Party Girl: A Novel (27 page)

“What do you feel like doing? Want to take a walk on the beach?” He asks me this like I come over here all the time and determining our nightly plans is simply part of our ritual. Just then, a small dark-haired boy comes barreling into the room and throws himself around Ryan’s legs.

“Hey, you. What’s up?” Ryan says, tousling the kid’s hair. “Want to come walk with Daddy and his friend on the beach?”

The child gazes at me with wide eyes. “I’m Diego,” he announces.

“I’m—”

“Amelia,” Ryan finishes and I’m both impressed by Ryan’s ability to remember and say my name and horrified by how easily impressed I am.

“Hi, Amelia.” Diego scatters out from under his dad’s arm and runs up to me. “Are you going to be spending the night?”

Total silence, and then I force a laugh. Ryan’s the one who should probably be embarrassed by the direction this conversation has taken, so why am I the one blushing? When it becomes clear that I don’t have an answer, Ryan smiles. “Chill out, kid,” he says affectionately. “Where’s Sam?”

Diego yells, “Sa-am!” and a towheaded kid comes scampering into the room. “Are we going out for pizza?” he asks Ryan.

Ryan doesn’t introduce me and I decide that it’s not worth getting offended over not officially meeting a prepubescent. Ryan glances at me and then at the two kids.

“No, we’re going to play ball on the beach,” he says and, even though I’m still stricken with the memory of all those notes I forced my mom to write so that I could get out of P.E. on “Dodgeball Day,” I try to smile. “Right, Amelia?”

Maybe it’s that Ryan’s face is about as familiar to me as my own. Maybe it’s that he’s undeniably sexy. Or maybe I just hoped that a game of ball (football? baseball? who knew?) would calm my nerves ever so slightly. Running around on the beach with a couple of kids could maybe help me forget the fact that I was standing in the home of someone I’d had posters of my entire adolescence or that the guy I was obsessed with—who happened to live mere blocks away—was clearly blowing me off.

“We sure are,” I say, kicking off the platform heels that I’d so carefully selected for this excursion. “Who’s coming?”

“Here you go!” I shriek, tossing an enormous beach ball toward Sam. He catches it, which makes me feel enormously validated, and tosses it back. Next to us, Ryan and Diego kick a soccer ball back and forth.

“Bet you can’t catch it if I throw it really high!” I yell and toss the ball up what I imagine is going to be hundreds of feet in the air only to have it fly about a foot up before flopping to the ground. Sam good-naturedly runs toward me to retrieve it.

“That was lame!” he yells as he scoops the ball up and makes his way back to where he was standing before.

Does Sam know that I’m faking interest in this impromptu beach ball game? Does he understand that I’m self-consciously watching myself try to act cavalier playing nonsensical ball games on the beach with Ryan Duran and two eight-year-olds? Or does Ryan have so many different women over that the sight of a slightly uncomfortable, overly enthusiastic young woman doesn’t even seem like a fact worth noting?

As Sam tosses the ball back in my direction, he doesn’t seem remotely aware of any of the thoughts racing through my brain. He seems intent, actually, on having the ball reach me, and I’m oddly touched by his fervor and the way he’s acting like all of this is all so normal. Inside I’m thinking,
It’s probably not good to be excited about getting validation from an eight-year-old
, but on the outside I think I’m doing a fairly decent job of acting like an all-around beach and sports enthusiast.

Then Diego kicks the soccer ball to Sam, and Ryan walks over to me and grabs my hand. “I’m just trying to tire these guys out so they’ll crash,” he says, and his face cracks into one of his famous, beautiful smiles. “You’re an angel for helping me out here.”

“Are you kidding? I love it,” I say, worrying that my voice sounds fake, even though, at the moment, I feel like I’m telling the truth. He falls down onto the sand, pulls a crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds from his jacket pocket, and starts searching for matches. And even though I don’t have a clue what the hell I’m supposed to be doing or saying, I smile and think,
Ryan Duran called me an angel
, pretending that Adam was somehow walking by and heard it.

“Red or white?” Ryan asks as he glances at the wine menu and then looks up at me. We’re in a casual Italian restaurant down the street from his loft, after having finished the beach ball games and left the kids watching
The Lord of the Rings
at home with a babysitter.

“Neither—I don’t drink,” I say without even pausing to feel self-conscious about it. I’m not sure if that’s because I sense that Ryan doesn’t seem judgmental or because he seems really only focused on himself and probably wouldn’t care.

“That’s cool,” he says, sliding his napkin onto his lap. “I used to be sober, you know.”

Since getting out of Pledges, I’ve run into some people who have casually explained to me that they’re not sober anymore and while none of them have had heroin needles dangling from their arms, I’ve tended to treat the whole concept of “formerly sober” somewhat skeptically.
Nobody ends up here by accident
, people at Pledges say, meaning, like the Hair Club for Men, if you thought you needed sobriety at one point, chances are you still do.
But maybe there are exceptions
, I think as I unfold my napkin and put it on my lap. You never hear about the people who leave and have perfectly wonderful lives where they’re able to drink and do drugs casually. We only learn about the ones who go out, screw it up royally, and come back after having lost everything—or, of course, the people who overdose.

“It just really didn’t work for me,” Ryan is saying. “The whole sponsor thing. Like I really need some asshole telling me what to do? You know?” He focuses his bright green eyes on me, clearly seeking validation of some kind.

“Some sponsors are assholes,” I say, feeling a bit guilty for deriding the program instead of telling him he sounds like he’s trying to justify not being sober anymore. “But some are great. Just like with anything, I guess.”

I’d hoped my statement would show how open-minded, nonjudgmental, positive, and yet realistic I was but once it’s out of my mouth, I realize it sounds pretty inane—a fact I’m even more convinced of when it becomes clear that Ryan isn’t going to say anything in response. I can hear
Just like with anything, I guess
echoing in my brain and I cringe.

Glancing at Ryan, I see he’s examining the menu with serious intent. I gaze at mine, too, but can’t seem to rustle up the same level of concentration. Eating when I’m around a guy who makes me nervous has always been slightly difficult, so I can only assume that getting any food down during this interaction will be out of the question. I used to think being nervous around a guy was good—it meant I really liked someone. But I’d felt the opposite hanging out with Adam that day. I’d felt, cheesy as it sounds, like I’d come home.
Chicken—I’ll just have
whatever the first chicken dish is
, I think as I try to brainstorm possible topics to bring up with Ryan.

Now, it’s always been my firm belief that when two people are eating together, it is the equal responsibility of both parties to contribute to the conversation. Of course, it usually happens naturally—one person says something or asks a question, the other responds, and conversation starts to just unfold—but it’s always annoyed me when I feel like the communication responsibility rests solely on me.
Why the hell doesn’t this long silence make you feel uncomfortable?
I’ve wanted to shriek across the table before.
Don’t you at least feel slightly compelled to
try
to change it?

The waiter comes over. I order chicken marsala, Ryan asks for tortellini and a glass of the house Chianti. I wonder if I should judge him for drinking or be offended that he didn’t not drink because of me, and Ryan sits in what looks to be completely enjoyable silence. I already know that Ryan’s dad was a character actor, his parents divorced when he was young, he dated Maria Bello throughout his twenties and didn’t go to college, so all the
what-did-you-want-to-be-when-you-grew up, what-do-your-parents-do, what-did-you-major-in
types of questions—standard first date fare—would be silly and redundant.

Forcing a conversation about what’s going on in the world would feel just that—forced—and I’m not interested enough in food to start discussing the menu. I am, for one of the first times I can remember, at a complete and utter conversational loss.

And then I feel just the slightest glimmer of hope in him. He could ask me the typical first date questions, or about my column, or about why I decided to get sober. Flooded with sudden optimism, I smile at him. He smiles back and I assume he’s going to ask me something, but instead he takes his index finger and taps the table, then his other index finger and does the same thing. And, before I know it, he’s doing some kind of impromptu drum solo on the table of Café Italiano, clearly grooving to some wild beat inside his head.

“Mmmm, you smell so good,” Ryan says as he breathes in my ear. He’s just finished kissing me, expertly, and we’re looking into each other’s eyes. I’m much more comfortable now than I was at dinner when, in between Ryan’s drum solos, we made allegedly casual conversation about the restaurant, the weather, and the waiter. Of course, there was nothing casual about my end of the conversation—each sentence I tossed out was attached to a prayer that he would respond in a way that would allow me to answer back—but at some point I realized that he didn’t seem to be expecting a lot of scintillating talk, and I relaxed as much as someone who’s in the process of gnawing a cuticle into a bloody stub can be.
Maybe some people just always eat in semi silence
, I started to think. I’ve often speculated that the conversations I have are a thousand times more bizarre or boring or superficial or whatever else my mood tells me they are than the ones everyone else is having. But dinner certainly convinced me that stressing about it wasn’t going to help anything.

After dinner, we’d walked the few blocks back to his loft, during which he grabbed my hand to point out a shooting star and I couldn’t help but see us as a stranger, or a camera, might. Were we secretly being snapped by paparazzi hiding behind sand dunes? Again, I picture Adam walking by right now, seeing us, and kicking himself with regret.

Right at his front door, Ryan had turned his face toward mine and started kissing me. And that’s when the chains that had seemingly been wrapped around my tight shoulders released. I felt comfortable as we kissed, even more so when he told me how good I smell. Maybe he really will be able to replace Adam in my mind.

“Let’s check on the little ones,” he says after we make out for a few minutes, so we go into the media room where we’d left them riveted by
The Lord of the Rings
, and they’re both sound asleep while Elijah Wood pontificates on screen. “Sit,” he says, smiling and pointing to the couch, as he pulls cash out of his pocket and hands it to the babysitter. I find myself aroused by the cool simplicity of his demand. For such a domineering person, I certainly do like to be ordered around sometimes.

So I sit on the couch as Ryan picks up Diego with one hand and Sam with the other to carry them upstairs and I’m simultaneously turned on by both his strength and his fathering skills. Within seconds, he’s back and kissing me even more passionately than before.

And then we’re just lost in the kissing, and I finally feel like I have some control. Sober people have warned me about sober sex and how disorienting it is, but I feel a million times more comfortable making out with Ryan than I did making conversation with him. I compare it to kissing Adam that day and have to admit that this falls short.
I just think that because I’ve known Adam longer
, I tell myself, annoyed that I’m kissing a household name and thinking about a guy who won’t even deign to call me.

I’m concentrating on doing a good job, reasoning that all men seem to like the same things when it comes to kissing: slow, tender, quick pecks at first, followed by openmouthed exploration with the tongue trailing on the upper gum, followed by neck nibbling and ear breathing, with soft moans thrown in for good measure.

Ryan is kissing me back so well that in my light-headedness, I wonder if the reason he’s been so successful in his career is that he’s made out with all of the casting directors. As we kiss and breathe and nibble, all memories of the awkward dinner dissolve. Now
I could talk to him
, I think as I trail my tongue on his upper lip and he softly moans.
But I’m just not willing to stop kissing him long enough to prove it.

Pretty soon, Ryan and I are lying down on the couch and he’s on top of me so that I can feel his full erection through his jeans. He starts moving his hips up and down ever so slightly and, even though one of my least favorite expressions, “dry fucking,” floats through my mind, I don’t stop him. But when he starts unbuttoning my Joie cords, I take his hand and move it away.

“I just don’t feel comfortable going there right now,” I whisper and he nods, but a few seconds later, he goes for the buttons again. When fingers enter my nether region, all rational thought—as well as any ability to say no to anything else—seems to escape me, and I know that having sex with Ryan Duran right now is simply out of the question. I may have run right over here the minute he asked, and be grinding up against him despite the fact that he hasn’t given me any indication that he’s actually interested in anything about me, but I know I’m going to follow the no-fucking-on-the-first-date rule because I’m not willing to screw this up yet.
Cosmo
says that you can give it up after three dates, but I’m harboring some notion that Ryan can be the one who will take my mind off Adam, and I know I’m going to have to strategize if I want to reel him in.
I should probably make him wait three months
, I think, as I breathe in his ear and feel his body shudder. Then his hand is on my cord buttons again, so I move it away and look him in the eye to shake my head.