I spend the rest of the afternoon daydreaming about the reconciliation celebration that Dan and I will have—I don’t need to pay attention to the case since obviously I’m on Dan’s side. I’m thinking maybe dinner at Crustacean…or spending the night at the Hotel Bel Air and getting room service. And maybe the passion of makeup sex will give Dan a boost in the bedroom that will benefit us both.
I’ll be honest—I’ve never had great sex. Of the select group I have been with, some (all) have been better than Dan, but nobody has been mind-blowing—or even bending. It’s the one and only area of my relationship with Dan that doesn’t exactly fit into my fantasy plan, since ideally my husband and soul mate would be able to give me an orgasm. It’s okay, though, because I’m a good faker and Dan usually likes to go to sleep shortly after he comes—which doesn’t take very long—and then I can sneak into the bathroom with my dildo and finish the job. I wonder where I’ll hide my dildo once we are living together?
Before I have figured out an ideal hiding place, the judge is dismissing us for the weekend with strict instructions not to discuss any part of the case with anyone outside the courtroom involved in the case or not. I was going to use the excuse of having some questions about the case to invite Dan to have a drink with me and decide not to be dissuaded. It’s probably one of those rules that is meant to be broken. The jury is led out of the courtroom in a single-file line and set free in the hallway outside the courtroom.
All the other jurors scatter as if the building is on fire, but I linger in the hallway. I mosey down to one end and take a drink from a water fountain, then saunter all the way to the other end to see if Neck Mole is still in the jury room so I can thank her one more time. I assume Dan with be exiting the courtroom quickly, but it takes almost forty-five minutes for him to enter the hallway where I have been mindlessly lingering for close to an hour.
“Oh, Dan, hi!” I say brightly when I see him.
Coldly he says, “Liz, what are you still doing here?”
I feel a shiver. Dan almost never calls me Liz and it feels strange. “Oh, I just thought I’d wait and see if maybe you wanted to go grab a drink.” There is a second of awkward pause, and in a desperate attempt I add, “I have a couple of questions about the case.”
“We are not allowed to discuss the case. Didn’t you hear Judge Santos’s instructions?” he asks in a know-it-all tone that I don’t particularly appreciate.
I feel like a busted kid in the sandbox. “Oh, of course—”
I don’t get to say another word—to plead my own case for a drink—because the blonde defense attorney walks out of the courtroom, unraveling her dorky braid by running her fingers through her beautiful hair. She looks much better (really good) with her hair down. Without acknowledging my presence she looks at Dan and says with a smile, “You ready to go?”
He returns her smile with one of his own and says, “Sure thing.” Then, without so much as a glance in my direction, they take off down the hall together.
I stand frozen in shock and horror. The humiliation stings and the heartbreak aches as I watch Dan hold open the door to the stairwell for her to walk through. He’s already replaced me? I’m not quite sure what to do next. I have gotten myself stuck on this case, which means I will have God-knows-how-many days of watching Dan and Defender Bitch together. Plan B for Bust…another failure, and given Dan’s new relationship, I’m not sure that there is any point in continuing.
I lean against the wall and try to think of an alternative life plan that could make me as happy as the one I’d pictured sharing with Dan. It just doesn’t exist, and somehow I’ve made a mess of the few things I actually did have going for me. I’ve taken off so much time from work in the last month that I’m probably at risk of being fired…and now I’m stuck on this stupid case that will keep me out of the office even longer. Plus, I ignored all the evidence presented today, certain that I would just side with Dan, but now I don’t want to—although I don’t want to side with Defender Bitch, either. Things were supposed to be getting better, but undoubtedly they are getting worse.
I take a deep breath and walk toward the elevator. At least tomorrow is Saturday. I have two days to recover from today before I have to watch Dan and his new love on display. I enter the slow old elevator and press the “L” button. The doors grind shut and with great effort the car delivers me down three floors. The doors reopen as if they are pulling taffy apart and I step out into the almost empty lobby. As I leave the building, a security guard calls out, “Have a nice weekend, miss.” I try to muster a smile, but I’m pretty sure I fail. He probably thinks I’m some sort of criminal who just got convicted, but I don’t have the energy to let him know that I am an innocent victim.
29
Buck had been counting the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until the weekend and his trip to Los Angeles. On Saturday morning, without the help of an alarm clock, he got up shortly after the sun, eager to get on the road. His stomach churned like a child’s on Christmas morning as he quickly showered and dressed. He quickly gave Wildcat an extra bowl of water and a heaping dish of kibble before heading out the front door and climbing into the truck he had filled with gas the night before on his way home from work.
He had talked to Tiffany yesterday afternoon and she had promised that Lizzie would be happy to have him spend the night at her apartment, since he had let her stay over at his house, which only added to Buck’s excitement (and anxiety). It did offer a tiny bit of relief that she didn’t hate him after their run-in in the kitchen. He thought he’d felt a spark between them, but then feeling typically insecure, he’d spent a good part of the week worrying that she felt nothing but freaked out by him. He had read her wrong at his prom, so Buck knew that there was a good chance he was reading her wrong now as well.
The highway was mostly clear at this hour on a Saturday morning except for the big tanker trucks that transport goods up and down the state. Buck set his cruise control at 75 miles per hour and ran through scenarios in his head. The first was the one in which Lizzie was thrilled to see him and openly admitted that she had thought about him as much during the week as he had thought about her. This scenario was his favorite. The others were less desirable. There was one in which she was openly hostile with him for coming on to her when she was grieving the death of her long-lost friend, another in which she was completely indifferent to him, hardly noticing his presence in her apartment, and his least favorite: the one in which she had gotten back together with the ex-boyfriend, leaving no chance of the first scenario ever becoming reality.
As he cruised along, Buck spotted a Starbucks ahead. As much as he hated to admit it to Tiffany and encourage her obsession, it was good coffee, and he could go for some right now. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock and Buck was a good part of the distance to Los Angeles, so he decided to make a quick pit stop, since arriving too early and waking Lizzie up probably would greatly diminish his chances of realizing scenario one.
Inside, the Starbucks was almost empty. There was a couple waiting at the far counter to receive their prepared drinks, and a single girl sitting at a small round table with an issue of Cosmopolitan. The couple were clearly on their way up to the mountain and were dressed in designer resort wear. The weekend in the mountains must have been a romantic getaway for them and they were already getting started on the romance. As they waited for their beverages, the guy, who looked a few years younger than Buck, kept his hands firmly planted on the girl’s round behind. Their lips remained locked, except when he broke free to give the green-aproned employee a brief thank-you nod before removing his hands from his girlfriend’s ass and picking up their drinks. As he did this, she moved her affection down to his neck, which she nibbled until he stepped back and handed her the white paper cup with the brown insulation band. Only when they finally broke apart did Buck get a look at the girl. She certainly wasn’t what he would have expected. She was a great deal older than the man she had been making out with. Buck did a doub
le take, because there was something familiar about them. Only after a second look did he recognize her to be the host of the show Lizzie worked on and a man he had seen operating a camera over the monitor in Elizabeth’s office. Renee Foster looked much different standing in Starbucks without her hair or makeup done. Buck thought about going up and introducing himself, but then what would he say? “Hi, I’m secretly in love with one of your employees”? His connection to Elizabeth was too complicated to explain…plus Renee had taken one sip of her coffee and then returned to playing tonsil hockey with her young companion. Buck collected his own drink and climbed back into the truck.
As the caffeine pulsed through his veins, he steered the oversize truck down the crowded city streets toward Lizzie’s apartment. After circling the block three times, he finally lucked out and found a spot big enough for the F150, when a couple in designer sweatsuits climbed into their Hummer H2 and drove away. Buck felt a little girly doing so, but nonetheless redirected the rearview mirror so he could see himself. He ran his hand over the short hairs covering his head and checked his teeth for any remnants of his blueberry muffin. He quickly popped a Tic Tac into his mouth and chewed it up as he walked across the street and up to Elizabeth’s apartment. Once at the door, he knocked quietly and then stood waiting, his heart racing with anticipation, for Lizzie to open it.
Instead, it was Tiffany who threw open the door and greeted Buck with a warm hug. He returned the hug and stepped into the apartment, purposely diverting his eyes from the small hall closet Lizzie had locked Tiffany in the last time he had been at her apartment. She had absolutely changed since then, even though it had been only a couple weeks.
“Come in, come in,” Tiffany encouraged him in a loud whisper.
“Why are we whispering?” Buck asked, copying her low tone.
“Elizabeth is still asleep,” she informed him. “But I’m going to wake her up anyway and see if she wants to come get pancakes with us,” she added in her normal speaking voice. “I read that a lot of celebrities go to Du-Pars at the Farmers Market for pancakes on the weekend, so we’ve got to go there,” she told Buck as she walked down the hall towards Lizzie’s closed bedroom door.
Buck couldn’t help smiling and wondered how long Tiffany’s celebrity infatuation would last. He stood in Lizzie’s foyer and waited…and listened.
“Pssst…Lizzie…Elizabeth. Buck and I are going for pancakes. Wanna come?” Tiffany asked.
Buck strained to hear Lizzie’s response. “Buck Platner is here? Oh my God…I forgot he was coming,” followed by muffled sounds he couldn’t make out.
His heart fell that she had forgotten altogether that he was coming. The “indifference” scenario wasn’t the worst, but it certainly wasn’t the best. His spirits lifted slightly when Tiffany exited the darkened room and said, “She’s gonna throw on clothes and come with us.”
Maybe it wasn’t indifference. If she was indifferent or hostile she probably wouldn’t get out of bed to come eat pancakes with him, right? He and Tiffany made small talk, chatting about the happenings in her week. It seemed mostly to consist of attending tapings of the show Lizzie worked at because, according to Tiffany, that was the most surefire way to see celebrities.
“There’s, like, a Starbucks on every corner and it’s impossible to predict which one a celebrity will go to and when they’ll be there,” she explained seriously, and Buck concentrated furiously on maintaining a straight face.
She continued on, naming each celebrity she’d seen and how he or she differed from how they look on television or in the movies. Apparently, some who appeared short on screen were really rather tall, which Tiffany found fascinating, since she thought people appeared bigger on TV than in real life. Not laughing was getting harder and harder, making Buck even happier to see Elizabeth coming out of her room.
“Morning,” she said with a slightly sheepish grin.
Was the sheepishness for Buck or because she had been caught still sleeping?
“Hey, there,” he greeted her warmly, hoping he didn’t come off as too eager. Why could he never properly control his brain-to-mouth connection?
Then, to his surprise and delight, Lizzie sleepily crossed the room and put her head against his chest in a warm embrace.
“Good to see you,” she said absentmindedly and then immediately crossed over and picked up her purse. “Where for pancakes?”
“I told you, Du-Pars” Tiffany replied eagerly, “unless you know of another place where more celebrities will be,” she quickly added.
“Hmmm…Du-Pars or Jerry’s, but Du-Pars sounds good. Let’s go there.” She opened the apartment door and Tiffany quickly stepped out. “Shall we?” Elizabeth said to Buck.
“Let’s,” he answered, following her out of the apartment.
“Why don’t I drive so that you don’t have to lose your spot?” Lizzie offered as they walked around the apartment’s Spanish tiled pool in the Melrose Place-ish courtyard.
“That would be great,” Buck said, thinking of the difficulty getting a parking spot to begin with. That was definitely something about Los Angeles that would get really old really fast. In Victory, there were always plenty of places to park, and since most of the town’s residents had trucks, all the spots were big enough for them.
The three climbed into Lizzie’s little white convertible. Thankfully, Tiffany cheerfully offered to take the backseat, since Buck was positive that he wouldn’t be able to fit in the glorified storage area. Even the front seat was a bit cramped for his long legs, and his head was touching the roof. Elizabeth started the engine and then hit a button on the dashboard that caused the roof to roll back and fold itself into a storage area behind the one Tiffany was seated in.
“That’ll give you a little more headroom,” Lizzie said with a tired smile.
Buck was grateful for the headroom, but the wind and road noise once the top was down made it practically impossible to talk at all. That was probably a good thing, he told himself as Elizabeth expertly maneuvered the little car down the L.A. streets that were already crowded, even though it was still relatively early on a Saturday morning. Soon they were in the Farmers Market parking lot and searching for a space. Buck had visited the Farmers Market once as a kid when his parents took him and his older brother, Larry J, to Los Angeles for a vacation. They had attended a taping of The Price is Right, and then wandered around the open-air market that sold everything from Chinese food to rubber stamps. The market had changed a lot since then—an entire upscale, outdoor mall seemed to have grown out the side of the old attraction.
Eventually Elizabeth found a spot and the three piled out of the convertible. Lizzie pressed a button on her keychain, which caused the car to let out a robotic peep, but to Buck’s amazement she left the top down. He thought crime was rampant in Los Angeles. Lizzie led the way into the old section of the market toward Du-Pars, which upon first glance seemed to fall somewhere between Mug’s in Victory and Denny’s in Lone Oak (the next town over). The coffee shop was old-fashioned, boasting many different kinds of pies and a line of people waiting for breakfast. Elizabeth wove her way through the crowd to put their name on the list of people. She emerged a minute later and informed them the wait was only twenty minutes. Buck doubted he had ever waited twenty minutes just to sit down at a restaurant table in his entire life, but he responded to Elizabeth that the wait was not too bad.
Lizzie then led Tiffany and Buck through the market and into the newer section, which she explained was called The Grove, to a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf.
“Isn’t there a Starbucks?” Tiffany asked anxiously, clearly not wanting to waste coffee consumption at a place in which she didn’t have a chance of spotting a celebrity and possibly not wanting to cheat on her steady venue.
“Everybody gets a latte here while they wait to get seated at Du-Pars,” Lizzie explained, and Tiffany immediately played it cool.
Buck was certain Lizzie had her at “everybody,” so they joined the line that extended
out the door of the Coffee Bean. The three got their drinks in little paper cups and returned to Du-Pars just in time to hear their name being called. Buck felt completely out of place. Out of place in line at the Coffee Bean, where he was the only man not wearing a worn-out, backward baseball cap, and out of place at Du-Pars, where everyone held an L.A. Times in one hand and a BlackBerry in the other. He tried not to notice it and hoped that Lizzie wouldn’t either.
They sat down in the beige vinyl booth and each picked up a menu. Almost immediately, Lizzie looked up,
“I don’t know why I bother to look. I always get the same thing—a short stack,” she informed them, setting the menu back on the table.
“That’s what I’ll get, too,” Tiffany quickly said, and also closed her menu.
Buck studied his for a few more minutes before deciding on a combination breakfast that included eggs and sausage. He could not live on pancakes alone. They ordered, and in less time than it had taken to be seated, plates of food were delivered to their table. Along with the pancakes were little containers of melted butter, in which everyone gluttonously drenched their cakes. As they began stuffing their faces, Tiffany said to Elizabeth, “So, jury duty sucked?”
She sounded sympathetic, which made sense to Buck. Even in a town as small as Victory, folks hated jury duty. The town housed the courthouse for the entire county, and as a result, Victory residents seemed to get called more than those from the surrounding towns.
“You have no idea,” Lizzie began, and then told a story about Dan (who Buck remembered as the fiancé who had dumped her so harshly just a couple weeks earlier) and the case’s defender.
“What bad luck to get assigned to his courtroom,” Buck sympathized, as if jury duty could get any worse.
Not Quite A mom Page 15