The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (12 page)

There was no holiday Los Angeles took more seriously than Halloween. Which was why, in many ways, New Year’s Eve, the second most popular holiday in Los Angeles, was considerably more fun for everybody involved. Like clockwork, a hysterical optimism took over the city, with every model, former comedian, musician, and accounting partner alike believing that the coming year would be the one in which everything they had previously hoped for in the current year would HAPPEN! in caps and with a big exclamation mark.

2011 was also the year that Risa, Sharita, and Thursday would all be turning thirty, so their hopes and dreams were kicked into overdrive by the prospect of another full decade of their lives having passed them by.

“Your thirties are going to be so great,” Tammy, who was thirty-two, assured them throughout 2010. “I remember this calm coming over me when I turned thirty. I didn’t feel anxious anymore like I used to in my twenties. And I became so much more accepting of my flaws.”

“What flaws are you talking about, exactly?” Thursday asked her. Life was Tammy’s silver platter: she had looks, millionaire money, a spokesmodel job for a worldwide brand, and such a friendly, upbeat personality that it was hard for Thursday to begrudge her the first three—even though Tammy had never worked particularly hard to receive any of them.

“Oh, I have them,” Tammy said with a tinkling laugh. “I just don’t dwell on them. That’s why I think my thirties have been going so well. You’ll see.”

Back then, Thursday had answered Tammy’s optimistic prediction with the most cynical of “harrumphs.” But when December 31st rolled around, even Thursday, who had recently grown despondent about her career, allowed herself to get caught up in the mass delusion that was a New Year’s Eve spent in Los Angeles.

However, as much as their group enjoyed being on the same hopeful page at this time of the year, they found themselves in a familiar quandary every December 31st. They loved each other, but they all had rather different versions of what they preferred to do on New Year’s Eve.

Thursday usually went to a party at someone’s eastside apartment, where she ended up talking all night with her fellow NYU grad school friends, who didn’t dance, didn’t do any drugs heavier than pot, and who wouldn’t even think of throwing a party without plenty of red wine and gourmet cheese on hand.

Risa, however, would slit her wrists before agreeing to attend some boring grown-up party on New Year’s Eve. She liked to be on stage at midnight, leading the crowd in the countdown before ripping into an electric version of “Auld Lang Syne.”

Tammy, on the other hand, could most often be found at a sophisticated party on New Year’s Eve. Her sister was married to a jazz club owner, and tonight she would don an evening gown and attend the swanky ball that he threw every year, raising her champagne glass with the rest of the well-heeled crowd at midnight.

Sharita preferred to stay home on New Year’s Eve. She ordered in from her favorite Italian restaurant, made a list of next year’s goals, and (here was the really fun part) wrote an action plan to achieve those goals. Unlike Risa and Thursday, she didn’t believe that “putting it out there to the Universe” was enough to get the job done. Most nights she went to bed by nine or ten,
so if she stayed up long enough to see Ryan Seacrest countdown to the Times Square ball-drop on New Year’s Eve, she considered it a wild enough night.

Accordingly, the four women had made a tradition of catching lunch and a matinee movie at the ArcLight Cinemas in Hollywood on New Year’s Eve. That year, after watching a matinee of
Tangled,
the only movie they could even partially agree on, they gathered upstairs at the ArcLight’s informal restaurant/bar and ordered champagne for a New Year’s Eve Day toast.

“You’re Tam Farrell, right?” A tall woman with an asymmetrical bob, dressed all in black, approached their table. Her monochrome clothing choice and direct demeanor screamed New Yorker on vacation.

Tammy, who had been featured on billboards all over NYC and L.A., her honey-blonde hair happily blowing in the wind while she hailed a cab, confirmed that it was she.

“Ooh, I love Farrell Cosmetics. That’s all I use. Your family makes the best stuff.”

Tammy thanked her for the compliment even though technically her family didn’t make the “stuff.” They’d sold the company to a French conglomerate years ago, but the buyout went off so seamlessly that unless one was in the habit of reading the business section, most of Farrell Cosmetic’s customers still didn’t realize that there had been an exchange of ownership.

“And can I also tell you how pissed I was when they replaced you with Naki Okwelo? I mean, you’re like American royalty. These African models keep taking all the fashion jobs.”

Tammy, who had been feeling as if a tiara had been ripped off her ever since her brother, James Farrell, the new head of marketing at Farrell Cosmetics, had taken her to dinner three months ago and informed her that they would be going in a different, younger direction and therefore wouldn’t be needing her services anymore, lowered her eyes.

“Naki is gorgeous, and we’re lucky to have her,” she said with as much demure humility as she could dredge up from her jealous soul.

The woman thankfully left after a few more awkward exchanges and reassurances that Tammy would always be the face of Farrell Cosmetics in her mind. And when Tammy turned back to the table, she found her three friends staring at her.

“When the hell did you get fired from Farrell Cosmetics?” Risa asked.

“August,” Tammy said. “And it’s fine. It was time for me to pursue other things.”

“Wait,” Risa said. “You got fired in August and you’re just now telling us about it?”

“Don’t be mad, Risa,” Tammy said. “You know I don’t like being gloomy.”

Her explanation was met with stunned silence, everyone at the table intensely aware that none of them had ever known Tammy as anything but the face of Farrell Cosmetics.

Tammy couldn’t bear their looks, which were just a few shades away from pity. She rushed to fill the silence with her personal brand of optimism and sunshine. “Plus, I didn’t see any reason to tell you until I had something positive to take away from the experience. And now I do. I’ve decided to transition into acting, I’ve already booked my first spot, and it’s a national one, for a Verizon commercial. Really, I’m so excited about my future right now.”

The waiter showed up with their champagne then, and as he poured, Thursday regarded Tammy with open admiration. Only Tammy would lose a job she’d held for over a decade and spin it into a silver lining. She wondered why she herself couldn’t ever do that, why she considered jumping off a roof every day now because of her latest career setback, and she quietly resolved not to daydream about killing herself in 2011, to be happier, more optimistic, more like Tammy.

Sharita, on the other hand, made a mental note not to tell her sister, Nicole, who had taken considerable loans to go to grad school at Yale, that Tammy, a former model with no acting experience whatsoever, had booked an ad for the same company that rejected her sister. But out loud, she said to Tammy, “I’m proud of you, girl.”

“Thanks,” Tammy answered.

“While we’re on the subject I’ve got some good news, too,” Risa said. “The A&R guy at Gravestone sent my version of ‘Party Hard’ to some music supervisor he knows and now they’re using it for a teen movie starring one of those kids from some CW show.”

“Which one?” Sharita, their television expert, asked. “
Gossip Girl
?
Vampire Diaries
?
90210
?
Hellcats
?
Smallville
?”

“Yeah, one of those,” Risa said. She watched sci-fi with Sharita, pretty much everything on HBO and Showtime, and sometimes a few DVRed episodes of the Nick Jr. show
Yo Gabba Gabba!
when she got home from bartending, so she had no idea what Sharita was talking about.

Before Sharita could press her further, Thursday chimed in with, “I’ve also got some good news and … some weird news. The good news is Caleb and I have been dating for three months, so you guys can meet him.”

Thursday didn’t believe in introducing a boy to her friends if she hadn’t been dating him for at least three months, and since she used to be a serial one-month stander this meant her friends had yet to meet anyone she’d ever dated. “Since I’m turning thirty next month, I’m going to throw a party at my place and you all can come out and meet him. That means you, too, Sharita.”

Sharita’s eyes widened. “It’s your birthday. Of course I’ll come.”

“I’m going to remember you said that,” Thursday said.

“You should get her to write it down. Like a contract,” Risa said.

Sharita swatted Risa’s shoulder. “Okay, I’m not that bad. I said I’d come, and I’ll be there.”

“I believe you,” Tammy said.

“Thank you,” Sharita told her with pointed looks at both Thursday and Risa. “Why can’t ya’ll be more like Tammy?” Then, before they could answer with something snide, or worse, true, she said, “Moving on, what’s the weird news, Day?”

Thursday fiddled with the stem of her champagne glass. “I kind of don’t know how to bring this up, so I guess I’ll just say it quick. This actorslash-producer approached me last month because he’s planning to do a biopic about my dad, and I told him I wasn’t interested in it because of, you know, me hating Rick T and all that. But he kept on calling me. And finally, he straight up offered me ten thousand dollars just to read the script and give him my notes. Which is great. I have no problems unleashing on a script about my father, and I could really use the money to put a dent in my NYU loans.”

Thursday averted her eyes so that she wouldn’t have to look at Tammy as she said the next thing. “Only thing is, it’s Mike Barker making the movie, so … ”

She trailed off and peeked sideways at Tammy.

“My ex, Mike Barker, is producing a film about your father?” Tammy asked.

“I know, crazy, right? You two broke up before I met you, but I don’t want to go there if it’s going to mess up our friendship.”

Sharita and Risa’s eyes ping-ponged between Thursday and Tammy. Thursday’s weird news entered a rather gray area of Girlfriend Law. In the real world outside of Los Angeles, it was somewhat implicitly understood that one didn’t date, work with, or really do anything whatsoever with a good friend’s ex. But in the City of Angels, getting paid for entertainment work trumped all. For example, if Tammy got an offer to star in a Rick T video, she would have Thursday’s blessing. But in this case, neither Sharita nor Risa knew how Tammy would respond to the prospect of Thursday working with Mike Barker.

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Tammy plastered on a gentle smile. “Don’t worry. Mike is so far in the past, and it’s a new day.”

Thursday let out a full-body sigh of relief. “Thank you for being so cool about this.”

Tammy answered with a weak trill of laughter that didn’t sound at all authentic to either Sharita or Risa. “It’s not like you two are dating or anything. Right? Hahaha …”

Thursday screwed up her nose. “I would never, ever do that,” she said. “I mean he’s hot or whatever. But he’s, like, zero percent substance. And he’s dumb. And he’s an actor. And he’s playing my dad in a movie. And didn’t he used to be some kind of gambling addict? Eww.”

Not until she was putting all of her vocal might into the word “eww” did Thursday realize that putting down Tammy’s ex might verge on putting down Tammy for having dated him in the first place, which caused her to get embarrassed all over again.

But Tammy, who had been raised to remain Southern and graceful under any situation, said, “I wish I’d seen all that bad stuff you see when I met him for the first time.” She shook her head. “Seriously, it is no big deal. You have my blessing and my best wishes.”

Thursday tipped her glass toward Tammy. “Thank you. My bank account thanks you. My college loan company thanks you—”

This was where Sharita cut her off. “Don’t use the money to pay off your college loans. That’s good debt and you’re not paying that much in interest. Get rid of your credit card debt first, and if you have anything left over after that, put the rest into a rainy-day fund.”

“Good advice,” Thursday said, not because she agreed, but because she had learned over the years that agreeing with Sharita was the only way to stop a stream of unsolicited money advice.

Tammy asked then, “Sharita, do you have any good news? How’s it going with Mark?”

“Marcus,” Sharita said, putting her BlackBerry away. “And it’s going really great, except …” She trailed off.

“Except what?” Thursday asked, sitting forward.

“Except we’re kind of in a rut.”

“Already?” Risa said. “You’ve only been dating for, like, two weeks, right?”

“Six weeks,” Sharita said. “And we see each other all the time. In fact, we saw each four times last week. The only thing is we don’t ever go out anywhere.”

“Oh, you need to dump him,” Thursday said.

“I KNEW you would say that. That’s why I didn’t even want to tell you.”

“If he’s not acting enthusiastic about you, you need to dump him. That’s, like, all of chapter five in
The Awesome Girl’s Guide
.”

“Please stop quoting that book to me, and I’m not a big going-out person anyway.”

“Then why did you describe it as a rut?” Risa asked.

“Because I wouldn’t mind going out to eat or something every once in a while. Lately he’s been coming over to my house and just kind of laying there on the couch while I cook us something, then we watch TV and go to sleep.”

Risa laughed. “You’re already that domesticated and you’ve only been dating for six weeks? Why didn’t you tell me you were a lesbian?”

“Not really, because most lesbians still go out to eat, right?” Sharita frowned into her champagne glass, her initial defensiveness cross-fading into mild despondency.

But Tammy came to the rescue. “Hey, guys, let’s not worry about men or jobs or money for the rest of the day, okay? The point is that 2011 is going to be our Best Year Ever. I can feel it in my bones. Who’s with me?”

Sharita couldn’t resist Tammy’s happy smile. “I am,” she said, raising her glass.