so probably someone with a four-year degree. Owen comes across too relaxed to show it, but he’s smart as hell, and he appreciates wit. Even if it’s only one date, he’ll be bored out of his skull if she can’t keep up with him. Oh, and confident: Owen needs a girl who can tell him what she thinks. He can get carried away with himself without someone grounded enough to play off.”
“Ok, maybe—”
“Supportive, too. He’s got ambitions and dreams. He deserves someone who’ll encourage him—he could achieve great
things with someone like that,” I add.
“How about-—”
“And open-minded—that’s important too. Owen’s got really wild tastes, in food, in things he likes to do, so he needs someone adventurous who’s willing to try new stuff. Oh, and he should really be with a girl who—”
“Margo,” Louise says with enough firmness to stop me talking. “You do realize you just described yourself, right?”
“I—” But I close my mouth as my phone dings with an incoming email notification.
Louise looks down at the screen for a second and says, “Who’s Cassandra Beale?”
I freeze for a second, then take the phone from her and open the message. It’s a short email, but I read it multiple times before it starts to sink in, my heart pounding, my breath coming in short gasps.
“What is it? Did something bad happen?” Louise says, and it’s only then that I notice I’ve been pacing up and down my living room while reading.
“It’s the woman from the New York Month—the one I spoke to last week—had the phone interview with last week…”
“And?”
“She wants to do another call with a few other editors. Tomorrow. Tomorrow in the morning.”
Louise’s face goes as bright and big as the sun, before she starts squealing loudly, stamping her feet and punching her arms in the air.
“You’re going to New York!”
“Oh fuck,” I say, falling onto the comfy seat and downing what’s left in my champagne glass before filling it up again. “I’d completely given up hope…I was sure I blew it…”
“What exactly did she say?”
I look at the phone again, already disbelieving what I thought I read just a moment ago.
“She said…let’s see…that she really liked me, she loves the breadth of my work, and that she thinks I’m just what they’re looking for—”
“Holy shit. Margo, it’s your dream!”
“And she wants some of the editors I’d be working with to meet me on Skype to see if they feel the same, but that there could very well be a place for me there…”
Before I can look up Louise has me in a hug as constricting and forceful as a wrestling move. When she pulls away, still smiling uncontrollably, I allow myself to laugh.
“I don’t even know how I’ll do it—it’s during work hours.”
“Oh whatever, just go out and do it from your car. Nobody will notice.”
“I might be gone awhile though.”
“So what?” Louise says, dismissing my worry with a shake of her head. She’s bouncing up and down on the seat now with excitement. “I can’t believe you’ve really done it! I’m so happy for you!”
“It’s not an official offer, just a second interview.”
“Just a second interview away from New York and the dream you always wanted,” Louise reminds me. “From leaving all this stuff behind. TrendBlend, dating shows, Carl.”
“Owen,” I find myself saying, the champagne making me think out loud. “You.”
Louise puts a hand out and squeezes my knee affectionately.
“I’ll be visiting you every chance I get—don’t worry about that,” she says. “As for Owen…if there’s no way to make this work, maybe a bit of distance is a good thing.”
“Maybe,” I say, before remembering Owen’s words on the video.
What I need and what I want feel like opposites right now—and I’m not even sure which one Owen is anymore.
11
Owen
For the fifth time this morning, my phone vibrates loudly on my desk. I look away from the article I’m working on, check my phone and see—for the fifth time—that it’s my dad. I take a deep breath, consider answering it, and decide to hit ignore—for the fifth time.
At this point I should just turn my phone off, but Margo’s not back, and I’m getting a little worried. She left her desk about fifteen minutes after I arrived, and she’s been gone for nearly an hour now. She left in a rush, didn’t tell me where she was going, and didn’t even take her coffee with her. Either she’s been kidnapped, or something’s seriously up. She’s not the type to play hooky from work.
I look back at the screen and try to refocus on my article in progress. It’s nothing big, just a fluff review for the latest superhero blockbuster. A few low-hanging jokes and pithy metaphors wrapped around a review just edgy enough to spark interest, but just tame enough to appease the fans. I was supposed to review the new Triangles album—but I got tired of looking over at Margo and seeing her stare at the screen like she wanted to throw it out the window. So I offered to swap projects with her. Now she’s doing the review of what will probably end up being the best rock album of the year, and I’m stuck with…this.
“Damn,” I mutter instinctively as my phone vibrates again. I check it, see that it’s my dad again, and put it on ignore again.
He’s persistent, my old man. I guess that’s one good thing you could say about him.
You know, in a way my dad is the reason I’m sitting here, behind a desk, working hard and grateful for it. He’s the guy who gave me the strength to turn my back on my old hedonistic lifestyle, on the temptations and temporary thrills of beautiful women, glamourous parties, and bullshitting your way into both of them. He showed me how stupid it was to live like there was no tomorrow, how destructive selfishness is, how pleasure-seeking leads you nowhere but where you started. He showed me by doing it all himself, and by continuing to do it even now that he’s twice my age. I saw where my life was going and it wasn’t looking pretty.
I try to push him out of my mind by staring at the jumble of letters on the screen—thinking about my dad usually just gets me down, though writing uninspiring fluff pieces for the site is hardly Mardi Gras.
I look across at Margo’s empty seat, pointed at me, two feet from her desk since she pushed it back in such a hurry.
I finally picked out her next vlog date last night, sent it to Agnes to arrange it all and got the ok this morning. As much as it would have made for a great video, I couldn’t go through with picking a curveball—though I found plenty on the app. I was tempted to go for the one who had some pretty archaic views on women’s rights, if only to see Margo tear him a new one over the appetizers. Send him crying into the bathrooms for an existential crisis. Or even the guy who wanted a girl to dominate him, just to see Margo squirm as she tried to let him down gently.
In the end, though, something stopped me. I could lie to myself and say that I just didn’t want to be mean. I could pretend that I didn’t go through with it because I didn’t want to put Margo through that—even for the superficial benefit of the cameras. The truth is that I liked the idea of picking an undateable guy for her too much. I wanted to pick a guy so awful she’d come right back to me after the date, bitching about him and telling me all the ways she found him repulsive. A little closer to realizing how rare it is to find nice guys, guys who care, guys who can fuck like piledrivers and cuddle like your favorite stuffed animal afterwards, guys like me. Maybe I’m still just like my father, however much I’ve turned my life around.
The hardest choices are usually the right ones though, and I was beginning to think sending Margo on a doomed date would only make it more obvious to the cameras that the chemistry between us is more than staged. And besides, she deserves a chance at something real, something more serious than anything I could offer her right now. So I swallowed my pride and picked somebody I actually thought she’d like. Some guy who works in independent cinema; a little edgy, intelligent, and ambitious. The kind of guy she seems to go for. But like I said, it wasn’t easy, and the idea of another guy kissing her, putting his hands on her, made something dark and resentful rise up in me. It still does…
“Something in my chair?”
I snap out of my reverie to see Margo walking to her desk, her expression seeming a little confused at finding me staring at her chair like 2001 was being projected onto it.
“Shit, no. I’m just zoni
ng out. Just remembering that movie I’m supposed to be reviewing is sending me to sleep.”
Margo settles in her chair and pulls herself under her desk.
“You want to swap back? I don’t mind—”
“No, it’s cool. Good to stretch my wings a bit from time to time.”
“Seriously Owen, I really don’t mind—I shouldn’t have made you take my—”
“I’ve already done half of it,” I assure her, giving her a big smile. “It’s really ok.”
“Thanks. You’re a lifesaver.” She brushes her hair behind her ear and lowers her head a little bashfully. The warmth between us disappears in a cloud of bile, however, when a shock of blonde hair and cleft chin pokes itself above Margo’s computer.
“How do you two do it?” Brad says, each word marinated in so much smugness it makes me feel sick. “Every time I look at you, you’re talking to each other, not at your desk, or just fooling around in front of a camera and calling it work.”
“You can actually get away with a lot when you have a personality, Brad,” says Margo. “You should try getting one yourself sometime.”
Brad grins darkly, unfazed.
“Maybe I’m just not sleeping with the right people,” he says, anticipating a reaction.
I answer before Margo can give him one.
“Not unless your right hand becomes the CEO anytime soon.”
Brad sneers at me like I’m just a distraction before directing himself at Margo again.
“What happened to you, Margie? You told me you wanted to write for the New York Times one day. Said you wanted to swan off to the Big Apple and act like you were Patti Smith. Now you’re fooling around at mini-golf and performing for the cameras like a third-rate celebrity. Did you finally find your level?”
“Well, I found my rock-bottom when we dated,” Margo says, instantly. She flashes him a perky smile. “Maybe you just lowered my expectations.”