The Balance Thing (18 page)

V
ida arrived with strawberry sauce for the cheesecake and an armload of yoga videos.

“Your mind-body connection is all out of whack,” she informed me. “Neither is listening to the other.” She'd been getting all Zen ever since she'd started dating Tim. “No wonder you're a wreck.”

“I'm not a wreck!”

She pointed an accusing finger at the pile of DVDs I'd just rented. “
Summertime
?
The Rainmaker
? You've got a spinster film fest and a billion calories on your table and you don't think you're in a little trouble here?”

She called Max. Her end of the conversation went something like “Yes, I know it's Friday night and you have three parties, but I also know you wouldn't be caught dead at any of them before eleven, so get your ass over here. Becks needs us.”

I winced. I hate to be needy. I don't like being weak and I don't like being dependent. Hell, I don't even like being taken to the airport.

But the truth was, for reasons I couldn't begin to figure out on my own, I felt needy. All I really wanted was to put on
my fuzzy slippers and have people say nice things to me. Things like “There, there” or “Everything will be fine.”

Because—and this is where I didn't understand myself at all—everything
was
fine. I'd just landed my goddamn dream job, and once Josh got over that goddamn kiss and we got back to a normal, professional relationship, everything would be goddamn perfect.

Vida disagreed.

“I can't believe you still haven't talked to Josh. What are you so afraid of?”

“I'm not afraid!”

“Right. You're just running away every time you see him for the exercise.”

“I'm not—” Well, perhaps the way I'd left the studio that morning could have been construed as flight. “I'm angry with him. There's a difference.”

She gave me severely raised eyebrows, so I elaborated.

“He should have had the decency to call and apologize for his behavior the other day.” Even I realized I sounded like a prim version of Marion the Librarian, but I went on.

“Or he could have kept our recording date—appointment—this morning, or at the very least acknowledged my existence when I stood outside his
closed
door!”

Vida wasn't buying it. “Did you ever stop to think you might have hurt him? That he wasn't just being rude? That maybe he's trying to protect himself from you now that he's finally made a move and you've totally rejected him?”

I remembered the look on his face through the glass wall and felt that stake go through my heart again.

“Listen, Becks,” Vida adopted a less accusatory tone, “I know it's terrifying to start something new. Especially with
someone you're already friends with. There's just so much more at risk if things don't work out, you know? I mean, when Tim and I got together, I was totally stressed about what could happen if we broke up and still had to work together.”

I nodded, glad to hear I wasn't the only one to worry about the consequences of inappropriate romances.

“But the thing is,” she went on, “one day I started thinking about what could happen if we
don't
break up.”

“What could happen?” I asked.

“We could live happily ever after.” She smiled one of those Renaissance Madonna smiles. Radiant.

And extremely irritating. But before I could respond, the doorbell rang.

Max, thank God. And in full take-charge mode.

“All right,” he announced, flinging off his jacket and checking his watch. “I've never met a romantic problem I couldn't solve in under thirty minutes, so mix me a cocktail and tell me what's going on.”

“I don't have a romantic problem,” I explained. “I don't know what my problem is. I've just accepted the kind of job I've been lusting after for my entire adult life, and instead of going out to celebrate I feel like complete shit. And through no fault of my own”—I stressed this point—“I haven't even been able to discuss the situation with my current employer.”

“Uh-huh.” Max reached for the cocktail shaker, as I hadn't leaped into service quickly enough. “And when does this feeling of complete shit date from? Perhaps around the time you ran away from the fevered embrace of your current employer? Who I think we can all agree is the only man you've met in years who might possibly be right for you?”

“She hasn't called him,” Vida informed on me. “She hasn't even told him about WorldWired, and when she saw him today, she ran away again.”

“Will you two please give it a rest? This isn't about Josh!”

As I yelled at my best friends, I caught a glimpse of myself in the little mirror over the bar cart. I had strawberry sauce on my chin. My hands were shaking so badly I risked losing the remnants of my drink. My mascara had settled in murky pools under my eyes. I looked like a crazy woman. I looked like hell. Worse, I looked like Vladima in the middle of a feeding frenzy.

Seeing myself in the mirror, I finally saw what everyone else already had. And the last of my denial came crashing down.

Oh, fuck. This was about Josh.

 

I'VE HEARD
that the first step in any twelve-step program is admitting you have a problem. I'm inclined to go along with that. Because once I admitted I was in a mess over Josh, I lost it. Big time. I had thought it was serious when I'd cried over Sir Meaningless Interlude in England, but this—this was in a whole different league.

The bright side of my complete breakdown was that Vida and Max finally broke out the “There, there's” in full force.

It was horrible. Every hideous sentence beginning with “what if” that a woman has ever asked about a man came pouring out of me. What if he…What if I…What if we…What if he
doesn't
?

Vida and Max had some answers, but not all. It kept coming back to the same thing—did I care enough about
Josh to risk all those horrible what if's on the off chance that, against a lifetime of history and staggering odds, everything might turn out all right?

By the time Max left at eleven, I had at least summoned the strength to wash my face.

By the time Tim picked Vida up at midnight I could contemplate the thought of going to bed without drinking the rest of the vodka.

And by the morning, I told myself, everything would be fine.

All I really needed was a plan.

 

AS IT TURNED OUT,
I slept through the morning. A clear course of action had failed to come to me magically in a dream, dammit, so I tried to think of one while I manically cleaned my loft all afternoon.

One part of my brain echoed Vida's last words to me—“Just call him.” But that would only take me so far. Because once I called him, in all likelihood I'd have to say something to him.

After I'd scrubbed everything I owned, I decided to scrub myself and I ran a hot bath. Baths were good. Some of my best plans had their origins in the bath. And incredibly, possibly due to the citrus aromatherapy that Vida had provided for mental energy, a plan did come to me.

It was so obvious. I needed to write a script.

I threw on my coziest sweats, all fluffy from the dryer, and sat down at the dining room table with a glass of Zinfandel and a legal pad.

I could do this. I'd written hundreds of persuasive talks in the past. If I could script Q & A sessions that persuaded
CEOs to write multimillion-dollar contracts, I could script a dialogue between Josh and me that would get the result I wanted.

Oh fuck. What was the result I wanted?

But before I could start banging my head on the newly polished table, the doorbell rang. Saved.

“Max?” I called. “Vida?” I opened the door.

Josh.

I
stared at him blankly for I don't know how long. Long enough for him to take the initiative.

“Think I could come in?”

“Oh!” I stepped back as if the doorknob had given me an electrical shock.

“Look”—he got as far as the hall closet and closed the door behind him—“I was going to call—”

“I was too.”

He gave me a quick glance. “You were?”

I nodded. “I was just”—I stopped myself from telling him I was just drafting out the optimal dialogue—“going to call in a few minutes.”

He shrugged. “Right.”

“I was! There are a couple of things I need to talk to you about—”

“Such as?”

I backed down. “Well, you might as well come in if you're going to come in.”

We made it the three steps to the kitchen. The living room, with its single sofa and floor pillows, was too cozy to even contemplate.

“I didn't think you'd want to talk to me.” Josh said, not looking at me.

“Why ever not?”
Why ever not?
Now I was channeling Bette Davis. Not good.

Josh risked a cautious glance. “When a woman runs away from me, I tend to think the worst.”

I bit back my automatic reply denying that I'd run away. He'd been there. He knew. Instead I offered an explanation. “Oh. That. Yeah. Well…sorry.”

“So am I. Sorry.” He looked it. “About, you know, everything.”

“Yeah. Well. Whatever.”

Is it obvious why I'd wanted a goddamn script for this conversation?

“Anyway…” We both said it at the same time, and finally there was a hairline crack in the ice.

“Look, Josh.” I decided to wing it, starting with full disclosure about the WorldWired job. Maybe he'd be so mad about that news that he'd storm off and I wouldn't have to deal with the rest of it. “There's something I have to tell you.”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “There's something I have to tell you too. About Vladima.”

“Oh.” I felt the giddiness of the reprieved convict. “Great. You go first.” If we could just keep it professional for a few minutes, I might get over the feeling that I was dancing on knives.

He cleared his throat. “I got a call that day after we…met with Alan Turnbottom.”

Good save. I imagined he'd been about to say “after we made out like sex fiends on the Embarcadero.”

“A call?” My voice came out a little huskier than I would have liked.

He nodded. “From Turnbottom's boss. Chloe Stevens. Apologizing for sending Mister Slick to see us when she should have handled it herself.”

“Damn right she should have. Who is she?”

“The head of some division. Whichever division it is that buys properties to make movies.”

“So she still wants to buy Vladima?”

“Well, in fact…” He examined the intricate pattern of slashes on my cutting board. “She already has.”

She…what?

“You sold the movie rights?”

“Lock, stock, and coffin.”

“Without me?”

“Oh,” Josh looked a little alarmed. “Well, yeah.”

Great. Only the biggest negotiation he'd probably ever handled, and he hadn't even picked up the phone to call his resident expert in such matters. This is how one kiss can ruin everything.

“Becks, it was a good deal. I'm sure I could have used your advice, but it was pretty cut and dried. And I'm not a total idiot, you know. Just because I've been hanging out in the graveyard for the past few years doesn't mean I've forgotten how to run a company.”

I did forget, occasionally, about Josh's life before Vladima.

“I'm happy for you,” I managed. “I'm sure you made a great deal.” And it was too late now, anyway, if he hadn't.

“You can look it over, if you want. I've got a copy back at the studio.”

“Fine, if you'd like me to.” I sounded less than enthusiastic.

He tilted his head and sort of stooped over to make me meet his eyes. “Becks, this is a good thing.”

Oh, shit. Why did he have to get so close when I was still trying to process everything? It made me want to just say “okeydokey” so we could get around to the kissing part.

No it didn't
, I mentally corrected myself. Out loud, I snapped at him. “Josh, I can't believe you made such a huge commitment without consulting me.”

He didn't flinch. In fact, the steadiness of his gaze was a little unnerving. “I would have. If I thought you might return a call.”

Of course I wouldn't have returned a call. But he couldn't have been sure about that. “If you had called about this, about business—” Didn't the man ever blink? I felt as if I were being pulled toward him, and if I didn't do something about it immediately, I'd never be able to recover.

I switched gears. “What about everything else?”

“Good question.” He straightened and moved a little closer. “What about everything else?”

I was finding it hard to keep hold of my thoughts. “Are you planning to keep doing the Web site? And the comic book?” I made the mistake of looking into his eyes again, and my voice came out about an octave higher than usual. “What about the ComixCon convention? Do you still want to go? Do you still want Shayla as Vladima? Do you still want me—”

“Oh,” he said, his voice softening. “I want you.”

There was a buzzing sound in my ears. I shook my head to try to clear it. “In what capacity?”

“As Vladima's voice,” he said. “And handling her marketing.”

I closed my eyes, but I could still see him. “Great. Perfect.” I let out a deep breath and looked at him again. “Good.”

“And in whatever other capacity you want.”

I opened my mouth, but no sound came out.

“Becks.” Josh touched my arm lightly, sending a little heat wave from my elbow to my shoulder. “You know, just because someone wants you doesn't mean you have to say yes. You're free to just…walk away.”

I'd dated a lot of men in my life that I should have just walked away from. Was this still about Vladima? Or was Josh telling me I should walk away from him?

“And,” he continued, his voice going all warm and liquid, “I'm very aware that just because you want something doesn't mean you're going to get it.”

I nodded, the image of the LOTM springing to mind. I tossed it away and floated a little toward Josh.

“But,” he was so close now that I was staring at his shirt buttons. I could feel his breath on my forehead as he spoke. If I looked up…I didn't dare look up.

“But, sometimes, if you're unbelievably lucky”—he brushed my hair away from my face—“the one you want wants you.”

Everything went a little soft around the edges and the buzzing in my head got louder. I took a slow breath and looked up.

“Fuck Vladima,” I told him. “I want you.”