Page 2 of The Wedding Season
I lower my voice. “That is definitely not thepoint!”
“When you have that kind of a reaction to an attractive guy—sister that is always thepoint.”
I don’t tell Maya that the point is Brie told me it was the best sex she’d ever had in her life. She went into great detail, describing the exceptional length and girth of his penis, how he went down on her, all the different positions he employed, and how he was the first guy who ever gave her orgasms. All the Guinness and tequila in the world could not erase my memory of those descriptions or the insidious images they conjured in my mind—and believe me—I tried. There was a brief period where I attempted to consume all of the Guinness andtequila.
I feel a chill throughout my entire body and shake my head. “It was so gross that he did all that with her in my room, like two hours after hitting on me at aparty.”
“Ah hah. The plotthickens.”
“No—I rejected him, end of story for me, but he and I had three classestogether—”
“So you weren’t mad at him for how he made Brianna feel, you were mad at him for how he madeyoufeel.”
“No, I—it’s both! I’m mad at him because of how he made her feel and in turn how she kept bugging me about him for months, showing up after my classes with him, and he wouldn’t even look at her, he was such a dick, and then I’d have to deal with her massive freak-outs.God!”
“Well.” Maya applies clear lip-gloss and drops the applicator into her tiny purse. “He definitely should have talked to her. For a lot ofreasons.”
“Yeah.”
“I just think it’s interesting that you still have such strong feelings about it all these years later.” She smacks herlips.
“They aren’t strong feelings and it’s been less than five years. I’m still mad at my sixth grade teacher for giving me a ‘Needs Improvement’ in CreativeWriting.”
“Well, you showedhim.”
“Yeah Idid.”
I cross my arms and sit back, trying to think of something else to talk about, besides Scott Braddock, but I can’t. Now that I’ve begun venting about him I can’t stop. It’s like a tic, or an itchy spot that you barely notice until you start scratching it and then you feel like you can’t go on with your life until that spot has been rendered red and raw andnumb.
“He’s such an ass. In class he always did this thing where the professor would express some pretentious opinion about something—Alfred Hitchcock, for example—and he’d nod his head slowly and pull his glasses off his stupid face and then clean them with the bottom of his shirt and say ‘I think that’s exactly right,’ and our professors would think he’s a genius because he tells them they’re right and he wears glasses and I bet you anything he does the same thing with producers and executives and it’s like—excuse me for having perfect vision and not wanting to lie to idiots about them being right when I know for a fact that they’re wrong—especially about NoraEphron!”
I finally take a breath and feel my armpits. They are moist. I’m getting myself all worked up about him and getting sweat stains on my dress. He’s ruining my day and I haven’t even seen his stupid faceyet.
“You know, you can get glasses that aren’t prescription, right? Like prop glasses. You’d look really good withglasses.”
“That’s not the point, Maya, the pointis—”
“The point is you haven’t stopped talking about this guy that you supposedly can’t stand for like twentyminutes.”
“Yeah because there are so many things I can’t stand about him, it takes me a long time to go through thelist.”
“I think you’re obsessed with him and you need to have sex with him to get overit.”
“Okay first of all, I’m the opposite of obsessed with him, and secondly, that is the worst adviceever.”
Maya always gives me the worst advice ever, but she’s the most loyal friend I’ve ever had, and also she’s always right. Her advice inevitably sounds terrible to me, and usually involves her forcing me to drink kale juice or apple cider vinegar when I think I’m coming down with something and just want chocolate chip cookies and milk, or pushing me to go out dancing with her the night before I have a big pitch meeting that I’m nervous about—and I always end up feeling better. So if she really thinks I should have sex with Scott Braddock, then I’m in trouble. Or she could be wrong about something for the first time in her entirelife.
She was certainly right about not trusting my last boyfriend. My last boyfriend was a camera operator named Jake. We dated for about a year, until almost a year ago. It was perfect—he worked long hours on movie sets while I was at home writing so we’d text each other throughout the day and then he’d show up to fuck me, we’d go out for something to eat and then he’d go home because he had to get up early. It was exactly what I needed/wanted and I was so happy that I didn’t even dwell on his somewhat disappointing cunnilingus skills and terrible taste inmusic.
Then he stopped texting and coming over and returning my texts and calls and I found out from Maya that he was dating an actress who was recently the star of her own Disney Channel show. They had gone to Maya’s restaurant for dinner and he had pretended not to recognize her. When he went to the men’s room, Maya cornered him and gave her a piece of her mind. He said it wasn’t like I’d ever acted serious about him anyway. She may or may not have instructed the bartender to spit in his drink and the bartender may or may not have done it. Who am I kidding—if she asked him to, then he definitely did it because he’s a male human and she’s Maya. Regardless, I have been a workaholic nun eversince.
“I just think that if you’re this passionate about anything, even despising him, it’ll translateinto—”
“Okay let’s stop talking about him, he’s not thatimportant.”
“Okay baby cakes.” She pats my knee. “Let’s talk about you and how amazing you looktoday.”
“If you think I made myself look amazing for him, you’rewrong.”
