“For me?”
“Yeah. Chicken salad. You going to bed early?”
Love you. Damn you. “Yep. Gotta get up at four-thirty.”
“’Kay, I’ll put on my headphones.”
I hovered in the doorway and waited for a pause in his typing.
He finally looked over at me, blinking.
“Hey.”
“I just wanted to wish you good luck. For your naturalization ceremony on Tuesday. I don’t know if I’ll see you before then—I’ll be gone early and home late all week.”
“Oh, right.”
“You’ll be in town all week, though, right?”
“Yeah yeah. I’ll be around.”
“Good.”
He looked like he was anchored to the floor, his feet flat, hands on his hips, contemplating something. Probably regretting everything he’d said to me that morning. Whatever. I didn’t even care what he was thinking right then. I walked towards him and wrapped my arms around his neck.
“So good luck.”
I pulled away before he even realized I was hugging him, and I was out the door.
“Thank you,” I heard him say quietly, as I shut the door behind myself.
I was wearing a sleep shirt and climbing into bed when he knocked on my door, asking if we could talk for a minute.
He looked all wound-up. I was not used to seeing him like this. He sounded wound-up sometimes when I called him if he was in the middle of something at work, but he’s Mr. Chill pretty much any other time. He stared at me for a few seconds, like he was ready to launch into some big monologue that never came. He crossed his arms in front of his chest.
I waited.
I was waiting for him to tell me that he had reconsidered and that we should proceed with dissolving the marriage, as originally planned.
I was preparing to act relieved.
He continued to not say anything, while pacing back and forth.
“What?!”
“Okay, I’m just going to say it.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t think you should date that Ben guy. Or anyone else. I don’t think you’re ready yet.”
“Oh…And?”
He froze. “And that’s it. I don’t think that guy’s right for you…”
I gave him a look. And?
“And I just thought I should come right out and tell you that instead of dancing around the issue.”
“Okay, great. Thanks. For not dancing around the issue.”
He nodded his head once, like that was the end of the conversation, but he didn’t move.
“Anything else?”
He licked his lips, rubbed them together, rolled onto his tip-toes then back to his heels. He looked down at the ground, scratched his chin with his thumb, messed up his hair, cleared his throat. “That’s it. Just had to get it off my chest.”
“So you’ve gotten everything off your chest now?”
“Yup. Feels good. How do you feel?”
“Fantastic. My chest feels amazing.”
After a beat, wherein his eyes flicked down to my chest, he said quickly: “Cool. Good talk. Good night, then.”
I felt the corners of my mouth pull up into a big fake toothy smile. “Good talk. Nighty night.”
He crossed his arms in front of his chest again. “Was there something you wanted to say?”
I had so many thoughts swirling around in my brain that I couldn’t pick out one of them and put words to it, so I did the only thing I could do. I picked up my pillow and threw it at him.
He caught the pillow with ease and clung to it. “I shouldn’t have come in here. I guess I’m just nervous about…stuff. But my offer for you to continue on with our current arrangement still stands.”
“And my answer is still no.”
He looked incredulous.
No. He looked sad.
I felt horrible.
“Theo, it’s just that—”
“No, it’s fine. We probably shouldn’t talk anymore tonight. You have to get up early.”
“Yeah.”
“Good night.” He left and shut the door.
That’s just like him. He comes in here and says something totally annoying and I’m still the one left feeling guilty about being an asshole.
Was it wrong of me to want to torture and confuse him, just a little? Did he deserve to be punished for being so gosh darned shirtless eighty percent of the time I saw him? Was it, in fact, a good and sensible idea for me to shower before going to bed so I could get fifteen more minutes of sleep in the morning? And was it possible that I would forget to bring a change of clothes with me to the bathroom, which meant I would have to return to my bedroom wrapped in a towel, even though that had happened exactly zero times before when Theo was home?
Yes.
To all of the above.
A thousand times, it was about fucking time, why the hell not, oh hell yes.
9
Theo
By Tuesday, everything had changed.
I had now made out with my best friend and seen her wrapped in a towel. I was in the kitchen having a midnight snack, when the door to the bathroom in the hallway opened and she emerged, skin glistening, towel wrapped so tight and low on her chest, her soft perky tits pushed up and squeezed together, humming to herself as she strolled the six feet to her bedroom door. Instead of scampering and shrieking “don’t look at me I’m naked!” as I would have expected, she took her sweet ass time and even turned her head to look me straight in the eyes while combing her fingers through her silky wet hair.
If it had been anyone other than her, I would have known immediately and without question that she was either giving me an invitation or hard-core teasing me. But Gemma doesn’t do that kind of thing. At least she didn’t used to.
Five years worth of denied attraction suddenly showed up uninvited in my pants and it wasn’t going to go away without a fight.
There weren’t enough math problems in the world to keep my mind occupied after that, and the hundred sit-ups I did in my room did nothing to make the monster boner subside, so I also did something I’d never done before: I left the door to my en suite bathroom open, got into my shower and jerked it to a filthy fantasy of my housemate tiptoeing in and joining me, and I didn’t even bother to keep quiet when I came like a rocket.
I had not seen her since then. She was probably fast asleep at that point. Part of me hoped that she was, and part of me hoped that she wasn’t.
Also, I was officially a naturalized American citizen.
The ceremony was held at the convention center. There was no pomp and circumstance, just a big American flag hanging from the ceiling and a big screen for the video of a bunch of notable US landmarks edited together with a soundtrack that sounded an awful lot like the theme for The West Wing. I found it all very moving. Or, I guess I should say that I was moved.
I received my certificate of naturalization and had to turn in my permanent resident card—the green card that Gemma Kelly married me for. Now that I was surrendering it, it felt like that part of our life was really over. I felt…melancholic. Until I thought about how fucking great she looked wrapped in a towel and how amazing the next part of our life could be if I had just dropped that mug of peppermint tea I was drinking in the kitchen, strode across the house to her room, pulled that towel off of her toned curvy body, and licked and sucked every wet inch of her until she begged me to fuck her and never ever stop.
These were not the kinds of thoughts that I should have been having about my best friend, especially while holding such an important government-issued document.
I’d had my assistant clear my schedule for the afternoon, and no one else was home to celebrate. Everyone else was at work, of course, Gemma was on set. She had been getting in late, going to work early as she said she would, so we hadn’t had time to talk about things. I didn’t know if she was really planning to move out, or when. I just knew that I didn’t like coming home when she wasn’t there.
>
She had left out a cupcake on the counter before she’d left that morning, with a note written in red white and blue ink: Congratulations, Walker! I guess America is stuck with you now. xo
I knew that she had gotten the cupcake at a bakery in Culver City, near the lot where she was working. She would have had to drive there on her lunch break yesterday. She got my favorite flavor—coffee toffee. I ate the whole thing in two delicious bites, and each time I took it into my mouth I imagined…The opposite of getting a call from my mother right at that moment.
But that’s what was happening. I swallowed and reached for my water bottle as I answered.
“Hey Mom.”
“Is it over? The ceremony?”
“I wouldn’t be answering the phone in the middle of it. Yes, I’m home.”
“So—you did it! Congratulations, I suppose.”
“Thank you.” My parents weren’t exactly thrilled that I hadn’t returned to Toronto after graduating, but they were supportive of my endeavors nonetheless. I was lucky that way.
“So that’s all done then. The whole process?”
“Pretty much. I just have to send out my passport application. I’m paying extra for a quicker processing time.”
“And how’s Gemma? Do you have…plans?”
“Regarding?”
“Are you going to be…you know…making any changes to your current situation?”
“We haven’t really had time to discuss it.” It was a half-lie. We hadn’t discussed it to my liking, anyway. “I’m in no rush.”
“Oh, good!” She sounded so happy, you’d think I’d just told her I’d bought her front row Michael Bublé concert tickets.
“Why?”
“I just mean, well, you know. She’s so good for you.”
“Yeah. I mean, I’m good for her too. I think.”
“Oh sure, of course. I like her. Your father did too, when we came out for your marathon. And she’s not seeing that out-of-town boyfriend anymore, right?”
“Right.” This was weird. My Mom never talked to me about girls. Like, ever. “What are you trying to say, Mom?”
“I’m just saying…”
“You’re not saying anything, actually.”
“Exactly. I know you don’t like to talk about these things. I was just giving you my two Canadian cents. They’re only worth about one and a half American pennies, so…”
“Mom. If you want to say something, just say it.” Maybe if someone says it out loud I can actually let myself think it.
“I just think you’re so cute together. The way you were at the wedding.”
“Marriage ceremony.”
“Yeah yeah yeah. You’ve been so ambitious for as long as I can remember, Theo, and we’re so proud of what you’ve accomplished, of course, but…You can’t run all the time, sometimes you just need to stay in one place and be with someone. And she’s a good someone. That’s all. I’ll let you go. Muah!”
“Mom?”
She’d hung up on me. My Mom hung up on me.
After Fitness Nerd made me a high net worth individual, I hired a personal business manager to handle my finances. It wasn’t easy for me to hand over the responsibility to a stranger, but I didn’t have the time or mental bandwidth to do things like pay bills or stay on top of the stock market once I had a growing company to run. My lawyer helped me find a guy that I liked and I had him sign a nondisclosure agreement about my situation with Gemma. He immediately tried to get me to do a post-nuptial agreement, as I’d expected he would.
He wanted it in writing that she would only get half of what’s in our joint bank account plus the car that I bought in our name, if and when we divorce, and none of my other assets. I wouldn’t even consider it. If anyone deserves half of everything I have, it’s Gemma Kelly. But she claimed she didn’t even want that. I believed her.
I just didn’t want to divorce her.
I was thirteen when my parents divorced, so “divorce” isn’t just a word to me like it is to Gemma, whose parents are still together, whose parents’ best friends are still together. My parents became friends again by the time I had graduated high school, after things had ended between my Dad and his girlfriend. My Mom eventually had the kind of career that she wouldn’t have been able to focus on as the wife of an investment banker. But I still haven’t forgotten how hard it was for her to get over the end of the marriage. It sucked for me too, and even though my Dad seemed happy with the woman he left my mother for, I saw how messed-up he was about it.
Even if ours was, by most people’s definition, a “fake marriage,” and the three years I spent with Gemma can’t compare to the seventeen years my parents were married, that wouldn’t make it any less of an ending. The divorce would be real. Just the concept of it was creating tension. Or was it the concept of us having sex with each other that was creating the tension? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was—there are two ways for me to relieve tension. Gemma was at work, so I couldn’t do it the preferred way, even if she were open to it. So that left going for a long run.
As much as I love and respect my mother, sometimes you do just have to run—to clear your head, or to focus on one thing. It’s not always about distance. Sometimes I feel closer to things when I’m running because I don’t have any technological distractions to keep me from thinking about them.
It was way too sunny and warm to be doing this now, but I only had a two hour window before I had to get on a video conference call with Palo Alto, so I sprayed on sunscreen and drove to the Silver Lake Reservoir with a liter of coconut water and a brain full of Gemma.
I was breaking in a new pair of running shoes, and I wasn’t sure if they were quite right for me. But I always give things a week, to figure out exactly what it is that’s not working. Whether it’s a product I’m developing, or a new eyeglasses prescription, or a girl I’m seeing. How long would I give it to see if it could work with Gemma? If what could work, exactly?
I felt like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed. I was like a cop who’s been so deep undercover for so long that I didn’t know who I was anymore. Was I a guy who’d always been attracted to her but was pretending to be her platonic friend, or was I her platonic friend who was finally realizing just how much I wanted to do dirty sexy things with her?
Bottom line: I wanted to do dirty sexy things with her while somehow not losing her as my best friend.
Is that even a thing?
I needed to make it a thing.
But I knew I shouldn’t change lanes without signaling first.
In geek speak: You can’t just hide that friend-zone app in your operating system and then update it to a new version that includes a dating option—it has to be uninstalled so the new version of the program can work. Teasing her like I had on Sunday morning after a drunken make-out session—that was a rookie move, but I knew I would be able to recover.
In entrepreneur speak: I was going to approach this as I would if I had a startup that needed to pivot from its initial business plan, to kickstart growth. I needed to keep it simple, focus on the key feature of my new approach, and clearly show how I stand out above any competitors. As if that weren’t totally obvious. Still, I needed to research my target customer.
After running about two miles, I did something I hadn’t done in years—I stopped mid-run to make a phone call.
Chloe answered almost immediately. “Hey! Did you get it?”
“Get what?”
“Get what? Oh my God. A piece of paper that states you’re an American citizen.”
“Oh yeah, I did.”
“Fuck yea, America! Right?”
“Yee haw.”
“Are you okay? Why aren’t you more excited?”
“I’m totally excited.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I paced around and said “hey” to a couple of joggers who were passing me from the opposite direction.
“Oh my God, are you out running? Did you stop mid-run to call me? W
hat’s going on?”
“Nothing, I was just…Fuck. I just wanted to casually ask you something about Gemma.”
Silence on her end.
“Hello?”
“Yup. Cool. What’s up?”
She sounded like she was trying really hard not to sound excited. Like she’d been waiting for this conversation for years. Or maybe I was reading too much into it. I heard her shut her office door.
“I was just wondering if she’s mentioned anything about dating-type stuff to you lately.”
“Holy fuck it’s happening! Oh my God it’s happening! Yes!”
“Did you just fist pump?”
“No. Yes. Fuck you. I’ve been waiting for this all year—God you’ve taken your sweet ass time about this you prick. It was the Ben guy, wasn’t it? That’s what tipped the scales.”
“What scales? There are no scales.”
“It knocked you on your ass.”
“I am definitely not on my ass.”
“Ahhhhh! This is huge. What are you going to do? You better not fuck this up, homeboy. Just be cool.”
“I am cool. You be cool.”
“I WILL NOT BE COOL!”
“Can you just answer my question?”
“No! I mean no, there’s no actual dating situations to speak of. She wants to. She’s ready. She’s so ready.”
“She is? So she’s talked about wanting to date other guys?”
“Yeah of course. Have you seen her body lately? She’s been working out and exfoliating and self-tanning and moisturizing. Did you see how big her hoop earrings were on Saturday? That’s earring-speak for my vagina is open for business—wide-open!”
I should not have made this call.
“But obviously her vagina would prefer to do business with you, Theo.”
“Why do you say that?”
After a brief pause, wherein I could literally hear her eyeballs rolling around in their sockets, she said: “Jesus. If you honestly don’t know, maybe you don’t deserve her.”
And that was all I needed to hear. “Chloe—don’t tell her we had this conversation.”
“Sistuh, please. This ain’t my first rodeo.”
Green: a friends to lovers romantic comedy Page 10