by Beth Orsoff
He wasn’t making this easy. “That’s not it. I just think it would be better if we kept this platonic.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t see this relationship going anywhere.”
“How come?”
“We’re not compatible.” It was the first thing that popped into my head.
“You don’t know that. We just met.”
“Trust me,” I said. “I know.”
“How?”
Most guys would’ve let it go by this point. Either he was incredibly inquisitive, unbelievably horny, or he actually liked me. I didn’t know him well enough to know which one.
I ran through my options. I could only think of two plausible lies. I could tell him I was getting back together with my ex-boyfriend, or I could tell him we didn’t have any chemistry. The problem with the second lie was that he’d probably try to prove me wrong and I didn’t think I was strong enough to pass the test. Since he didn’t know about Scumbag, the first lie might work. But then if we did become friends, he would ultimately find out the truth, and then he’d hate me for lying to him.
I didn’t see any alternative. I was going to have to be honest. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, Joe, but you’re just not husband material.”
He sat up in his lounge chair and faced me. “Really. Why is that?”
“Because you’re a wannabe.”
“I’m a what?”
“You’re a wannabe. A want-to-be actor.”
“I’m not a wannabe actor!” he said in an octave higher than his normal voice. “I was an actor. Now I’m a chef. If I’m a wannabe anything, it’s a wannabe restaurateur.”
There was no point in arguing. I laid back down. “Fine, Joe. Whatever. But all we’re ever going to be is just friends.”
“Let me see if I understand this,” he said, even louder this time. “You don’t want to go out with me because you think I want to be an actor, even though I told you that I was an actor and now I’m a chef.”
“You’re telling me that if someone offered you a role in a movie right now you would turn it down?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I might. It would depend on the role.”
“Exactly. You haven’t given up the dream. You’re still a wannabe.”
“And you’ve got something against wannabes?”
“Let’s just say I’ve been burned before.”
“We’ve all been burned before. It doesn’t mean you stop living.”
Now my voice rose too. “I haven’t stopped living! I just don’t want to date you.” What an ego!
“But you want us to be friends?”
I wasn’t so sure anymore. “I thought it might be nice, but not if you don’t want to.”
He stood up and told me to stand up too.
“Why?”
“Can’t you do one simple thing without an argument?”
I stood up.
In a romantic gesture worthy of a Harlequin Romance novel, he put one arm around my back, the other under my knees, and lifted me up in his arms. “Are you sure you want to be my friend?” he asked.
“Why?”
He walked over to the edge of the pool and threw me in.
Chapter 24
Swimming Without A Suit
The water was freezing and tasted like chlorine. When my butt hit the bottom of the deep end, I kicked back up to the surface. After I stopped choking, I swam to the side of the pool and hauled myself out.
The goose bumps on my arms made me look like a plucked chicken. My clothes were clinging to me and I was only wearing one shoe. Its mate was somewhere at the bottom of the deep end. It wasn’t worth retrieving. The tan sandal on my right foot was clearly ruined.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” I screamed.
“We’re friends aren’t we?” he said. “That’s just the kind of thing I do with my friends.” He was trying hard to keep the smile from his face, but he couldn’t quite pull it off.
“You’re a real prick.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to be my friend anymore?” This time he let the smile shine through.
I could’ve killed him. Instead, I grabbed him by the T-shirt and attempted to push him into the water. He managed to disentangle himself from my grip, and in the process I lost my balance and fell back into the pool. This time I lost the other shoe.
I heard his laughter as soon as I broke the surface. “Would you like me to help you get out of those wet clothes?” he asked after I’d hauled myself out for the second time.
“Is that what you do for your friends?”
He ignored my sarcasm. “Not usually, but for you I’ll make an exception.”
I looked down at my now see-through tank top. My nipples were standing at attention. I pulled the towel off the lounge chair and wrapped it around my shoulders, covering my chest. “Just take me home.”
“Are you sure? We could lay here and sunbathe while we wait for your clothes to dry?”
“I want to leave. Now!”
“Whatever you say,” he said. “I’ll go get my keys.”
I sat on the edge of the lounge chair and steamed. He returned minutes later jangling a ring of keys in his hand. “Ready?” he asked.
“I need my shoes. They’re at the bottom of the pool.”
“I can wait.”
“I thought maybe you could get something to fish them out. Don’t you have one of those things with the net people use to clean the pool?”
“I don’t know. My aunt has a pool service.” He must’ve caught my glare. “But I’ll look.”
He dropped his keys onto the other lounge chair and disappeared into the shed near the shallow end. After some clanking and cursing, he returned with a skimmer attached to a ten foot pole. I watched Joe plunge the silver rod into the water and attempt to scoop up the shoes. Every time he’d catch them, they’d slip off the net and he’d have to start all over again.
I sat and waited, in my wet clothes and my bare feet, getting angrier by the second. How dare he throw me in the pool just because I don’t want to go out with him. Who the hell did he think he was?
I wiped my eye makeup off onto his white towel, hoping it would stain. When I looked up, I noticed that he’d switched tactics. He was now trying to push my shoes up the slope into the shallow end. He wasn’t having much success, but it gave me an idea.
I reached over and grabbed Joe’s keys off the lounge chair and slipped them into my purse. Then I waited until he was precariously perched at the edge of the pool, and when his back was towards me, I pushed him in. Then I ran.
With his keys in my hand, I sprinted as fast as I could around the house and out to the driveway. I jumped in his jeep and took off, lunging and lurching down the street. I hadn’t driven a stick shift since college.
I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I didn’t want to be there when Joe got out of the water. I drove to the end of the block, made a right, a left, another right, and somehow managed to end up back on the same street. Luckily, I recognized Joe’s aunt’s house before I reached it and had started my u-turn when I was still three houses away. Unfortunately, I couldn’t cut the turn tight enough to clear the parked cars. When I put the jeep in reverse and turned around, I saw Joe running towards me in his dripping wet T-shirt and jeans.
I turned forward and shifted the jeep into first gear. It stalled. Shit! I started it up again, pushed the stick shift into first gear, and slowly eased up on the clutch. It stalled again. By the time I started it for the third time, Joe was standing next to me with one hand on the windshield and the other hand on the roll bar. I guess he thought he could physically stop the car from moving forward.
“Enough,” he said. “Give me the keys.”
“Not on your life.”
“Julie, I’m not kidding around. Give me the goddamn keys.”
“If I give you the keys how am I going to get home?”
“I’ll drive you.”
“
Yeah, right.”
“If you don’t give me the keys we’re going to be here all night. I’m not letting you leave with my car.”
I believed him. “How about I drive us both to my house and then you can drive yourself home?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because by the time we get to your house I’m not going to have a clutch left.”
He had a point. But I didn’t trust him. I was afraid that if I gave him the keys he would take off and leave me standing in the middle of the street. Scumbag had done that to me once. We’d had an argument in the grocery store parking lot and he drove home without me. Luckily, I only lived six blocks away, so it was an easy walk. Joe’s house was at least ten miles from mine. Too far for an afternoon stroll, especially without shoes.
I shut the ignition and twisted the car key off its ring. Then I stood up and stepped into the passenger seat. With my belt buckled and the rest of Joe’s keys buried at the bottom of my purse, I handed him the ignition key. “Okay, you drive.”
“Am I going to get the rest of my keys back?”
“As soon as I arrive safely at my doorstep.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat and smoothly shifted the jeep into first gear. We took off down the street. About halfway through the silent thirty minute drive to my house, I caught him glancing at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. I only noticed because I was stealing glimpses of him. I still had the towel wrapped around my shoulders. All he had on were his wet clothes. His clinging T-shirt revealed great pecs and a six pack stomach. I looked away. Too bad that body was wasted on a wannabe.
Joe pulled up in front of my apartment building and left the engine running. I unbuckled my seat belt and opened the passenger side door. I’d only managed to maneuver one leg to the ground when he grabbed my arm.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” he asked.
I picked up my purse and fished out his key ring, but held it outside his reach. “You’re going to let me get out before you drive away, aren’t you?”
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re the last person I want to be with right now.”
“Good,” I said. “Then we’re agreed.” Before he could object, I wrenched my arm free and jumped out of the Jeep. Then I tossed his key ring onto the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.
He smiled at me for the first time in hours. “You’re one crazy girl, Jules.”
“You can’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
“You haven’t known me long enough.”
Chapter 25
Just a Date
After the Joe fiasco, Just A Date started looking like a better alternative. After all, I really was a busy professional having trouble meeting quality people on her own. But it still took me another two dateless weekends with Elmo before I worked up the nerve to call. The woman on the phone told me they were having a $50 off special that was ending on July 31st. I made an appointment to meet with one of their ‘dating specialists’ on the 30th. Love on sale is still love.
* * *
I snuck out of work early on the 30th to make my six o’clock appointment. When I pulled into the parking garage of the nondescript glass office building, I was stopped at the gate by an attendant.
“Where are you going,” he asked.
I wasn’t expecting to be questioned. I pulled a piece of paper out of my purse and pretended to read it. “A company called Just A Date.” Maybe he would think I was just making a sales call.
He snickered and told me to park on level C.
* * *
I felt like I was in a doctor’s office. I gave the receptionist my name and was told to have a seat in the waiting area. Five minutes later another woman showed me to a small, windowless room containing two white sofa chairs and a television on a stand. “The program director will be with you shortly,” she said, then shut the door behind her.
I wished I’d brought my magazine from the waiting area. I tried my cell phone, but I couldn’t get any reception, so I tucked my phone back in my purse and started counting ceiling tiles. I was up to twenty-three when the door opened and a tall, thin, stunning woman with long black hair and caramel skin walked in. She introduced herself as Celia Barker, a ‘dating specialist’ and director of the L.A. office of Just A Date.
Celia explained how the program worked. Each client had to fill out a questionnaire describing themselves and their interests and the qualities they were looking for in a potential date. Celia told me that once a week she and the four other dating specialists in the L.A. office met to discuss their respective clients and whether any of them could be matched up.
“When I find you a match,” Celia said, “I’ll call you up and describe him to you on the phone. If you want to meet him, then I’ll set the two of you up on a date. Are you interested?”
Maybe. “How much is this again?”
“It’s normally $350 for six dates, but right now we’re offering an introductory special of $50 off or two extra dates. But the special ends tomorrow. Would you like to join?”
It sounded like the service my friends had been providing, except that my friends did it for free. Of course my track record with my friends’ blind dates hadn’t been too good. And my track record with the men I met on my own was even worse. I thought of Joe and Doctor-Pilot and Nose Hairs and John the Annoying Cheapskate and the fact that I had no prospects for any future dates. I heard my mother’s voice reminding me that I wasn’t getting any younger. I imagined the inside of my vagina covered in cobwebs from lack of use, and my ovaries shriveling up and dying, still enclosed in their cellophane wrappers.
I handed Celia my Visa card and told her to sign me up. I couldn’t even buy a good suit for $300. Surely a potential mate was worth that much.
* * *
Celia called me a week later and said, “I found you a match. His name is Michael. He’s thirty-four years old, lives in Hermosa Beach, and he’s a director.”
“What kind of a director? Movies? Television? Commercials?” I figured if she said he was a movie director, then he was really a wannabe. If he described himself as a television or commercials director, then he was probably for real.
“I don’t know, the form just says director.”
So much for the personal touch.
“He’s 5’10”,” Celia continued, “has blond hair and he likes to ski, play tennis, go to movies, restaurants, and the beach. He also plays baseball, softball, basketball and enjoys cooking gourmet meals.”
Except for the blond hair (I preferred brunets unless the guy looked like Brad Pitt) and that he was geographically undesirable (Hermosa Beach was at least a thirty minute drive without traffic, and there was always traffic), he sounded perfect.
“Would you like to meet him?” she asked.
“Sure, he sounds great.”
“Good. Just give me some dates you’re available and I’ll call you back with the time and place.”
I never knew finding a husband could be this easy. I should’ve called this place months ago!
* * *
Celia called me back the next day. “I spoke to Michael. Unfortunately he’s not available on any of the dates you gave me and he’s leaving town on Monday for two weeks. Can you make it next weekend?”
“I thought you don’t set up dates for weekends.”
“Normally we don’t. We’ve found that weeknights work better. But since the two of you have such conflicting schedules, I thought maybe a weekend would be easier. Are you available for lunch on Saturday?”
“Sure,” I said. “Where?”
“How about The Range in Beverly Hills? I’ll make a reservation for one o’clock.”
Normally, I didn’t go to snooty, over-priced restaurants like The Range. But in this case, it was a good choice. I didn’t want to run into anyone I knew, and I was sure that I wouldn’t at The Range.
“Whose name will it be under?” I just realized that Celia had never told m
e Michael’s last name.
“The reservation will be in both your first names. We don’t give out last names in order to protect everyone’s privacy.”
I liked that.
“I’ll call you on Friday to remind you about the date.”
It was already Wednesday. “I don’t think I’m going to forget in the next two days.”
She laughed. “I know. But it’s our policy to call and remind both clients the day before the date, just in case.”
I wasn’t concerned when I left the office on Friday night without having heard from Celia. I was sure she’d left me a message on my home machine. I’d told her I preferred she not call me at work. I didn’t want to risk my assistant, Lucy, finding out and blabbing to the rest of the office that I was so desperate that I had to join a service just to get a date.
When I walked through the living room and I didn’t see a blinking red light I was only slightly concerned. The window on my answering machine showed “0” messages, but I pushed the PLAY button anyway. No messages. I looked at my watch. It was 6:45. I was now mildly concerned.
Since it was at least possible that Celia was still in the office, I called. Her voicemail picked up on the fourth ring. “Hi Celia, it’s Julie Burns. You didn’t call to remind me about my date with Michael. I don’t know if that means we’re still on for tomorrow and you just forgot to call, or that the date is canceled. Please call me back and let me know.”
I didn’t start to really worry until eleven o’clock. By that point, even if Celia picked up my message, she would think it was too late to return the call. But it wasn’t too late for me to call Kaitlyn. Her solution was for me to phone Celia again in the morning, but if I didn’t hear back from her, to go anyway. Kaitlyn was sure if the date was canceled, Celia would’ve called and told me. This time I was praying she was right.
* * *
I called Celia three times on Saturday morning, but she never returned my call. At noon I showered, dressed in the outfit of black pants and tan sleeveless shirt I’d carefully planned the night before, and headed out to The Range.
A parking spot opened up right before I reached the restaurant’s valet stand. Normally a good omen, but if my parking karma and my love life really were inversely related, then it was actually bad. I filled the meter with two hours’ worth of quarters and headed inside.