The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (38 page)

“Once again in the morning, then?” he asked before we fell asleep, facing each other, my right hand clasped inside both of his. This Scottish boy liked his negotiations. And four weeks later, I found myself engaged in yet another negotiation over Valentine’s Day dinner.

“I tell you what,” he said. “You can download a recipe for haggis, and I’ll download a recipe from that Food Network show you’re so keen about.”

“Down Home with the Neelys?”
I asked. Referencing the show sent a strange pang through my heart. Hosted by the most loving real-life black couple that I’d ever seen on TV, I found it hard to watch when I was between
relationships, because it reminded me I still hadn’t found my match. The Scot and I had watched an episode together when we’d both had Martin Luther King Day off and had decided to spend it lying around his apartment.

“Yes, that one,” he said. “They seem like a delightful couple, and I’m certain you’ll like my take on their food.”

I did not like his take on their food. He not only over-seasoned the Memphis-Style Catfish, he also put too much sugar in his peach cobbler and over-boiled the potatoes, which were supposed to be baked in the first place.

“I can’t be blamed for it. I’m from a land where every laddie and lassie is taught to boil and over-cook our vegetables from childhood on. There’s nothing such as a Brit that’s capable of cooking vegetables in a flavorful manner. Even our celebrity chefs like Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver are shite with veggies. This haggis, on the other hand, is the best I’ve ever had, and makes me want to send your version of the recipe on to ma dear mum. I don’t know how you got the idea to put it over sweet potatoes and honey …”

“I found a recipe that said it’s usually served over some kind of mash, and I thought sweet potatoes would be fun. Really, better than your mama’s?”

“Well, she’s no great cook, I’ll have to admit. But truly, this haggis of yours is inspired.”

If he wasn’t so funny, he might be too bizarre to date. But it had been a lot of fun cooking next to him in my kitchen. And despite his botched dishes, dinner had been amazing, with him insisting that I come sit on his lap halfway through. “Why sit over there, when the candlelight’s so much better over here?” he asked.

I found his reasoning suspect, but I did appreciate the way his kind gray eyes twinkled above his beard while I forked bite after bite of my haggis into his mouth. I had always known that dating was something you had to do in order to fall in love, an obstacle and a chore on the path to marriage. But until the Scot, it had never occurred to me that dating could also be fun.

RISA

L
ast Valentine’s Day, I did the same thing that I’d been doing every Valentine’s Day since Tammy and me broke up the first time: tried to convince her that we should be together.

My pitch stayed the same: It’s time, I fucking love you, I would die for you. All that shit.

But her answer remained the same, too: I love you, but it would kill my family; please, Risa, don’t ask me for things I can’t give you.

This Valentine’s Day, however, I was on the road, playing a show at some college in Montana. It was cold outside so I wore a fur bikini top, Raquel Welch style. The college kids loved it, and the guys from Yes, We Are were congratulating me on the wardrobe choice around the table at some college-town diner afterwards, when my phone lit up with a 310 number.

Here was the thing about 310 numbers: I always felt compelled to answer them, because in L.A. the truly important people always have 310 numbers. Agents, lawyers, music company execs, renowned plastic surgeons—they all seemed to go out of their way to make sure they were associated with the area code dispensed to Los Angeles’s most expensive neighborhoods.

So I excused myself. Outside the restaurant, I cradled my iPhone between my shoulder and ear and pulled out a cigarette. “This is Risa Merriweather. What up, ho?”

“Were you really not going to call me back? Not even on Valentine’s Day?”

Oh shit, it was Tammy. I hadn’t been caught out with the call-from-a-different-number trick in a while. And I felt a little embarrassed for myself. “Hey, Tammy, this isn’t a good time.”

“Do you know where I am?” she asked. “In my bathroom, dry-heaving into my toilet. I’ve been here pretty much all day. It’s disgusting. I’m disgusting.” She started crying again. “I need you, and you promised you would be here for me, before you left town.”

“Yeah, well,” I took a drag off my cigarette. “I’m with some people. Gotta get back.”

“Did you ever love me?” she asked me. “Or did you only love me when I was beautiful and sexy and didn’t have cancer?”

“Oh, come on.” I had planned to take the high road with Tammy, her being Dead Woman Walking and all, but … “How are you going to accuse me of not loving you? I asked you to marry me back in 2008 when it was legal, and you said no. If you had said yes, I’d be with you right now. But you said no, so guess what?”

“You know why I said no. I couldn’t have …”

“See, I’ve been thinking about that. You keeping on saying that I know why you couldn’t come out and that I know why you couldn’t be with me publicly and that I know why you couldn’t tell your family about us. But I don’t know. I never knew. Because I gave up the Sweet Janes for your ass, and you wouldn’t even hold my hand in public.”

I didn’t know how deeply I felt about this, but I was yelling now, so I guess I must have been pretty fucking mad, even if Tammy had cancer.

“Risa,” she whispered. “I know I didn’t exactly treat you right while we were together. But I don’t have much time left. And I haven’t told my family, so I’m alone. You’re all I have.”

Those words tugged at my heart. The image of Tammy dying alone on her couch with only some nurse she hired in attendance. That was a hard one to swallow. But I said, “No, Tammy, I’ve already wasted too much time on you. You only care about how other people see you, and all you’ve done is take from me. I can’t let you do that anymore. Even if you’re sick.”

Tammy was crying again, and maybe this cancer was a good thing, because I had become pretty much immune to her tears by now. Pretty much.

“Risa …” she said.

“Call your family.”

“Risa, please …”

“Call your fucking family.”

I hung up. And after wiping away a few tears of my own, I flicked away my cigarette and went back inside.

Everyone complains about heartbreak. But heartbreak is like failure. It’s nothing to be scared of, you can only learn from it. If you got your heart broken in your last relationship, congratulations. You proved you really know how to fall in love. Now dust yourself off and fall in love again.

—
The Awesome Girl’s Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men
by Davie Farrell

THURSDAY

M
eeting with Davie Farrell in February changed my life forever.

At first I stood in the doorway, speechless. One of my earliest memories was meeting Michael Jackson backstage at an awards show. I’d shaken hands with Bono from U2 for goodness’ sake, but standing there in that doorway, I became paralyzed with admiration.

If Davie Farrell hadn’t waved me toward one of Mike’s orange seats and said, “Sit down, darlin’,” I probably wouldn’t have ever gotten out of that doorway.

“Hi,” I finally managed to squeak when I sat down across from her. “I can’t believe this.”

Davie grinned at me. “Neither can I. Mike called me to apologize for never telling me the truth about him and Tammy not really being together, and the next thing I know he’s finagling a Valentine’s Day session out of me for you.”

I shook my head, annoyed and impressed with Mike at the same time. But then it occurred to me to ask, “Did you tell your husband and Tammy’s sister?”

“No,” Davie said. “James is my husband, and I try not to keep secrets from him anymore. But it’s not my place to be telling Tammy’s business.”

So it sounded like Davie knew about Tammy being gay, but not about her cancer. Mike had kept Tammy’s secret from her, despite the fact that Tammy might actually follow through and sue him for violating their non-disclosure agreement any day now. “Mike’s very …” I trailed off.

“Don’t finish that sentence. I can’t talk with you about what you got going on with Mike. This is strictly a career consultation.”

Davie’s declarative statement filled me with a certain relief. The truth was I didn’t want to talk about what I had with Mike either. I didn’t want to label it, didn’t want to analyze it.

“Mike tells me you’re on some kind of big job search right now,” Davie said. “How’s that going for you?”

“No bites yet, but I’m looking hard,” I said. “And I’m excited about entering a new phase in my career. I just have to figure out what that phase is, then figure out how to get a job in it—”

“Can I ask you what you originally wanted to do when you were a kid?”

“Well, I wanted to write,” I said, surprised by her interruption. “But obviously that didn’t work out.”

Davie frowned. “What do you mean it didn’t work out?”

“I mean I wasn’t able to make a career out of it or anything.”

“Let me stop you right there. Just because you’re not successful at something doesn’t mean it didn’t work out. And it really doesn’t mean you can stop doing it. If I’m guessing right, you’ve probably already tried to give it up and do something else, right?”

This conversation was not going at all the way I had expected it to. “Well … yeah, I mean … I tried stand-up comedy for a while.”

“But it got boring, like every other job you’ve tried to do outside of writing. Then your mind started unraveling and your self-esteem plummeted. I bet it felt like you were going a little crazy, right?”

I gaped at her. The only thing she hadn’t been right about was the “little crazy” part. “It was more like a lot crazy,” I said.

“Suicidal thoughts?” she guessed next.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Are you psychic?” I asked. “Is that, like, your trade secret?”

She laughed. “No, darlin’, I just work with a lot of creatives. Now I want you to think back to the last time you wrote. How did you feel about yourself?”

“I was feeling terrible,” I said. “Because I thought I had betrayed Tammy by sleeping with Mike.”

“I’m not talking about all that outside stuff. I’m talking about you and the writing. How did that feel? Coming back to it?”

“Awkward at first, but then it was like riding a bicycle.” For whatever reason I thought of my childhood home in Connecticut. The temporary relief that had filled me up when I had seen it for the last time after flying in from China. “It felt like coming home,” I told Davie.

Davie leaned forward. “The majority of my clients have tried to do something else, only to find out that they couldn’t. The fact of the matter is that we’re all born to do something, and if that’s what we’re meant to do, that’s what we’ve got to do until the day we die. Trying to replace it with anything else is a waste of time.”

“But I’m thirty-one years old and I’m completely dependent on an actor who I have nothing in common with and who might get tired of me tomorrow,” I said.

“So?” Davie said.

“
So
I’ve got to start building some safety nets. I can’t be dependent on other people for the rest of my life.”

“Why not?” Davie asked.

“Because that’s not how I’m supposed to be. I’m a feminist. I hate that I’ve never been able to get by on my own. First it was my father; then my friend, Sharita, took care of me; then my ex-boyfriend, Caleb; and now Mike. I’m supposed to be a strong black woman. I’m supposed to be able to depend on myself. I want to be that kind of woman. I know I could be if I tried harder. I could be so much better than the person I am right now.”

To me, this felt like a heartfelt statement, an inspired proclamation about the person I could be this time next year, if I put my mind to it.

But Davie leaned back and folded her hands on top of her stomach. “Yeah, you’re thirty-one, so darlin’, it might be high time for you to accept
some stuff. You’re a writer. You ain’t independent by nature. And fate has set up one nice situation for you with Mike. Don’t spit in its face. I thought we were really going to have to go through the ringer with this job situation of yours, but I’ve only got two words for what you’ve got to do now: Accept it.”