My Life as a Doormat (in Three Acts) (15 page)

Mother's eyes narrowed. “Well, whatever you do, don't let on. Okay? This could be Kate's only shot at this kind of man. Nobody's going to blow it for her. Do you understand me?”

I stared past Mother toward the balcony, where everyone else had gathered. “What are they talking about out there, anyway?”

“Politics.”

“That's a good way to blow it.”

“No worries. He's a Democrat. That was one of the first things Kate told us about him. Thank goodness she at least has the good sense to bring home a Democrat.”

Edward slipped up beside me suddenly, his eyes looking weary from all the socializing he was having to do. “It's getting late. About ready to go?”

I wasn't, really. I hadn't finished assessing Dillan. “Sure, we can go.”

The rest of the crowd was tearing away from paradise. Dillan asked, “Are you two leaving already?”

“Oh, come on,” Edward said, “you know you two lovebirds want time alone. Leah, remember those days?”

Edward was going to have to buy me a scarf if he didn't stop. I'd never seen him this uncharming. He wasn't excitement rolled into a ball, but usually he tended to keep his foot out of his mouth.

“We'd better go,” I said.

Dillan shook my hand. “Leah, it was really great to meet you. Kate's lucky to have family like you. I hope you enjoyed dinner.”

“You're a terrific cook.” That was no lie. As annoying as this guy was, he could really cook.

We said another two rounds of good-byes, and then Edward and I took the elevator down. Outside I said, “Well, what'd you think?”

“About what?”

I paused. About
what
? “Dillan, of course.”

“He's fine.”

“You talked to him more than I did.”

“Not really. Your dad did most of the talking, as usual. Somebody needs to get that guy a balcony.”

“Right, but back to Dillan. You had to have had some sort of impression.”

“Like I said, he was fine.”

“You didn't find him annoying?”

“Annoying?”

“I can't put my finger on it, but there's something I don't like about the guy. I mean, he seems fine. He's nice, polite, seems to really like Kate. But I don't know; it's weird. He just gets on my nerves. I just don't think I could be around him very much.”

“That's odd.”

“You thought he was Mr. Perfect.”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Edward shrugged. “I don't know. I guess that, well, he . . .”

“He what?”

“Reminded me of you.”

Me?
Edward was out of his mind. I was nothing like that guy! Dillan seemed to be the biggest pushover, willing to say whatever he needed to make a good impression.

“And by the way,” Edward said, “when are we going to tell your parents we're Republicans?”

Chapter 12

[She feels unsteady.]

I
actually faked the flu. Flu season was long over, but I did a good enough job of hacking into the telephone over the weekend that everyone wanted to leave me alone. I managed to graciously affirm Dillan to Kate, though. I couldn't deny how in love they appeared and how Dillan's normalcy seemed to be drawing Kate back into reality.

I also couldn't deny how out-of-love Edward and I were. I mean, when was the last time we even exchanged an “I love you”? Though Jodie clearly thought those words weren't necessary to a relationship, I wasn't so sure. Then again, maybe I was fooling myself into thinking the dress incident had anything to do with the situation. And maybe I was fooling myself into thinking anything was different. Wasn't this how our lives had been for the past two years? Had our relationship really changed, or had I?

But the thing that had forced me into taking another sleep aid Friday night was realizing how much alike Dillan and I really were. It took me most of Saturday and Sunday to work through the idea that this genuinely nice man of predictability was my twin.

So I spent the better part of the weekend and into Tuesday afternoon sitting in my favorite oversized leather chair, drowsy and dumbfounded, hating the fact that I'd become a person I despised. And then I had to perform delicate and intricate surgery without the help of emotional anesthesia to try to figure out what exactly I was despising.

Maybe you are jealous.

I didn't have the strength to shut out Jodie, so I just closed my eyes and listened.

After all, how could a freaky, nonsensical person like
your sister come away with such a nice, seemingly blind man
like Dillan? How does that even begin to work? A person like
Dillan, who has done everything right in his life and has the job
to prove it, shouldn't be with a woman like Kate. That kind of
romance doesn't make the world go around. It makes it come to
a screeching halt.

First of all, Jodie would never use a word like
non
sensical
, but I let it pass. Jodie was coming from the perspective of a nonromantic, so her views were going to be slightly skewed. Of course I was happy for my sister, and of all people, I know opposites attract. Jodie was getting ready to learn that herself, because in about three pages, she was going to be introduced to Timothy.

I stood and marched over to my computer. That was one way to get Jodie to shut up . . . just give her some catchy lines in the play.

It took an hour to reach the scene where Jodie would meet Timothy for the first time. I'd been looking forward to this scene ever since I began. Jodie had lost a bet with a friend, and she had to pay up by letting her friend set her up on a blind date with anyone her friend wanted. The friend had chosen the most romantic restaurant in town, and here Jodie Bellarusa waited, drumming her fingers against a tablecloth more expensive than her entire outfit, staring at a centerpiece of five plump, dewy roses, complete with thorns.

I rubbed my hands together and cackled. J. R. wanted conflict? This was going to be conflict like she'd never seen before. I typed out the setting and then had Timothy enter from stage right.

Now, what in the world would Jodie say out loud that she shouldn't when she first lays eyes on the man who could only be described as “dashing”?

“You must be Jodie.”

“Yes.”

“I'm Timothy.”

I rubbed my hands together again. This was going to be good. Yesirree, brilliant. I watched the blinking cursor, waiting for that lightbulb moment.
Don't rush it,
I told myself.
Don't panic. It will come.
Clever, conflict-ridden dialogue doesn't always just flow down the mountain of literary genius like hot, bubbly lava. No, sometimes it spews. And spewing, while not as graceful, still gets the magma out of the earth.

A shiver of doubt swept through my body. Was I only capable of using
National Geographic
metaphors?

Maybe you've missed your calling.

“Jodie, why don't you use your energy to come up with a clever line for the play.”

Huh. I'd talked back to Jodie. That was weird.

I think I had rubbed my hands together for the eighth time when it began to occur to me that I would be lucky to spew. In fact, I would be lucky to sputter.

I think I yelped. Some curse had come upon me! No thanks to Elisabeth. I stared at the screen and muttered to myself, “I am not a prophet. Nothing I have written or will write is going to come true. It's all a coincidence.”

I carefully laid my hands across the keyboard and typed out:

“I've never been to dinner with a metrosexual.”

The sigh of relief that rushed from my mouth could've blown out the Olympic torch. But as I studied the line, it wasn't really that funny. Too obvious. Timothy was a metrosexual, but stating it up front was overkill. I deleted it, but reminded myself that it was a start. At least I'd typed something.

“Come ON!” I yelled at the screen.
I need wit! I need a
clever diatribe. I need snappy one-liners!

For forty minutes I wandered around my apartment, hoping that elusive burst of brilliance would send me racing back to my computer. Then a thought struck me. Maybe, just maybe, I was trying too hard to create a scene that wasn't supposed to happen.
Maybe
to Jodie Bellarusa's everlasting surprise, they hit it off. Maybe that's why she couldn't come up with anything cleverly condescending.

“Aha!” I actually jabbed a finger toward the ceiling. As long as that clichéd gesture didn't make its way onto the page, I was going to be fine. “And before you say anything, Jodie, you should realize that sometimes you have to shake things up. I'm the playwright, and I know exactly what I'm doing.” Jodie remained silent, thankfully.

Some writers put a body in a trunk. Some kill off a main character. It's called a plot twist, and more often than not, it's discovered by the writer after he or she has written him- or herself into a corner. There comes the belief in every story, with every writer, that it is the worst story ever written. This is not true, of course, and once a person other than the writer reads the story, a confirmation usually comes that the story is, in fact, good. But at the halfway point the writer will usually think the work is, as they say in the scientific world, “dormant.”

After examining the many pages and pages of writing, she will come to the conclusion that the story is more boring than any other story that has ever been written in the history of the world. This thought causes even the most confident of writers to curl into a fetal position and suck the proverbial thumb.

But then days later, possibly on a dark and stormy night, after personal hygiene has become a distant memory and all hope is lost, the writer has a small, easily-described-as-crazy thought roll through her foggy mind. At first, she laughs it off as insane. But then, something convinces her that it's not so crazy after all, and if she reworks this and reworks that, she can sell it.

She rushes to her computer, and after several hours of nonstop typing, she realizes that all her story needed was a shake-up, and that one shake-up can carry the writer all the way to the end of her masterpiece.

“That's what everyone is expecting,” I said. “They're expecting these two opposites to hate each other at first. That is what we, in the writing world, call preee-diiiictability.” I rubbed my hands together for the ninth and final time and then wrote out a scene so shockingly unpredictable that it only took me fifteen minutes to create.

I smiled, laughed, and did a little dance that no one should ever see. Then I promptly sent the new scene to J. R.

I did the little dance again, but this time, I ended up with an audience, because my front door flew open and Elisabeth caught me just as I thrust my hip toward the kitchen and threw my hands in the air.

“Leah!” she screamed and rushed to my side.

My hands flopped to my sides. “What?”

“Are you okay?”

“Why?”

“You're okay?”

“Yes, I'm fine.”

Elisabeth looked confused. “I thought you were having a seizure.”

I rolled my eyes. “I'm dancing.”

“You don't dance.”

“I do too.”

“Leah, no offense, but you're not the dancing type.”

“How do you know?”

“I've known you for years. You've never danced.”

“I dance all the time. Around here.”

Elisabeth suppressed a smile. “That doesn't surprise me.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Leah, you already know this about yourself. You're just not really one to let loose, you know? You don't even throw caution to a soft, gentle breeze, much less the wind.”

I wasn't going to let Elisabeth spoil my fun, so I did a little jig toward the kitchen, proving I could dance in front of other people. I did notice, however, that all that moved were my elbows as they sliced back and forth across my rib cage. “So, what brings you by?”

“You don't know?” she asked.

I thought for a moment. Creyton. That was the last time we'd spoken, and she'd nearly left upset. I'd managed to apologize, but we'd left up in the air what she was going to do about her life.

“Have you made any decisions?” I asked.

“Yeah. That's what I came over here to tell you.” Her finger traced around the toast crumbs on my counter. “I'm going to take it to the next level.”

“An affair?” I blurted.

“Call it what you want. I'll never know if I don't do this.”

“You're willing to risk your family?”

“Henry won't know, Leah. He's never around to know. And I don't know if he would care anyway.”

Here was another chance for me to tell her what I thought, but I wasn't sure what I could say. Last time I'd spoken up, Elisabeth had interpreted it as me taking Henry's side.

“You're quiet,” she observed. “You think I'm making a mistake.”

“I . . . think you should take more time to think about this. Obviously Henry isn't fulfilling your needs, but—”

“You're right. And he's not even trying.” She took my hand. “I want you to meet him.”

“Who? Creyton?”

“Of course Creyton.”

“But . . . but why?”

“Why? You're my best friend. I want you two to know each other. He's home right now. You could come by and—”

“Elisabeth, I don't think that's a good—”

“You'd really like him, Leah, if you just gave him a chance.”

I glanced at the microwave clock. “I'd love to meet him, really, I would, but I can't right now. I'm . . . I'm running late, actually.”

“Late? You don't do anything on Tuesday nights.”

I never thought the conflict resolution class would come in handy. But it was starting to provide a good excuse for a lot of things I didn't want to do.