The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (40 page)

Thursday looked between the two of us. “So you and Benny are together?”

“Your name is Benny?” I asked the Scot, guiding us all to a space beyond the checkout line so that we wouldn’t block traffic.

“No, I’m not fecking Benny. I’m Ennis, but she calls me Benny because she didn’t understand when I told her my real name. Then Abigail picked it up because she thought it was a laugh, and between the two of them …” He shook his fist in the air. “But are you trying to tell me this is your friend ‘Day’? How could she possibly be your best mate? You’re so wonderful and she’s one of the worst people I’ve ever known. And yea, before you ask, I’m including ma ex-girlfriend in that number.”

“What’s he saying?” Thursday asked me. “And when did you learn Scottish?”

“It’s not a foreign language, Day,” I said. “He’s speaking English. You way overstated how bad his accent was.”

“It’s un-freaking-intelligible. Hey, did you tell Risa you two are together? Because if you told Risa and didn’t tell me, that’s so wrong.”

“Risa? Is that the skinny bird with the harsh haircut?” he asked me. “I think I met her once at the North Hollywood flat.”

“Yes, that’s her. And how can you not have known that the girlfriend I mentioned that had a Scottish roommate was your old roommate? How many black girls do you think there are with Scottish roommates?”

“I was supposed to assume your best girlfriend was black, then?” Now his tone shifted. “I mean, I was never properly introduced to any of your friends, was I?”

“What’s he saying?” Thursday asked again.

“Thursday, would you please stop? His accent is not that bad. I understand everything he’s saying.”

“Then you must have some kind of secret power, because I don’t even understand how he’s employed as a PA.”

“He’s not a PA, he’s an assistant director.”

“I was working a PA stint when I first met Abigail, but that was over three years ago,” Ennis said. “I tried to tell her I’d passed the test and became an AD, but … this is really your best mate? Really truly? You know she used to make me write everything I said down. Refused to talk to me, except through a notepad.”

“What’s he saying?” Thursday asked yet again. “And why did he lie about being a PA?”

“Thursday. He tried to tell you, but you didn’t understand.”

“Why didn’t he write it down?” Thursday asked, the picture of innocent confusion.

“Because he didn’t appreciate having to write down everything he was trying to tell you.”

Thursday chewed on that and then she said, “You really understand him? I mean really, really understand him?
Ni ye tingdong zhongguan ma
?”

“I have no idea what the last part was,” I answered.

Thursday sagged a little, disappointed. “I asked if you understood Chinese, too. I thought your magical gifts might extend to other languages.”

“Do you ken why I found it so verrae hard going to live with her?” Ennis asked, his good humor long gone.

“It was nice seeing you, Day, but we’ve got to go,” I said.

“Wait, wait, wait, how long have you two been seeing each other?”

Oh no, this was what I had been hoping to avoid. “Three months,” I mumbled.

Thursday cupped her ear. “First of all, did you say ‘three months,’ because I asked you, like, four days ago if you were seeing anybody and you were all, like, ‘No’!”

“I didn’t …” I rubbed my temple. “I didn’t exactly say no. I kept it vague.”

“Why?” Thursday asked as if Ennis wasn’t standing right there and hearing all of this. “Usually you’re telling me about new guys from the jump-off date.”

“Thursday, we’ve really got to go. We have plans.”

“Like secret boyfriend-girlfriend plans?” Thursday asked.

“We’ve got to go,” I said, my voice turning edgy.

But Ennis said, “No, the movie’s not for another forty minutes, and I, too, am curious about why you didn’t tell your best mate about me.”

“What did he say?” Thursday asked.

I leveled Thursday with a look that even she would understand meant that she was to stop talking now and go away.

Thursday raised her hands. “Okay, okay. I’m not going to chastise you anymore for pulling a Tammy. But you need to call me later.”

“Who’s Tammy? Is she the one with the cancer and the lesbionics that she was hiding for several years like a soap opera program on the telly?” Ennis asked.

“What did he say?” Thursday asked again.

Ennis and I did not end up going to see the sci-fi action flick, which we had been looking forward to all week, so much so that we had even decided to splurge on candy for the movie. This had been the fatal decision. Since we were both misers at heart, we stopped at Target as opposed to paying the markup at the movies. It had sounded like a great idea at first, but then Mike Barker had invited Thursday to New Orleans, and Thursday had brunch with a friend in North Hollywood, and, instead of going back to the West Hollywood Target, which was the one closest to Mike’s house, she had decided to stop at the same Target as Ennis and me.

Now, I wasn’t one of those people who thought God messed with folks just for the heck of it, but I did look skyward and shake my head with pressed-together lips as we came out of that Target. We had actually wasted more money by going to get the candy, because not only did we not go to see our movie, even though we had already paid for the tickets online, but Ennis also threw the candy in the trash can as we headed back to his car.

We drove in nauseous silence all the way back to his apartment, where I had left my car parked in front of his building.

“Here we are,” Ennis said, pulling up right beside my car.

I stared gloomily at my lap. “Did you tell your best friend about us? I haven’t met him, either.”

“That’s because he’s back in Scotland. And, yes, I told him. I also told ma mum and ma sister and ma grandda. Am I right to assume you’ve told absolutely no one about us?”

“We haven’t exactly had the boyfriend-girlfriend conversation,” I pointed out.

“That’s because I’ve done a good job of making it clear I’m crazy about you. I had hoped you felt the same. But I can see now I was wrong about that.”

“Ennis, I’m not trying to lead you on or anything, I’m just confused, and I’m trying to figure out where we stand before I start announcing stuff. Just give me some time.”

“No, Sharita. I know you Americans are big ones for giving each other
time,
but I’m thirty-seven years old. I don’t want to ‘play games,’ as you all are so fond of saying. I want to settle down and have some bairns and live a happy life with someone who loves me as much as I love her. I won’t settle for anything less. Now get out of the car, please.”

“Ennis …”

“Get out of the car,” he said again, his voice harsh and thick.

I got out of the car, feeling sullen and confused. That’s what I got for dating a foreigner. He obviously didn’t understand that in the States only stalkers and people with undiagnosed brain aneurysms pressured someone into calling himself her boyfriend after only three months.

Maybe that’s what Ennis was. A crazy stalker Scot with a brain aneurysm. That would explain a lot … except stalkers with brain aneurysms didn’t usually kick you out of their cars, did they? And they didn’t usually drive away while you stared after them, right?

And when a stalker walked out of your life, it wasn’t supposed to feel like he’d left a big gaping hole in your heart, was it?

Was it?

RISA

I
spent all of March bouncing from state to state, playing spring break concerts, because, for whatever reason, every college spring-breaked at different times and no one could quite agree on when. This would go on till late April, which was when Ipso! Facto! was scheduled to go back into the studio and I was scheduled to—well, I didn’t know what I was scheduled to do yet. That all got decided tonight.

“Excited about the head of Gravestone coming out to see you?” The Lead Singer’s Girlfriend asked. She was lying on my motel room bed, flipping through some art magazine.

I rock-star shrugged. Daniel Croisiere was planning to hit my set at the UNLV concert that night. So I had to bring it. But I didn’t want to encourage The Lead Singer’s Girlfriend by actually talking with her about my excitement.

Ever since I dropped Tammy, I’d been on a tear. I’d made out with groupies in front of her, ignored her texts, kept our increasingly rare sex sessions shorter and to the point, kicking her out afterward and telling her to go home to her boyfriend.

And in the way of all great rock star girlfriends, this only made her like me more. Whenever I had a hotel room on a non-travel day, she showed up at my door offering to keep me company before the show. “Where’s your boy?” I asked … sneered, really.

“Oh, he’s with the rest of the band. He doesn’t care,” she answered.

But see, he did care. The less I did to conceal that I didn’t really like The Lead Singer’s Girlfriend, the less she did to conceal how much she did like me. She openly flirted with me in front of him, throwing her head back and touching my shoulder anytime I said something clever. And I’d caught The Lead Singer himself staring at me a few times now, intent as if to silently ask, “What does she have that I don’t?”

He was so on edge about her that he’d probably end up proposing to this chick any day now. And I would definitely not get invited on the next tour. So I needed this second deal with Gravestone to happen.

I couldn’t lose both my career and my dream girl at the same time. Then I wouldn’t have anything. So I ignored the nightmare girl on top of my bed, and I examined the desert sky outside my dusty motel window, and I choose a tangerine leather bikini top to match the polluted sunset. Then I went through the old motions of getting ready for the show, except it wasn’t the same.

Not just because The Lead Singer’s Girlfriend was lurking on the bed behind me, but also because when I tied the two suede straps behind my neck, a picture of Tammy flashed in front of me, pretty and laughing, like the first time we met and our eyes connected across the room.

When I tied the other two suede straps behind my back, there she was again, rolling around on top of her bed with me, giggling and telling me to keep it down, because Mike Barker was down the hall and she didn’t want to wake him, even though she was paying him to sleep at her condo and pretend to be her boyfriend. When I’d first met Tammy, I had found her constant attention to the feelings of others lovable. But eventually it grew into a thorn. “How about my feelings?” I asked her during the big argument that got me kicked out of her condo. “You’re so worried about your family. How about me?”

I was better off without her. I knew this. But when I pulled on my bright-green leather leggings, there she was, rubbing her naked breasts against my back as she fed me pieces of birthday cake—that was back when I would actually eat cake, when I was young and could stay thin easily, before she broke my fucking heart.

Half my head was shaved right now in an asymmetrical style, while the hair that remained was bleached out and dyed magenta.

“That hairstyle would look silly on anyone but you,” Tammy said behind me in the mirror. This was another memory, from back in 2002,
when I was one of the first black women to rock a fauxhawk. She’d looked at me looking at myself and said. “I wish I was brave like you.”

I shook my head. Daniel Croisiere would be in tonight’s audience and I was the opening act. It was time to stop being sentimental Lisa. Time to bring Risa out to seal a second album deal. I stared at myself in the mirror like I did every time I needed to channel Risa.

The second album, I decided then, could and would be better than the first. I had to show Croisiere what I was made of; I had to become Risa …

“I can’t believe you still want me when I look like this,” Tammy said the last time I saw her in person. The side effects of the chemo had loosened their grip on her, and she had tentatively shaken me awake to ask I if I’d like to make out.

“Make out” was Tammy’s code phrase for initiating sex. She could never meet my eyes when she made this inquiry, as if sexual desire were unseemly.

I responded to her request by immediately pulling her white baby-doll nightgown over her head and kissing her breathless.

“I can’t believe you still want me when I look like this,” she had said in the dark.

“Tammy,” I said, turning her away from me and cupping one of her breasts with one hand and her pussy with the other. “You have the most magnificent set of knockers I’ve ever had the pleasure of viewing on a non-Photoshopped woman. I will always want you.”

And she had laughed and said, “I love you.” For the first time in years, she told me this.

And I knew if we could get past this cancer shit, I would come back from touring and she’d finally let me back into her life. But then she continued, “I just wanted you to know that, in case I’m not still here when you get back.”

“You’ll still be alive,” I had said, because of the aforementioned growing-up-Catholic bullshit. “And if you need me, just call me and say the word. I’ll come off the road.”

She rubbed her crotch against my open hand. “Would you really?”