Wedding Fever

I look over Jacquie’s shoulder to watch my confused fiancé widen his eyes (couple shorthand for “What the hell is going on?”). Before I can answer him, Jacquie pulls away from me, then excitedly grabs Jason. “I start Monday!”

“Um . . . congratulations,” Jason says, feigning enthusiasm. “You start what Monday?”

Jacquie pulls away from him. “Didn’t Nic tell you?”

Shit.

“I didn’t think anything was definite,” I say weakly.

“Tell me what?” Jason asks. “What job did you get?”

Jacquie proudly tells him, “I am the new junior speechwriter for the governor.” Then for added emphasis she happily screams, “Ah!”

Jason’s face falls. “Of California?”

“No. Of Rhode Island,” Jacquie jokes. “Of course, of California. He announces his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in the next week or two, so he’s expanding his staff. The mayor put in a good word for me. I didn’t think I had a shot in Hell, but I flew up there yesterday, and I guess I made an okay impression, because I got it!”

Jason looks shell-shocked but like he’s trying to cover. “You flew up to Sacramento?”

“I did!” Jacquie says, looking so happy she might burst out of her own skin. “I didn’t bother telling you because I didn’t think it was going to happen. But senator. Can you believe I have a shot at working in Washington, D.C., next year?”

“But what about the girls?” Jason blurts out. “We have a custody agreement.”

“Yeah, what about the girls?” I hear from the staircase. The three of us look up to see Megan standing at the top of the stairs. “I’m not moving to Sacramento,” she states firmly as she walks downstairs.

“Oh, honey, you don’t have to,” Jacquie says, walking halfway up the stairs and hugging her daughter. “I’ve got it all worked out. Sacramento is only an hour’s flight away. You girls will live with your father during the week, I’ll fly home every Friday night, pick you up, then drop you off on Sunday night, and fly back up. It’ll be exactly the same schedule you had before, just with your dad and me having you on opposite days than we did last year.”

“But what about our family cruise?” Megan asks. “It’s next week.”

From the look on her face, I can tell Jacquie hadn’t thought that one through. “Well . . .” she stalls. “We can still go. Just not next week.”

Megan gets a look of disgust on her face that should be reserved for teenaged girls and Simon Cowell. “Malika has been looking forward to that trip for six months!” she nearly screams at her mother. “You already postponed it once. How can you do it again?”

“Honey, I have to work,” Jacquie tells her apologetically. “We’ll find a different time.” Jacquie looks over at us. Her face lights up as she says, “And you’ll love Italy.”

Say what now?

Jason and I have the conversation that only couples can, which consists of no words and fleeting looks.

First look, a pleading expression from Jason: I’m sorry.

Second look, a shrug from me: It’s okay. It’ll be fine. They can come.

Third look, relief from Jason: I love you so much.

“Who goes with their dad on his honeymoon?” Megan asks in disgust.

“Lots of kids go on honeymoons with their parents,” Jacquie assures her. “I’ve read about the trips. They’re called familymoons. Why, I’m sure your dad and Nic could find you guys amazing things to do in Venice. They have gondolas, and pizza, which you love. Plus there’s . . .”

As Jacquie continues to sell her firstborn on the idea of Italy, I look up to see Malika, standing at the top of the stairs, silent and devastated. “But why can’t they just come on the cruise with us?” she begs her mother.

The girl looks heartbroken. Utterly heartbroken. As her mother walks up to her, she bursts into tears.

How can I enjoy the romance of Italy, knowing it came at the expense of a five-year-old’s happiness?

I immediately walk up the stairs and kneel down to be at eye level with Jason’s little girl. Then I muster up all the enthusiasm and excitement I have in me and tell her, “You know what would be really cool after the cruise is if the four of us went to Epcot. I hear they have a pretend St. Mark’s Square that’s even better than the real thing.”

Chapter Eight

Melissa

By 3:00 A.M., Scott has gone home, Seema is in her room, and I’m in my old bedroom at her place, the one I lived in before Fred and I moved in together.

My old room.

God damn it. I loved living here— don’t get me wrong. I love my friends, I loved feeling like part of a family that I picked out, and being surrounded by people who loved me and accepted me for who I really am.

But, at the same time, when I moved out, I felt a little smug. Not smug— that might be the wrong word. But I was the first one of us to move in with the love of her life. And, at the time, I thought I was just months away from being the first of us to get engaged.

Back then, I was absolutely giddy that my life was moving forward. I had been sure that I was the smartest and the luckiest of the three of us. In my mind, I was the chosen one, because someone had literally chosen me! I wasn’t quite thirty yet, but I had managed to figure out the secret to having it all: a job I loved and a boyfriend who wanted me to move in. (Fine, allowed me to move in. But I’m not the first woman in the world who ever gave an ultimatum. I’m not even the first one today.)

And now, at thirty-two, my life has just taken a giant fucking U-turn, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

I feel completely powerless, helpless, and useless.

And as much as I know I have to leave, my mind is racing for something he can do to win me back.

The rest of the evening wasn’t too bad. Fred called a bunch of times but, with the help of my friends, I had the strength not to answer the phone. Scott went to Fred’s house and packed a whole suitcase for me. I have no idea what he said to Fred, but somehow he managed to convince him to give me a night or two to cool off.

Then Scott came back to Seema’s and tried to cheer me up as I continued writing my list of things I hate about Fred.

I had written sixty-two things down and left room at the bottom of the last page for more. The list zigzagged from petty to huge: his blaring U2 I guess is minor— his lying and cheating is gigantic.

And now, sitting in bed alone, I look through my list and add number sixty-three.

63. Knew if I ever found out that he had an affair, it would break my heart. Did it anyway.

I begin to cry again. Soon, my crying turns into loud sobbing, and my stomach hurts again from my violent hyperventilating.

Seema is through my bedroom door in no time flat and pulls me into a hug. “I know . . .” she says gently. She hands me a box of Kleenex, and I quickly pull out a fistful of tissues.

After a few more minutes, I stop crying enough to blow my nose and dry my eyes. “I think I might be running out of tears,” I tell her through my stuffed-up nose.

“Do you want me to get you some water?” Seema asks me. “Or a cocoa or something?”

“Water,” I say weakly. She stands up. “You want to try and get some food into you too?” Seema asks. “I have tons of leftover cheese and crackers.”

I shake my head. “If I eat, I’ll throw up.”

“Booze?” she asks.

“If I drink, I’ll throw up.”

“Cigar?” Seema asks.

I raise one eyebrow. She found my weakness. I might be pathetically clutching at straws for any way to make myself feel better, but I do love cigars. They are decadent, and bad for me, and Fred hates them on my breath.

Perfect.

Two minutes later, we’re on Seema’s front porch, sitting in her side-by-side white wicker chairs. As she lights my cigar, I suck in deeply, attempting to enjoy the intoxicating caramelly aroma of a good smoke. I can taste it, but I still feel like crap. I hold the smoke in my lungs, then slowly exhale out.

“I just didn’t even see this coming,” I say to Seema, as she lights her cigar. “I mean, I knew he had a problem committing, but I just figured it would happen eventually. I figured if I could just stick it out long enough, he’d realize he couldn’t live without me.”

Seema gives me a sympathetic look. She doesn’t say anything. How could she? What can you say when your best friend gets cheated on?

I take another puff of my cigar and try to savor this treat that usually brings me such joy. “God, I’m such a fucking idiot,” I say angrily.

“You’re not an idiot,” Seema assures me, as she sucks on her cigar to get the whole thing lit. “You’re a woman in love. It happens to the best of us.”

“You’ve never been this stupid,” I point out to her.

Her cell phone beeps a text. She lifts up the phone so I can see Scott’s text. “Wanna bet?”

“What’s it say?” I ask, unable to focus through my watery eyes.

She reads the screen, “Just got home. Is she okay?”

“Nice someone cares,” I say.

“A lot of us care,” Seema says while texting something back.

“What are you writing back?” I ask.

“Just telling him we’re smoking cigars,” Seema says. She hits send, then tosses the phone onto the white wicker table between us. “So when do you want to move your stuff in?”

I love that it’s not even a question, it’s a statement. It’s not an offer, it’s a given. I’m family, I’m wounded. And I’m home now.

Nonetheless, Nic just moved out six months ago. I feel guilty for intruding on Seema’s new life without roommates. “I don’t want to cramp your style,” I tell her. “What happens when you finally begin your torrid affair with Scott? How’s it going to look that first night? I can just see it: the two of you are making out in a frenzied heat on your front porch. Clothes are unbuttoned, but still on. Tongues are flying everywhere. You unlock the door, bursting into the living room ready for a night of passion . . . and the two of you see me, in my pink fuzzy bathrobe, watching bad TV, a spoon of ice cream sticking out of my mouth and my face tearstained and red.”

Seema takes a moment to paint the picture in her mind. She shrugs. “I’ll just tell him Friday’s your self-pity night. I get Mondays, Wednesdays, and Valentine’s Day.”

I try to laugh. It comes out more as a loud smile.

Seema pats me on the back. “Come on. It’ll be fun. We could have your old room decorated in about a day.”

I casually look around my old neighborhood. “It would be nice to move back in here,” I admit. “It feels safe here.”

“Of course it does,” Seema agrees.

Her cell beeps again. She reads the text, then smiles sheepishly.

“What’s it say?” I ask.

“He says that watching a woman smoking a cigar is one of the sexiest sights on the planet, and that watching two should be illegal.”

I try to smile, but I think those muscles have atrophied. “He’s a good guy,” I tell her.

“You think?” Seema asks me, smiling from my approval.

“Yeah,” I say with absolute certainty. “Complete wimp in terms of what he’s going to do with you, but a really good guy otherwise.”

“If you listen to all those self-help books, they’d say he’s not interested,” Seema tells me as she frenetically flicks her fingers over her BlackBerry’s minikeyboard.

I shrug. “Not necessarily. You’re with someone, then he’s with someone. At some point, if it’s meant to be . . .”

“Oh, God, I hate that ‘meant to be’ crap,” Seema says as she tosses her BlackBerry onto the table again. “If it were meant to be, one of us would have done something about it by now.”

“Fair enough,” I say, not wanting to fight about it. Seema’s BlackBerry beeps again. She can’t help herself— she’s like a kitten staring at a flickering thread of yarn. She picks it up and reads as I take another puff of my cigar. “Although I must ask: if it’s not meant to be, what’s he’s doing texting you at three A.M. on a Saturday night?”

Seema looks over at me. Gives me a I have no fucking clue look with an accompanying shrug.

“Ah, men,” I say. “A mystery.”

“Wrapped in sharp spikes,” Seema continues.

“And covered in chocolate,” I finish.

Seema reads, “He says to tell you that he’s making filet au poivre at my house Tuesday night, and that you need to tell me you’re moving in or he’s not going to make you one.”

“He cooks?” I ask.

“He finds it soothing.”

“Look, if you don’t want him, can I have him?”

“Oh, honey, I love you,” Seema tells me warmly. “But if you touch him, I’ll break you like a twig.”

I try to laugh. It is funny. I take a big puff of cigar. “All right, you got me,” I say. “I’ll move in.”

“Good!” she says cheerfully. “With someone chipping in for rent, I might be able to afford those filets.”

Chapter Nine

Nicole

Chester ripped off Penelope’s bodice. Her nipples hardened. But was that from the cold air, or the promise of his

I drum my fingers on my desk. What’s a new word for penis?

the promise of his shaft of love

I actually saw that in a book once. Ick. I highlight shaft, and use my computer’s thesaurus. Rod of love, stick of love, pole of love, shank . . .

Good Lord, I’m scraping bottom here.

I highlight my passage and hit delete. So much for trying to make it as a romance novelist.

It’s three in the morning, I can’t sleep, and I’m not getting anything done either. I throw my legs up on the desk in my home office and stare at my computer screen.

Man, I hate writing. I mean, you know, I love being paid to be a writer. I love reading what I’ve written. I love telling people at parties that I’m a writer. I just don’t so much like the writing part.

As a matter of fact, lately I hate all of it. Seriously— why do people ever want to become writers?

It’s a weird thing when your job is everyone else’s hobby. Writing’s certainly not the only job like that. It’s just like any other job that, if done well, looks effortless. Jobs people are sure they would be great at (and get rich from) because they do it so well at home. There are the home chefs who make the perfect risotto who want to shuck it all and open a restaurant. The community theater actors in small towns around America who secretly want to shuck it all to try to become the next Cate Blanchett. The bakers who have perfected a red velvet cupcake in the privacy of their own kitchens and dream of opening a little shop. The bloggers who think they’re the next Bob Woodward. Or the people who are sure their lives would make a fascinating screenplay and who even buy a copy of Final Draft and begin typing:

INT. COFFEE SHOP— DAY

BLAKE CONNORS, good-looking but doesn’t know it (think John Krasinski), sits at a table drinking his coffee. A beautiful woman rushes in, wearing a wedding gown.

WOMAN

You need to hide me!

Seriously, I have read that opening line in a script on three different occasions. Once the character was described as (think George Clooney). Once it was (think Gerard Butler). Once it was (think Dane Cook). Which is just wrong on so many levels.

Anyway, I think the reason that most people never actually follow through on their dreams is because on some level they know that it’s not as easy as it looks, it’s not as fun as it looks, and it’s never as lucrative as we see on TV.

Case in point: actually being a working writer. That sounds pretty glamorous, right? Or at least fairly easy. You get up at noon, have your coffee, tell the world what observations you’ve made about your life. Very Carrie Bradshaw.

Unless you’re a screenwriter. In which case you get up at noon, go to a studio meeting or two, then hang out with your screen-writer friends in a coffee house or bar and talk about what you should be writing. Very . . . um . . . well, there are no famous screenwriters I can think of, but you get the point.

Most of my paid writing has been as a newspaper columnist. Which to most people conjures up a fantasy of traveling the world, putting one’s life in jeopardy while digging up stories, effortlessly speaking to the locals in any of the seven languages one is fluent in.

God, I wish. I am fluent in one language: English. And at seven in the morning, I wouldn’t even go that far.

Up until six months ago, I worked for a local Los Angeles newspaper. I was overworked and underpaid. I frequently worked for the Metro section, which meant I was the woman who showed up at City Hall early in the mornings, then wrote about anything from a contentious city council meeting to what was going on at the LAUSD to what zone ordinances were threatening the city’s water supply.

In short: I had the most boring writing job in the city. And I miss it every day. I worked way too many hours. I was paid so little that up until recently I was still living with a roommate. And I was constantly worried that my job was going to go away because people are more interested in reading about the sex lives of Jon and Kate than whether or not their local charter school license would be granted, or if the mayor would raise the parcel tax another hundred dollars annually.

Six months ago, during the third wave of layoffs in as many years, the company bought me out, and I was out of a job.

I was devastated. I was thirty-one and had spent the last ten years of my life building a career that was gone in a ten-minute meeting with my boss. And forget about going to another paper: circulation was down everywhere and no one was hiring.

So there I was, smack dab in the middle of a midlife crisis, at the ripe old age of thirty-one. I supposed I would die early.

I called Jason, who was, as always, perfect. He always knows when to listen to me vent, when to ask questions, and when I am emotionally spent and ready to listen to his advice. And that day was no exception.

“Okay,” Jason said calmly the morning I was let go, after listening to me monologue for at least twelve minutes straight. “How about if you take a few days off and regroup? You can come with me to Portland this weekend and think about your options.”

(Side note: Since Jason is an NBA assistant coach, he travels with his team on road games from October until as late as June. That weekend in February they were in Portland.)

“I have no options,” I remember whining to him from a locked bathroom stall. (I had gone to the ladies’ room to hide, cry, and use my cell phone to track down moral support.) “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“The L.A. Tribune isn’t the only paper in the world,” Jason had said. “Why don’t you update your résumé and see what else is out there?”

“Nothing else is out there,” I said. “Circulation is down everywhere. And besides, I love you, and I don’t want to leave you. It’s not like I can move to Seattle or New York or anywhere else. You’re here.”

Jason proposed to me that night. And as far as everyone else knew, I chose to take the buyout from the paper because I wanted to plan my dream wedding, then get pregnant and become a housewife.

Everything sounded so perfect when I said “Yes.”

And, for the most part, it has been pretty damn perfect these past six months. Yes, I have been trying to get work as a writer (my latest botched attempt being this romance novelist idea), but honestly I’ve been a bit lazy.

The Politically incorrect thing is, for the most part I rather like being a house wife. I like not having to get up until nine in the morning. I like helping Jason’s girls with their homework during the school year, when they stay with us on weekends. I like having a maid come in once a week to clean the toilets. And I really like having enough money to pay my electric bill and my cable bill in the same week.

But I’m not so sure I’m going to like helping with homework every day, and I’ll admit I’m disappointed about Italy.

I pull the silver baby carriage out of my desk drawer and stare at it.

Babies. Motherhood.

When do you know you’re ready to start the rest of your life? How do other women know? And is something wrong with me that I’m so terrified of the thought of a person on this planet thinking my name is “Mommy”?

Everyone says motherhood is incredibly fulfilling. No one I know seems to have ever regretted having kids. Plenty of people I know regret becoming reporters. Why is looking at this damn charm filling me with such paralyzing fear?

I stare at the baby carriage. Is this my future? Is someone trying to tell me something?

Jason knocks lightly on my open door. “You working?” he asks me as he yawns.

I smile at him as I toss the charm onto my desk. “Trying,” I say. Then I turn to my computer screen and sigh. “I think you’re right. I’m not cut out to do romance novels.”

Jason smiles at me. “I’m not cut out to play point guard. That doesn’t mean I’m not a good basketball player.”

He walks over to me and gives me a kiss, then pulls me into a hug. “You’ll find your niche.”

“I found my niche,” I tell him sadly. “Newspapers. I just lost it.”

“You’ll find another niche,” he says, rubbing my back. He pulls away slightly to look me in the eye. “I really appreciated what you did earlier tonight.”

I smile at him, then give him a kiss on the lips. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“It was a very big deal,” Jason assures me. “And it makes me love you even more that you’re acting like it’s not a big deal.” Jason notices the baby carriage and picks it up. “What’s this?”

I shrug and try to downplay it. “Oh, it’s just the charm I pulled at the shower yesterday.”

Jason’s eyes widen slightly. He smiles at me. “You got the baby carriage? I thought you wanted the work charm.”

“I did,” I say. “But I rigged the cake wrong. I got this instead.”

Jason looks at it. “Hmm.”

“Hmm,” I repeat. “What does ‘Hmm’ mean?”

Jason does some downplaying of his own. “It just means, ‘Hmm.’ ”

“No, it doesn’t,” I argue. “That ‘Hmm’ is fraught with subtext.”

Jason cocks his head, smiling at me in amusement.

“What?” I ask suspiciously.

“I love that you think that anything I do could be fraught with subtext. I’m a guy: we are rarely, if ever, fraught with subtext.” He wraps his arms around me and gives me a big bear hug. “You want to talk about it?”

I lean my head into his chest and say apologetically, “It kinda freaked me out.”

“Why?” Jason asks me, in a tone of voice that lets me know he suspected as much.

“I just don’t know if I’ll make a good mother,” I admit. “At least not yet.”

“Need I remind you, you just cancelled your honeymoon—”

“That’s different,” I interrupt. “Changing two weeks of your life isn’t the same as changing twenty-four/seven.”

“That’s true,” Jason agrees. “It’s a good start, though.”

I’m starting to get uncomfortable. I know Jason would like another kid. We’ve talked about it: buying a cute crib, getting the baby a little basketball, loving each other so much that we want to make a new life. But . . . I’m just not there yet.

“Can we talk about something else?” I ask.

“Sure,” Jason says. And I love him for that. “So what charms did everyone get? Did Seema get her red hot chili pepper?”

“No, Mel pulled that.”

“What’s Mel going to do with a chili pepper?”

Chapter Ten

Melissa

It’s Tuesday night, and I’m finally starting to feel like maybe I did the right thing.

I think.

I’ve just read an article about surviving breakups that instructs you to “journal” how you’re feeling about the breakup. You start by writing down three pages of what ever gibberish goes through your brain. It can be anything from, “I’m hungry,” to “Fred’s a jerk,” to “Why do men cheat?” to “Man, now I really want a cookie.”

After completing the three pages of non sequiturs racing through your brain, you should begin writing specifically about your relationship, your man, and any questions and fears you have about the breakup.