by J. S. Cooper
“Take that, Jasmine,” I thought to myself.
Later that night, I did something bad. Well, not horribly bad, like go straight to jail bad, but bad enough. I did feel guilty, but I resolved to myself that Jasmine deserved it. I wouldn’t have done anything if it hadn’t been for her last leaving comment. The rest of the lunch had gone seemingly well, or so I had thought. I mean, as well as it could have for it being a date where I watched the love of my life gush over Cruella DeVille while I played happy-faces with my old childhood friend, who incidentally was making me feel weird things with his romantic words and caresses.
Only it didn’t really work. Ben was so caught up in Jasmine that he barely had time to talk to me. Thank God Gayle asked Blake to accompany me on the date. Otherwise, I would have felt extremely uncomfortable, even more so than I do already. But it was Jasmine’s parting comments about ‘chubby chasers’ and ‘Hollywood’ that got me going.
I may not be a size zero, but I certainly wasn’t going to be put into the same category as a “Big Beautiful Woman.” Not that there’s anything wrong with being BBW, but whenever I think of that acronym, I think of kinky sex and sleazy dating ads. So really, Jasmine is to blame for the little ad I created about her.
When I got home, I was still seething at her comment, so I decided to create a rental listing on Tedslist. It reads:
“Former Playboy bunny (from one of the 2009 editions) is looking to rent a room in her luxurious mansion in Beverly Hills to a man with strong hands. Age is not a factor. Rent is only $400 a month so long as you are able to provide massages at least 3 times a week. Call or email me for more information.”
I laughed myself to sleep that night. There was no way half of all the freaks in LA weren’t going to contact her.
10
Dear Diary,
Ben and I aren’t speaking. Surprise, surprise. Jasmine was inundated with calls from men who wanted to ‘live with’ her, so she decided to do a study about the Internet, sexual predators, and something else, related to the brain. He wasn’t happy about that because that meant she had no time for him, really. Gayle was the one who told Ben about me posting the Tedslist ad. She claimed that she assumed he knew. But obviously I’m not going to tell him about my evil deeds. So Gayle and I aren’t talking, either. The good news is that I now have plenty of time to write my novel, which is actually coming along nicely. If a few pages equals nicely, that is.
Lucy was snuggled up at my side, snoring loudly, her mouth dribbling saliva like an oozing volcano onto the sheet. My laptop was on my legs, heating up my thighs, and I was daydreaming about Blake and me meeting different Hollywood stars. My hot thighs broke me out of my daydream; I’ll have to remember to get one of those small laptop desks for my bed before I burn my thighs to a crisp or crash my computer. Because that would be just my luck. I’d finally get the book up and started and then lose all my work due to my computer crashing. I could just imagine giving Blake that excuse. It would be reminiscent of some sort of ‘cat ate my homework’ excuse. It’s the sort of excuse that no one believes, but in my life it’s usually real. On second thought, I’ve decided I should add an external hard drive to the shopping list, as well.
“They climbed…” No, no. Backspace… “They scrambled…” Argh! I was frustrated. Trying to write the perfect novel in a time crunch is a hard job. I was leaning over Lucy to grab my thesaurus to find the perfect word for the sentence when the phone rang.
“Hello?” I grabbed it without looking at the name.
“‘Sup, Maggie Moo?” Blake’s voice always sounded as if he was half-laughing at me. I couldn’t imagine that he had the same tone when in important business meetings.
“Not much, Blakey-wakey. How may I help you?”
“I heard from Gayle about the Tedslist incident and figured you might need a friend.”
“Does Gayle just not know when to keep her mouth shut?” I muttered.
“She was just concerned about you.”
“Yeah, well she’s not my mother.”
“So how’s the book coming along? Can I set up the meeting yet? My contacts are really excited to talk to you,” Blake changed the subject. I guess he didn’t want to get into a long discussion.
“Actually I was just working on it.” Finally, a time when I could talk about the book without lying. “Um, I don’t know if it’s quite ready...”
“Maggie,” Blake interrupted me.
“Yes?”
“It’s not done, is it?”
“What’s not done?” My heart started thumping.
“The book.”
“Huh?” I feigned ignorance at his question.
“The book you are ‘revising’, it hasn’t been written yet, has it?” he asked softly.
“Why would you think that?” I try to act affronted but my words come out as a half-cry.
“Maggie. I may not have seen you in a while, but I’ve known you a long time, and I just have a feeling.”
“Are you mad at me?” That was all I needed to say to answer his question. I waited for the anger to erupt from his voice. For one more person to tell me that I needed to just do something and stop dilly-dallying.
“No.”
“Really?”
“Maggie, I knew you hadn’t written it after our first conversation, when you wouldn’t tell me exactly what the plot was about. You’re a sharer, not a hoarder, and if the book was done, you would have been talking about it all night.” There was amusement in his voice. I felt a tension release in my body.
“I know. I’m sorry. I just didn’t want to lose this opportunity. You know.”
“I know. And I’m serious that my friend wants to see a book sooner, rather than later. How far along are you?”
“Not very far,” I whispered the words, hoping that somehow they would sound better if not expressed too loudly.
I heard him sigh. “Oh, Maggie, what am I going to do with you?”
Kiss me again. The words came to my brain involuntarily. What was I thinking? I had no interest in Blake. Did I?
“Do you have any time off?” Blake inquired.
“A little, but I don’t really have the money for a vacation right now.”
“Maggie! Not a vacation. Maybe you can take some time off and get to writing full-time so that we can have something good to go as quickly as possible.”
“Oh, oops, ha-ha.” Darn, it would have been nice to have been offered an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii or even Fiji. I could relax on the beach and let the words seep out of me while I gazed out on the ocean.
“So, can you do that?” Blake broke into my reverie. I had been picturing myself dancing under the moonlight, with flowers tucked into the side of my hair and a handsome man, possibly Bradley Cooper, staring at me in wonder at his luck of being with me.
“Um, sure. Yeah, I will put in the time for next week.”
“Great. Let’s do dinner tomorrow. I have someone I want you to meet.”
“Okay sure.” And with that we hung up the phone. I was curious as to who he wanted me to meet. I hoped it wasn’t some sort of psychic guru who was going to help open my mind so that my creative juices could start flowing. I’d already tried one of those and it hadn’t really worked. Or perhaps he would introduce me to some famous author, who would tell me about their writing process and provide some sort of positive feedback as to how it always gets tough but you have to keep going.
Now I was getting excited. I wondered which author it was going to be, and hoped it was someone whose book I had read recently. How embarrassing if it were some New York Times bestselling author and I’d never read their book. I decided that I’d better catch up on the bestseller’s list and Wikipedia all of the authors and their books. Better to be prepared and able to impress. Maybe if I impressed them enough, I could get some free autographed copies of their book for We Love to Read so we could auction them off at our fundraiser and I could be recognized as employee of the year for the thousands of dollars I brou
ght in. Ben would be very impressed with me then.
11
Dear Diary,
Blake has a girlfriend. A real girlfriend. It was quite a shock for me to meet her, and I’m not really sure how I feel. She’s gorgeous, of course, but really nice, so I can’t hate her. Though, I don’t really have a reason to hate her. She says she’ll be my gym buddy, as she hates going by herself. I didn’t ask why she doesn’t go with Blake, but I guess that was a bit too much to expect and ask. Actually, I didn’t ask them about their relationship at all. I just didn’t want to know. I don’t know what to think or feel right now. I can’t explain the surge of jealousy I got when I saw them together. I thought my heart belonged to Ben, but there is something in Blake’s eyes that makes me feel so warm inside.
“Maggie, you look great.” Bridget smiled at me in her cute workout outfit. She was waiting outside the gym for me and didn’t seem annoyed that I was ten minutes late.
“Thanks, you look great too.” I smiled, wanting to hate something about her but failing.
We walked into the gym, and I could feel several guys’ heads swirl around to look at us. Okay, maybe not at me, but at her.
“That guy is totally checking you out, three o’clock,” Bridget whispered to me.
I looked over to my right and made eye contact with a handsome older man. He was staring and smiling at me. I gave him a smile back, and this time I was not embarrassed or anxious. He really had been checking me out. Hmm, I thought to myself, maybe I’m not as invisible to men as I thought.
“So how is the novel coming along?”
“Did Blake tell you to ask me that?” I’d only been on vacation for 2 days. Was this going to be a constant inquiry?
“No,” Bridget laughed. “Actually, he told me not to ask you. He said he didn’t want you to feel like you were being pressured, but I was just curious.”
I looked over at Bridget. She seemed so genuine and nice. And when I had met her a few weeks before, I had felt like she was someone I could be great friends with. I didn’t want to like her. I wanted her to be a bitch. Inexplicably, I wanted her to have some major faults. I didn’t quite know why I felt this way, maybe just protective of Blake. He was one of my oldest friends, and we’d just come back into contact, and I didn’t want to lose his friendship again so quickly. To say I was in shock when I met her would be an understatement. I had tried to think of some famous authors named Bridget when he first introduced us, but then she told me she was a lawyer as well, so I knew she wasn’t an author.
Every time they laughed or told stories, they seemed to look at each other with such respect and admiration, and something inside me would curl. I really wanted to know how long they’d been dating, how they met, and if it was serious, but I didn’t want to be nosey. I mean, he hadn’t even introduced her as his girlfriend, so it was obvious to me that they weren’t the sort to shove the relationship in other people’s faces. It did hurt my feelings that he’d never told me about the fact that he had a girlfriend, especially since I had asked him about his love life.
“So, is it going well?” Bridget started talking to me again as we settled onto the two recumbent bikes and started pedaling.
“It’s going okay,” I was hesitant to say more than that. I couldn’t tell her that I had spent more time thinking about her and Blake than my book.
“You know, if you want, we can go to this house in the hills tonight. It’s my friend’s, and whenever I feel like I’m lost and need inspiration, I go and relax and my mind frees up.”
I looked over at Bridget. It was going to be impossible to hate her if she was going to be so nice.
“Wow, that would be kinda awesome actually.”
“Great. We’ll have a girls’ night. It’ll be fun,” Bridget smiled at me widely.
“You and Blake aren’t doing anything tonight?” I was surprised. I thought that Saturday nights were reserved for boyfriends and girlfriends.
“No, we don’t really hang out that much. He works a lot, as I’m sure you know.” She laughed. What a considerate girlfriend. I knew that work or not, I would want to see my boyfriend on a Saturday night.
“But you are a lawyer too.”
“Blake has a much bigger workload than me, but a higher salary as well, so I guess it evens out.”
“Yeah,” I didn’t want to probe deeper. But I felt a little happier all of a sudden. They couldn’t be that serious if they didn’t have set dates for Saturday night.
“So, what time tonight?” I was now ready and raring to go with my book.
“Let’s say 6? We can grab dinner first, then pick up some wine and go on up. Sam’s out of town for a few months, so we can go over whenever we want.”
“Sounds great.” We got down from the bikes with my muscles only slightly aching.
“And tomorrow we can come back to the gym and do cardio and upper body!”
“Uh, sure.”
As we grabbed our bags, I checked my phone and saw that I had a text from Blake.
Hope it went well at the gym today. I figured you would prefer having Bridget as a gym buddy over me. :)
I smiled at his text and looked over at Bridget. “Ha-ha, just got a text from Blake.”
“Sweet. How is he?”
“Oh, he didn’t text you too?”
“No, Blake doesn’t text me much.” She laughed.
“Oh.” Wow, Bridget was a really laid-back girlfriend. Maybe that was what Blake liked about her. Maybe she was just really confident in herself in that she didn’t need to hear or see her boyfriend much.
“I’ll meet you at the restaurant at 6 p.m.?” Bridget shouted over to me as we walked to our respective cars.
“Sure, see you then.” I hopped into my car, feeling more energized than I had in the past few weeks.
12
Dear Diary,
I think I am now in love with two men, Ben and Blake. Of course both of them are off limits to me, so naturally I did the most feasible thing I could do next. I signed up for an online dating service, because you know, when you are in love with 2 men who don’t love you, trying to write a book, training for a marathon, and trying to lose weight, you need to add another distraction to your life. To be fair to myself, it was Bridget’s idea. She says several of her friends who recently got married met their partners online. And while she didn’t tell me this to goad me into joining exactly, her talk did plant a seed in my mind. Also, I had this idea that perhaps Bradley Cooper was looking online as well. I’d just read an article about how celebrities look for love online anonymously to ensure the person wants them for them and not just their fame and money. And supposedly some actress from some TV show I’ve never watched ended up marrying some non-celebrity guy. So after all that, I decided that was the way I was going to end up with Mr. Right.
Writing with Bridget was great. I got a lot done, and my first impression of her was indeed correct. She was a wonderful human being. I’d told Gayle about her before she picked me up and she had advised me to get as much dirt on Bridget and Blake as possible and try to break them up. But I didn’t think that would be a good idea. It was bad karma, and honestly, I didn’t think I would be successful if I tried anyways. I didn’t think I could compete with Bridget, and I didn’t really think Blake was interested in me. It also seemed somewhat unfair to Ben. I’d wanted him for so long. How flakey would I be if I dropped him as the object of my affections for Blake?
Gayle didn’t have any answers to my mumblings. She couldn’t explain it either. She didn’t know why I was so interested in Ben and thought I should just drop him from my thoughts. He was one of those guys who was obviously a dirt bag, yet he had the looks and the charisma to make a girl forget her own name. Sometimes, I wondered if Gayle had fallen under his spell as well. But there was no way No-Nonsense-Gayle would ever put up with All-He-Thinks-About-is-Himself-Ben. But she had been asking me about Ben and Jasmine a lot recently and seemed to be overly upset at the fact that they seemed to be getting on
really well, even more so than I was.
“What does he see in her?” she said one day, showing a lot more exasperation than I had expected to hear from her in regards to him.
“I don’t know. Perhaps her body? Maybe the sex is good?”
“That bony thing? I’m sure it can’t feel good.”
I didn’t want to laugh out loud or point out the obvious to Gayle. She was just as skinny as Jasmine, and if it didn’t feel good with Jasmine, it wouldn’t with her either.
“Yeah, I don’t know. It seems as if he is really smitten. He told me he was thinking about moving in with her.”
“WHAT?” Gayle shouted.
“I know, right? I was in shock, but what could I say? I don’t want to seem as if...”
Gayle cut me off. “You need to speak to him seriously. He cannot move in with her! That would be a big mistake.”
“I don’t think that I am in a position to really...”
“He cannot move in with her. You are one of his best friends, Maggie. You need to talk to him.”
“Uh, yeah, I guess.” I had no intention of telling Ben not to move in with Jasmine. I didn’t want him to think I was really into him. It would be too embarrassing.
“Hey, so did I tell you I joined cupidlove.com?” My segue into a new subject worked.
“What? OMG, you are online dating now?” Gayle screeched. She’d been hanging out with me for too long. She wasn’t usually prone to these loud, excited outbursts.
“I signed up last night. I have a feeling this is the best way for me to meet Bradley Cooper.”
“Maggie, are you joking right now?” Gayle sighed.
“No, didn’t I tell you about this magazine article I read? It says a lot of Hollywood stars are looking for love anonymously online because it is the best way to find out if a woman is into them for who they are and not their fame.”