Engaging Men (19 page)

Still, I reined in my joy and suggested instead we celebrate at Jimmy Chen’s—that Chinese restaurant a few blocks from

Kirk’s apartment we often frequented when a hunger for ginger chicken and pork lo mein overtook us. After all, I told Kirk, it wasn’t as if there were any contract signed yet. Nothing was definite.

But as I sat over a plate of ginger chicken later that night while Kirk poured me yet another glass of wine—not a usual choice for us at Jimmy’s, but we were celebrating—I felt as if my life had taken definition.

And I realized how much definition when Kirk gazed at me happily over our half-finished meal and said, “Everything’s coming together. As soon as I get this proposal in to Norwood, I could have the major client I need to get my company off the ground. And if you get this contract, Noodles, that could mean big money.”

“Yes,” I agreed, thinking of my recent expenditures and realizing big money might be just what I needed.

Then Kirk looked at me, his gaze somewhat shy. “With the regular hours and all, I imagine it’s not a bad gig to have while raising a…a family.” He blushed at his words, and it suddenly occurred to me that he was not thinking any family, but our family. And by the way he was looking at me, it seemed like he was ready to get started on those babies right now.

Oh God. This was serious, I realized, staring at him and attempting to plaster a smile over my stricken features. Suddenly it occurred to me that Kirk’s lid had not been properly...child-proofed. He was not only thinking marriage, he had already moved ahead to babies.

I should have been ecstatic.

Instead, I felt ...scared.

Which was probably why I found myself in Grace’s apartment the following night, after the kind of warm couple-y weekend at Kirk’s that could convince any woman she’d be happy going down in TV history as the limber, cheerful host of a borderline wacko exercise show and, judging by how much of that couple time Kirk spent bent over his computer, the wife of a leading software entrepreneur.

Almost happy anyway.

Now, as I sat anxiously chewing the ice cubes in the rocks margarita Grace had promptly served me when I arrived (I had

sucked down the drink while telling her about my meeting at Rise and Shine), my little facade of happiness fell apart. Helped along by Grace, of course. I should have expected it from my best friend. Even Justin had been hesitant to endorse my latest career leap when I’d told him about it yesterday. But then, Justin never did endorse my whole Rise and Shine routine anyway.

“You don’t have to sign the contract, Ange,” she said, studying my now-empty glass as she sat on the sofa across from me. “Maybe this is a sign that you should move on. Weren’t you telling me a couple of months ago that you missed auditioning?”

“No one misses auditioning, Grace. That’s like missing a toothache. I mean, does any actor like spending hours learning a character’s motivations, right down to the smallest gesture, only to stand in front of the casting director and be told that your eyebrows are a quarter inch too thick to carry the character?” (Yes, this really happened to me. I’ve been waxing ever since.)

“I mean acting, Ange. You told me yourself you were only going to do Rise and Shine long enough to make the TV credit matter. It’s been over six months now. Maybe you ought to put yourself out there again.”

I shivered involuntarily. Because if the thought of spending my life in a yellow leotard was scary, the idea of subjecting myself to the scrutiny of casting agents again was positively frightening.

“Kirk thinks it’s a good career move for me,” I said. “In fact, when we were talking about it over dinner on Friday night, he started talking about...about how perfect it would be for when we…we started having...kids.”

“Wow,” she said, her eyes widening. “He made a three-sixty, huh? I didn’t think Kirk was even ready to get married.”

“Of course he’s ready,” I replied defensively.

“But the question is,” she said, taking my empty glass and standing, “are you ready?”

As Grace headed off to the kitchen to refresh our drinks, I felt a new resolve fill me. Of course I was ready to get married. I was thirty-one years old. I was practically living with an adorable, ambitious man, a man who wanted to father my future children.

Oh God. Children. Did I even want to have children? Had I even thought about children? Oh yeah, I thought about them. Thought about them every weekday morning for at least a half an hour. Of course, after half an hour, I was always free to go home and leave said children behind. Whereas if I had children of my own…

Oh God, oh God, oh God…

“Are you okay?” Grace said, returning, drinks in hand, and staring at me in confusion.

“I’m fine!” I said, a little too quickly. I didn’t want to examine the fear pervading my system at the moment. I was supposed to be happy. Happy. Happy. Happy. ‘m just...tired,“ I said finally, averting my eyes. And I realized it was true. It wasn’t easy making your whole future happen over the course of a few short weeks.

“I’ve got something to perk you up,” she said, putting our drinks down on the table and disappearing into the bedroom.

She returned with a shopping bag overflowing with clothes and plopped it on the floor in front of me. “I did a little closet cleaning. You can have whatever fits you.”

Normally the sight of designer hand-me-downs from Grace did my heart good. But not this time. There were just too many—and it made me suspicious. Because the only time Grace did away with this much clothing was when she was trying to exorcise some thing… or more specifically, someone.

“What’s going on, Grace?” I demanded, suddenly forgetting my own fears in the face of my suspicions.

“Nothing.” This time it was she who averted her eyes.

Suddenly it occurred to me how unusual it had been to find Grace home alone tonight. She had been spending so much time with Drew it seemed like he had practically moved in. I glanced quickly at the pretty brass coatrack by the door, where Drew’s cashmere coat had hung since he’d left it there during the last warm days of the winter before. The rack was bare.

“Where’s Drew?”

She met my gaze head-on. “I haven’t a clue. And I couldn’t care less.”

“Grace!”

“Don’t start, Ange—” she warned.

“Don’t start?” I replied, exasperated. After all, Drew was the best guy to ever happen to Grace. Not that Grace didn’t get great guys all the time, she just never hung on to them as long as she had hung on to Drew. I had thought that maybe this time, Grace had found someone real.

“I thought we were getting married!” I burst out. “You and me both, taking the plunge together.”

She snorted at that. Actually snorted.

“Why is wanting to spend your life with someone such a foreign concept?” I said. “I mean, Drew is a good guy. Kind. Generous. Financially stable. And hot!” I added, remembering all those ribald tales Grace had told of his prowess in the sack.

She shrugged, then looked me in the eye. “He wasn’t the one.”

I felt all my insides deflate as that truth hit home. “But how do you know?” I asked, my own uncertainties rearing up once more.

“A woman just knows,” she said simply.

This statement bothered me all the way home from Grace’s, especially since she refused to elaborate on her breakup, focusing instead on those designer hand-me-downs until she had dug out the only items that might fit me: two tops that hadn’t been stretched out of shape by her larger bust and a pair of pants that had lost two inches off the length in the wash. But my new wardrobe additions couldn’t take my mind off her words, even as she practically shoved me out the door, saying, for the umpteenth time, that there wasn’t anything to discuss. Nothing to discuss? How often had I been certain of anyone the way I had thought Grace was certain about Drew?

My mind immediately settled on Vincent. Vincent, to whom I had pledged my undying love at age sixteen. Vincent, who had been so sure, even after I came home from my first semester at college with a new boyfriend in tow, that we were meant to be. “You’ll date those other guys,” he told me with the same fierce intensity that had once caused me to fall madly in love with him, “but you’ll marry me.”

A part of me had even believed it. Up until the day my mother called me at school to tell me Vincent Salerno had just gotten engaged.

See what I mean? This was a man I once believed was my soul mate. Whom I once asked, in a moment of newly spent passion, what he would do if I died. (I was seventeen at the time, I could be forgiven the melodramatics.) He had replied, with the solemnity of a young man who had just experienced his first simultaneous orgasm, that he would die, too.

I hadn’t asked for logistics. Hadn’t needed them. I only needed to know he was it. The man I would go through time with.

I didn’t have time to ponder if Kirk was that man. I had to keep things in perspective. After all, as things stood now, he was simply the man I would go to Massachusetts with. And that was all a girl could really expect at thirty-one, right? The party was over.

According to Colin, however, the party had just begun. “Angie, that is fantastic,” he said the next morning when I relayed my conversation with Kirk to him after we had both donned our workout clothes and stood waiting for Rena to finish a phone call so we could begin taping.

“Yeah,” I replied with a smile, feeling the first rush of excitement since my dinner with Kirk. I couldn’t help but get excited, with Colin beaming at me as if I had just been offered a lead opposite Mel Gibson. But, as Colin pointed out, I had been offered a lead of sorts—I had, for a change, a starring role in my own life. So why did I feel like William Shatner probably did in the later seasons of Star Trek—trapped?

“I guess this means you’re not going to be the mother of my children?” Colin joked, referring to the pact we had made over breakfast one morning when he was lamenting that he would never find anyone, in the entire gay community of NYC, who wanted children as much as he did. At the time, it seemed safe enough to offer up my own eggs in the event I didn’t marry and have children of my own.

Just then an earsplitting wail shattered the room, and Colin and I looked up to see our tiny tumblers filing into the studio.

And one of them—a diminutive redheaded girl in a purple leotard—was clearly not happy.

Studying that bunched-up little face as the girl yanked herself forcefully out of her mother’s grasp, I wondered, exactly, what kind of crazed instinct had driven me to promise Colin such a thing.

Or if I could make such a promise to Kirk.

“I hate you!” the girl declared now, and was just about to throw herself onto the floor in a tantrum, much to her mother’s horror, when Rena popped out of her office and, with a clap of her hands, declared, “Positions, everyone!”

I watched with something close to admiration as Rena, zeroing in on the little girl, stepped gracefully yet decisively on her dancer’s feet over to the mother in question. Saw the confidence with which she spoke in hushed yet forceful tones to the mother as she gestured to the child, who was now writhing on the floor in what looked like pure agony. I was thoroughly amazed at how swiftly the mother scooped up the still-screaming child and hauled her out of the studio. By the time Rena turned to the remaining children, now lined up in neat little rows before Colin and me, her smile was back in place. “Shall we begin then?”

I decided, right then and there, if I ever did have children, I would need an army of Renas to manage them.

But I didn’t have time to contemplate a frightful future of squalling children, because the music had begun…

Wake up, wake up…

My heart sank, right along with my body, as I bent into the opening stretch.

It’s time to come alive…

Suddenly my legs were like lead, and I felt a decided tremor in them as I pulled back up again, my arms going mechanically over my head to reach for the sun, which was, in this case, a beaming spotlight that somehow seemed hotter than usual on this fine summer morning.

Wake up, wake up! the Barney clone intoned once more, as I felt sweat begin to pop out, on my forehead, my arms, my legs…

It’s time to rise and shine!

By the time we got through the half-hour segment, I was shining everywhere. And it had nothing to do with the workout.

I called Grace from my cell phone on my way home from the studio, whether out of fear for her state of mind post-Drew, or my own, I wasn’t sure. But I only got her secretary, who told me Grace was in meetings all day.

“Um, this is her friend, Angela?” I said, hoping this might cause the young woman to realize I was someone who might warrant calling Grace out of her alleged meetings.

“Okay, I’ll tell her you called,” she said cheerfully before she hung up.

I sighed, though I wasn’t surprised. This was the way Grace handled every breakup—alone. I should have been used to it. Only I needed her now. I knew it was selfish, but after my morning at Rise and Shine I needed someone to tell me I was doing the right thing by taking my relationship with Kirk to the next level.

Then it occurred to me that Grace would be the last person who would encourage me when it came to marriage and— gulp—children. Especially now.

But there was someone who I knew would come down solidly in the marriage camp, no matter what doubts I was having.

“This is big, Ange. Big, I tell you,” Michelle replied. “His lid is off. I wouldn’t be surprised if he buys you a ring the minute you guys get back to New York. Once he sees how much his family adores you, the whole marriage thing will just be a given.”

“But his family liked Susan, his last girlfriend,” I countered, wondering why it was suddenly so important to argue the other side.

Michelle shook her head, as if I still wasn’t getting it. “Susan was the lid loosener. Haven’t you been paying attention to me all this time?”

“Lid loosener?” Roberta said, strolling in from the bathroom. “What are we talking about?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’d like to know. You lost me there, Del-grosso,” Doreen said, turning in her chair to join the conversation.