Misery Loves Cabernet (15 page)

I speed dial Jordan, and prepare to leave a message on his voice mail. I had rehearsed it several times in my head. I would sound sexy, yet sweet, purring like a kitten as I said, “Hey, baby, it’s me. Guess what? Drew took a job in Paris. Call me back.”

And then I would wait for him to call me back. I’d be flirty, but nonchalant. I’d leave him wanting more. I’d make him miss me, and make him dream of the moment when we’d be back in each other’s arms, drinking champagne in a romantic hotel room, making passionate love in the middle of the night, whispering sweet nothings in the Latin Quarter, holding hands as we walked along the Seine . . .

“Hello,” I hear Jordan whisper.

Wait—he wasn’t supposed to pick up.

“Uh . . . hi,” I stammer.

“Hold on,” Jordan whispers.

“Who’s that?” I hear a girl whisper on Jordan’s end.

“It’s Charlie,” Jordan whispers back. “Give me a minute. I’ll be right back.”

I wait for him to . . . what? Walk away from his set? Walk out of the girl’s bedroom?

Breathe, Edwards. Let it go.

About twenty seconds later, Jordan returns to the phone with his normal voice. “Hey, what’s up? Is everything okay?”

“Who was that?” I hate myself for asking.

“Genevieve,” he says, pronouncing it with a French accent, and acting as though I’ve heard that name before. “So, what’s up?”

“I’m coming to Paris!” I tell him gleefully.

“What?” Jordan says, sounding confused.

“I’m coming to Paris. Drew just took this low-budget movie, and part of it shoots in Paris. I’ll be there at the beginning of next month!”

There’s only a few seconds pause, but I wonder if that’s because of the delay during long-distance calls, or a complete lack of excitement on Jordan’s part.

“Oh,” Jordan says. “Well, that’s . . . um . . . that’s great.”

If you want to know what someone means, listen to how they sound when they speak. We’ve all trained ourselves to listen to the words, rather than the tone of voice inflected in the words. That’s to protect ourselves. We all know from a man’s tone of voice when “No,” means “Yes.” When “All right,” means “I don’t want to.” And when “I Love You,” means “Don’t hate me, but I need you to go away.”

I take a deep breath before I go on. “You don’t sound like you think it’s great.”

“No, I do,” Jordan says quickly. “I’m just in the middle of something. Can I call you back tonight?”

“Yeah. I guess,” I say sheepishly, trying not to let the hurt creep into my voice.

“Are you mad?” Jordan asks me, sounding concerned. “You sound mad.”

“No. It’s just . . . I thought you’d be excited.”

“I am,” Jordan assures me. “I meant to call you yesterday. I have some news of my own I want to talk about. Can I call you later?”

My lungs are feeling constricted. I’m getting nauseated. My mind races with all the news he might give me, and all of it leads to our permanent breakup.

“Can’t you just tell me the news now?” I beg.

Jordan sighs. “I really should be back on set. I shouldn’t have taken the call, but when I saw it was you, I decided to pick up.”

“Hey, sweetie,” I hear behind me as Liam’s hands wrap around my shoulders. “You know, in all the excitement, I forgot to ask how your ankle is doing.”

I turn to face Liam, and force a smile. “Great,” I mouth silently, giving him a thumbs-up.

“Oh, sorry. Didn’t see you were on the phone,” Liam whispers, smiling brightly as he pulls away from me. “I’ll see you back inside.”

“I’ll be right there,” I say cheerfully. Then I turn my back to him so he won’t hear how pathetic I sound talking to Jordan.

“Who was that?” Jordan asks, with what I think might be a tinge of jealousy.

“One of the producers,” I say a little too quickly, hoping to God he can’t tell in my voice how much lust I have in my heart (or another part of my body anyway). “Why?”

There’s a pause on Jordan’s end. “No reason. Listen, I really have to go. Can I call you later?”

“Look, if you’re going to dump me, please just do it now,” I say sadly. “Otherwise, I’m just going to spend all afternoon waiting for the other shoe to drop, and dreading your phone call.”

There’s another pause on his end. “Charlie, I can’t really dump you. I’ve been trying to stay a nice guy about this, but you do remember breaking up with me, don’t you?”

There it is. I force myself to breathe, “I didn’t break up with you. I said we should see how things go when you’re away, and then decide what we’re going to do once you get back.”

“All right. Well, first of all, to a guy, that’s a breakup.”

“It’s not really a breakup—”

“Yes, it is,” he says a bit angrily. “And that’s fine. I probably deserved it for all I put you through before. But don’t act like you weren’t just keeping your options open. The minute I left, I’m sure all of your doe-eyed suitors came back out to sniff around.”

“Options?!” I say, completely flummoxed. “I don’t have doe-eyed suitors. Name one doe-eyed suitor.”

His voice is sarcastic. “Um . . . the guy who just asked how your ankle is doing. Should I even ask what that was all about?”

“Liam is a friend. You accusing him of liking me is right up there with my accusing Genevieve of liking you.”

There’s silence on the other end. Uh-oh.

“She likes you?” I ask sadly.

Jordan laughs a little. “No. Genevieve is gay.”

A weight has been lifted from my lungs long enough to let me breathe.

Then Jordan hits me with his news. “But I’ve been offered another job. Starting in February. For a film shooting in Germany.”

And the weight is back. “Oh,” I manage to stammer out. “So . . . what did you tell the people who offered you the job?”

“I told them I’d think about it.”

I think I’m going to throw up. “Oh.” I take a deep breath, and try to barrel through the rest of the conversation as quickly as possible. “Okay. Well, um . . . I should let you get back to work.”

“This is why I didn’t want to tell you while we were both at work. I want to talk to you about this.”

“No. It’s fine,” I say quickly, hoping to get off the phone before my eyes start watering. “Take the job. I get it.”

“Charlie . . .”

I hear Drew behind me. “Charlie, what do you think of me turning my dressing room into a space station? I found this catalog that sells freeze-dried ice cream . . .”

I turn around to face Drew, and I must look pretty bad, because he stops talking.

“Oh shoot, that’s Drew,” I say into the phone, as I look right at Drew. “I gotta go.”

Jordan sighs. “Okay. But can we talk about this later?”

“Sure,” I lie. “But I gotta go.”

There’s more dead air between us before Jordan finally says, “Go to it then. Call me when you’re ready to talk.”

“Yeah. You, too. Bye.”

I click off the phone. I force a smile as I say to Drew, “So, freeze-dried ice cream. I’m on it. What flavor?”

Drew cocks his head, and looks at me oddly. “Was that Jordan?”

I avoid the question. “Because I know where I can get Mint Chip or Ice Cream Sandwich. Any other flavor requires I get on the Internet and . . .”

Drew pulls me into a hug. He pats my back, and says, “It’s okay, baby. Let it all out.”

Ick. I don’t want to get into this with my boss. I let my arms dangle to the sides, refusing to hug him back.

“I don’t want to let it all out,” I say, my voice muffled deep in his chest. “I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” he says in a voice dripping in sympathy. “You’re thirty, you’re alone, you have a dead-end job, and your biological clock is ticking like a time bomb in the middle of Manhattan.”

I pull away from him and glare. “That’d better be a line from your script.”

Men send confusing messages. Don’t waste your money on books trying to simplify or decode the messages. Sometimes, even other men don’t know how to translate the mixed messages. The only authors in my day and age who claimed to know what men really wanted were usually unattractive, wimpy, or both
.

By late that afternoon, Jordan had already sent me two messages telling me he missed me, and that he’d really like to talk to me. The first one, a text, was brief:

Are we still friends?

To which I responded:

Of course.

Even though I think he made it very clear in those four words that we were no longer dating.

The second one, an e-mail, was more confusing:

Can I call you tonight? I miss you.

xoxo

J

Argh . . . I didn’t respond to that one. I mean, I am completely within my rights to hate him now, right?

After driving Drew home, I head back into hideous Los Angeles traffic, and debate my options.

Well, there are the obvious ones: Ice cream. A bottle of wine. Enough cigarettes to fill a petting zoo.

Or, there is a more proactive approach. Go out and find a nice guy to flirt with.

But where does one find a truly nice guy in his natural habitat on a Monday night? Okay, we all know:

Karaoke is never a good idea
.

But here’s a thought: a sports bar.

I call Jamie.

He picks up on the first ring. “I do, too, have a girlfriend.”

“You do not,” I insist.

“Do, too—”

“Do not—”

“Do—”

“Okay, fine!” I interrupt, knowing my brother well enough to know we’ll go twelve more rounds otherwise. “How long have you had this girlfriend?”

“Since the Halloween party.”

“That’s two days. You mean to say that after a two-day relationship she’s already invited you to Thanksgiving?”

“Well, she has abandonment issues.”

“Don’t they all?” I say dryly.

“Yes. But I’m not gay, so I’ll just have to deal with that. By the way, I’m writing my next article for
Metro
. Is it funny or offensive if I say I could hear a girl’s knees snap shut over the phone?”

I sigh loudly. “Both, I suppose.”

“Excellent!” Jamie says, audibly typing on his computer keyboard. “So, why are you calling? Obsessing about Jordan again?”

“Actually, no,” I say firmly. “But I talked to him this morning. He’s been offered a job in Germany this February, and I suspect he’ll take it.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Jamie says sympathetically. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

“I will be,” I say, and I mean it. “And part of my recovery is to go out and be social tonight. Do people still play Monday Night Football?”

“People?” Jamie repeats. “Well, twenty-two
men
play. The rest of us watch them.”

“Good. I want you to come with me to Tonight Let’s Score!”

“The fake sports bar?” Jamie says with a tone of disgust.

“It’s not fake. You just hate it because it’s trendy, and it has a decent wine list.”

“Sweetheart, if you knew anything about men, you’d know we don’t care about a sports bar having a decent wine list. We care about lots of large plasma TVs, cute little waitresses in tight little outfits, buffalo wings, and beer.”

“There are also twenty-seven beers on tap,” I tell him.

“I’m in.”

I call Andy, Dawn, and Kate to invite them to join us at Tonight Let’s Score! at 7:00
P.M.
, just in time for the second game of the night to begin. Andy and Dawn can come, but Kate can’t make it: She and Will are going out to register for gifts tonight. After a momentary bout of jealousy (followed by the standard, “What’s wrong with me that nobody wants to register for gifts with me?” self-hatred I’ve come to know and love), I decide it’s time to focus on sports.

Or, at least the men who love them.

When I get home, I throw on some nice jeans, a yellow fitted T-shirt with the word
LAKERS
written in faux amethysts, and a matching baseball cap. (Why do they make baseball caps with basketball logos on them? And why do I even own such a thing?) Then I head out to Hollywood.

Beauty is only a light switch away.

Tonight Let’s Score! (nicknamed Score by the locals) recently opened in Hollywood to become the trendiest local sports bar in town. Well, okay, other than the fake sports bar at Staples Center, this place is probably the only sports bar in town. For whatever reason (maybe our lack of a football team, maybe our lack of caring), Los Angeles does not have that many sports bars. Oh, we have bars all right: trendy bars to be seen in (think Hyde a few years ago), classic hotel bars that have become trendy, (like Stone Rose, or the Polo Lounge). We’ve got funky urban bars in downtown for the new condo set living there, and we’ve got divey bars on the Westside with a beach theme. But we don’t have a local sports bar on every corner, like they do in San Francisco, Boston, or New York. Which is a shame, because we also don’t have any kind of decent public transportation in L.A., so if a sports bar opened in Silverlake, I’d go some nights just so that I could walk home.

But I digress.

I valet my car, show my ID to Score’s doorman, and walk in to find Jamie, who has snagged us a table in the middle of the room, and has already ordered a pitcher of beer, buffalo wings, nachos, and curly fries.

I look around the room. There are at least fifteen giant TVs showing everything from professional basketball and hockey to what I think might be a national cheerleader tournament. The waitresses are dressed in tight little referee uniforms.

I hate them. But I take a cleansing breath, throw my shoulders back, and walk confidently up to Jamie.

He looks at me disapprovingly. “The Lakers aren’t playing tonight.”

“I know,” I say, taking a seat. “I did this on purpose. I don’t want any guy hating me just because he thinks I’m rooting for the . . .” I grasp at straws to try and finish my sentence. “For the . . .” Finally, I have to admit my ignorance and ask, “Okay, who’s playing?”

“The 49ers and the Chargers,” Jamie says, pouring me a beer. “It was supposed to be a more interesting game, but since the Chargers’ quarterback is out with bruised ribs, and the 49ers’ top receiver broke his hand last week, I just don’t know how much action we’re going to see.”