The Next Best Thing

by Jennifer Weiner

  I closed my eyes. There were no words.

  Dave tucked his clipboard under his arm, loosened his tie, and turned to me. “Never mind my privilege problem. I invited you here for a reason,” he said.

  “You didn’t invite me here,” I pointed out. “The network did.”

  He waved one big hand dismissively. “Me, network. It’s all the same. We need to talk.”

  “What now?” In five minutes, I’d be onstage with my cast, and then we’d both have to work, glad-handing foreign reporters and big shots who bought ad time for tampons and Swiffers and weight-loss programs.

  “Now.” He turned to me, for once managing to look serious. “What is going on with you and my boy?”

  I tried to keep my face expressionless. “What do you mean?”

  “Every time I mention you, he gets this look.” Dave gave a wince that made it seem as if lunch hadn’t agreed with him. “And I know he’s barely been to your set all week.”

  “Everything’s fine,” I said. “He was there for the table read. I’ve got everything under control.”

  “Ruth,” he said. “Talk to your daddy.” He put one heavy hand on my shoulder. “I know you can’t be happy about Taryn. The network cast the girl who stole your man away.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” I said, blushing. “And really, the issue with Taryn isn’t our history. The issue is, she’s not very good.”

  Dave kept talking. “And you had to replace Annie, who we all loved, and you’ve got the whole Cady situation.”

  “She’s not wearing underpants,” I blurted as another clutch of actresses came teetering by.

  “I noticed,” Dave replied. “So did the shooter from People magazine. And don’t tell me everything’s fine. I know what’s going on.” He looked at me, for once not tossing off a joke or telling a funny story or doing his impression of his father trying to pass a kidney stone.

  I didn’t answer. Vaguely, I was aware of movement around me, actresses stepping onto the stage, more actresses taking their place. I heard fabric rustling, heels clicking, fingers snapping, very close to my face. “Um, hello? Earth to Ruthie? Come on! We’re up!” Taryn Montaine’s breath smelled like olives, and she was standing so close I knew that, if I looked, I’d be able to see the scars from the face-lift she’d lied about having.

  “You broke his heart,” said Dave . . . but before I could think of what to say, I heard the announcer’s voice.

  “And now!” he shouted, as the music—“Do You Really Want More?”—played even louder. I knew the clip they’d show by heart. I’d picked out each scene and edited it myself. There was Nana getting dumped, Cady getting fired, Cady on her Rollerblades, Nana holding Cady’s chin in her hand, promising her a big life, the life her mother would have wanted her to have. “The stars and executive producer of the debut comedy The Next Best Thing!”

  “I have to go,” I whispered to Dave, and stepped through the red velvet curtains to stand onstage with the bright lights in my eyes and the cast on either side of me, letting the music and applause wash over me like water.

  * * *

  As soon as I climbed down the steps, my girl-stars gliding ahead of me and Pete ambling behind, Big Dave grabbed me by the elbow and steered me to an empty cocktail table in a corner. “I am going to get you a drink,” he announced. “And you are going to tell me what’s going on, and we are going to fix this.”

  I shook my head. I’d already decided that I could give him only the vaguest outline of the situation. I wasn’t going to betray Dave’s privacy or embarrass myself. Besides, what Dave had said couldn’t be true. I hadn’t broken Dave’s heart. It wasn’t possible. By the time Big Dave came back, with two glasses full of clear liquid and ice and wedges of lime, and a plate full of skewered chicken and slices of sushi, I had a speech planned.

  “I had a crush on him, and we kind of hooked up, but it’s not going to go anywhere,” I said. Dave set the plates on the table and put a glass in front of me. I took a sip, tasting sugar and tequila. “So it’s really no big deal. Things might be a little tense for a little while, but I’m sure it’s not going to cause any problems in the long term.”

  There, I thought. Done. Except Big Dave still wasn’t talking. He ate a chunk of a sushi roll, eased chicken off its wooden toothpick with his teeth, chewed, and swallowed. He patted his lips with a napkin and smoothed his hair. Then, finally, he repeated his line from backstage. “You broke his heart.”

  I shook my head, feeling breathless. “No.”

  “He told me. Well, not exactly, but he told me you guys fooled around and then you got out of there so fast it was like your ass was on fire and your hair was catching.” He gave me a hard look. “If you didn’t want to be with a guy in a wheelchair, you shouldn’t have started up with him in the first place.”

  “If I . . . I didn’t want . . .” I couldn’t process what he was telling me. I could barely speak. “Dave thinks I don’t want him because he’s in a wheelchair?”

  “What else could it be?” Dave asked.

  “How about, he already has a girlfriend? How about, I don’t want to be the other woman?”

  Big Dave waved one big hand dismissively. “The Shazia thing’s just for show. He’s in love with you.”

  My heart was swelling. I felt like I’d been pumped full of helium; like at any moment I might lift up off of my chair and start floating. “He is?”

  “Duh. And you,” he said, shaking one long finger in my face, “should not have hurt him.”

  “I didn’t leave because of the wheelchair.” I dropped my voice, my face burning. “It was Rob. Rob didn’t want me, and I thought Dave wouldn’t, either, once he came to his senses. I thought he was just being nice.”

  “One dumb-ass model-fucker breaks your heart and you think we’re all dogs?” Big Dave shook his head, looking disappointed. “You don’t think Dave’s any better than Rob Curtis?”

  “So he . . . he likes me?”

  Dave shook his head, rolling his eyes as if he couldn’t believe my folly. “Don’t get all junior high on me now. Of course he likes you. You’re both smart and funny. You care about the same things, and you’re from the same place. Which, now that I think about it, might be the problem. New England. Frickin’ Puritans. Repression and witch hunts.” He paused, thinking, and then pulled his iPhone from the front pocket of his shirt, which had his initials embroidered in lilac-colored thread on the cuffs. “Question: Could there be a show about a modern-day witch hunt? Maybe set it in Salem, Massachusetts?” Satisfied, he put the phone back in his pocket and said, “Go to him.”

  “And do what?”

  “I don’t know. You tell stories for a living. Tell him how you feel. Tell him you’re sorry you ran away. Tell him you have herpes.”

  “What?”

  Dave smiled, pleased with himself. “And then tell him you don’t, and he’ll be so relieved he’ll probably propose right on the spot.” He looked at me with a puppy-dog expression. “Can I marry you guys? I’ll get Internet-ordained and everything.”

  “One step at a time.” I couldn’t believe this. I was blushing so hard that my face felt like it might burst into flames. The tablecloth and the billowy white drapes on the wall would catch. Many dead actresses would have to be identified by their dental work or their breast implants’ serial numbers. Dave snatched another fistful of food from a passing waiter’s tray, then laid his free hand on my shoulder. “Go to him,” he said again.

  I shook my head. “I need to think.”

  “No, you don’t. You need to get in your Prius and drive over the mountain and tell him how you feel.”

  I could imagine doing it. I could also imagine Dave opening the door, and seeing Shazia standing behind him . . . or worse, Dave saying politely that he was flattered, but that it was too late . . . or that Big Dave had gotten it wrong, and he’d done what he’d done to comfort me in what was clearly my hour of need; that he didn’t like me like that.

  “Hey, Ruth!”
Cady and Taryn glided toward our table, a pair of goddesses who’d descended from Mount Olympus to walk among the mortals. Cady grabbed my hand as Taryn assumed a hip-sprung pose and batted her long lashes at Big Dave. “We’re going dancing. Want to come?”

  I blinked at her, at both of them, wondering if they were kidding, if this was some kind of mean joke on the ugly showrunner. Then I chided myself for being cynical, and I thought with longing of my couch, the blanket Grandma had knitted, the L.A. Law marathon, how I’d take off my skirt and my Spanx and sink into the quiet of the sofa for what was going to be one of my last nights alone with my grandmother.

  “Go to him,” Big Dave said. His voice was quiet but insistent.

  “I will,” I said . . . but I knew that I wouldn’t—at least not yet, not until I had some sign, not until I was sure.

  I watched Taryn and Cady go, arms linked, laughing, attracting stares with each step. “He doesn’t want that,” said Big Dave, reading my mind. “He wants you.”

  “Okay,” I said, and slipped my valet ticket out of my clutch. Now or never. Grab for that ring or spend the rest of my life wondering. “Okay.”

  TWENTY

  Dave answered the door before the bell had finished chiming. “Ruthie?” he said, staring at me.

  “Hi.” I hadn’t called or emailed or texted to tell him I was coming. I hadn’t wanted to lose my nerve.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “I came to apologize. For leaving last time. I didn’t mean . . .”

  Before I could finish, he’d wheeled a few steps backward, beckoning me inside. He was the most casually dressed I’d seen him, in sweatpants and a plain blue T-shirt, and his feet were bare. “It’s fine,” he said. “You look very nice. Were you at up-fronts? Everything go okay?”

  “Everything was fine,” I said, leaving aside for the time being the matter of Cady’s ass crevice. “But what I did wasn’t fine.”

  “It’s okay,” he said again. “Not every girl dreams of Prince Charming riding up in a wheelchair instead of a white horse. I get it.”

  “No! No, you don’t! It’s not that at all. I don’t care about the wheelchair. I just thought . . . I mean, with Shazia, and all the women before her, you’d come to your senses, and you’d look at me—”

  “And see what?” Dave was gazing at me steadily.

  Tears sprang to my eyes. “You know,” I whispered, and touched my cheek. “You can have anyone. Why would you want me?”

  “Because you make me laugh,” he said promptly. I couldn’t keep from giving a hiccupping sob as two tears trickled down my face. He reached up and took my hands. “Ruthie. I like you so much. When you left . . .” He was looking at me, his face so open, so boyishly hopeful, that it broke my heart. “I thought, Okay. I’m not what she wants, and she deserves better.”

  “There’s nobody better than you!” I went down on my knees and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. He sat there not moving, not returning my embrace. “I thought you didn’t want me,” I said.

  “So it’s all a big misunderstanding?” Slowly I felt one of his hands rise until his palm was settled against the small of my back, and then he was pulling me closer.

  “Like on a TV show,” I said. “Where everyone but the man and the woman know they’re in love.”

  “Sam and Diane.”

  “Maddie and David.”

  “Captain Picard and Data.”

  “You totally just made that up.”

  “Maybe,” he said, and reached down and lifted me up into his lap, as if I were as tiny as a young girl. In that moment, I was back in the hospital, in bed, bandaged and in pain. The room was dark except for the glow of the television set, the theme music from The Golden Girls. Thank you for being a friend, I heard—the ring tone I’d assigned my grandmother’s calls. In my memory, I could feel the warmth of my grandmother’s body beside me, and could smell Camay soap and cigarettes and finally I could let myself sleep, stop fighting the maddening itch of my flesh knitting itself together. I could stop thinking about whatever shot or stitches or surgery came next. In the darkness, in that bed, with my programs and someone who loved me nearby, I was safe. This was like that . . . only better.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck as he began wheeling us down the hall. “Why do birds suddenly appear? Every time you are near,” he sang in a low and tuneful voice.

  I raised my head, looking at him. “Are you singing?”

  He didn’t answer. He just kept singing. “Just like me,” he continued, as we made our way toward the back of the house. “They long to . . . touch your ass.” He reached underneath me and gave my bottom a squeeze. At the touch of a button, the glass doors slid open, and then we were outside, in the warm, sweet-smelling night, right in front of the pool. Dave’s eyes seemed to darken as he looked at me. “Stand up,” he said.

  “Do I have to let you go?”

  “Just for a minute.”

  I got off his lap and stood before him. He reached out, grasping the hem of my dress. “Put your arms up.”

  I felt the muscles of my belly quiver and tighten. He had one hand on my dress. With the other, he reached around and, with a featherlight touch of one fingertip, stroked my spine from the small of my back to the top of my ass.

  Oh my God. “Dave,” I said weakly. I was trying to picture how my industrial-strength bicycle shorts would look, but before I could think, Dave’s fingers were underneath the hem, and my Spanx were on the ground, on top of my dress, and I was standing there, in (thank God) my good black lace bra and panties.

  Dave took my hand, brought it to his lips, and kissed it. I could feel his tongue on my knuckles and my knees got weak.

  “Follow me,” he said, and wheeled away into the pool house. The shower—really, it was more of a wet room, all in azure-and-turquoise tile—was large enough to accommodate a basketball team. There was a built-in bench, that oversize showerhead, nozzles everywhere. Dave turned on the water, adjusting the dials. The room began to fill with steam.

  “Come here.” Dave’s voice was thick and husky, deeper than I’d heard it, and his eyes were intent on my body.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What I should have done the last time you were over here swimming. I’m not going to let you run away from me this time.” He reached for me and took both my hands. “I love you, Ruthie.”

  I closed my eyes. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t speak. I thought about Rob. I thought about Gary. I thought about my grandmother, telling me not to be the same fool twice. Then Dave was sliding my panties down my legs, with his face so close I could feel his breath on my skin. I felt his hands on my thighs and his tongue, making its way down my belly, and I forgot everything, every man I’d ever known, every piece of advice I’d ever been given, as he slipped one finger inside of me.

  “God, you’re so wet,” he whispered. He pulled out his finger—I mewled in protest—then he grabbed me around my waist and settled me on his lap. “Lean back,” he whispered. I did, letting my head rest against his shoulder as he pushed the cups of my bra down, lifting my breasts up and out, brushing them with his fingertips, then pinching the nipples, first the left one, then the right.

  “Oh, God,” I groaned. I was squirming in his lap, wanting his fingers back inside of me, wanting to feel his skin against mine. He was kissing my ear, nibbling at the lobe, then moving his lips down the side of my neck, nipping me gently with his teeth, then kissing me.

  “My Ruthie.”

  My eyes filled with tears. That was all I wanted—to be his Ruthie, his girl. “Please,” I whispered. “Oh, please.”

  “You want this?” His voice was soft. “You want me?”

  “Please,” I said again, and started to cry. I’m so ugly. I don’t deserve you. You could never love me. I tried to stand, seized, once again, by the impulse to run before I got hurt, but he held me in place in his lap. He was so strong . . . even broken, even crippled, so strong. He pulled me against his chest, al
l warm skin and hair and muscle. “Please don’t.”

  “Don’t what?” he breathed in my ear, biting my lobe again.

  “Please don’t break my heart,” I whispered.

  “Never,” he said, trailing tiny kisses down my neck, over the scars on my shoulder, the puckered pink flesh that I always kept covered. “I’ll never break your heart. I want to take care of you, for as long as you’ll let me.”

  “Okay,” I whispered, thinking, This isn’t happening. This is some other girl’s fairy tale, someone else’s happy ending.

  “Stand up.”

  For a moment, I wasn’t sure my legs would work—they were so wobbly, and I was so wet. Dave gave me a gentle push, and I was on my feet.

  He gripped my hips, then reached around, brushing my clitoris with the ball of his thumb. I groaned, pushing against him, thinking, More, more, oh, God, more.

  “Get in the shower.” On shaky legs, I did as he commanded. “Stand against the glass. I want to look at you.” I pushed myself forward, arching my back, feeling the cool glass on my breasts, the warm water beating down on my skin, my hair, raining down my back. On the other side of the glass, I could see him taking me in, all of me—my breasts, my thighs, my skin, my scars—and I saw nothing on his face except love, adoration, excitement. It was the way Maurice looked at my grandmother, the way my father looked at my mother in the wedding picture that I kept and carried and put on the set, the way Big Dave, for all his teasing, looked at Molly, his wife, and Paul and Claire, my married writing team, looked at each other when they thought no one was looking at them.