30 First Dates (21 page)

"He
is
. Seriously, he is. When your invitations came, he brought his in and asked me and Angie if we'd been invited. He looked like he was about to pop open, he was so
pleased
about it."

"That's funny. He never even RSVP'ed," Erin said. "I figured he was still mad at me, or scared of me, or whatever." She thought for a minute. "But what about Jess Mickelson? Did Angie tell you that weird thing he said about Jess?"

Dave's face darkened somewhat. He reached his hand up to stroke his scraggly beard. "Yeah, I don't really know."

"You don't know?" Disappointment washed over her. She'd been sure Dave would have some explanation for Paul's weird reaction to Jess's name.

"Yeah, he's been acting funny about her since we got back. Me and Angie think something must have happened over the summer, but I can't figure out what in the world it could be. She's married, you know. No kids, but I think she's been with her husband for like seven or eight years. She has the hots for Paul though. That much I do know."

Erin nodded. "I have to agree with you there."

"If anybody's to blame about your job situation, it was her," Dave said. "We all know it was her who placed that ad in the paper."

"Well, anyway, good riddance," Erin said. "Now I'm starting a new job, so none of that matters anymore…"

The man seated beside her at the gate stood suddenly and, jarred from her thoughts, Erin glanced back down at her text. She typed back to Paul, "Thx. Think I may need it."

She closed her eyes, envisioning his handsome features. Their coffee date had been quick, less than an hour, because she'd had a million things to do for the blog and the trip. She hadn't gotten a vibe that proved anything Dave said about how he felt about her, but then, Paul was pretty hard to read.

He'd asked her to go to dinner with him after her trip, but she didn't have the mental space to think about that right now. Her mind turned to the day ahead and to the great unknown she was about to face.

Absently, she Googled the
TODAY
show's website and looked over the lineup of recent guests. She felt like pinching herself that she was going on the show—she wasn't sure what they saw in her blog that warranted the invitation, but it was enough to fly her there a day early so they could tape her completing her bucket list walk across the Brooklyn Bridge before the taping of her actual interview Tuesday morning.

She reached up and pushed her hair behind her ears, fingering a few strands and then pulling them forward again, examining them as they slipped between her fingers. She'd decided to keep her hair blonde for the show, in the spirit of the blog. She was almost accustomed to the color now. An announcement broke into her thoughts,
"Welcome, guests of Delta flight 2022, with non-stop service to New York. We will begin boarding for our Delta Medallion members in just a few minutes
.
"

She stood to stretch her legs before the long flight, rolling her turquoise carry-on over to the floor-to-ceiling windows at the far wall of the gate to glimpse the plane. She watched as flight crew and airport personnel scurried around on the tarmac like extras on a movie set, shuttling laden baggage carts to the plane's cargo hold and performing their various, mysterious last-minute checks.

Her stomach churned the way it always did before a flight, and she forced herself to think happy thoughts of landing at La Guardia, having no idea what that would actually look like. The closest she'd ever gotten to New York was Pittsburgh, to visit cousins when she was fourteen. They'd made the trip by car, driving straight through on the way home—seventeen hours. It had been one of the longest days of her life.

She'd been out West a couple times, once to Vegas during college, and once to Arizona on a bachelorette party spa weekend with sorority sisters a couple years back. And now she'd been to Europe.

She felt every bit the bumpkin from Texas and, still staring out the window, she chewed her lower lip.
No!
She straightened her back and turned, watching Delta Medallion members with their sleek black roller bags begin to queue up beside the podium. She knew from experience that Yankees loved a good southern accent, and she was proud of her Texas roots. Tuesday on network TV, she'd let 'em shine.

As she strode toward the cluster of flyers who were waiting for their groups to be called to the gate, Erin remembered her mom's advice:
When you're not having fun, pretend like you are, and then you will.
She smiled, Joanne's voice ringing clearly in her head, and willed herself to look forward to the next three days.

*  *  *

The crowd at Rockefeller Plaza at 7:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning felt like an electric current that rippled under Erin's skin, and it alone was enough to set her every nerve ending on fire. So far her first big trip to the Big Apple had been a surreal experience.

At 11 a.m. the day before, a crew consisting of a shaggy-haired camera guy and one other dude whose job seemed to be to carry small equipment and move stuff around met Erin at the foot of an outdoor stairwell on the Brooklyn side of the bridge. She'd left her Times Square hotel room two hours early for her first-ever subway ride, not knowing how long it would take to ride out from Manhattan. It turned out she had plenty of time to wait, which she killed by wandering through the neighborhood under the bridge and ordering a chocolate chocolate chunk cone from the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory. The ice cream shop was in a quaint, white-brick building with a miniature lighthouse on top that now sold confections to tourists—she'd found it on Yelp.

Erin regretted the decision the instant a big, melty glob from her double cone dripped onto her light blue shirt. In the ladies' room, a sweet Jewish-grandmother type with mad skills at stain removal brought her down from full-blown panic to mild mortification.

She barely remembered the walk itself, though she'd had to start it four times, being circled all the while by the guy bearing the camera, whose name, she recalled, was Gus. She'd tried to enjoy her sweeping view of the city—it was hard to do as she concentrated on not
looking into the camera lens. Thinking back, she had flashes of hazy sunlight glinting off mirrored skyscrapers and vehicles for every mode of transport beating a steady thrum in her eardrums. Pedestrians who ranged from middle-aged tourists to exercisers to teenaged dropouts with piercings and low-hanging pants weaved around her, the New Yorkers barely giving the cameramen a passing glance.

At the Manhattan end of the bridge, she was allowed to look at the camera to share her triumph and she gave a cheeky grin she was embarrassed about now—it was sure to be the segment the show aired, captured for all posterity. She imagined her dubious future offspring torturing her with the footage in her old age.

What a way to knock an item off the list.

Now she glanced around herself, and then up at the towering expanse of 30 Rock, which was as intimidating as any building she'd laid eyes on in her life—more intimidating than her dorm tower on day one of her freshman year at UT, more intimidating than Northside her first time in front of a classroom of staring ninth-graders.

Short of breath, she entered the building with swarms of other people—many, it seemed, employees in the building, but also some meandering tourists and probably a few other non-famous morning show guests like her. Erin studied them all with interest.

After finding the information desk and telling a young, ponytailed receptionist why she was there, she was met by an NBC page who whipped her up to the green room. She sat for a few minutes that felt like a very long time, wishing she knew what questions she was going to be asked—not because she wanted to prepare so much as she desperately wanted something to
do
.

The green room, it turned out, wasn't green, but a tasteful beige and brown, with patterned carpet, dark brown leather seating, and a dropped ceiling with fluorescent lights—it looked like a cross between a slick law office and a bachelor pad. At first she was alone in the room. She contemplated getting up to check out the foods arranged on a glass cart near a coffee bar—she didn't dare get coffee, already feeling wired enough to scale the walls—but before she got the chance two people entered the room.

The first was a guy, with long, thick dark hair and a beard, who was wearing a faded black tee covered by a black leather jacket. He had sunglasses on but removed them upon coming into the room and, glancing at Erin, acknowledged her with a nod. Recognizing him, she gulped air in a gasping breath and he half-smiled as he walked past her and scooped something off the food cart.

Dave Grohl.
It was freaking Dave Grohl. Foo Fighters. Freaking
Nirvana
.

For about five seconds she thought she might pass out.

She collected herself quickly—she'd never been one to get star-struck, not that she'd had much chance to test that theory—and tried to decide whether or not she should talk to him. Then she realized the second person to enter the room was there for her, another NBC staffer come to haul her off to hair and makeup. She gave Dave a longing glance as she followed the page from the room, but he wasn't looking at her. He was scrolling down his iPhone screen. Who did Dave Grohl follow on Twitter, she wondered?

She forgot the thought as she passed Matt Lauer in the hallway. He was taller than she expected, and thinner than he looked on TV. He nodded as he passed her, and she smiled at him, in control of herself now.

In the dressing room, an unnaturally blond guy named Chris worked wonders with her hair, giving her the kind of teased, spiraled and perfectly tousled 'do she'd only ever seen on people like Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. Then an equally glamorous chick named Raven turned her into the best version of herself she'd ever seen. She examined her makeup from every angle, knowing she could never come close to replicating the look.

She thanked them profusely, and then the same staffer led her back to the green room, where, disappointingly, Dave Grohl no longer sat. In the room now was a blonde woman Erin learned had written a
New York Times
-bestselling book on parenting. She chatted with her for a few minutes before the girl was led back for styling. She glanced at her phone screen to check the time, and her heart rate quickened when she realized her scheduled slot was in twelve minutes. Her foot jiggled uncontrollably in the nude heels Hilary had loaned her for the show.

About a minute later, she heard footsteps coming down the hall and voices that grew louder with the steps. She looked up to see what other interesting people she might meet today, vowing to be cool this time. When the people attached to the voices turned the corner into the doorway, her heart stopped for a full second.

Noah looked taller than she remembered, his dark hair longer than when they'd dated and gelled into a stylish disarray she was sure came courtesy of Chris the Stylist. Slightly behind him, with her fingers laced through his, Amelia Wright was petite, with stick-straight, chestnut brown hair that was currently as glossy as a model's in a Pantene commercial. She wore nude heels, too, and a light blue dress with a high neckline and short, chic pencil skirt. Erin mentally assessed her own clothing, glad Sherri and Hilary had convinced her to choose the demure violet shift dress and not the red blouse and gray skirt she'd initially favored. Her mind was spinning and calculating what Noah and Amelia's presence alongside hers meant, and she was suddenly sure sassy, home-wrecking red would not have been a prudent choice.

What was going on here? Her eyes met Noah's, and she knew her face wore the same bewildered expression as his. Amelia, who was talking, trailed off when Noah stopped mid-stride and then glanced between the two of them in confusion.

Noah turned to Amelia, placing one hand on the small of her back. Erin couldn't help but smile at the tender way he addressed her. "Lia, meet my ex-girlfriend, Erin." He glanced at Erin and said, "This is Amelia." He laughed a short, hard laugh. "I took your advice…but I guess you know that."

He chuckled again and then gestured toward the door to the sound stage. "Well, this should be fun."

Erin, thinking she should probably be mortified, instead felt her nervousness subside. Noah was right. This was going to be fun.

*  *  *

"So let me get this straight. You broke up with him, and then you told him to ask her out." Kathie Lee Gifford, talking to Erin, pointed first at Noah and then at Amelia as she spoke. The two of them smiled, though Erin noticed Noah looked uncomfortable.

"That's right," Erin said. "He was in love with her, not me."

"And so then you started a blog because all men are dogs, right? How's that fair, if you're the one who called it quits?"

"No, I started the blog after another man cheated on me with my best friend." Erin arched an eyebrow, and Kathie Lee nodded slowly and pursed her lips, as if expressing solidarity. "I'm sure there's a decent man out there, or at least I hope so. That's one of the reasons I started the blog."

"Meanwhile
you
." She looked at Noah now. "You go barreling in and steal Amelia away from Colin Marks—not somebody I'd want to mess with, but it's all you—and then pretty much everyone hates you. Proving, basically, that all men are dogs." Kathie Lee sat back in her chair, pleased with her assessment.

Noah started to protest, but Hoda Kotb chose that moment to interrupt. "But you and Colin Marks weren't actually engaged, like everyone thought. How soon after your relationship ended with Colin
did
you and Noah begin dating?" She asked the question of Amelia.

Erin stared at Amelia with interest. She'd been wondering the same thing. So had half of America, she figured.

In a quiet, serious voice, Amelia gave her answer as if she'd rehearsed it twenty-five times in her hotel room that morning. "I broke up with Colin when I realized we wanted different things," she said. "We were in a long-distance relationship, and I knew it would stay that way most of the time. I don't think there's anything wrong with the way Colin lives. We just weren't the right match for each other."