The Awesome Girl's Guide to Dating Extraordinary Men (30 page)

Mike smiled at me then, full wattage, putting all of his movie star looks behind it. And I would have liked to have remained myself, the woman that didn’t fall for any of the famous-people tricks because I had grown up with one. But I had just been dumped. And the nicest thing a guy like Mike could bestow on someone like me at a moment like that was the gift of his smile, which even I had to admit was totally gorgeous.

I smiled back at him.

“Look at us,” he said. “We’re smiling at each other.”

“Yeah, I know, crazy, right?”

“I like your dimples. Do me a favor and keep on smiling, okay?”

“Okay,” I said, though suspicion started to creep into my smile.

“I didn’t apologize on your machine because that isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can leave on somebody’s voicemail. I felt like I owed you an in-person.”

“Okay,” I said, still smiling. “As long as we’re being honest, I shouldn’t have cussed you out in Catalina. I was tired and hungry and I wasn’t exactly in my right mind.”

“This is really good,” Mike said. “Now don’t stop smiling when I say this next thing.”

He didn’t wait for me to agree to his request before continuing. “I’ve been thinking about what you said, and the thing is, you were right about the script. It’s not where it needs to be. And I’ve been meeting with other writers, trying to figure out how to fix it, but I keep on coming back to one solution: you need to write it.”

I immediately stopped smiling. “I assume you’re joking.”

He maintained eye contact even though I was now staring at him like he was insane. “Hear me out,” he said. “You have an MFA in dramatic writing, right?”

“Yeah, but my thesis was a sitcom pilot,” I reminded him.

“Okay, understood, but I’ve worked with a lot of dramatic screenwriters since getting serious about my career, and the one thing I’ve noticed is that the great ones also have a great sense of humor. I think you have a great sense of humor, too. I mean, your delivery sucks, but your content—that’s on point. And, quiet as it’s kept, comedy is way harder than drama.”

I believed that myself. It was easy to pull on people’s strings and make them cry, but making people laugh, now that was a whole different level of effort. Still … “You would hate my version of my father’s life,” I said. “You wouldn’t be able to handle playing a dick.”

Mike shook his head. “I don’t think you hate your father as much as you think you do.”

I gave him a frank look that said he was wrong about that.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay, say that you really do hate him and you write a script where he’s a total villain. Then I’ll play him that way. Denzel Washington got an Oscar for playing a bad guy. If that’s my path, then that’s my path. But I don’t think that’s how this is going to go down. I think you’re going to write this script, and I think you’re going to tell the truth, and I think the truth is going to set you free.”

I stared at him. Stared at this idiot who was sitting next to me, daring to psychoanalyze me and my writing, even though he didn’t know either. And whatever sunshine he had brought into the getting-dumped-by-Caleb situation with his movie-star smile disappeared. “Fine,” I said. “I want the Writer’s Guild standard for writing the script.”

“I’ll give you twenty thousand, and if my production company can get it green-lit, then I’ll give you the standard on top of your upfront fee.”

I thought about that offer, which was actually halfway decent for an unproven screenwriter. Then I thought about my current homelessness. “You probably have a big house, right? One of those splashy mansions?”

Mike’s eyes narrowed. “Yeah, and … ?”

“I need a place to stay until I can find a new apartment.”

“I thought …”

“He dumped me,” I said. “As it turned out, he was in love with my old roommate, so he dumped me, like, fifteen minutes before you showed up. And I came out here to commit suicide by throwing myself over the railing, but then I couldn’t do it, so I tried to go back into the apartment to get my things, and that’s when I discovered that I had locked myself out.”

Mike whistled. “Wow.”

“Yeah, it’s been a hell of a day.”

“So when this locksmith comes, you’re not going to try to burn the place down or trash it or anything like that, right? Because that’s the kind of stuff that would land me in the tabloids.”

“That’s actually a really good idea,” I said. “But I don’t think I have the energy. I’m just going to pack. But seriously, can I crash with you?”

So that was how I came to be living in the pool house behind Mike Barker’s mansion.

It wasn’t so bad. No TV, but at least I had Wi-Fi this time, unlike on Catalina. When I fell into bed that first night, a tiny sliver of hope started to radiate underneath my demolished heart. Maybe I would wake up the next morning and feel better about myself and my future.

But instead, I had a nightmare about throwing myself off of the MTS roof, even though I didn’t work there anymore. Only Risa, Sharita, and my sister attended my funeral, because Tammy was mad at me for moving in with Mike Barker. And directly after the service, Caleb and Abigail got married in front of my coffin.

I awoke, my brain racing, my heart feeling like a dead gray thing in my chest. I had heard people talking about things that kept them awake at night. But I had never truly understood that idiom until I woke up at three in the morning afraid to go back to sleep, because I never, ever wanted to have another dream like that. This thing Caleb and Abigail had done, it was going to keep me awake at night. Tonight and maybe every night into the foreseeable future. And I didn’t even want to think about where I was at the moment.

First of all, as the fact that Mike Barker had sold Tammy out for money had proven, he was a liar. He would never play my father as he really was. And second of all, even if he was willing to, he would never get it green-lit, because Rick T was a rap idol. No studio exec would want to give Mike millions of dollars to play Rick T as a ridiculous narcissist. Third of all, twenty thousand wouldn’t last me very long, especially after 1099 deductions. When Mike kicked me out of his pool house, I’d still need to find a new soul-killing job and, worse, I’d actually have to do it without the fun option of suicide to get me through the day.

Fourth of all, how was I going to explain the Mike Barker situation to Tammy? I had promised not to have any further contact with him. And when Risa called me two days later and said the exact words “You need to stay the fuck away from Mike Barker,” I had promised again that I wouldn’t take any more of his calls. But now I was living in his pool house.

Fifth of all, was there something wrong with even the best version of me that Caleb had been able to toss me away so easily?

Sixth of all, was anybody else ever going to love me again?

Seventh of all, was I going to be wandering around directionless for the rest of my life? Because if that was the case, the rest of my life was going to suck. Really suck …

I sobbed into my pillow. I missed Caleb, missed having someone stable in my life who I could depend on. Just the thought of having to start dating all over again made me cry harder.

In between my racking sobs, I heard a noise. A
thump-thump-thump
. Somebody knocking on the door, I realized after a few moments.

“Who is it?” I asked, my voice still wet from the crying.

“Ah … it’s me. Mike. I came down for a swim and I heard you crying.”

Obviously this day didn’t want to end until it had wrung every bit of humiliation that it possibly could out of this situation.

“Sorry,” I said, trying to get my tears in check. “Sorry for interrupting your swim.”

“Do you want something to drink? I have a poolside bar. Fully stocked.”

I hadn’t known how very badly I wanted a drink until he offered me one.

“Okay.” I pulled on some sweatpants to go underneath my Smith College T-shirt. Then I stepped into the cool October evening and found Mike right outside my door … wearing a purple sarong around his waist.

Mike wasn’t skinny like Caleb. And he wasn’t completely ripped, either, like he’d been back in his younger days. Still, there was something
about him under the fairy lights that surrounded the pool. He seemed so confident, so comfortable in his own skin. Seriously, how many guys could pull off a sarong with a straight face?

I followed him over to the poolside bar, which had large tiki lights running across the top. As promised, it was fully stocked.

“What do you want?” he asked, walking behind the bar.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Wine?”

He grabbed a bottle of some red wine with a white label and uncorked it with an electric bottle opener. “Cabernet okay?” he asked, because he was the kind of guy who asked if things were okay after he did them. The kind of guy who got women to agree to cabernet even when they, like me, preferred shiraz.

“Mike Barker gets what he wants,”
I remembered Tammy saying just a few weeks ago.

“I don’t need the glass.” I took the bottle from him and took three large swigs straight from the head. Then I said, “You don’t have to stay here with me. You can go have your swim.”

He took the wine bottle from me and poured his cabernet, which he preferred over shiraz, into a wineglass of his own. “I could, but that might be a little weird for you. I swim naked.”

He didn’t look at me when he said this, but somehow it felt to me like he was staring at me. Staring at me hard.

A certain electricity rose up between us, crackling beneath the tiki lamps. And my breasts swelled underneath my T-shirt as a hard rock guitar went off in my ovaries.

This right here, I realized, was a boy-girl moment. And the one thing that I had always excelled at, before deciding to mess it up because I had a recurring dream about agreeing to a marriage proposal at a farmers market and saw the movie
Inception
during the summer of 2010, was boy-girl moments.

The warm red wine sloshed around in my empty stomach, and I thought about that section of
The Awesome Girl’s Guide
where Davie Farrell talks about making sure you sow all of your wild oats before you settle down into a relationship. I watched Mike’s Adam’s apple go up and down as he took a drink from his wineglass, and I thought,
Mike Barker looks to me exactly like a wild oat, like a boy in need of a good sowing.

I blinked, and my poor-Thursday red eyes got exchanged for the heavy-lidded sensuality I had employed so well in my twenties as I took the wine bottle back from him. “You mean you don’t have anything on underneath that sarong?”

“No, I thought you’d be asleep, and I needed a swim. This is what I do when …”

He trailed off.

“When what?” I asked.

“When I’m tempted to gamble. I swim instead.”

Recalling this story, I would have liked to believe that there was a moment of pause here on my part. I’d love to think that when presented with further evidence of his gambling past, I stopped and thought of a broken-hearted Tammy, who had been one of the first victims of his addiction to games of chance.

I would like to believe that reservations came up, but the only thing I can remember saying for sure is, “You swim naked?”

“Usually there’s no one else here.”

Mike Barker was an actor. Mike Barker was a black man. In fact, Mike Barker was a black actor who was set on playing my father in a film. Of all the men on earth, I couldn’t think of one man who I should be less attracted to than Mike Barker.

“Is the pool heated?” I asked.

He nodded, and his eyes met mine.

“Fine,” I said, putting the bottle aside. “I’ll go swimming with you.”

And even though my breasts weren’t pert with silicone and even though I hadn’t shaved my bikini line since August, I pulled my T-shirt off, over my head.

Mike’s gaze stayed on me, hungry and prodding me on until I also came out of my fleece sweatpants and stood there in nothing but my underwear.

When Mike came around the bar, I thought he was going to take off the sarong, but instead, he grabbed my hand and led me past the pool, back into the house, and up the stairs.

“This is my bedroom,” he said, opening a door on the second-floor landing.

“So you don’t want to swim?” I said. I shivered, not just because of the situation, but also because I was standing in Mike Barker’s doorway in nothing but my cotton panties.

In fact, it felt like Mike was doing me a favor when he cupped each of my breasts in his large warm hands and pressed me into the wall beside the door.

He didn’t kiss me, just fondled my breasts as he explained, “We could have taken a swim first, but I don’t think I would have made it more than a minute or two without going after you. And I don’t have any condoms downstairs, so it wouldn’t have been safe. I prefer we be safe.”

Oh, his hands felt good. “Well, I’m glad you put our safety first,” I said, feeling my sense of humor coming back for the first time that day.

But then Mike took one of my breasts into his mouth, and his sarong came off, and the time for jokes quickly passed.

Now, I wasn’t one of those people that believed that actors were gods, capable of slow-mo movie sex as soon as you said, “Action!” Also, this wasn’t my first rodeo. I had slept with dozens of guys, both good in bed and not. I had thought I knew all there was to know about sex.

But I had never had sex like the sex I had with Mike Barker that night.

First of all, there was the intensity. I had a fleeting moment of thought for Tammy, who’d had her heart broken by this man, but then the moment passed, and it seemed to me that the train had already left the station, running over my friendships, personal tastes, and standards as Mike sucked on my breasts while pushing me against the wall.

Second of all, there was Mike himself. Both weird and sexy at the same time. Sexy because he was aggressive, picking me up like a caveman after a few moments spent with each breast. Weird because he jumped into the bed with me like we were kids.

Third of all, there were the compliments.

“No way,” he said when he pulled down my panties. “Real bush! I haven’t seen real bush since the nineties.” He stroked my hair-covered mons like it was a wonderful new pet. “I love this,” he said, sticking two fingers into me. “I’m going to get it nice and wet and ready for me.” Then: “Oh, wait, you’re already there.”