I snickered. “Sure. Totally off the record.”
“Your taste in men sucks.”
“Good thing you don’t have to sleep with them then, isn’t it?” I stuck my hand out the top of the Jeep and waved at an oncoming Wrangler. “You’re slacking off on your waving duty, Chris.”
“I’m serious. You say you’re attracted to jocks, guys you’d totally have stuff in common with, and yet you keep going out with guys who do absolutely nothing for you.”
“Kevin did stuff for me.”
“Name one thing. Not counting sexual favors, which I highly doubt he was all that good at anyway.”
I frowned. Well, crap. Sexual favors had been exactly what I was thinking of. Kevin could be quite generous in the bedroom. Of course, usually I was generous first. So what did he give me? There had to be something. He provided a roof over my head—probably not what Chris had in mind. He provided companionship, though it was probably only payoff for the sexual favors, considering I’d discovered he hated just about everything about me.
What the heck had I gotten out of the relationship I wasted the last two years on? Pretty much nothing, obviously, if it took this much effort to think about it.
“Well?” Chris poked. “Can’t think of anything, can you? And what about Rance?”
“Lance.”
“See, I can’t even remember his name, so he must not have done anything for the relationship.”
I laughed. “Whose relationship? Yours and his or mine and his?”
“Either one. He wasn’t much better than Kevin.”
“Lance ran with me.”
“One step up from Kevin then, but what else did he do for you?”
Once again I thought about it until I felt my brain cells would explode from the effort. Lance provided a warm body in bed, companionship, someone with whom to take turns emptying the dishwasher and to pay half the rent.
“Not a damn thing.” Chris finished my thoughts for me, just in case I didn’t come to the same conclusion he did. “If any of them gave you anything, you’d still be with them. So, if you’re not going to marry a guy anyway, why don’t you at least go for guys that turn your crank?”
“Guys like you, I suppose.” I rolled my eyes.
“Guys who turn you on. Make you drool. Get you hot.”
“Well, that leaves you out.”
Chris glared. “Forget that you find me sexy and hot. I just mean, if you claim to be attracted to guys who are jocks, warrior guys, then go for them. Stop picking suits. Don’t pick guys for their stability and safety. Pick a dangerous guy.”
“I don’t pick guys for stability and safety. I can take care of myself.” With the exception of the weeks following a head injury. “I picked them because…”
“What?”
I shrugged. “I really don’t think you should be giving advice when you aren’t exactly getting close and cozy with anyone for more than one night at a time. It’s kind of like getting relationship advice from my mother the divorce queen.”
“I just haven’t found the right girl yet.”
I pushed some wildly blowing hair behind my left ear and leaned toward him, so I could look into his face and know if he was putting me on. “So you’re telling me, if the right girl came along, you’d stop sowing your wild oats and settle down?” If this was true I was going to die of shock. It would be like saying, if the right woman came along, Adair would go straight.
Chris shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
I flopped back in my seat. “I don’t believe you. You can’t have spent the last fourteen years banging every woman in sight trying to find Ms. Right.”
“What the hell else did you think I was doing?”
“Being a guy! Being the Christopher Treem I know. Lovin’ ’em and leavin’ ’em. You weren’t interviewing them all for a permanent job.”
“Not all of them,” he agreed with a chuckle. “I didn’t have any illusions about Candy’s qualifications for Mrs. Treem.”
“Well, thank God for that. You marry anyone like her and I’ll put the bullet through your heart myself.”
I turned to stare out the passenger window, still stunned. Here I’d thought for all these years that Chris was just like me. Marriage-phobic. And now I find out that he’s not? It was almost too much to take.
What would I do if Chris got married? It wasn’t as if just any woman would accept the fact that her husband’s best friend was another woman.
Where would that leave me?
I chewed my lower lip a minute before I finally spoke. “Do you think our closeness has affected our relationships?”
“How so?”
“Have you ever had problems with anyone you’ve dated because of me? Like Julie the other night. She wasn’t too happy about finding me in your apartment, even with you lying about who I was. Has that ever happened before?”
Chris shrugged. “Not really. Guess I haven’t dated anyone long enough for you to become a problem. At least not a problem for them. You seem to have a knack for being a problem for me lately.”
“Highly amusing.” I smirked back. “The women in your life probably accept my presence merely to stay in your bed. But, I’m serious. Do you know I once broke up with a guy who forbid me to see you?”
“Seriously? Who?”
“Remember Joel?”
“The actor?”
“Yeah.” Not a suit, but I didn’t bother to point that out, since the moment had passed.
“We went out a few times, and then once we met by accident at Jeffrey’s. Not on a date or anything. I was there with you.”
“Like every Friday night.”
“Yeah. Like the Friday night I met him. But this time he went ballistic, freaking out, accusing me of cheating on him with you. I dumped him.”
“You dumped a guy for me?”
I looked at him like he was nuts. “Are you kidding? For one thing, I’m not going out with a guy who tells me what to do. But, we’ve been friends forever. Why would I date someone who tried to tell me we couldn’t be friends anymore?” This wasn’t such a hard concept to believe. Unless—“Would you throw me over for some girl?”
“No.”
He didn’t sound very convincing to me. “Not even if she was Mrs. Right?”
“Of course not.”
I stared at his profile, trying to read his mind. He’d just told me that he planned to get married someday, which totally blew away all my previous assumptions about my best friend. So how did I know he wasn’t keeping something else from me? What if he met the woman who matched him perfectly? Who held Chris’s interest for more than a date or two? A woman who passed the Kiss Test. And, the Bed Test (if there was one I wasn’t privy to). What if he met the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with?
What would happen to me?
I guess, in the most platonic sense, I’d always expected to be the woman he spent the rest of his life with. What if I were replaced?
Suddenly I didn’t feel so well.
Chris finally turned and looked at me. “What?”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
He just grinned that disarming grin. “That’s one of the things women find so fascinating about me. I’m unreadable. Dangerous. Warrior-like, as you so poetically put it.”
Charm didn’t work on me this time. I felt like the rock my world was built on had crumbled.
Chapter Twelve
“A Little Less Conversation”
The next day things were pretty much back to normal between us. With my dizziness nearly nonexistent now, I’d been able to get some exercise, taking a long walk with Chris prior to heading for our hotel the night before. The pressure of getting the photo shoot out of the way, and without Chris annoyed with me for dragging him through Elvisville, peace had returned to Best Friend Land.
I tried not to dwell on the revelation that Chris’s allergy to matrimony had been a figment of my imagination and consoled myself by remembering that, in the las
t decade and a half of searching, he obviously hadn’t found the right woman. Considering the sheer volume of women he’d been through, if Chris was going to find someone, odds were he’d have done so already. Right? Which meant he was so incredibly picky he’d never be able to settle on one woman for life, or he’d already passed by Mrs. Right without recognizing her. Either way, my place in Chris’s life appeared secure for the moment.
However, this did nothing to stem the sense of panic I now felt every time he administered the Kiss Test. Which was fairly often.
My burger waited for me by the time I got back from the restroom, where I’d washed my hands and relieved about four hours of bladder build-up since our last stop.
“Oh, thank God. Meat,” I said. The small town we stopped in last night for dinner, in the boonies of New Mexico, had only one restaurant. The Veggie Barn. All veggies, all the time. I like broccoli and Brussels sprouts as much as the next person, but this red-blooded woman is definitely carnivorous.
“Not bad meat, either,” Chris muttered around a mouthful of sirloin. “Shoot me if I ever think eggplant is enough to subsist on again.”
I didn’t bother answering. Gastronomic heaven required a vow of silence. The burger was expertly dressed with blue cheese, lettuce and tomato, oozing out the edges of the heavy roll it was packed between. It had taken us until midafternoon to find this place, but with a lunch like this, I just might make it the rest of the day.
“I asked how far to the next town.” Chris sat back in his chair and rubbed his now full, yet ever flat and muscular belly. “With a hotel, that is, since we missed the last one.”
We’d blown through the last town so fast we’d only seen a gas station and a post office. No homes in sight—but a post office, just in case. We drove on into northern Arizona in search of a hotel and nourishment, until the growling of my stomach eating its own lining grew to such a decibel we could no longer hear the Jeep engine, forcing Chris to pull over for food before I did bodily harm.
The first available food was Spiffy’s Sports, which thankfully sported a non-vegetarian menu. We felt right at home at the sports bar. The Giants played the Cubs on multiple overhead TV monitors, so the late-afternoon patrons could watch Randy Johnson strike out his opponents at every angle.
“How far is that, exactly?” I asked. “Or, more importantly, how much closer are we to any fun I may have on this trip?”
“About fifty miles. Or an hour closer to L.A.”
I drank half of my Coke before answering. “Are you sure we just can’t quit now and go home? I’d even give up Vegas if it meant I could skip the Wedding of the Year, Volume Eleven.”
“And what about my business? And yours?”
“Oh, yeah.” I’d forgotten my interview with Nancy of Today’s Country Magazine.
“Maybe we could see if our hotel in Vegas has banquet facilities and have Nancy and your business contacts meet us there.”
“Nice try.” Chris pushed his now-empty plate back. “I need to stretch my legs. Mind if I go shoot some pool while you finish up?”
I shook my head and retrieved a chunk of blue cheese from the ketchup on my plate. I needed to check my phone messages anyway. I’d placed a few calls and faxed résumés to some non-country radio stations back home and needed to see if I’d had any response. Branching out and exploring my options was my best move. A job was a job, at this point. After I had work again, I could court the country stations outside the city for openings. I just had to keep my foot in the door, so I didn’t lose my edge. And so I could pay my rent.
Once finished with my meal, I settled back in the booth to make my calls. Chris was in the pool room, a glassed-in area across the bar, with its own TV, its own personal bartender and a boisterous crowd. Pool wasn’t my thing, though I played when I had nothing better to do. Darts was more my style.
My only message was from Katya, who informed me—in what sounded like an extremely relieved voice—that Adair finally made contact with the Wide-Strider in Central Park, only to discover he had a wife and three kids. Adair had immediately purchased a rocking chair at the flea market on Twenty-Sixth and spent his evenings on the fire escape, rocking, and asking Kat repeatedly if he was really so pathetic that he’d be alone forever. She told him he wasn’t pathetic yet, but if he stayed out on the fire escape past October, it would be a different story.
I laughed and flipped my phone off. I missed my friends. Well, not so much now that Chris and I were speaking again. I’d missed them fiercely the days we were giving each other the silent treatment. I don’t do silence well—unless it’s with my mother.
My eyes drifted back toward the pool room and I groaned. Chris locked lips with an exotic, dark-skinned chick, who looked like a cover model. As they broke apart, Chris’s gaze lingered on hers a bit too long, as if considering, and my stomach gave a lurch. What if she was it? What if he liked kissing her so much he kissed her again? And what if that kiss was even better than the first and he brought her to Las Vegas with us, where she auditioned for the part of Mrs. Treem with a Bed Test? And what if she was the jealous type and told Chris she wouldn’t sleep with him unless I was gone, so he gave me bus fare to go on to L.A. by myself? He’d bring her to my mother’s wedding and by the time we got home, they’d be married, and I’d be…nobody.
The possible future Mrs. Treem went back for another kiss and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch.
“You okay, miss?”
The waitress, in her khaki shorts and green Spiffy’s Sports T-shirt, looked concerned.
I sat up straighter. “Fine. Just tired.” And sick, I thought. Sick of suddenly having to worry about my friendship with Chris. It was dumb to be concerned, right? This wasn’t the 1920s. Men and women could be friends, and surely Chris had enough sense not to marry some insecure twit who couldn’t accept twenty years of friendship.
Another peek at the pool room revealed Extreme Treem attempting the daring maneuver of making a shot while blinded by the drape of ebony hair blocking his view as he sucked face again.
Oh, shit. I needed reassurance. I dialed Adair’s cell phone.
“Single Central,” he answered.
I laughed, cheered up already…a little. Until Chris planted another wet one on Madame Gorgeous and my stomach turned. “It’s me,” I said. “You okay? Katya told me about the Wide-Strider.”
I heard what sounded like the runners of a rocker scraping against the metal fire escape.
“I’m Jim Dandy,” Adair snapped. “I’ve booked an episode on Oprah. ‘Gay Men No Man Wants and the Rockers Who Love Them.’”
“Oh, Adair—”
“No, don’t pity me, Margo. Just enjoy your trip with Mr. Hunkola, who is totally wasted on you.”
“Sorry, but he’d be wasted on you, too.” I pushed my plate away and rested my elbow on the table, nesting the phone against my ear, observing that, at least for the moment, Chris seemed to be keeping his lips to himself. Rolling my eyes, I realized I’d sunk to a new low to care what Chris was or wasn’t doing with his lips. But, dammit, my future was at stake. “Hey, I was wondering…Kat’s your best friend, isn’t she?”
“Every day but those six around midmonth when Aunt Flo visits. That girl is no one’s friend then.”
“I’m serious. If Oprah had a…a ‘Gay Men and Their Best Girlfriends’ show, would you take Kat?”
“Of course. Pre-mens notwithstanding, she’s my most loyal subject.”
But was Adair loyal? Was Chris?
“So, let’s say—hypothetically of course—that you meet the man of your dreams—”
“I met him,” Adair said with an audible pout. “He said he was straight. I called him a liar. He showed me pictures of his wife and kids. I told him he was in denial. He threatened to call the cops.”
“Adair.”
“Sorry. What was the question, love?”
“Say you meet the man of your dreams—”
“What does he look like?”
“
Adair!”
“It matters.”
“You don’t even know what the question is, so how do you know it matters?”
“Looks are everything, babe.”
Geez. Maybe I’d called the wrong person.
“Forget—” I stopped when I caught sight of a blonde girl cheerleading Chris’s apparent victory at the billiard table. She planted a smack right on his mouth and he didn’t fight her off by any stretch of the imagination. I needed my question answered. “Adair. Focus. You meet the man of your dreams—and he looks like Adonis.”
“Yummy. Keep going.”
I snorted. “And you decide to become life partners. What would happen to Kat?”
“Why, she’d be my best woman when I stood up in front of God and everyone to get married. As soon as the no-gay-marriage law is overturned.”
I smiled at Adair’s romantic side. He’d probably carry a ribbon-festooned fan up the aisle to prevent sweat stains on the Armani suit he’d wear for his nuptials. But, I was more worried about what happened after the commitment.
“What if Mr. Perfect doesn’t like Kat?” I ventured. “What if he wants you to stop seeing her?”
There was a prolonged pause. “How hot did you say he was?”
“Adair!” I sat bolt upright in the vinyl booth seat. “What difference does that make? Kat’s your best friend. Would you dump her because a damned Adonis told you to?”
The rocking got faster, more agitated. “Everyone likes Kat. That wouldn’t happen. I’d just ban her from visiting during that time of the month.”
“But what if it did happen? Would you dump her just for another guy? Your best friend?”
“You know, Margo, this is not helping my depressive state.”
I sighed. It wasn’t helping mine, either. We chit-chatted a few minutes then I said goodbye, and went back to watching Chris play pool. Big mistake. It felt like watching my own death. The death of my position as Head Friend. I was being circled by the two vultures in the pool room, just waiting to get their hooks in Chris. We needed to get out of here before I went crazy.
“Hey, Chris, all done.” I waggled my phone at him as I entered the pool room. Everyone turned to look at me and I sensed hostility from the most recent participants in the Kiss Test.
The Kiss Test Page 19