“Right. So are you going to celebrate or anything?”
“I’ll celebrate in Joshua Tree. You?”
“Yeah. Same.”
“Right. Because you’re in your writer’s cave.”
“Right. I am…Is that why you haven’t called me?”
“Sure.”
Sure? You total asshole.
There is a long pause, wherein I wait for the other Scott Braddock to speak—the one who’s nice to me.
I might have to wait forever.
“So I just wanted to touch base with you about the rehearsal dinner thing or whatever we’re calling it. I mean, I’ve been told you’re the best man.
“Right good yeah I was going to email you about that.”
“Oh. Well you know maybe I should just send you an email, good idea. Bye.”
I hang up and throw my phone on my bed. It doesn’t break or bounce or make noise. It’s very unsatisfying.
I can’t believe I called him.
I can’t believe he didn’t call me.
I can’t believe how cold he’s being.
I should have gone to his apartment and punched him in the face.
I pick up my phone again and call him back.
Again, he answers on the first ring. “Hi.”
“I can’t believe you’re being such a dick to me.”
“Really? I thought your whole world view centered on the belief that I’m a dick to you.”
I hang up on him and drop my phone again. This time it falls on the carpet. Again, it is unsatisfying. I wish I were unstable and irresponsible enough to just hurl my phone at a wall, but I can’t not have a phone, especially while I’m helping to organize my best friend’s wedding.
I let out a loud, deep, frustrated groan.
My eyes are stinging with hot, repressed tears.
I call him back.
“Hi.”
“Fuck you Braddock.”
“Back at you Duffy.”
“What is your problem?! Is this really how you want things to end between us?”
“Things aren’t ending between us.”
I exhale. So relieved by his reassuring tone, it’s embarrassing. “They aren’t?”
“Not possible. You never even wanted to start, remember?” He hangs up.
He hung up.
Maya knocks on my door and pokes her head inside. “You okay?”
“Did he just hang up on me?”
“What? I’m sure he didn’t. Just call him back.”
I drop my phone onto the bed and run my fingers through my hair. “Oh my God it’s happening. I’m turning into Brie. I have become my own crazy roommate.”
“Honey this is so not the same thing.”
“That fucker. This is exactly what I was afraid of and it has become a reality.”
“Okay you know what. You go ahead and create whatever reality you need to, I have to meet Sam for dinner. I love you please don’t lose your mind.” She starts to close the door again.
“No no no no no! Wait! I’m not doing this! I’m not obsessing!”
“It’s okay, you can obsess.”
“No I’m not going to—I’m not going to be a blight on your beautiful wedding week.”
“It’s just the weekend, it’s fine. Get it all out.”
“Okay go meet Sam for dinner, but the next time you see me I promise I will be sane and totally focused on you.”
“Um also—hello? YOU SOLD ANOTHER FUCKING SCRIPT, ERIN DUFFY! Do you want to come to dinner with us? Wait a minute, we should be celebrating this. Come with us.”
“Nope! It’s bad luck to celebrate before I’ve officially received the deal memo or signed a contract. Go. Enjoy your sweet man. Love you.”
“Love you. I’m celebrating your sale anyway you weirdo.”
I am going to beat this Braddock-Anger-Obsession. I’m going to be the boss of my mind. I will control my own mind, and my body and heart will follow. I go to the kitchen, open the “mess” drawer, and find a rubber band, which I place around my left wrist. Every time I have a Scott Thought, I will snap it. Furthermore, I will pretend I’m playing a video game. Every time I have a Scott Thought, I will shoot at it and win points every time I make it explode and dissipate. Every time an image of Braddock’s mouth or penis enters my brain—POW! One hundred points! Level up!
I expect to garner approximately fifty billion points by the end of the day.
By then, I will have called my parents, to give them the good news. By then, I will be excited and so grateful to be a paid screenwriter who can still afford to pay her rent. By then I will be able to kiss the tender pink skin around the inside of my wrist, and not feel sad that it’s my lips on my skin instead of his.
I wish I liked scotch, so I could hold a tumbler of it while staring out my window, thoughtfully.
I also wish I had a view.
And tumblers.
And Scott.
Chapter 22
*Erin*
It’s July, and Joshua Tree is a hot desert.
I’m pulling up to the rental house by myself, and I’m a hot mess.
I went to the two previous weddings with Scott Braddock. The first one I attended this season, I went to dreading the sight of him because I thought I hated him. This time, I’m dreading the sight of him because while I was driving here, by myself, I finally realized that I’m hopelessly in love with him.
It’s terrifying.
Before Maya left our apartment to come here in her parents’ rental car, she said to me: “I think some people find it hard to fall in love with a person while they’re actually with them. I think you needed this space. Some time and space away from him. But you’ve had enough. You’ll see him today. Let him be the guy he wants to be for you, instead of the guy you’ve been so determined to see him as.” Then she played A Thousand Years by Christina Perri on her phone, because she knows I can’t listen to that song without crying. She was playing hardball. I respect that.
I ate pepperoni sticks and powdered donuts while driving (I don’t recommend this), and I thought about my first love Peter. I tried to remember what it felt like to be in love with him. The truth, when I actually allow myself to remember it, is that I adored him. I liked him ever so much. And we were young, sex was new, so it made everything feel special and important. But I always knew we wouldn’t last, because he didn’t challenge me. He didn’t force me to become more of who I could be. When I left for Boston though, we were just texting and talking on the phone, and I enjoyed him more because I didn’t have to put up with his mood swings and neediness. When he dumped me from Europe, I was hurt at first, but then I was free to rewrite my memory of our relationship. It was my first love and it was behind me. This cute little blue-eyed blonde from Idaho who had been cursed with nice parents and a pleasant upbringing had finally experienced something. I had something to write about. Yay for me.
Jake the camera operator barely even figures into the narrative of my so-called love life. He was my L.A. boyfriend, and a perfectly decent distraction from my writing when a distraction was warranted. Every other guy I went out with or made out with at a bar or party has been a very short term distraction for my brain and my mouth. For years, the most important things in my daily life, besides Maya, have been my writing and my hate-fueled obsession with Braddock. Now, of course, I can acknowledge that the hate was fueled by lust.
In the time and space away from Scott, I had indeed become aware of the enormous void that needed to be filled in his absence. I’m not even going to make a vagina-penis joke here. I have been cracked open. But he didn’t break my heart, I did. And I don’t want to put it back together again. Not the way it was before. It has become something new, something more. It is raw and vulnerable.
I realize what he’s been doing, since we got back from New York, since our fight at LAX. He’s letting me struggle with myself again. Waiting until I wear myself out, like an inexperienced boxer.
Well, it has happened. I am t
ired of fighting him. But I’m still scared. And I’ve been crying while driving for nearly three hours, listening to Eighties love songs, having every feeling I’ve been repressing for years, and trying not to crash. I am mad at him for not calling or texting me and also relieved that he hasn’t, because I don’t know what to say to him right now.
I’ve written so many scenes where a person tells another person “I love you,” but I have no idea how or when to say it Scott. I want to be brave, and be the one who says it first. But I also want to be brave enough to let him lead the way. That’s so much harder for me.
It was so much easier just to despise him.
The house we’ve rented for Maya, myself and the three other bridesmaids is a four bedroom. Maya and her cousin Bridget and I get our own room, and Naz and Cleo are sharing because they are besties. I know Naz and Cleo, but this is my first time meeting Maya’s cousin from Vancouver, Canada. Bridget is a quarter Chinese and looks like Phoebe Cates from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. She is super sweet and cool, and I plan to put a bag over her head whenever Scott is around. I’m sure she’ll understand.
Sam, Scott and the three groomsmen have rented a house a few blocks away. Maya and Sam’s relatives were all able to find vacation rentals in the general area around us. The dinner party will be at our rental house here tonight.
Maya, Naz, Cleo, and a few other design students plus one of their teachers, are heading to the wedding venue to set up for tomorrow. Since it’s a Moroccan theme, I imagine that means draping colorful exotic fabric everywhere and placing a lot of glass and metal candleholder lanterns around the covered outdoor space. It’s sort of ridiculous that Maya is decorating her own wedding venue, but also awesome and to be expected.
I offered to help, but Maya knows that my decoration skills are limited to telling her if something that she’s hanging is crooked or not, and holding the step ladder while she places the star on top of our Christmas tree.
So, two weeks ago, I had offered to help Heather the caterer with the cooking for tonight’s rehearsal dinner/party because she and her team also have to prep for the big event tomorrow. I was, of course, being super considerate, but I also wanted the excuse to hide in the kitchen—away from Scott.
Heather is tiny, has short red hair and freckles, and she looks like a very pretty, totally stressed-out elf. All the times I felt like I was losing my mind about a script, I’m certain that I never looked as crazed and frazzled as she does right now. It may not have been a good idea to hire her to cater for both nights, but Maya has been to a party that was catered by Heather and her new team before, and she insists that we are lucky to have her while she’s still available and affordable.
After changing out of the pepperoni-scented powdered sugar-covered clothes I drove up here in, freshening up, and pulling my hair into a pony tail, I have come to the kitchen to make myself available to Heather and her minions and to find something to eat, because I’m starving. There’s still several hours before guests will start arriving for this party—which I remind her is low-key—but things in here are pretty frantic. It’s great, because I immediately go into crisis mode and forget that I’m going to have to see Scott and tell him that I love him at some point.
Apparently, there isn’t goat cheese for tonight, and apparently this is an emergency.
I offer to go to the store to buy goat cheese.
“It has to be goat cheese,” she says. “Are you familiar with cheeses?”
“I grew up in Idaho,” I say. “If it’s a dairy product, I’ve consumed it.”
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I need a specific kind of goat cheese.”
“Are we talking feta or chevre?” comes a deep sexy voice behind me, a voice that sends a shiver down my spine and makes my knees week. “Because if you want labneh, I doubt they sell it around here and there isn’t enough time to make our own.”
She looks over my shoulder at Scott, very serious. “Get me all the feta and chevre you can find in the next half an hour.”
I don’t turn to look at him, because I have butterflies in my tummy and I’m afraid I’ll start crying or blush—oh wait I am blushing.
“I got this,” he says huskily, touching my arm. “You stay here.”
It has been so long, it seems, since he’s touched me. I feel like I’m thirteen and at my first dance. I run my tongue across the front of my teeth to check to see if I am in fact thirteen and have braces. What is happening to me? I finally turn to face him.
He smiles at me. “Hey. Good to see you. How are you?”
“Hi,” I say. He is better looking than I remember, somehow. He has gotten more sun since I last saw him, and he is cool as a cucumber, in that way that has always made me nuts. “I didn’t know you were a foodie.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Duffy.” He smiles and looks away. He blushes—he’s blushing! “How are you? Did I ask you that? Did you answer?”
“No,” I say, my voice a mouse squeak. “I’m fine. Good. You?”
Heather doesn’t stop julienning zucchini, but she keeps looking back and forth between us, probably wondering if either of us has ever spoken to members of the opposite sex before.
“Good, yeah. Well, I better…”
“Okay, yeah.”
“I’ve got a game thing I want to set up for later, maybe you can help me.”
“Oh yeah, for sure, okay.”
“When I get back then.”
“Yup. I’ll be here.”
“Good. Anything else anyone wants from the store?”
“Ice! We need more ice!”
“And one of those cheap coolers, if they sell them.” We’ve run out of room in the freezer.
“Ice and a cooler. Got it. We’ve got a nearly empty fridge at our house, by the way. If you guys think of anything else, Erin can text me.” Scott starts to turn away.
“I just, umm…”
“What? You want potato chips?” He turns back and looks at me, expectantly, but clearly he has other things to do and people to talk to, as do I.
“No—I mean yes, always—I just—wanted to...I never said ‘thank you.’ To you. For writing the script with me. It was a big deal and it’s a big deal that it sold, and I’m glad we worked together.”
He smiles. “I am too. You’re welcome and thank you to you. Is that it? Because I gotta go buy some cheese. Unless we can use that cheese you just served up.”
“Go! Get out of here!”
Probably five entire minutes pass before I realize I’ve been standing still, staring into space, with a stupid smile on my face.
“You still with us?” asks Heather. She’s holding a large knife.
“Yeah. Hi. I’m here. Don’t stab me. What can I do?”
“Well first, you need to stop smiling because it’s creeping me out, and then I need you to whisk this dressing for a full minute.” She hands me a large mixing bowl filled with a golden-hued liquid mixture. “Then pour it evenly over this julienned salad, but don’t mix the salad. I will do that. Then I’ll have you slice some lemons—you good with a knife?”
“I’m like a C plus knifer.”
“Good enough. If you cut yourself, don’t bleed on the food.”
“Got it. Will do.” Heather is a hard-ass and I love it. My confidence in her has grown.
I ace the salad dressing and lemon-slicing, and request another task, but Heather gets distracted by the cheese that Scott has returned with. He nods for me to sneak out with him. He leads me to the dining room, where he has set up two piles of index cards, black Sharpie pens, and duct tape. He’s grinning, watching me take it all in.
“We starting a new script?”
“You want to?”
“Maybe later. After our best friends are officially married.”
“Cool. This is for the sex game.”
I remember the times I’ve used duct tape on him at my place.
“Not that kind. The party game. I told you about it in an email, right?”
“Oh right. The guessing game.”
He pulls out a chair for me. “Have a seat. Write down a word or phrase with a sexual theme. No swear words. Get creative. Think you can handle that?”
“Fuck yeah. What’s the duct tape for?”
“To tape the cards to people’s backs.”
“Right. Of course. So useful, duct tape.”
He sits down across from me, and writes bondage on a card, while looking at me. He then folds the card in half and drops it into a large bowl at the center of the table.
I clear my throat and look down at my pen and card. I write: dildo.
“Classic,” he says.
I fold the card in half and place it in the bowl. “Should we keep it PG-13? I mean, there will be parents and grandparents here.”
“You haven’t met Sam’s family yet. They’re filthy Scotsmen. It’s safe to go hard adult comedy R.”
I write down BUTT PLUG!
He writes out Reverse Cowgirl.
I clench my jaw and bite the inside of my cheek to keep from thinking about that time with him…
I pull out my phone.
“No looking up terms on Urban Dictionary dot com. It has to be terms that most people would know off the top of their heads.”
I push out my lower lip in a pout and write doggie style.
“Yes, perfect, he says, gazing at me just a little too long before looking away and writing down honey pot, while subtly licking his lips.
My face feels like it’s on fire. I shift around in my chair and am about to tell him about my emotional realization, but he starts talking first.
“So hey, I wanted to tell you…”
“Yeah?”
“My brother actually sent me an email last week, asking if he could read my scripts.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Never happened before.”
“Did you send him something?”
“I sent him our script. He read it overnight. He said it was a great read. He congratulated us on the sale.”
“Wow.”
“He sent it to my mom and she liked it too.”
The Wedding Season Page 15