I'm with Cupid (9 page)

Tanya was praying to God for strength. Trent looked so yummy to her, so completely and totally twelve on a one-to-ten scale of yumminess, that she was worried she'd drag him back to the Roosevelt Hotel, check in under an assumed name, and lose her virginity all over again.

“Trent, um, can you move your knee a little bit?” she said in her baby-girl voice, the voice she could get anything with. Trent obliged, smiling a dopey, love-glazed smile, and moved his knee. The minute his knee disconnected from hers, Tanya felt a cold spot where it had been, an iciness that shot up and down her leg, radiating pain and suffering and loss.

“That better?” he said, still smiling his catatonic love smile. They'd been drowning in a sea of love delirium for a little over a week. Ever since that ride up into the hills, the night Trent offered Tanya his undying love—and a Jamba Juice fiber boost.

“No,” Tanya said, in her pouty little-girl voice—the one she could get anything with. “It's not better, Trent. Can you, like, mash your knee against mine again? Please, oh, please?”

Trent nodded, his mouth hanging open, his eyes misting over in an even foggier blanket of lust, and did as he was told. The minute his knee reconnected with Tanya's, she felt a flush of joy explode from the top of her Imitation of Christ dress to the tips of her Jem + Kim shoes. “Jesus!” she yelped.

Everyone from Anushka on down shot her a look. “Sorry,” she said, looking apologetic. “Just getting a little prayer in before the show starts.”

She closed her eyes and made her lie real.
Jesus
, she silently said to the heavens,
please give me the strength to, like, not be tempted like Eve was in the garden of . . . um . . . wherever that place was. I love Trent—but I also totally love you, Jesus! Even though you, like, wore a robe and bad shoes and weren't as hot as Trent. Trent is, like, totally wearing a hot Tom Ford suit that is totally driving me completely crazy! I'll never ask you anything again, Jesus, I swear! I just want to keep my legs crossed and be a good girl until I'm married—then I can do it all the time! Amen.

She sighed and sat back in her seat, keeping her eyes shut to make sure she wasn't tempted by Trent's stick-straight blond hair, hanging all choppy in front of his sky blue eyes. Or his deep, golden tan that basted him like butterscotch. Or his white, glistening teeth, framed by his kissy, scrumptious, ever-open mouth . . .

“You okay?” he said next to her.

But she wasn't. And she didn't want to answer. She was fighting a tsunami of desire within—and that tsunami was heading for the shore! She tried to banish Trent entirely from her mind, but in an instant he flashed behind her eyelids. First, dressed as he was sitting next to her, all red-carpet hot. Then he appeared outfitted in a cape and mask, swooping down on her like Zorro, with a rose between his teeth and a look of hunger in his eyes. Then she saw him bare-chested, paddling a canoe down the Amazon. Finally, Trent appeared as George of the Jungle, wearing the skimpiest leopard-print thong and yodeling her name as he swung past her on a big vine . . .

“Mother Mary!” Tanya called out again.

She creaked open her eyes. Once again everyone was looking at her. “Okay, Tans,” said Anushka, “enough with the praying. This is the Shrine Auditorium, not Our Lady of Hot Panties!”

Corliss was in a panic. Not only was JB looking at her like she was the Queen of Looney Land because of her inept pass (which he mistook for a chewing gum grab), but she suddenly couldn't find her Harry Winston bracelet! It was two inches wide, so she was completely mystified as to how it could have left her wrist—let alone be nowhere in sight.

She got on her hands and knees in the aisle and began to search. It wasn't exactly a ladylike position, but what could she do when there was $40,000 of gems at stake?

“Nice view, Ms. Meyers,” said JB, speaking to her pink Versace butt.

“Ha-ha-ha!” Corliss laughed way too hard. “It's just my program slipped down here somewhere . . .” She didn't want to tell JB she was about to be arrested for grand larceny. She didn't think that information would bring them any closer to a makeout session.

JB was worried about Corliss, who was crawling on her hands and knees in the row and smiling at him like a crazy person. In fact, she'd been acting weird ever since she'd rolled up to his place in her uncle's chauffeured Bentley.

“You okay, m'lady?” he ventured, then offered her his hand. He helped her back into her seat and she immediately started cracking her knuckles. She was also blinking a lot.

“Need some eyedrops?”

“No, my eyes are wonderful,” she said in the oddly formal voice she'd been using on and off that night. “Never better, in fact. In fact, I'm absolutely a-okay. Whyever do you ask?”

“Um,” said JB, not knowing how far to push it, “because you keep saying things like
whyever
and you were just crawling around in the row on your hands and knees in Versace couture. And now you're smiling at me with big, crazy-person eyes.”

“I am?” she said, smiling with big, crazy-person eyes.

“'Tis true! You look a little like you just got sprung from the Cedars-Sinai psych wing with a fistful of uppers. Something on your mind?”

“No! Nothing at all!” Corliss exclaimed, her eyes growing even wider and blinking even faster. “Just excited that the show is about to begin,” she said, cracking her knuckles again.

“Are you sure?” he said. “I mean, you look like you might be having a seizure. You can tell the Jeebster if something's wrong, ya know. We're old friends at this point, right?”

Corliss bounced up and down in her seat like a toddler who needed to get to the potty. “Of course we are! That's
exactly
what we are—
friends
.”

“Boy, you sure are putting a lot of words in italics,” JB said.

Corliss threw her head back and laughed way too hard again. “HA-HA-HA! Whatever do you mean, JB?” she said, her eyebrows as wild as deranged caterpillars.

JB was mystified by her odd behavior. “What is it, Corliss? You've got the Jeebster a little worried.”

“What is it? I'll tell you!” she whispered into his ear. “The Harry Winston bracelet that Uncle Ross lent me courtesy of his ex-BF Jeremy is stuck on Teri Hatcher's hairpiece!!!”

Sure enough, $40,000 worth of diamonds were dangling off Teri Hatcher's updo.

“What do I do?” said Corliss helplessly.

JB had no idea. He'd never been in such a situation before. The diamond bracelet swung like a mini-chandelier from the top of Teri Hatcher. “Corliss, how on earth did you manage that?!”

“I have no idea! I think I used way too much moisturizer on my arms and the bracelet must have slid off when I was taking my seat!”

The whole episode was a public relations nightmare. There was no delicate way out of the predicament. Corliss couldn't tap Teri Hatcher on the shoulder and embarrass her with such a revelation. Nor could she yank the bracelet from Teri Hatcher's head without doing some serious fake-hair damage—the bracelet had already taken root.

“Okay,” said JB. “I've got a plan. I'll tap Teri Hatcher on the shoulder and distract her with some light conversation. While I'm doing that, you go in and dig out those diamonds. Sound good?”

“Uh-uh,” said Corliss, looking completely overwhelmed.

“Oh, Miss Hatcher?” said JB, tapping Teri Hatcher's shoulder. “I just wanted to tell you how much I admire your work!”

Teri Hatcher turned to thank JB—and Corliss gave a quick tug on the bracelet. Miraculously, it came loose—but with one of Teri Hatcher's ponytails attached.

“Ohmygod!” despaired Corliss, cradling $40,000 worth of diamonds in one hand and hundreds of dollars worth of Hatcher hair in the other. “JB, what do I do with
this
?” She flung the hair in JB's lap as if it were a poisonous spider.

“Well,” he said, looking down at the locks, “my first thought was that you could auction it on eBay, but those days are over for me!”

“This is terrible,
mortifying
. You must think I'm a total nut job . . .”

“Well, you do seem a bit strung out tonight, Cor . . .” Corliss's face fell. “Okay, here's what we do. I brought some bobby pins to keep my hair in place until the forming cream set—”

“You did?” asked Corliss incredulously.

“Little trick my sister taught me.” JB produced the bobby pins. “Now that Teri Hatcher and I are old friends, I'll engage her once again in some back and forth about how faboo she is.”

“You will?” asked Corliss, weakly.

“You'll have to work fast—I'll probably only have her attention for a few seconds, tops.” He handed over the bobby pins and the hair extension. “Can you handle this?”

“Uh, I think.” Corliss looked like she was about to get seriously sick. She fastened three of the bobby pins to the top of the hair extension, then held it up right behind Teri Hatcher's head. “Okay, I'm ready. I guess . . .”

JB nodded and cleared his throat. “Oh, Ms. Hatcher?” he said, tapping her once again on her beautiful shoulder. Teri Hatcher turned and smiled again. Corliss immediately went to work. “I forgot to tell you how I think you're the absolute
bestest best
on the show and how I hope it runs forever!” JB said to the star. Teri Hatcher nodded politely and thanked him yet again. She then turned back in her seat. Behind her, Corliss was still trying to get one good bobby pin securely into the updo. Time seemed to slow. JB watched, as Corliss—with a look of sheer panic on her face—poked and jabbed at Teri Hatcher's head. Her hand was shaking so much, JB wondered if it would slip, taking even more ponytails with it. And then . . .
voilà
. Corliss gave one final thrust, and the ponytail was back on Teri's head. It worked! The ponytail seemed a little precarious—and not as artfully placed as it had been—but it was in there, nestled among the rest of the Hatcher hair.

“JB, I'm totally wrung out,” said Corliss, panting as she tried to catch her breath. “I don't know how to thank you. That could have been the end of my career! Not to mention the end of our, er, ‘hanging out.' But it's not,
is
it?”

“Uh, no, Cor. There's nothing I like more than a friend in emotional freefall on one of Hollywood's biggest nights.” He laughed to make her feel better, but he kinda half-meant it.
What's going on with her?
he wondered.

Trent knew everyone was staring at him and Tanya, but he didn't care. He was in deep—way deep. He got up in the morning and he thought about Tanya. He went to bed at night and thought about Tanya. He picked sand out of his bellybutton and thought about Tanya. He bent over to try and tie his flip-flops and thought about Tanya.

“I, like, think about you, like, all the, like, time,” he said for the tenth time that evening. Tanya's face was a mask of delirious happiness. “Sometimes I even, like, think about how much I think about you and then I'm, like, whoa, that's a lot.”

“Trent,” she said dreamily, “you can't possibly think about me as much as
I
think about me.”

But he did. He thought about Tanya so much he was losing the little bit of mind he had. Mostly he was thinking about Tanya taking a bubble bath . . . or Tanya washing his Cruiser with a big, sudsy sponge in slow motion . . . or Tanya opening a gigantic bottle of champagne that sprayed all over her white T-shirt as she giggled and writhed . . .

He was a red-blooded American surfer, for God's sake. Or at least he played one on TV. He had needs. Tanya had to have needs, too.
Why is she holding out on me
, he wondered. Then his mind started to wander . . . maybe she
wasn't
holding out on him. Maybe she was getting her needs met elsewhere . . . Before she was revirginized, she'd had quite a time doing everyone within firing range. Maybe she was up to her old tricks!

Trent's blood boiled as his head filled with adulterous scenarios. He squinted down the row at Rocco. Then he looked two rows over at Justin Chambers. Then turned his head and stared back a couple rows, narrowing his eyes at Raven-Symoné.
With Tanya's past,
Trent thought,
she could be doing any of them.

Then it hit him like a coral reef. The only way to banish such jealous thoughts from his head and get a piece of some hot Tanya action was to marry her! That way they could do it morning, noon, and night—with Jesus's approval!

Sweat burst from his forehead. He knew he couldn't think too much about it; whenever he thought too much about anything, the space behind his eyeballs hurt. The lights in the theater started going down. The conductor raised his baton, and the orchestra started playing the overture. Trent waited for a minute or two but then he just couldn't hold it in any longer. He just had to kick it out and see what happened. “YOU WANNA MARRY ME OR WHAT?!” he shouted at the top of his voice.

At that precise moment the orchestra took a dramatic ten-second pause.

Every head in the row flicked Trent and Tanya's way as the castmates gasped in unison. Tanya was stone-still at first and then finally muttered an answer—but the music started up again and drowned her out. “What'd you say?” shouted Trent over the horn section.

“I said,” Tanya said, shouting back loud enough for her entire row to hear, “can I give you an answer at the commercial break?”

A cavernous white tent had been stretched between the blue and green ocean-liner-sized buildings of the Design Center. Twirly neon chandeliers hung from rafters, swooping down among the crowd of Emmy-goers as they arrived at the party. An army of waiters in powder blue aprons moved stealthily among the crowd with trays of Wolfgang Puck appetizers: tuna tataki with wasabi whipped cream, smoked salmon with Iranian caviar, black and green tapenade with goat cheese crostini.