Engaging Men (12 page)

“So, you folks ready to order?”

“I am,” said Josh, glancing up at me in question.

“Uh, yeah. You order first,” I said, burying myself in the menu, my appetite gone. How was it that Josh always had a knack for making me realize the pure insanity of my life?

“I’ll have the PadThai,” I said finally, ordering the same thing I always ordered whenever I ate Thai. Boring, yes, but at least I knew what I was getting. And I liked to be sure of something in life. Besides, I was allergic to so many things, it saved me from having to interrogate the waiter about hidden ingredients that could potentially kill me in the other entree choices.

“So let me tell you how I did it,”Josh said, and I knew, without any further clarification, what “it” was. The proposal. I sipped my water, pasted on a smile and listened while Josh proceeded to tell me all about the glorious evening he asked Emily Fairbanks to be his wife. Josh prided himself on being a romantic. In fact, he still gets on my case that I didn’t appreciate all his valiant attempts to woo me (okay, forgive me if I didn’t find rowing across the lake out front of his parents’ family cabin in the Poconos on the hottest day of the year romantic). But as he told me about the carriage ride across Central Park (a bit cliched, but we’ll give him points for big spending), how the moon hung low in the sky and the only sound was the gentle clip-clop of the horse’s hooves (I’m sure there was traffic. There’s always traffic.But never mind…). How Emily’s eyes lit up when he turned to her in the cozy little seat, took her hand in his and said those words he had never uttered to another woman before.

I have to say, I got a little choked up there. Especially when I saw shining in Josh’s eyes what looked like the real thing. Love. For Emily Fairbanks, whose most notable quality (in my mind, anyway) was a certain nobility of brow and good skin.

I smiled, the lump thickening in my throat. I was happy for him. Really, truly happy. Because if Josh, with whom I shared not only the same allergy prescription but the same paralyzing anxieties, could get married, then, hell, I would be just fine.

“So let me know when I have to get my tux,” I said, referring to our old joke that I would have to be Josh’s “best man,” since I was (at least according to him) his closest friend.

And then Josh ducked his head and actually
blushed
.

“Okay, okay,” I continued to banter, unaware of the source of his discomfort, “I’ll wear a dress if I have to. But no taffeta!”

But when Josh continued to avert his gaze, I realized our old joke was no longer funny. And I suspected I knew why.

“I
am
coming to the wedding, aren’t I?”

Finally he looked up, his gaze hesitant. “Actually, Emily and I… well, we were just talking about, well, you… and she doesn’t really feel, uh, comfortable with, uh, inviting…that is to say, uh—” he ducked his head once more “—you.”

My mouth opened to speak, but not a word was forthcoming. After all, though we didn’t hang out much anymore, Josh and I were friends. And though we hadn’t fared well as a couple, we had come to depend on each other in some ways. At least until Emily had entered the picture.

“C’mon, Ange,” Josh said now. “You have to understand how Emily must feel. I mean, you
are
my ex-girlfriend.”

And, apparently, I thought as I scanned his embarrassed features for some sign of the man I thought was one of my closest friends, that’s all I would ever be.

But I didn’t have time to ponder my flagging relationship with Josh. Because suddenly my relationship with Kirk took a turn for the better.

When I came home from dinner that night, there was a message blinking on my answering machine. “Call me when you get in,” came Kirk’s voice over the machine (rather insistently, I might add).

I opted not to call.

What? It was
late
. I didn’t want to wake him up.

Besides, I didn’t want to do anything to break my feeling of sheer power. A power that only grew when, while I was sitting at my desk at Lee and Laurie the next day, Jerry Landry leaned over my cube, eyes gleaming as if he were going to tell me some dirty secret, and said, “You got a call at the control station from Kirk.You want me to transfer him?”

“Sure,” I said, my insides shimmering with an excitement I had not felt since the early days of Kirk’s and my relationship. I glanced at Michelle, who raised an eyebrow at me. Kirk never called at the office. Not only was it near impossible to get through during the day, he never really had a need to. Until now.

“Thank you for calling Lee and Laurie Catalog, where casual comes easy,” I answered as I was supposed to, praying Kirk’s call had gotten to me before a customer’s.

“Hey,” Kirk said, “what’s going on?”

“Hey,” I replied, as calmly as I could.

“Why didn’t you call me back last night?” he demanded. I almost felt a pinch of guilt at the hurt in his tone;

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said, rushing to make amends as was my nature (despite what you might think of me, I really am no good at this game-playing stuff). “It was just so late when I got home and I figured you were tired, and—”

“What the hell time did you get home?”

Wow, he was mad. “Uh, eleven-thirty.” I neglected to explain it was because I had spent a major part of the evening letting Josh know just what I thought about the fact that he felt it necessary to exclude me from the most important day of his life. An utterly fruitless endeavor, as I discovered that not only did I not understand Emily Fairbanks, I understood Josh even less.

“What the hell were you doing?” Kirk barked. “Oh, never mind.You coming over later?”

“Later?” I glanced at Michelle, who was nodding her head in the affirmative. “Uh, okay.”

“Good,because we need to talk. . . .See you around ten-thirty.”

“Okay,” I said, clicking off the line and turning to face Michelle. “He wants to talk…”

“Bingo!” she proclaimed, clapping her hands together.

My eyes widened. My God. It was working…

I showed up at Kirk’s place around quarter to eleven. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t Kirk standing in the doorway of his apartment, waiting for me.

“Hey,” I said, approaching cautiously.

He didn’t answer, only pulled me into his arms and proceeded to kiss me in a way he never had before. A bit roughly. Not that I minded. In fact, I liked it very much.

I linked my arms around his neck, pressed my body into his, looked up into those gray eyes I thought I knew so well and saw something unfamiliar stirring there. I would have called it anger, if not for the kisses he kept feathering over my mouth, my chin.

And here I thought I was going to get a speech about Josh.

Kirk broke the kiss, but only long enough to lead me down the long hall to his bedroom, where he pulled me down to the bed and proceeded to molest me.

In the best way, of course.

Better. Because I had never seen Kirk in such a…fever. He was always so in control (not that that was a bad thing—it accounted for his longevity in the sack). Now he was like a man driven by demons, tearing at my clothes (well, not exactly tearing—he did have a certain respect for fashion and knew what these little Lycra numbers went for), running his hands over my body as if committing it to memory.

Once he was inside, I nearly came when he gazed down at me, a look of pure possessiveness in his eyes.

You can just imagine what effect that had on me. And this time, Kirk didn’t even attribute it to the mattress.

Now, as we lay curled into each other, I felt a ribbon of pleasure move through me. For no matter what manipulative devices had brought Kirk to this point, I couldn’t deny that what had just happened between us was very, very real.

“That was nice,” Kirk said, nuzzling my face with his and causing another flutter to rush through my satiated body.

“Yeah, it was nice,” I said, gazing up into his eyes, which had now gone soft and were looking at me in a kind of wonder.

I came home the next day after an evening during which Kirk had made love to me no less than three times. It was if he were trying to drive home (literally) the fact that I was his and no one else’s. A pretty heady experience, as you can imagine. Not even the rigorous morning I had spent at Ri5e and Shine could dispel the glow I was feeling.

As I rode the bus home from the studio, I realized how foolish I had been to spend money I didn’t have on azalea, plants I didn’t want and steaks I would inevitably render inedible. Kirk loved me. Really loved me. I felt like an idiot for going to such lengths to prove something to myself that I should have already known. And since I knew I’d feel like an even bigger idiot when my Visa bill came, I had resolved to undo some of the damage I had inflicted on myself by returning the azalea. After all, I hadn’t ordered it. I could march it right back to Murray the florist, play the disgruntled consumer and get my money back. It was a simple plan.

Only I hadn’t counted on the Justin factor.

“What the hell have you done!” I yelled when I strolled through the living room, carefully dodging the flowerpots and bags of potting soil that littered the floor only to discover that lovely little azalea on the windowsill now sported a brand-spanking-new flower box in which to spend the rest of its happy little plant life.

Justin poked his head out from the kitchen, where he was apparently creating some other sort of mess, judging by the sound of pots clanging. “Hey, Ange. What’s up?” he said, oblivious to the cause of my distress.

“What’s up?” I asked, gesturing to the brightly colored bush. “You repotted my plant?”

“I think it’s actually a tree, though you could categorize it as a bush. Azalea,” he said, stepping into the living room and gazing fondly at it.

“Why would you do something like that?”

“Why?” He shook his head at me as if I were the clueless one. “Did you see the size of that pot it came in? Poor thing needed room to breathe, to grow. In fact, when I went back down to Murray’s to explain the problem, he gave me this great flower box for free. He’s a pretty nice guy, that Murray.”

My anger exploded. “But I was going to return it to…to Murray!”

“Return it?” he said. “Why the hell would you return such a beautiful—” He stopped then, as if suddenly remembering the circumstances of how this beautiful azalea had come into our lives. His gaze narrowed. “Oh, I get it. Now that this innocent azalea has served as your little.. .ploy—” and he said “ploy” with such disgust, I admit, even I cringed “—you just want to send it back, is that it?”

“It wasn’t a ploy. It was a…a mistake.”

“Why?” he demanded. “Because you didn’t get what you wanted? No pledge of undying love—” then, grabbing my hand with a fury I found surprising for Justin “—no ring?”

“I don’t expect you to understand, Justin.”

“You’re right. I don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t get this sudden desire to be married. I thought you wanted to be an actor.”

“Since when is it against the law for actors to get married?”

He thought about that for a moment. “I dunno. Getting married seems kind of…time-consuming.”

Suddenly the memory of my brother Sonny’s wedding leaped to mind. I remember his then-fiancee,Vanessa, and how she somehow managed to fill her days, her mind, her whole entire life, with choosing everything from the perfect dress to the perfect finger food to serve during the cocktail hour. Hmm…

Then I snapped to my senses. “You don’t have to make the wedding a three-ring circus,” I said.“Besides, I’m…I’m ready to get married. I’ve got a good gig at the moment and—”

“Rise and Shine?” Justin said, eyes bulging.

“It’s TV, isn’t it? Who knows where it could lead to?”

“Maybe a jail term for child abuse. I was looking over those tapes you brought home. Some of the yoga poses you did on that one episode looked…lethal.You sure kids are supposed to bend like that?”

“Okay, smarty-pants, I’d like to see you take your career beyond the odd open mike now and again. Have you even been performing on any of those nights you’ve been spending at the Back Fence? Ever since you left acting, I haven’t seen you do anything to pursue this…this music thing.” I couldn’t call it a dream. I knew Justin’s dream was film—a dream he’d reduced to the somewhat menial job of a grip. And he barely even did that anymore.

When I saw the worried frown descend over Justin’s features,

I immediately regretted that last statement. I didn’t know what had been holding him back lately, but now that he was finally doing something, I didn’t want to quash whatever creative impulses he had left. “I’m sorry, Justin.You know I want to support you in whatever you do. I just wish you would support me…in this thing with Kirk.”

“This ‘thing’? Meaning marriage?”

“Yeah,” I said uncertainly, as his eyes narrowed on me. “Or…whatever.”

“Okay,” he said, “but it’s your funeral.”

In the end, I couldn’t stay mad at Justin, especially after he cooked me an omelette so amazing I felt almost guilty for trying to take the azalea away. I couldn’t believe how attached he’d grown to the bush in such a short time. But then, Justin did seem to form attachments to things the way I formed them to men. Besides, I knew he had a point. Now that I was assured of Kirk’s affections, I felt no pressing need to push the marriage plan any further. I sensed that good things would happen for me in due time, if I just let them.

Michelle, of course, had other ideas.

“You’re going to lose ground if you don’t move on this,” she warned.

I wanted to resist her. I really did. And I would have, if it hadn’t been for the late-night chat Grace and I had on the phone that evening.

“Drew wants me to come look at houses in Westport,” she said when I idly asked what she was doing over the weekend, thinking that I might round her and Drew up for dinner with me and Kirk. I knew that Kirk liked Drew from the rare time when our schedules meshed and we managed to meet up for drinks or a movie. And I figured it wouldn’t hurt to remind Kirk that there were other upwardly mobile men who were not afraid to make some sort of commitment. Because Drew had “marriage and kids” stamped all over him, despite Grace’s protests that it wasn’t happening anytime soon. But I hadn’t realized how soon.