The Vegas Diaries: Romance, Rolling the Dice, and the Road to Reinvention (14 page)

It wasn’t long before Jeffrey became suitemate number three during his visits. Despite being obsessive-compulsive when it came to cleanliness and dog hair, he befriended Laura’s pup and even attempted to befriend Napoleon, in spite of the fact that the dog peed on Jeffrey’s clothes the first time he stayed over. (Napoleon has always had better radar than me.)

Laura was always polite to him, not to mention supportive of our relationship since it made me happy, but I could sense Jeffrey wasn’t her favorite person in the world. That lack of a sense of humor that I had noticed on Twitter carried over into real life, unfortunately. Not only were his jokes not funny, he seemed to have an odd prudishness when it came to humor. Laura and I laughed at all things raunchy, which would make Jeffrey blush like a Victorian lady in a drawing room. Sometimes he even made a disapproving comment when Laura or I would comment on something we thought was funny. He quickly became known on Laura’s side of the suite as the Fun Police.

But I didn’t care. I was so thrilled to have a sweet guy flying out to see me that I could deal with the disconnect when it came to humor.
After all, nobody’s perfect,
I reminded myself.

Among Jeffrey’s stranger habits was going down to the casino for ten minutes or so every day.

“What is he doing every time he goes downstairs?” I wondered aloud, petting Napoleon while Laura put a few healthy items away in our small kitchen. “Do you think he’s, like, calling another girl or something?”

“He’s taking a shit.” Laura jokingly condescended to point out, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“Ohhhhhhh . . .” I said, finally putting two and two together.
Not a bad strategy,
I thought. After all, who wants to drop a deuce at your date’s house?

The next time
I
had to go, I was in the clear. I had said good-bye to Jeffrey as he headed out the bedroom door on his way to meet some friends at the Palazzo . . . just in time! I zipped to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and LET IT GO. Without getting too graphic, I’ll just say things were loud. Really loud. For more than a few seconds.

I sat there contemplating what was on my to-do list that day.

“I’ll be back up later tonight!” Jeffrey yelled and a door shut behind him.

I froze. What . . . the . . . hell had just happened? I thought he was gone! As if the situation weren’t humiliating enough, I had left the bathroom door WIDE open, for maximum aural consumption. I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. I was at once petrified and alive with humiliation. At least he had been gentlemanly enough to not mention it . . . or would it have been better had he just put it out there and made a joke out of it?
No way,
I thought,
he is probably too grossed out. The only way to handle this now is just act like it never happened
.

That embarrassing moment aside, Jeffrey’s visits were generally delightful. He treated me well and was exceptionally well mannered (a long-lost art form for most men). In fact he was turning out to be so much more of a catch than I expected. I couldn’t believe I was admitting this to myself, but he really did seem like a genuinely nice guy.
Who actually ever lives up to that reputation?
I wondered. And isn’t that what I was looking for? What most women are looking for? How many times have you heard someone say, “I just wish I could meet a
nice guy
!” It seemed I just might have found one.

“I want you to meet my family,” Jeffrey said, dropping the comment like a bomb.

“What?” I asked, nearly choking on my coffee. I was leaning up against the granite countertop in the kitchen of his stark, modern Westwood apartment. On this specific trip I vacated my usual Beverly Hills Hotel residency and agreed to spend time with Jeffrey on his turf. I let
down my guard for one moment and he drops
this
on me? Meeting someone’s parents was a huge step, and I’d rarely heard of it happening this early in the game. We had been seeing each other for only a month. I don’t know what I expected when I first met this guy, but it wasn’t this. He was quickly becoming too good to be true. Even his friends couldn’t stop gushing to me about how Jeffrey was always saying how much he liked me, how I was so different from other girls he had met, how special I was. It really made me feel good. And since I was hearing it secondhand, he had to mean it, right?

“Grab your stuff,” he said. “I’m going to change your flight. We’ll drive down to my parents’ in Orange County and you can fly out of John Wayne.”

I triple-checked to make sure I had packed every last item I brought in my overnight bag (Rule 22: “Don’t Live With a Man or Leave Things in His Apartment”) and we were on our way! He took me to lunch at his parents’ beautiful beachside home. His parents, his sister, and her kids were all there. Normally, this would have turned my socially awkward self into a bundle of anxiety. Interacting with new people who I feared would be sizing me up and passing judgment scared me. But it wasn’t like that at all. His entire family was engaging and kind. Our conversations felt natural and lively, and I felt like they really liked me. This was such a huge step, and going so smoothly—on top of it being so sudden and out of the blue. He doted on his nieces and nephews and wouldn’t stop talking about how he couldn’t wait to be a dad—it was really sweet.
This guy is the real deal,
I thought. He didn’t seem afraid of commitment and was even opening up about his wants and desires. I couldn’t believe I was saying this about the serial modelizer I had so quickly written off, but he seemed to check all the boxes.

I was done with the bad boys. It was finally time to give the nice guy a chance.

For the next month we had a perfect little courtship. On one of his
weekly visits, we walked into Koi, the sushi restaurant around the corner from the
Peepshow
theater, for a late lunch. My pilot was set to air on E! that night and Planet Hollywood was having a private screening in one of their lounges before that evening’s
Peepshow
.

“We apologize, the private booth isn’t available tonight,” the hostess said, tossing her long, silky hair over her shoulder and grabbing two menus.

“That’s okay!” I replied cheerfully, “We don’t need it. A corner booth would be fine!” I wondered who was in the private booth, kept away from prying eyes by metal beaded curtains. Last time it was taken, I had spotted Maria Shriver. As we followed the hostess through the restaurant to the back corner, we passed Robin Leach, who was at the hotel for the premiere party so he could cover it for his column in the
Las Vegas Sun
.

“Hello, Holly,” he greeted me before adding insinuatingly, “and hellooooo, Jeffrey.” The tone in his voice suggested they had met before.

After we were out of earshot, Jeffrey shot me an annoyed look and muttered: “I didn’t know
he
was going to be here.”

“It’s cool,” I said flippantly. “I know him. He won’t write about us. He’s cool about that kind of stuff.”

We took our seats and ordered our usuals. Our conversation wandered on to whether or not we thought Vegas would be a good place to raise kids (a topic he brought up). I was still kind of soured on L.A., and only the negative things about the city were at the forefront of my mind, so I was making an argument for Vegas.

“Besides, the few people I know who grew up here seem really well adjusted,” I added, unwrapping my chopsticks as the waiter set down a plate of dragon rolls for me and sashimi for Jeffrey.

“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Someone I used to date was born and raised here, and she was
crazy
.”

When he said crazy, I pictured a knife-wielding psychopath.

“Who was it? Anyone I know? How was she crazy?” I asked eagerly, ready for the scandalous scoop.

“You might. She was this model chick named Andi,” he replied. I nodded, awaiting his anecdote. Andi seemed perfectly sane to me, but, like I said earlier, I didn’t know her
that
well.

“Yeah, we were out to dinner one night and she got all gangsta on me and was like ‘Are we serious with each other or not? I need to know because this needs to be locked down,’” he recalled, doing his best impression of her voice and wagging his finger around in an attempt to imitate her.

“Huh, well, she always seemed normal to me,” I said, shrugging and reaching over to take a drink of water.
Damn,
I thought,
if that was his definition of crazy, I guess I won’t be bringing up
our
status any time soon
.

Not that I need to,
I thought. I already knew where we stood. Jeffrey had introduced me to his family, talked all about how he wanted to have kids, traveled to Vegas constantly to see me, and bragged incessantly to his friends about me. I had nothing to worry about.

After sushi, we were walking out toward the escalators that would take us down to the screening when he put his hand on my back and said, “I think I’m gonna let you do this one solo. I promised Drew I would link up with him when I was out here this time. I’ll see you after the show, though, right?”

He leaned forward to give me a quick kiss.

“Sure,” I mumbled after our lips parted, in a thinly veiled attempt at being nonchalant (because “bitches men love” keep a “slightly aloof demeanor”). Inside, though, I was devastated and kind of dumbfounded. What was with the sudden one-eighty? Jeffrey had seemed so supportive of my career and the new television series. This was a huge moment for me. To add insult to injury, we hadn’t even discussed this ahead of time. It had been dropped on me like a bomb minutes before I had to go greet everyone at my screening. I quickly justified his reaction by decided that running into Robin must have freaked him out.

Sure, supporting me during one of my big moments should have
trumped his own issues, but things had been going so well that I wasn’t going to write this relationship off because of one slipup.

I pushed what had just happened to the corner of my mind where I kept all my unwanted thoughts and put on the biggest smile I could find. I’d deal with it later; I couldn’t let a guy ruin my premiere night.

But this would prove a little difficult as I remembered that all of my closest friends knew that Jeffrey was in town. I burned with embarrassment at the thought of having to make feeble excuses for him while my lack of a poker face gave me away. I knew that everyone expected him to be there. Not because I had said he would be, but because that’s what boyfriends do—support their girlfriends during their big moments.

Despite the excuse he had given me, I had my own suspicion as to why I thought he didn’t want to be there. It hit me that maybe I wasn’t the only one avoiding publicity. Maybe he didn’t want to be seen with me, at least not publicly. He had no problem introducing me to his family and showing me off to his friends, but did he want to be known publicly as “Holly Madison’s boyfriend”? Probably not. Or at least that’s what I imagined. And that hurt.

I took a deep breath, put the smile back on my face, and descended the escalator.

“Where’s Jeffrey?” Josh asked as I walked in.

“Oh, he promised one of his friends he was going to meet up with him while he was out here,” I tossed out, knowing how flaky this sounded—that he would rather hang out with a bro than support his girlfriend on her big night. “No big deal,” I added, trying to swipe it away like it was nothing. I am pretty sure that my disappointment showed through on my face, though. A few more people asked me about it, but no one pressed the issue. They weren’t buying my forced attempt at being casual about the matter, so they dropped it.

Maybe this is a one-time thing,
I thought to myself. I’d just have to file this away as strike one in case he ever tries to pull something similar again.
Maybe he just doesn’t understand what a big milestone this is for me
.

I decided not to bring his behavior up to Jeffrey, despite how upset it had made me and that it practically ruined what should have been my big night. I just wanted to forget that it had ever happened, not to mention, I didn’t want to run the risk of coming across as “crazy” for having feelings. If I chilled out and let things go back to normal, our relationship would continue to grow . . . I was sure of it.

In fact, I couldn’t wait for the upcoming New Year.
Peepshow
was going on hiatus for the entire month of January to add a few elaborate new numbers to spice up the show. The production was a smash and we needed to give audiences a reason to come again. And because I was now the official face of the show with a new yearlong contract, audiences expected to see more of me onstage and I was more than happy to oblige.

I figured that when I wasn’t busy with
Peepshow
rehearsals, I’d be spending more quality time with Jeffrey. When I gave him the good news about my month off, my dreams were quickly dashed. He informed me that he was scheduled to spend most of the beginning of the year out of the country, working on a project. I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t all bad. After all, our long-distance text messaging was how I ended up falling for him to begin with, so maybe absence would make us grow closer.

It didn’t turn out that way, though. I began hearing from him less and less. At first I thought I was just being sensitive and figured he must be busy on set, but I could get away with telling myself this for only so long. I thought he had really cared for me, so what changed? I couldn’t let this guy make me feel like shit. He sought
me
out, not the other way around. . . .

I knew I couldn’t sit around twiddling my thumbs, waiting to see what would happen when he came back home. Can you say
He’s Just Not That Into You
? I wasn’t going to try and fight the situation or attempt to change his mind (Rule 18: “Don’t Expect a Man to Change or Try and Change Him”). I needed to pull the plug before he had a chance to do it to me.

I decided to preface the breakup with a little test, because deep down, I was still hoping he would pass. I had negotiated a week off for a vacation later in the year, choosing one of the last weeks of September because it was a slower week in Vegas, right after summer tourism died down. I decided that if I told Jeffrey about the vacation and he didn’t jump at the chance to plan a trip with me, I would break it off.