KIM GRUENENFELDER

Wedding Fever

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Prologue - Melissa

Chapter One - Seema

Chapter Two - Nicole

Chapter Three - Seema

Chapter Four - Melissa

Chapter Five - Seema

Chapter Six - Melissa

Chapter Seven - Nicole

Chapter Eight - Melissa

Chapter Nine - Nicole

Chapter Ten - Melissa

Chapter Eleven - Seema

Chapter Twelve - Nicole

Chapter Thirteen - Melissa

Chapter Fourteen - Seema

Chapter Fifteen - Melissa

Chapter Sixteen - Nicole

Chapter Seventeen - Melissa

Chapter Eighteen - Seema

Chapter Nineteen - Melissa

Chapter Twenty - Seema

Chapter Twenty-One - Melissa

Chapter Twenty-Two - Nicole

Chapter Twenty-Three - Melissa

Chapter Twenty-Four - Seema

Chapter Twenty-Five - Melissa

Chapter Twenty-Six - Seema

Chapter Twenty-Seven - Melissa

Chapter Twenty-Eight - Nicole

Chapter Twenty-Nine - Melissa

Chapter Thirty - Seema

Chapter Thirty-One - Nicole

Chapter Thirty-Two - Seema

Chapter Thirty-Three - Melissa

Chapter Thirty-Four - Nicole

Chapter Thirty-Five - Melissa

Chapter Thirty-Six - Nicole

Chapter Thirty-Seven - Seema

Chapter Thirty-Eight - Melissa

Chapter Thirty-Nine - Seema

Chapter Forty - Nicole

Chapter Forty-One - Melissa

Chapter Forty-Two - Seema

Chapter Forty-Three - Mel

Chapter Forty-Four - Nicole

Chapter Forty-Five - Seema

Chapter Forty-Six - Nicole

Chapter Forty-Seven - Seema

Chapter Forty-Eight - Melissa

Chapter Forty-Nine - Nicole

Chapter Fifty - Seema

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prologue

Melissa

Is it a really bad sign when the bride has locked herself in the bathroom? Or is it just one of those things that all brides are secretly tempted to do right before the ceremony?

I am standing in the back room of a beautiful old church in Santa Monica wearing a sparkly satin aquamarine dress with a giant bow at the hip, dyed-to-match aquamarine pumps, and an aquamarine hat so ostentatious it could make Liberace climb out of his grave just to tell me to tone it down a bit.

Obviously, I’m the bridesmaid. An honor that currently affords me the task of knocking politely on the bathroom door of my good friend Nicole (aka The Bride) and begging her to come out.

“Nic? Honey,” I say gently, tapping lightly on the door. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she whispers to me through the locked door. “I’m an awful, selfish person who doesn’t deserve a wedding, or a marriage, or happiness. And I am going to die alone with a bunch of potbellied pigs.”

“Pigs?” I ask, confused but trying to sound understanding and sympathetic. “Why would you end up with pigs?”

“I hate cats.”

I can’t tell if she’s overreacting or not. I mean, when you think about it, a wedding is an astonishingly big leap of faith. Any ceremony that specifically mentions “sickness,” “poverty,” and “death” as part of the agreement— that should at least give a girl pause. Right?

Maybe that’s why society has encouraged women to focus more on the glittering diamonds, the gorgeous dress, the flowers, the presents, the cake. . . .

Oh . . . the cake. After this past week, I’m pretty sure the bride doesn’t even want to hear the word cake, much less look at one.

Our friend Seema, Nic’s maid of honor, opens the front door of the bridal room and backs her way in, careful to keep the door as shut as possible while she slithers through the doorway. Seema wears the same ridiculous ensemble as I, but her luminous Indian skin can handle the hideous shade of blue Nic has picked for us. And her hourglass figure easily pulls off the lacy décolletage of the V-neck top and the stupid bow at the hip.

“No, no problem at all,” Seema insists with forced cheer to someone out in the hall. “We just need a few more minutes. The bride . . .” She glances over at me as she struggles to finish her sentence. “. . . smaid!” Seema continues. “The bridesmaid is depressed that it’s never going to be her and has locked herself in the bathroom. We’ll be right out.”

Seema slams the door shut, locks it, then runs over to me, still camped out at the bathroom door. “I think I bought us a few more minutes,” Seema whispers to me hurriedly. “I don’t think anyone suspects anything yet.”

My eyes bug out at her. “Who was that?”

“The church lady. She wants to know why we’re behind schedule.”

“Why did you tell her that I was the depressed one?” I whine to her in a whisper. “Like I’m not having enough problems today. Do I really need three hundred people thinking I’m holding up a wedding because I can’t get my love life together?”

“I panicked,” Seema admits in a whisper. “Besides, it could be an excuse.”

“Did it ever occur to you to use your sorry excuse for a love life as an excuse?” I challenge her. (An outburst that is completely out of character for me but I believe well within my rights.)

“Fine,” Seema concedes, her tone of voice clearly brushing me off. “So next time, you can go out there, and use me as the excuse.” Seema begins rapping on Nicole’s bathroom door several times. “Nic, drama time’s over,” she says firmly, but ever so quietly. ( Can’t have the wedding guests hear anything in the back room, after all.) “Now come on out.”

“No!” Nic whispers back urgently through the door.

“Don’t let my whispering fool you,” Seema warns Nic. “I swear to God, I will kick down this door! Put me in an aquamarine skullcap in front of three hundred people. Oh, you will get married today! I don’t care if I have to drag you down the aisle with a chair and a whip.”

“First of all, it’s not aquamarine— it’s aqua,” Nic begins with a hint of condescension. “As a matter of fact, if we’re getting technical, I’d say it’s more of an electric blue.”

“Really?” Seema responds dryly. “This is what you want to do right now? Lecture me on your chosen bridal color palette?”

Nic whips open the door to haughtily tell Seema, “Well, you make me sound like some tacky little bride from 1984. And, secondly, it is not a skullcap. That is a lovely— vintage!—forties hat and veil.”

Nicole looks exquisite: the quintessential California girl ready for her wedding at the beach. Her sun-kissed skin glows, her emerald eyes sparkle, and her platinum-blond hair practically shimmers under her long veil. She looks flawless in her gorgeous Monique Lhuillier strapless princess A-line gown in ivory satin. A vision, ready to walk down the aisle. . . .

Until she slams the bathroom door shut again before we have the chance to ram our way in and force her to get married.

I let my head fall into the palm of my hand.

Seema tries the door, but it’s locked again.

“It’s a costume for an extra in an Esther Williams movie,” Seema yells as much as possible while speaking in a stage whisper. “Now get your butt out here!”

There’s a polite knock on the front door. I walk over to it. “Yes?” I ask through the door in the most carefree and breezy tone I can muster.

“It’s Mrs. Wickham,” the lady from the church says on the other side of the door. “People are starting to ask questions. Is everything okay in there?”

I watch Seema stand up, determinedly walk back a few steps, then run like a bull right into the bathroom door.

It doesn’t budge.

“It’s fine,” I lie. “I was . . .”

Seema grabs her shoulder in pain, and starts rubbing it. “Son of a . . .” She pounds on the door with both fists and stage-whispers, “You get out here, woman!”

I open the front door as little as possible, then squeeze through the tiny crack and step out into the hallway. As I do, I take my left hand and push Mrs. Wickham away from the door and farther out into the hallway while simultaneously closing the door behind me with my right hand. “I’ve been vomiting,” I lie. “And crying. Nic was just helping me clean up my mascara.” I grab her by the collar and whine, “Oh God, Mrs. Wickham, why isn’t it me? Why is it never me?”

Suddenly I hear a loud, rhythmic pounding inside the room. I quickly let go of Mrs. Wickham’s collar, open the door a crack, then peek in to see Seema holding a fire extinguisher and ramming it repeatedly into the locked door.

I close the door quickly to block anything unseemly from Mrs. Wickham, and force a toothy smile. “But I’m good now.”

POUND!

I continue to smile, “You go make sure the groom is okay . . .”

POUND!

My cheeks hurt, I’m smiling so hard. “After all, without a groom, we don’t have a wedding.”

POUND!

PSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!

“Oh shit!” I hear Seema roar on the other side of the door.

I open the door a crack for a second time to see Seema covered in fire extinguisher goo.

I slam the door shut again, then turn around to the church lady and force myself to admit, “Okay, we might be having a little problem with Seema’s dress. We’re gonna need two more minutes.”

One week earlier. . . .

Chapter One

Seema

Date not bad. She’s pretty cool actually. Can’t wait to see you tonight. Have drinks ready. ; )

Love ya!

I stare at the text on my phone.

My God, men are just glorious in their ability to send mixed signals. I look over at my friends Melissa and Nicole, both scurrying around my kitchen, setting up an assortment of food and drinks for Nic’s bridal shower.

“Okay, this is the last text, I promise,” I say, showing the screen to Nic as she pulls a giant glass pitcher of peach puree from my refrigerator. “What do you think Scott meant when he wrote this?”

Nic takes a moment to read the words on the screen. “That he’s a typical guy who wants you to carry a torch for him but doesn’t actually want to kiss you, make out with you, or take any responsibility for leading you on.”

“I hate it when she minces words,” I joke to Mel, who laughs and nods as she diligently wraps prosciutto slices around melon wedges.

“Okay, I give up,” Nic admits to me in confusion as she holds up the glass pitcher. “What is this?”

“Fresh peach puree,” I tell her, with just a hint of defensiveness. “For the champagne.”

Nic looks horrified. “Since when does perfectly good champagne need to be sullied with sugared fruit?”

“Since every bridal magazine and online article I read told me that proper bridal showers need to have peach Bellinis,” I answer her, with just a hint of “Bring it on, Bitch” in my voice. (I have spent the last week perusing wedding magazines and online wedding sites getting ready for this damn shower. I’ll admit, reading about all of these deliriously happy fiancées has made me a tad sullen.)

“Seriously?” Nic asks. From the scowl on her face, I’m going to guess this is the first she’s heard of it.

“Tragically, yes,” I say. “I also bought orange juice for mimosas. Apparently destroying twenty dollars’ worth of sparkling wine with fifty cents’ worth of sugar during a bridal shower is as traditional as the bride throwing the bouquet, unmarried wedding guests having a fight on the way home about why the guy won’t commit, and a bridesmaid waking up on top of someone horribly inappropriate the next morning.” I hand Mel my phone to read Scott’s text. “What do you think this means?”

Mel clutches her chest. “Oh my God! The poor guy. He liiiikes you. Why don’t you just let him be your boyfriend already?”

I shrug. “I don’t know. Is it worth jeopardizing a really good friendship just because I want to have sex with him?”

Mel answers with, “It would be so romantic. The best relationships start out as friendships,” just as Nic talks over her with, “Absolutely. Pin him to a wall and show him who’s boss.”

Mel glares at Nic disapprovingly. Nic shrugs. “What? I didn’t say she had to be the boss.”

They’re both right in their own way, of course. I desperately and achingly want to have sex with Scott. I think about it all the time.

Actually, that’s not true.

What I desperately want is to have that first six-hour make-out session where you just kiss and dry hump on someone’s couch until one of you falls asleep and the other one sneaks off to the bathroom to wash off her makeup, brush her teeth, and prepare to look radiant when you both wake up three hours later. At which time, hopefully he suggests brunch, and you both keep sneaking kisses all day.

But I’m afraid what would happen instead would be the morning that has haunted every girl for months or years after the actual event. When, the next morning, the man that you have finally caught, the man that you have dreamt about kissing for so long, now has that look on his face that men get when they want to find a way to nicely let you know that you were a giant mistake, and that they wish the night had never happened. But it’s not you, it’s him. Really. And can you still be friends? Because he just loves you so much . . . as a friend.

And what do we girls typically do when presented with this humiliating situation? Most of us stupidly pretend that nothing happened, that everything is okay, and that we can go back to being “just friends.”

But not one of us has ever really felt comfortable around the guy again. How can you relax around someone who doesn’t think you’re enough?

In my experience, the breakup goes one of two ways: either you pretend to stay friends and slowly drift apart— canceling on dinners or not scheduling movie nights anymore. Or, worse, you do keep seeing each other. And while a taste of honey is worse than none at all, a taste of tequila is deadly. Someone inevitably makes a move, someone says no, you both start yelling, and you never see each other again.

Oh, or I guess there’s the third dreaded kind of breakup: the one that happens three months later, after you’ve declared your undying love for him, he has said he loves you back, everything’s going incredibly smoothly, you’re picking out wedding china in your head, and Bam! He breaks up one night. Doesn’t even give a good reason, just doesn’t “feel the sparks” you feel.

This is the biggest reason for why I haven’t kissed Scott. I’ve already felt the heartbreak of him breaking up with me hundreds of times— all in my head. Depending on the night, I either go to bed fantasizing about him kissing me or I think about the breakup that would inevitably follow.

It would happen. I know this logically. We are completely wrong for each other.

I am a key fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Museum. It’s a job I kind of fell into, but I like it very much, and I’m pretty good at it. I organize sophisticated parties and showings for the well-to-do in Los Angeles, and try to get them to become patrons and donate money to the various programs and exhibits within the museum. I have no artistic ability whatsoever, but I am the biggest fan of a good exhibit. I’m stable. I have a steady job, a mortgage, and a 401(k). I get my teeth cleaned twice a year.

On the other hand, Scott— sexy, delicious Scott— is a walking disaster. He’s an artist: like a real painting, sculpting, honest to God that’s his job artist. As such, some months he can barely cover his rent. He goes to the dentist only when a tooth is exploding in his head. Getting him wrangled into a suit for a fund-raising event usually requires negotiations, flattery, and bribery. He sleeps until noon, then works until three in the morning. I get “booty calls” from him at 2:00 A.M.— because he actually wants to talk. (And, like an idiot, I always take the call. Then we stay up until four or five in the morning talking, and I spend the next day at work exhausted and inhaling Diet Monsters and plain M&Ms to get through the afternoon.)

I met Scott about ten months ago at a show a curator from the museum had put together on modern life. I’ll admit, contemporary art frequently escapes me.

Scott had done a piece everyone was raving about that night called The Conformity of Imagination. The piece was a white couch from a thrift store, a dark blue table, and some red, white, and blue tissue paper ribbons strewn from a red painting to the white couch.

I didn’t get it.

So, when the incredibly sexy guy with wet hair and freshly washed Levis walked up to me and asked what I thought of the piece, I diplomatically said, “It’s crap.”

He laughed. “Don’t let the artist hear you say that.”

I looked around the room nervously. “Where is he?” I ask Mr. Hotness. (One thing I’ve learned as a fund-raiser is never to discount an artist in public. You can say you “don’t get” a piece. But don’t cut them out completely— that may be the next Hockney or Picasso you’re dissing, and you will pay for it later when his pieces show up in Paris and three billionaires call you wanting to sponsor him in L.A.)

“Oh, I have no idea,” he who could be Orlando Bloom’s hotter brother said to me at the time. Orlando took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed me one as he asked, “So why don’t you like it?”

“Well, it’s so unoriginal,” I said to the insanely handsome man. “It’s like the artist was on deadline, knew he needed to turn in a piece, and had nothing. So he looked around his living room, and said, ‘Got it! Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,’ gave the piece a good title, and turned it in.”

The man smiled at me. “Wow. You’re even meaner than the art critic from the Times. She said she thought I went to IKEA to pick up some cheap wineglasses, and when I was looking at their display modules, decided to duplicate one and call it art.”

My face fell. “Oh. Shit. You’re not . . .”

“I am,” he admitted with a glint in his eye.

I let my shoulders fall. “I’m so screwed.”

“I would love to take you up on that, but unfortunately I’m here on a date,” the man told me flirtatiously. Then he flashed me a sexy smile as he put out his hand. “Scott James.”

I reluctantly put out my hand as I tried to figure out a way to apologize. “Seema Singh.”

Scott cocked his head. “Seema Singh? How do you have a Northern Indian first name and a Southern Indian last name?”

I was impressed. Not only that he knew that I was Indian (you’d be amazed how many Americans think I’m black, Asian, or related to Tiger Woods), but that he knew that my name was wrong. I smiled at him, immediately smitten. “I had parents who fell in love despite themselves. How do you know so much about India?”

“Took a trip there last year. I was dabbling in watercolors, trying to become less postmodern. More classic.” Scott looked over at his piece and said in an easy, self-deprecating tone, “Clearly I failed.”

I tried to backpedal. “You know, it’s not bad at all. I was just trying to be clever.”

Scott seemed amused. “Never apologize for your opinion. All notes are legitimate.” Then he winked at me and said breezily, “Just promise me that you can love the artist, even if you don’t understand his art.”

That statement was the first of hundreds of flirtatious remarks Scott makes that to this day throw me off my game.

That night, I wasn’t sure if Scott hated me or saw me as a worthy adversary to be conquered.

But I did know that I could have been conquered.

I stared at him off and on all night, and we ran into each other a few more times. Maybe he was hitting on me? I’m still not sure. His stunningly beautiful model date never allowed me to find out— she hung all over him for most of the evening, then dragged him home early.

At my behest, Scott and I exchanged cards and began meeting for lunch to talk about work. Lunch eventually led to drinks, which led to dinners, late-night games of pool or darts, and finally middle of the night phone calls.

But no make-out sessions, and no sex.

You see, our timing has always been off. By the time he was done dating the model, I had moved on to a very nice guy named Conrad. Who turned out to be a jerk, which I couldn’t wait to tell Scott one night, only to discover he had started dating a sitcom writer. By the time he broke up with her, I was with Alan, who I dated until last week. And now that I’m free from Alan, it sounds like Scott might be dating again.

Sigh.

Despite our poor timing, I think a few times we’ve come damn close to a Love Connection.

Maybe.

I’m not sure.

Times like when we were in the kitchen at a party and just started staring at each other, and I wanted to kiss him, but I didn’t. Or one of the many nights when we would order takeout, watch a Blu-ray, hug a bit, and fall asleep in each other’s arms. Hugs good night that lasted forever. Kisses hello that might have lingered a half second too long.

Or maybe this is all my imagination. Who the fuck knows?

And it doesn’t help that he constantly says stuff that could be interpreted a million different ways. Things like:

Date not bad. She’s pretty cool actually. Can’t wait to see you tonight. Have drinks ready, ; )

Love ya!

I stare at the text. “Have drinks ready.” What does that mean? Let’s get drunk so that I can take advantage of you?

I’m being silly. Scott is crucial to my life. With Nic engaged and living with Jason, and Mel almost engaged and living with Fred, Scott’s the only single friend I still have left to play with. He’s the one who can go out on a Saturday night at a moment’s notice. He’s the one I can call after 10:00 P.M. without a lecture from the other side of the king-size bed.

And lately, he’s the one I want to call when I have news. Any kind of news: good, bad, big, small. Anything from booking a hundred-thousand-dollar donation to my finally finding that vanilla-bean porter from that local brewery in bottles.

He’s the one I called right after my grandmother died. (It was 2:45 in the morning. I didn’t want to bother the girls.) He’s the one who dragged his ass out of bed to pick me up in the middle of the night, drove me up to San Francisco, then stayed with me while I dealt with my crazy family during her Indian funeral. He’s the one who listened to me as I talked through tears about this gold bell that she had on her mantle, and why it meant the world to me. At one point, I was crying so hard, Scott pulled the car over, took me in his arms, and let me sob until I started heaving.

I think back to that moment when I was just a big pit of needs, and he was there for me unconditionally, unquestioningly, and unwaveringly.

I take a deep breath.

Right.

When I’m being lusty, I forget about what’s really important. You don’t find guys like him every day. Why would I want to jeopardize that unconditional love and support just for a one-night stand, no matter how fun and tempting it might be at the time?

I delete Scott’s text. “I’m being silly,” I say aloud to the girls. “Scott is a good friend. I love him. If something was supposed to happen, it would have by now.”

“You’re not being silly,” Nic assures me with a look of determination. “What you need is a chili pepper.”

I furrow my brow at her. “Please tell me that’s not something else I’m supposed to mix with champagne.”

“No. It’s the charm you’re going to pull,” Nic tells me in a firm voice. “I’m telling you, this is going to change your life.”

Chapter Two

Nicole

I can tell Seema is suppressing an urge to roll her eyes at me.

“Don’t give me that look,” I tell her. “The first time I was ever at a cake pull, I pulled the silver heart, which meant I’d be the next woman to fall in love. I met Jason that night.”

Mel looks up from her melon tray. “What’s a cake pull? What are we talking about?”

“Glad you asked,” I say, beaming, as I walk to Seema’s refrigerator. As I open the door, I hear a loud pop of a champagne cork. I turn to see Seema opening a bottle of Taltarni Brut Taché, my favorite sparkling wine.

“Ah,” Mel says happily. “I love that sound.”

Seema pours some champagne into flutes for us. “Good. You’ll need booze to hear this.”

“Stop that,” I say sternly, as I pull a large circular cake with white frosting out of the refrigerator and place it in the middle of Seema’s kitchen table. Radiating from the cake are twenty-four white satin ribboned loops, evenly spaced around the circumference.

“Okay now, you see these ribbons?” I ask Mel.

“Yes,” Mel says, taking a sip of champagne as she fingers one of the ribbons.

“Each ribbon is attached to a sterling silver charm, which gets pulled out before we eat the cake.” I continue. “I stuck twenty-four charms in here, one for each woman at the party. Some of the most common charms include the engagement ring, the heart, the baby carriage, the money bag, the hot air balloon, and the wishing well. The charms are like fortune cookies. What ever charm you pull, that’s the next stage in your life coming up.”

“How on earth did you get these in here?” Mel asks me.

“It’s easy, but messy. First, I bought the charms at therescake inmyfuture-dot-com. Next, since I can’t bake to save my life, I went down to Big Sugar Bakeshop on Ventura and had them bake a two-layer chocolate fudge cake with buttercream frosting. Then I stuck the silver charms in between the layers of the cake, careful to leave the ribbons hanging out in full view but the charms hidden.”

“How long did it take you to do that?” Seema asks me with a hint of disapproval.

“And make it look pretty? About three hours,” I am forced to admit.

The girls widen their eyes at me. I shrug. “What can I say? Since losing my job, I’ve discovered the joys of making a mess in the kitchen, needlepoint, and doing vodka shots at noon.”

As Seema snags a finger full of frosting, I watch Mel inspect the ribbons closely. Mel’s interest is clearly piqued. “So if someone picks the engagement ring, does that mean they’re the next to get engaged?”

“Right,” I tell Mel as I point to her. “That’s the one you’re going to get. And I’m making sure the baby carriage goes to Heather . . .”

“Is she the one at your old job doing the IVF?” Seema asks.

“Yeah. Poor thing has gone through three cycles already. Oh, and speaking of people from my old job, my friend Carolyn was fired during the latest round of layoffs, so she gets the typewriter.”

“Wait. How do you know which charm everyone’s going to get?” Seema asks.

I look at her like that’s the stupidest question I’ve ever heard. “I rigged the cake.”

Mel eyes me suspiciously. “How do you rig a cake?”

I proudly point to a red toothpick at the bottom of the cake, ever so slightly hidden by gobs of vanilla buttercream. “See that toothpick there? When we put out the cake, I’ll make sure the toothpick faces me at the table. Since everyone has a place card, I know exactly where each woman will be sitting. With that chart in mind, I slipped the perfect charm for each girl’s future into the part of the cake closest to her.”

I grab my purse from the dining room table and pull out a folded paper map. I unfold the map to show Seema and Mel a giant circle with twenty-four spokes radiating out of it. On the outside of each spoke is a guest’s name and inside the spoke is the charm they will get. I point to where Mel will sit. “For example, Mel, here you are . . . ,” then I point to a ribbon on the cake, “and here is your corresponding charm: the ring. Seema, you’re here. And here’s your charm: the red hot chili pepper. Which means you’ll be the next one to have a red hot romance.”

Mel promptly pulls her assigned ribbon from the cake.

“What are you doing?” I exclaim.

She looks at the silver solitaire ring attached to the ribbon. “Just making sure your map works.”

I grab the charm from her. “It works!” I insist as I carefully slide the ring back between the cake layers. “I spent a long time on this. Don’t mess it up.”

Seema laughs to herself. “So that’s what you think I need most in my life? Hot sex?”

“Don’t all people need hot sex in their lives?” I counter.

“Fair enough. But why can’t I pick which charm I want?” Seema asks. She takes the list from me and reads, “Like the wishing well, why can’t I have that?”

“What would you wish for? Scott?” I ask knowingly.

I can tell from the way Seema shrugs her shoulders that I’m right about that one.

“Okay,” Seema concedes. “But what about the hot air balloon? I’ve always wanted to go to Napa and take a ride in a hot air balloon.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head determinedly. “The hot air balloon is for my friend Julia. It symbolizes adventure and travel. She’s never been out of California. It’s time.”

“Why wouldn’t you want the hot air balloon?” Mel asks me as she looks over Seema’s shoulder to read the chart.

“I’m already spending two weeks in Italy for my honeymoon. I don’t need more travel,” I tell her. Then I let them in on my dream. “No. What I want is the shovel.”

Mel furrows her brow. “What’s the shovel stand for?”

I smile proudly. “A lifetime of hard work.”

Seema and Mel exchange a concerned look. Seema shakes her head. “Sometimes I worry about her.”

“Seriously, I have to get back to work. I’m going nuts at home.”

Seema nods, then says sarcastically, “Yeah, it must be terrible having to sleep past five in the morning.”

I cross my arms. “Actually, for me it is—”

I’m about to begin a diatribe when Seema’s doorbell rings.

My guests have arrived.

I point to the toothpick, then to Mel. “When you bring out the cake, make sure the toothpick faces me. You’ll get your ring, I’ll get my shovel, Seema will get her pepper. Be diligent. I don’t want to leave anything to chance.”

• • •

Two hours, three new toasters, four place settings, and one obvious regift later, my gaggle of female guests are tipsy, well fed, and (most importantly) sitting in their assigned seats.

Mel brings out the cake for dessert. I am treated to a bunch of “ooohs” and “aaahs” from the group.

Mel places the cake about three feet from me, in the center of the table. As we planned, she is careful to place the covered red toothpick dead center in front of me.

I give everyone a brief history of the cake pull: an old Southern tradition, charm reveals your future: blah, blah, blah. Then I hold up a sheet of pastel-pink paper. “Each of you has a chart like this one under your place cards. The list will tell you what your charm means. Okay, now, everyone, I want you to loop your finger through the ribbon closest to you . . .”

They all do exactly as I instruct, each girl putting her index finger into the correct satin loop. I do a quick mental scan of the table to make sure everyone has their finger in the right loop. Then I put my finger through my assigned white loop, and say, “On your mark. Get set. PULL!”

I hear a cacophony of laughter and delight as we all pull out our charms.

And I pull . . . the baby carriage.

Shit.

As the women begin licking the cake crumbs and frosting off of their charms and reading their pink charts, I hear our friend Ginger squeal, “Oh my God! I got the diamond ring! That means I’m the next to get engaged, right?”

That can’t be right. Ginger’s been dating her boyfriend Jeff for all of three months. She was supposed to get the fleur-de-lis, which means “Love will blossom.”

I look over at Mel, whose face has fallen as she watches our friend Ginger show off the exact same ring charm Mel pulled out two hours ago. I lean over to her and whisper, “What did you get?”

Mel glares at me. “The red hot chili pepper.”

“But then what did See . . .” I start to ask, turning to see Seema holding up the shovel, then draining the rest of her peach Bellini.

Shit, shit, shit.

My friend Carolyn gleefully says, “Hey, I got the money bag. Maybe I should go buy a lottery ticket Tonight.”

“No, no . . .” I blurt out. “Didn’t you get the typewriter?”

“No. But why would I want the typewriter?” Carolyn asks, genuinely confused.

“Because you’re a journalist. I figured with all the layoffs, you’d want good luck getting a new job.”

Carolyn’s having fun with the pull, not taking it seriously at all. She shrugs. “Well, if I win the lottery, I’ll just start my own paper.”

“I got the typewriter!” Jacqueline, Jason’s ex-wife, cheerfully says. “Which is awesome, because I’m up for a speechwriting job for the governor.”

“You’re up for a job with the governor?” I ask her nervously. “As in the guy who lives in Sacramento?”

She’s thinking of moving Jason’s daughters to Sacramento? When was she planning on springing that news on us?

“It’s a long shot,” Jacqueline assures me. “The mayor put in a good word for me. Still . . .” She holds up the silver typewriter. “Nice to have a good luck charm.”

I open my hand, clenched tightly in a fist, and stare at the baby carriage.

A good luck charm. Yeah . . . that would have been nice.

I close my hand around the charm again, force a smile to my guests, and excuse myself to the kitchen. Once I’m in the sanctuary of Seema’s kitchen, I open my clutched fist once again to reveal the baby carriage.

A baby carriage. WTF?

I can’t have a baby! First off, I have no desire to ever touch diarrhea or spit-up. Plus, I like sleep. And I like spending my money on what ever I want. (What mother in her right mind would spend three hundred dollars on a pair of suede pumps with a college fund to worry about?) But the most important reason that I can’t have a baby is a nonnegotiable . . . I like being able to hyperfocus on my career as a newspaper reporter, a job which has stalled enough in the past year without a mewling infant on my hip taking away any shot I have of ever writing again.

It’s not that I don’t like babies. I do. I love holding them, playing with them, being an auntie, and then SENDING THEM HOME. It’s why I make such a great stepmother but would make a lousy mother.

I almost didn’t date Jason after I found out he had children.

When I first met Jason at a museum fund-raiser Seema had put together, I thought he was gorgeous, charming, and smart. Wickedly smart, which sort of surprised me for a former NBA basketball player, who was now an NBA assistant coach here in L.A. The first hour we talked, I was totally smitten. He was thirty-seven at the time (six years older than me, a bit past my comfort zone), but he was a very in-shape and smokin’-hot thirty-seven. As we talked and laughed, I started thinking about fate, and the silver heart charm I had pulled earlier that day, and how you just never know when the right one is going to come along.

Then he mentioned his two daughters, who at the time were four and eight. Damn, I thought to myself—I knew there had to be something wrong with him. Within minutes, I had politely excused myself and started scoping out other men at the party.

But I kept running into him: he was at the bar getting a drink when I popped by for a refill, later I turned a corner to see him admiring one of the Monets. At the end of the night, he was behind me in line for the valet.

He asked for my number. I told him I was seeing someone.

After the valet pulled up with my car, we stood by my open car door talking for so long, the valet actually asked us to move it along. Jason asked for my number again. I politely declined.

Then he asked Seema for my number. She called me right after she gave it to him to declare that I was an idiot, that she had overruled me, and that he was perfect for me.

When Jason first started calling, I used the accepted code of those not interested: I couldn’t do this weekend, I would be out of town. I was really busy with work during the week. My weekend was completely booked as my cat, Mr. Whiskers, had died, and I was planning his funeral. There was no Mr. Whiskers, and I’m allergic to cats. But I figured nothing turns off a guy faster than a crazy cat lady. (By the way, he was onto me. He sent flowers and asked if he could attend the ser vice.)

Despite my rebuffs over the next few weeks, I always stayed on the phone a little too long and thought about him a little too much the next day. So, after he asked me out for the tenth time, I agreed. I mean, for God’s sake, the guy wasn’t proposing, he was asking me to dinner. And what was wrong with dressing up on a Saturday night to gaze at an elegant man with poreless caramel-colored skin and clear hazel eyes?

During our dinner I discovered (to my astonishment) that this guy was a real guy. He actually pursued me: a rarity in Los Angeles. I was used to typical L.A. neurotic guys. Men who would call once every eight to ten days, with no rhyme or reason to when or why they would call. Men who asked me to go dutch at dinner. Men who were incredibly attentive until they got sex, then talked ad nauseum about how they weren’t sure if they had time for a relationship. (At which point they, too, would call at random times, although at least then I knew the reason.)

But this guy asked me out again before the first date was even over.

He knew what he wanted and— like everything else in his life— he planned to go after it until he won. If other men in Los Angeles are like toy poodles— yippy and useless— this guy was a Labrador: hardworking, loyal, a bit slobbery, and beautiful.

A month later, I agreed to meet his kids. And I fell in love with them immediately. Megan was a gorgeous eight-year-old (now nine) who cracked me up with a knock-knock joke and had fun polishing my toenails. Malika, four at the time, had the cutest voice I’d ever heard. There was (and is) nothing she says that I don’t want to repeat to all of my friends, because it’s just so damn cute.

That said, it took me a while to feel comfortable in my role as stepmother. And frankly, I screwed up sometimes. Like when I snapped at Malika for repeating the same sentence for the sixth time, or when I drove Megan to her school for her dance recital instead of to the auditorium the school had rented, thereby giving us all of four minutes to run from the parking lot to the correct stage to begin her dance.

This summer, the girls have been living with us full-time, per the custody agreement. I love it, but I am ready to rip my hair out. I seriously don’t know how mothers do this full-time. We can’t go out to dinner without Malika insisting on sitting next to me (never her father) and screaming in my ear the entire time. And I can’t insist she sit next to her father, because then I’ll look like a mean stepmonster.

Oh, and on the subject of food: what is it with kids and not eating anything? Malita is the picky eater to end all picky eaters. We had an argument last week because I used tomato sauce on my homemade pizza rather than “pizza sauce.” It wasn’t worth the fight— it’s just pizza— so I nuked her some fish sticks instead. The same thing happened with the gourmet mac and cheese I slaved over one night. It was baked. It was white. It was pronounced “wrong,” “weird,” and “yucky.”

We have been eating neon-orange mac and cheese from a box ever since.

And don’t get me started on all the driving! What ever happened to summers off? This summer the girls have had a combination of ballet camp, museum camp, zoo camp, and music camp. Of course, neither girl has the same camp as her sister, and inevitably each week’s camp is at least ten miles (meaning forty-five L.A. driving minutes) from the sister’s camp.

Jason has had a full-time job all summer prepping his team for the next season. I currently have no job. Guess who does 90 percent of the driving?

I love these kids. I really do. But in one week, they go on a Carib be an cruise with their mother, and then it’s back to school for them— and back to weekend parenting for me.

Politically incorrect though this may be, I am not only counting down the days until my honeymoon, I’m counting down the days until I get my life back.

I look down at the silver carriage again.

Nope. I’m barely hanging on as a part-time stepmonster— there’s no way I’m ready to have a baby.

Seema and Mel walk into the kitchen. Seema hands me a Bellini, then says, “Sweetie, it’s a cake, not an augury. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Easy for her to say. Ever since we were in college, Seema has lambasted me for my belief in fortune-tellers, good luck charms, and fate.

“Yes it does!” I say, almost crying. “You don’t understand. At the last two showers I’ve been to, every woman’s fortune came true. There was this woman who couldn’t have a baby, who got the carriage. Pregnant two weeks later. One person got the wishing well— said out loud she wanted a new job in New York, totally got an offer.”

“Okay,” Seema concedes, “but, with all due respect: the woman who got pregnant could have been doing IVF for the past year. And the woman who wished for the new job had probably been working on getting that job for a while.”

“You gotta admit,” Mel says, opening her hand to examine her pepper. “It is a pretty big coincidence.”

“No, it’s not,” Seema counters. “It’s people having enough faith in their lives to work hard and go after their dreams. Here,” Seema says, taking Mel’s pepper. “Give me this. Nic, give me your charm.”

I hand Seema my charm. She places it and the other two charms in the palm of her right hand, covers her hand with her left, and shakes her hands like she’s about to roll dice. “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”

Seema opens her hands, then gives the baby carriage charm to Mel. “You take this. Nic, you get the shovel. And I’ll take the chili pepper.”

“Why do I get the baby carriage?!” Mel practically howls.

Seema glares at Mel. “I thought you didn’t want the chili pepper.”

“Well, I want it more than a baby carriage!” Mel whines.

Seema rolls her eyes. “Fine. You want the engagement ring, right?”

She waits for a response from Mel, who looks down and shrugs self-consciously.

“Be right back,” Seema says.

As she leaves the kitchen, I look down at the shovel. “Maybe since she hid it in her hand, it could kind of count. . . .”

“What the Hell is wrong with you?!” we hear someone screech in condemnation from the other room.

Seema comes racing back in, with my friend Ginger running in after her. “Mel! I got you your engagement ring. Quick! Throw the carriage at her!”

Chapter Three

Seema

That night, Scott keeps me company while I clean up all of the shower refuse scattered about my house.

Or, I should say, Scott comes over so we can get drunk on leftover champagne and hors d’oeuvres, then watch a double feature of wedding movies together. We each picked one: he picked Wedding Crashers, I went with 27 Dresses.

Okay, so we’re not the most romantic couple in the world.

“What the Hell is this?” Scott asks, picking up a stainless-steel serving platter from the pile of gifts Nic had left behind to pick up tomorrow.

“What’s what?” I yell from the kitchen, as I collect some freshly washed champagne flutes from my dish rack. I look through my kitchen doorway to watch Scott as he holds up the platter and scrutinizes it.

“It looks like a giant . . . comma?” Scott says questioningly.

“That might be the weirdest gift of the day,” I say, as I emerge from my kitchen with my flutes and an open bottle of just-popped Taltarni sparkling wine. “Someone at the party said it’s a traif dish.”

“A what?” Scott asks, as he turns it slightly in his hands to examine it further.

“A traif dish,” I repeat. “You know . . . for serving traif.”

“And that would be what?” he asks me.

“Um . . . shrimp I think?”

Scott shakes his head as he puts down the platter. “Okay, you can make fun of us men all you want for wasting money on lap dances during a bachelor party, but wasting money on a traif dish you’ll never use is just as sinful. Maybe even more so.”

“How do you figure it’s ‘more so’?” I ask, as I put the glasses down on my coffee table.

“At least the twenties we’re handing out at the strip club will help pay for the girls’ college education.”

“They’re never really going to college,” I say with a tone of disgust, as I reach for the pitcher of peach puree, left largely untouched by my guests.

“So says you. Let me keep my fantasies. Oh, honey, please don’t put peach glop into my drink.”

He called me “Honey,” I happily think to myself, as I stare at Scott examining all of Nic’s shower gifts. As I fill his flute with bubbly, my imagination immediately rushes to the fantasy of what it would be like to have him here in my living room, looking through all of our wedding gifts. I hand him his glass. “One glass of champagne, sans peach glop.”

“Thank you,” he says, taking the glass as he makes himself comfortable next to me on my sofa. “So next week—‘black tie’ doesn’t really mean I have to go rent a tuxedo, right?”

“Not if you already own one, no,” I answer him teasingly.

This is one of our running gags with each other. I love clothes and shoes. Scott could not care less if he tried.

Tonight, for example. Once the shower was over, I changed out of my perfect “bridal shower” long pastel-peach A-line skirt with matching top, and into dark jeans cut at just the right waist level for this season, a purple Graham & Spencer crew top I just picked up at Fred Segal, and Giuseppe Zanotti sparkly flat sandals that were full price, and in my mind worth every penny. I put a lot of time and effort into my look. Buying the pants alone took at least three hours, and included two runner-up pairs and me turning around in the dressing room to stare at my backside at least five times while asking Nic if they made my butt look big.

Scott, on the other hand, is wearing a wrinkled “Stone Brewing Co.” T-shirt with blue jeans: one of his many “pick out of the clean laundry basket because God forbid I should ever fold anything and put it in a drawer” ensembles. It took him all of two minutes to get ready. Five, if you include a shower. The “just laid” look is one that no woman could ever pull off but one that guys like Johnny Depp and Scott will probably get away with until well after they hit the nursing home.

I hate men. More pay for equal work, no labor pains, and they can be ready to go out in two minutes flat. So unfair.

Anyway, despite the frat boy look, I still want to pounce on him, right here and right now, and take advantage of his virtue. But God knows it’s not because he’s trying. He’s never trying. He just is.

Scott smirks. “I could rent an aquamarine tuxedo to match your dress.”

“You do and no one will give you a blow job that night,” I warn him.

“Like I would have a shot at meeting anyone anyway. I’m already going to be with the prettiest girl in the room. The others will be too intimidated to talk to me.”

“Aw . . .” I say. Then I reiterate firmly, “You still need a tux.”

“Now, are you sure you really want me to rent one? What about that guy you’re seeing? Conrad. Don’t you think it would be better to take him?”

My shoulders tense up. I’ve been avoiding this subject all week. “Um . . . actually, we broke up.”

Scott furrows his brows. “What? When?”

“Last week,” I say, trying to use a light and breezy tone. “It’s good, really. It just wasn’t quite right. And, you know, it was getting to that point where we were either going to sleep together or not, and I just . . .”

I pause. I just kept thinking of you. And comparing him to you. And even though he was way more appropriate for me, all I could think about was you.

Scott is staring deep into my eyes, and I worry he can see right through me.

So I make a joke of it. “Quit looking at me like that. I’m fine. Besides, I really did not want to take a date who I knew was temporary just so that I could have well-meaning people embarrass me all night with questions like, ‘So, have you two talked about marriage yet?’ ”

Scott laughs. Tension diffused. “Why do people do that at weddings?” Scott asks, shaking his head appreciatively. “It’s right up there with asking a single person if they’re seeing ‘anyone special’. I always want to answer, ‘No. Is your prostate still giving you trouble?’ ” He glances at a pile of pastel-pink index cards on my coffee table. He looks at the top card. “Brad Pitt. What’s this?”

“Oh, that’s this game we played called fantasy Date/Date from Hell. Everyone had to write down who their ideal celebrity date would be, and then their celebrity date from Hell. Then we all had to guess which girl picked which dates.”

Scott shoots me a mischievous look as he picks up the pile. “Oooo . . . I’ll bet I can guess who you picked.”

I grab the cards away from him. “No, you can’t. Besides, I don’t want you making fun of me.”

Scott playfully tries to grab the cards back. “I’m not going to make fun of you.”

“You can’t help it. It’s in your DNA.”

“No. Seriously— I’ll be good.”

Off my dubious look, he continues. “Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll show you how well I know you.”

He puts out his hand for the cards. I eye his open hand wearily.

“Fine,” I say, about to hand him the cards. “But first you need to tell me your ideal celebrity date.”

Scott looks up at my ceiling, seemingly giving my question serious thought. “Um . . . I guess my ideal would be Drew Brees,” Scott answers. “And that stupid blond chick with the reality show— she’d be the worst.”

“The quarterback?!” I exclaim. “But you’re not gay! Wait, you’re not, are you?”

“No,” Scott assures me. “And neither is he. But if I get to go out to dinner with any celebrity in the world, why waste that on a first date that will inevitably lead nowhere?” He rubs his fingers together. “Cards please.”

I reluctantly hand him the pink cards. Shit— when he sees the name on my card, he will so obviously associate it with himself. Fuck! That name is about to give away my crush, and then he’ll never see me the same way again.

Scott leafs through the cards. “Ben Affleck,” he guesses.

I am tempted to lie, say yes and get it over with. But I know the other side of the card is Hugh Hefner and, while the old man is gross, he can’t be the worst guy in the world to be on a date with. So I am forced to admit, “Not a bad choice, but no.”

He continues to fan through the cards. “Jason Washing-ton is obviously who Nic chose . . .” Then he guesses, “Bradley Cooper?”

“What? Him? No.”

“John Krasinski.”

“No.”

“It’s not the actor on Heroes, is it?”

“Dr. Suresh? No. Why do you assume just because I’m Indian, I’m going to go for an Indian?”

“I don’t,” Scott says triumphantly, proving how well he knows me as he turns around the card to show me Zachary Quinto’s name (Sylar on Heroes).

I shrug, and concede, “Actually, Zachary Quinto’s kind of hot in a ‘take your damn Spock ears off’ kind of way.”

“ ‘Take your damn Spock ears off.’ Sexy,” Scott deadpans, as he leafs through the cards. “Fabio?”

“He’s from the dates from Hell side of the card, you moron.”

Scott stops at one card. He cocks his head to one side. “Orlando Bloom?” he guesses.

“Yeah,” I admit quietly.

Scott looks up at me, looking a bit perplexed. “Seriously? He doesn’t seem like your type.”

Considering Scott is a dead ringer for Bloom, you’d think he’d pick up on the hint. Oh yeah, right— he’s a guy. They pick up on hints about as well as magnets pick up seashells.

Now I’m defensive. “Why wouldn’t he be my type? He’s cute. I know people who have worked for him, and he’s really nice. . . .”

“It’s not that. It’s that he has dark hair. You normally go for blonds.”

“No I don’t. Why would you say that?”

Scott shrugs. “Your last two boyfriends are blondish. Both had blue eyes. I figured that was your type. Who was your hell date?”

“Antonin Scalia,” I respond, still reeling from Scott’s obvious misinterpretation of me and my “type.”

“The Supreme Court justice?” Scott asks, as he finishes looking through the cards. “Not really a celebrity. Who picked Stephen Colbert?”

“I don’t have a type,” I continue. “There’s no type.”

“Please,” Scott says, flashing me a patronizing look. “No offense sweetheart, but you like the westside type: blond hair, or had blond hair as a kid at least, a little bland, has some sort of nonartistic job that he’s a bit bored with, but which is stable. You know, like an actuary or a strategic planner. Lives in a condo west of La Cienega . . .”

Now I’m fuming. “That is so not true. I dated an actuary once, and I have dated a lot of artists.”

“Not for more than a date or two. Then you find something wrong with them, and move on.”

I have nothing to say back, but my feelings are hurt. He doesn’t see it: he genuinely has no idea how much I like him. And the only way for me to ever let him know how much would be to go so far out on a limb that my weight could easily shatter the branch.

Scott smiles. Tickles me under my chin. “There’s nothing wrong with it. I don’t like dating artists either. I’ll admit I’d rather have a downtown lawyer than a westside computer geek, but we’re pretty much the same.”

I still look sad. Scott knows this, but he has no idea why.

My phone rings. Saved by the bell. I walk over to my landline and answer. “Hello?”

“Is Scott there?” Nic whispers into her end of the phone. “Am I disturbing anything?”

“Never,” I say, maybe a little too brightly. “We’re just drinking champagne, going through your gifts, and figuring out which ones you won’t miss.”

“Ginger just called me,” Nic tells me in full panic mode. “She got engaged tonight.”

The guest who pulled the ring charm.

Shit.

“And it’s all my fault!” Nic continues. “If I hadn’t tried to get Mel hitched, none of this would have ever happened. I wouldn’t be checking my birth control pills to make sure the pharmacy didn’t accidentally switch them with mini SweeTarts, you wouldn’t be doomed to a life of hard work, and Karen wouldn’t be avoiding going to Oklahoma City next week.”

“Oklahoma City?” I ask.

“She got the tornado charm,” Nic tells me, her voice getting more anxious and high pitched. “Which was supposed to go to Samantha to guarantee a whirlwind life. I fucked everything up.”

“Okay, take it down a notch,” I advise. “Don’t go off all half cocked, it’s just a coincidence.”

“It’s not a coincidence, and I am completely cocked,” Nic insists, sounding more frightened than the babysitter in a slasher movie. “It’s happening.”

“You say that with a tone of voice like we’re in the middle of Armageddon.”

“I can’t have a baby right now,” Nic says. “I have no job.”

I resist the urge to point out that she’s thirty-two, has found the love of her life— the holy grail for all of us singles out there still searching— and that he has money and wants to fill their house with their laughing babies. Right now is the perfect fucking time to have a baby. I have a job— they’re not all they’re cracked up to be.

Instead, I cover the phone’s mouthpiece and whisper to Scott, “I need cake.”

“I’m on it,” he says, standing up. “Fridge?”

“Cake stand on the counter,” I tell him.

He makes a show of closing his eyes, shaking his head, and opening his eyes again. “Cake stand? Another thing women don’t really need.”

I playfully push him. “Just get me cake.” Then I turn my attention back to Nic. “No, I’m still here. Just talking to Scott for a second.”

“I would not be a good mother,” Nic insists. “Even the idea of changing a diaper disgusts me. The Teletubbies bore me. I’ll admit, I like Sesame Street, but a Snuffleupagus fan does not a mommy make.”

I sigh. “Are you still taking your pills?” I ask her.

“Religiously. I’m starting to wonder if they come in extra-strength.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” I assure her. “I’m not saying that I believe in the magic of the charms. But even if I did, maybe the carriage just symbolizes that you’re about to have children in your house part-time. Maybe it’s just about the girls.”

Nic takes a moment to consider that possibility. “Yeah, it could be that, I guess . . .”

As Nic continues talking, I watch Scott in the doorway of my kitchen. Man, he is so cute. And he’s here with me on a Saturday night. To watch wedding movies. Why won’t I make a move?

“Malika’s calling for me to read to her,” Nic says, “I gotta go. Any chili pepper hotness going on?”

“Not yet,” I admit. “But the night is young, and he’s still sober. Give me time.”

Nic laughs. “Remember, it’s that or you have to revert to your original shovel.”

“Thanks for the incentive.”

“I love you,” Nic tells me.

“Love you too. Bye.” I hang up the phone just as Scott appears with two slices of chocolate cake. “I cut big slices, as there really is no such thing as too much cake,” he says, as he hands a massive slice to me.

“A man after my own heart,” I (half) joke as I take the cake and settle in on the couch to take a huge bite.

Scott sits down next to me. “Who was that?”

“Nic. She’s a little stressed.”

“Cold feet?” Scott asks, as he takes a bite of cake.

“No. It’s silly, really. We just played this game where—”

“Ow!” Scott yelps, grabbing his mouth. He sticks out his tongue and pulls something silver out of his mouth. “What the . . .”

The charm is not attached to a ribbon, and I can’t see which one it is. Scott opens his hand to examine it. “There’s a heart in my cake.”

The heart charm: the next one to find true love.

Chapter Four

Melissa

I hate to be a bad friend, but really, is there any woman over the age of sixteen who actually likes going to bridal showers? I mean, besides happily married pregnant women who can gloat, and tell us in excruciating detail how their husbands proposed.

I’m sitting with my boyfriend, Fred, in a ridiculously romantic restaurant, with an incredible view of the city lights. He looks positively dapper tonight: his swimmer’s body looks fantastic in his new navy-blue suit; his brown eyes sparkle as he tells me a story about his day, and he seems to be in a really good mood. We’re having lovely wine and fantastic sushi. But instead of focusing on what I do have (a boyfriend who showers me with romantic dinners), I am paying attention to what I don’t have (a ring on my finger).

I can’t believe Ginger got the ring charm. Of course she’ll be the next one to get married. She’s one of those beautiful women who always has ten doe-eyed suitors doting on her at any given moment. Women like that don’t need to force the issue of marriage— it’s just part of the natural course of things for them. Like having exactly one boy and one girl, so you don’t miss out on the experience of parenting either one. And being supported by your husband if you choose to quit your job to go be a mom for ten years. And by that I mean supported both financially and emotionally— like having a guy around who loves you enough to want to have kids with you.

Fred doesn’t want kids. Or at least not with me. I’m a high school calculus and physics teacher, and any time I mention kids, he counters my hints by pointing out that boys with mothers who are freakishly good in math have a much higher incidence of autism and Asperger’s.

Which might be true. I wasn’t the easiest kid to raise, and maybe these days I’d be diagnosed with one of those disorders. I have to force myself to look people in the eye— I hate doing it. Always have. That’s a sign of both Asperger’s and autism. Plus I have a high IQ: 177. That’s frequently another sign.

Fred’s laughing as he finishes his story about someone at his law firm. (He’s a divorce lawyer. Which might be why he’s so anti-marriage.)

Instead of laughing with him, I’ll admit I’m kind of in my own world tonight. Fred takes my hand and asks me sweetly, “Are you okay? You seem . . . distant.”

“Sorry,” I say, sad but trying to cover.

Should I tell him about the ring charm? Ruin a perfectly good evening by bringing up marriage again? Maybe. I mean, honesty is supposed to be the cornerstone of a good relationship. Why shouldn’t I let him know how much his actions are hurting me?

I chicken out. “I was just thinking about how happy Nic and Jason looked earlier today. Like they’ve never not known each other. Pretty amazing after only one year together.”

Fred starts chuckling. He says playfully, “Here it comes.”

I know very fucking well what he means, but I still ask in irritation, “Here what comes?”

“Oh, isn’t marriage wonderful?” Fred says in a dreamy voice. “We should think about getting married. We’d have the cutest children.”

He playfully touches my nose and jokes, “Trying to give me ideas.”

God, I am so sick of this. I push his hand away from me. “I wasn’t doing anything except telling you how happy they looked.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. Now you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad. I’m tired,” I say. “It’s been six years. A girl gets tired after six years.”

Fred gets a pained expression on his face. “Mel, I’m just not there yet.”

“Six years,” I repeat, my voice rising. “When are you going to be there? Seven? Eight? Twenty? Just give me a number, so I know what my options are.”

Fred looks around the restaurant self-consciously, then leans in toward me and lowers his voice. “Honey, please don’t do this.”

I make a conscious effort to keep my voice low, but can still hear myself getting angrier. “Seriously, what is it going to take? What event has to happen that you suddenly realize that you love me, and that you want to spend the rest of your life with me?”

Fred looks down at the tablecloth, and away from me. “I don’t know,” he says sadly. “But can’t we just have a nice evening? Do we have to have this fight again tonight?”

I sigh, too. I hate not getting through to him. He either doesn’t know how important this is to me, or doesn’t care.

And I know exactly what’s going to happen tonight. First, I will have a fleeting thought in my head of how I will live without him. About how I’ll go home, right after dinner, pack my bags, move out of his house, and move back in with Seema. I’ll think about how I will finally have the courage to get on with my life. I’ll daydream that I’ll find a new guy who can make a commitment. Who loves me enough to make a commitment. I’ll imagine what it’ll be like and wonder whether or not I am strong enough to do this— to be by myself after six years. And by the time dessert comes, in my head we’ll be broken up. It will just be a matter of saying it aloud.

And then, over dinner Fred will become the sweetest, most attentive boyfriend ever. He’ll tell me how much he loves me, hug me, passionately kiss me, give me the best sex of my life, and then fall asleep, with me fitting perfectly in his arms.

The next morning he’ll do something incredibly romantic: breakfast in bed, complete with champagne. Or an impromptu trip to Santa Barbara for the day. And I’ll be happy again (for the most part) and feel loved and trea sured (mostly). And I won’t bring up marriage again.

Until the next event happens that breaks my heart.

Fred gently takes my hand. “I have an early birthday present for you,” he says.

Yes—I am an idiot. As he fishes in his pocket, I feel a rushing surge of hope that he will pull out a square-shaped, velvet box.

Instead, he pulls out a travel magazine. “Here. Go to the page with the Post-it on it.”

I flip through to page ninety-seven, where I see a yellow Post-it over an article about Bora Bora, and a picture of overwater bungalows looking out over a large mountain. “It’s beautiful,” I say, confused.

“We’re going,” Fred says, flashing me a wide grin. “For ten days. Tahiti, then Bora Bora. Starting the day after Nic’s wedding. Check out the next page— it shows what our room looks like.”

I go to the next page to see the inside of a bungalow built right over the turquoise-blue water. It is stunning: there’s a high ceiling with a thatched roof, teakwood furnishings, a king-size bed with a fluffy white comforter, and plenty of cushy pillows everywhere. In the step-down living room part of the suite is a glass coffee table that you can flip open to feed the tropical fish swimming beneath.

“You got off work?” I ask him incredulously. Fred works all the time. We haven’t had a vacation together in two years, and even then it was a four-day weekend to see his family in New York.

“I thought I needed to take some time for us to just be alone together and reconnect,” Fred tells me. “As much as I love you, it seems like we’ve been drifting apart lately.”

I smile as I read about ladders that take you from your room right into the warm turquoise waters of the Pacific. “You can swim with dolphins at this hotel?” I ask, happily surprised. I look up from the magazine. “I’ve always wanted to swim with dolphins.”

Fred is clearly excited to elaborate about his surprise. “I’ve signed us up for that. And we’re going to do this picnic on a private island that’s only accessible by boat. Plus there’s snorkeling and water sports. And this amazing gourmet restaurant . . .”

I smile, stand up, and give Fred a big hug. “I love it. Thank you.”

Fred hugs me back. “I love you so much,” he says softly, then kisses me.

I give him another kiss, then sit back down.

Life is pretty good. I look at the pictures dreamily again and sigh. “I’ll bet they have a spa there. Maybe the two of us could get a couple’s . . .”

And then the strangest thing happens. Fred looks over my shoulder, and all of the color drains from his face.

I turn around to see a strikingly beautiful woman staring at him from the maître d’s podium. She is stunning. Looks like Bar Refeali’s way cuter sister.

I turn back to Fred. “What?”

“Uh . . . nothing,” he barely manages to squeak out. “Just a client. I did her divorce a few months ago. I’ll be right back.”

Fred throws down his napkin and quickly rushes up to the woman. She looks beyond thrilled to run into him, quickly giving him a tight hug and moving in for a kiss. I watch Fred pull away from her uncomfortably. He then kisses the woman’s cheek demurely. She looks a little thrown by his reaction— not angry, just puzzled.

Then she sees me. And she’s pissed. Fred gently takes her hand, and the two of them talk. Eventually, Bar looks at me inquisitively, kisses Fred good-bye on the cheek, then leaves the restaurant.

Once she is out of my sight, Fred walks back up to our table, and takes his seat. “I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to introduce you. She was just leaving. Where were we?”

I stare at him. “You’re fucking her, aren’t you?”

Honestly, I don’t know why I said that. The words came tumbling out of my mouth before I could think about them.

But suddenly I can’t breathe. It’s as though my entire body instinctively knows what’s happening, and my brain is struggling to catch up.

“What?” Fred says, unconsciously looking around the room for a moment. “Why would you say that?”

I take a deep breath, throw down my cloth napkin, and look him dead in the eye. “Fred, do you want to get married or not?”

“Wow,” Fred says, clearly stunned by my outburst. “Because I’m not ready to get married, somehow I’m now cheating on you?”

I’m about to answer him with, “Yes. Why else would a man wait six years, unless it’s to sample what else is out there?”

But before I can say anything, from the corner of my eye I watch a tidal wave of red wine fly past me and hit Fred dead in the face.

I turn to see Bar, the beautiful blonde, with an empty glass in her hand. “Knulla dig! Farväll lögnare!” she spits out angrily at Fred, then turns on her heel and marches away.

I’m stunned. My jaw drops. I want to get up from the table, but my legs are frozen.

Fred begins calmly wiping his face clean. “I guess she didn’t like the settlement I got for her.”

Chapter Five

Seema

“So you’re saying this means I’m about to find my true love?” Scott asks me as he plays with his new charm and smiles so wide that I can’t tell if he’s fucking with me or genuinely thrilled to hear such news.

“I’m saying Nicole thinks it does,” I clarify. “I know it’s completely bogus, but you should have seen how she flipped out when—”

“How do you know?” Scott interrupts.

“How do I know what?”

“How do you know it’s completely bogus? What scientific proof do you have?”

My shoulders drop. “Stop that.”

Scott smiles and shrugs his shoulders. “You just said her friend Ginger just got engaged. Maybe the universe is trying to tell you something.”

I make a point of sighing loudly and rolling my eyes. “There were twenty-three girls at the party today who pulled charms. One of them pulled a charm that coincided with her future. Twenty-two others—twenty-three, if you include your heart— did not. Mel isn’t suddenly going to have a wild sex life with her boyfriend of six years, Nic won’t get pregnant if she doesn’t want to, I’m not going to work any harder at my job than I already have to, and you’re not falling in love anytime soon.”

Scott looks me in the eye and seems to genuinely ask me, “How do you know?”

I cross my arms, irked. “How do I know . . . which one?”

He shrugs and smiles. “Pick one. Any one. How do you know I won’t be the next person to fall in love?”

It’s at that point that I realize— maybe he’s already fallen in love with the girl he just started seeing two weeks ago.

Damn it. Why didn’t I break up with Conrad sooner? Better yet, why didn’t I make my move on Scott sooner? I had almost a fucking year, and I blew it. I should have just kissed him that first night and gotten it all out in the open. Either he would have been interested— in which case I wouldn’t be in this Hell (not even Hell— limbo. At least in Hell, you know who your enemies are), or he wouldn’t have been interested, in which case I could have had him as a coffee friend but never allowed myself to fall for him.

I look at his beautiful face. He’s smiling, and his sparkling eyes seem to be dancing. His lips are pink and plump and sexy, and I desperately want to kiss him. I do. I ache for it. Even though I know it’s no good for me, I will dream about it a hundred times tonight before I go to sleep. I’ll fantasize about the perfect place, the perfect time, how he’ll kiss me back, and how my life will be changed forever.

But this isn’t the perfect time or place. There never has been a perfect time or place, and now that he’s dating someone new, there probably never will be.

Scott jokingly wags his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx in an old black-and-white film. My eyes narrow, and I eye him suspiciously. “You are totally fucking with me, aren’t you?”

Scott laughs. “Of course I’m fucking with you.” He lifts up his silver heart to inspect it in the light. “I’m constantly amazed that women, particularly intelligent women, believe this crap. When was the last time you heard of a guy reading his horoscope or having his tarot cards read?” He slips the heart into his pocket. “I do want to keep this, though. I have a piece I’m working on that I want to put it in.”

I smirk “Please don’t tell me you’re calling the piece, ‘Crap Women Believe In.’ ”

Scott laughs. “THAT would be an awesome piece! I could totally get some bachelor to buy that!” He pulls a small notebook from his pocket, and a black ink pen. “The battle of the sexes always fascinates me,” he says, as he begins sketching his new project. “I could do it all in powder-pink and white, like a wedding . . .” I watch him as he quickly (and flawlessly) sketches a three-layer wedding cake as the centerpiece, then surrounds it on all sides with a series of shelves. “For the top shelf, I’d intersperse diet books like The Zone and Ten Days to Skinny with self-help relationship books like Think Like a Lady, Act Like a Man and He’s Just Not That Into You.”

“It’s Think Like a Man, Act Like a Lady,” I correct him.

Scott looks up to give me a pitying look. “You disappoint me, Singh.”

“I didn’t say I bought it, I just know the title. Knowledge is power. And I actually think I like that Ten Days diet book. I was leafing through it at the bookstore— it had some interesting ideas.”

Scott continues to draw ferociously, a man possessed. “No woman needs a diet book. Every woman I know knows enough on the subject to write a diet book herself. And it would be a short book, too. Page one: walk every day. Page two: if you’re wicked serious, go to a gym three times a week and lift a few weights. Page three: quit eating all that crap. Whether your crap is Zingers every time life throws you a curveball, Twinkies hidden in your desk drawer, or eating a two-thousand-calorie ‘salad’ loaded with dressing and meat, knock it off!” He turns the notebook around for me to scrutinize his work. “What else do I need?”

I look at the drawing and decide to betray my own sex in the name of flirting. “A Christian Louboutin shoe.”

“Which a woman believes will help her catch a man. Perfect!” he says, drawing an insanely high heel.

“Plus a DVD of Sex and the City, an eyelash curler, maybe a deck of tarot cards . . .”

“You are on fire, girl!” Scott says happily, taking a quick sip of champagne, then going back to his sketch.

My home phone rings. “Hey, can you do one of these about men?” I ask as I head to the phone.

“No,” Scott answers me firmly.

“What? Why not?”

“I wouldn’t know what to put in the display.”

“Under ‘Crap Men Believe’?” I exclaim. “You’re kidding, right? How about a Knicks jersey, a letter from Pent house, a porn DVD, and an old pizza box.”

“Hey—the Knicks have a shot this year. And a porn DVD is clichéd.”

“No more clichéd than a diet book,” I insist as I sip my champagne. “Oh! And for the center of the piece: a pillowtop mattress thrown onto the middle of the floor, with no box spring or head-board in sight.”

Scott laughs at my joke as my phone continues to ring. I look at the caller ID. It’s Mel. Damn it. She knows I’m seeing Scott tonight.

I pick up. “Hello.”

“I don’t think I’m getting the ring or the chili pepper fortune.” Mel says, and she sounds like she’s been crying. “Do you think there’s a toilet charm? Because that is where my life seems to be headed at the moment.”

“What happened? Are you all right?”

“No,” she says quietly. “If I were all right, I’d be in a romantic restaurant right now planning a trip to Bora Bora with Fred, dreaming of his proposal to me while we’re there, and being completely oblivious to where my life was headed. Instead, I am stunned, ready to throw up, and parked in front of your house.”

I’m confused. “Wait,” I say, walking to my front window, and pushing back my curtains to see her bright blue Prius parked out front. “You’re outside? Why aren’t you coming in?”

“Because Scott’s car is parked in your driveway, and I don’t want to bother you,” Mel reasons. “But I don’t know where else to go. Fred’s cheating on me.”

Chapter Six

Melissa

Seema and Scott run out to get me and bring me inside.

I quickly catch them up on the last hour of my life and have just finished the part about some strange Swedish woman throwing a drink in Fred’s face.

I then fill them in on what happened next: Fred wasn’t stupid. I saw a woman throw a drink in his face— he wasn’t going to get off without a full-blown explanation.

Svetlana, that’s her name— as if I could ever compete with a Svetlana— had been a client of Fred’s for three months. She was the trophy wife of a seventy-eight-year-old studio head who she caught getting head one night from an even younger woman than herself. Fred was her divorce attorney.

I had actually heard about her. Her husband had forced the final arbitration to be in Manhattan— so Fred was stuck there for a week and a half while both sides hammered out whether a five-year marriage to a decrepit guy was worth one hundred million dollars or one hundred and fifty million.

I remember Fred asked me to go with him to New York, but my high school was in the middle of state testing, and I didn’t want to leave my students.

I guess I should have.

I sit on Seema’s couch, numb, as I continue my story. “Fred told me, in a moment of tearful confession, that the night the case was settled, he took her out for drinks at the Oak Room. They had too much wine, he walked her back to her suite, she kissed him, and they made out for a few minutes.”

“Oh, good Lord . . .” Scott mutters under his breath.

“She’s not done with her story yet,” Seema tells him.

“Yeah, but obviously . . .”

“Scott . . .” Seema says warningly.

“Fine,” Scott says to Seema, crossing his arms. Then he turns to me. “But you do know he’s lying about that, right?”

I take a deep breath before I answer, “Honestly, I have no idea.”

“Finish your story,” Seema tells me sympathetically.

“Yes, you do!” Scott insists to me. “They did NOT just make out for a few minutes. You do know that, right?”

I look over at Scott, surprised at his vehemence. I shrug. “He says that’s all that happened.”

“Oh please. What’s he going to say? ‘I fucked someone in a hotel room three thousand miles away. I never thought I’d get caught. Oops.’ ”

His statement makes me burst into tears. Now I’m sad and embarrassed. Seema gives me a hug. I can’t breathe. I’m feeling sick, my nose is clogged, and my life is over.

I take a Kleenex from a box Scott brought into the living room, wipe my eyes, and gauge Seema’s and Scott’s reactions.

Seema’s eyes are wet as well, she is so shocked and saddened to hear my news. She looks almost as heartbroken as I feel.

Scott, on the other hand, looks angry. And the longer he listens, the angrier he gets.

I take a deep breath, and end my story. “Honestly, I don’t know what the truth is,” I tell them. “Fred’s called me at least seven times on my cell, and left texts. I haven’t picked up, because I don’t know what to say to him. I’m not ready to go home yet. I’m not even sure if I have a home to go to anymore.” I tear up again, but don’t cry. “I just have no idea what to think or what to do.”

“He’s a chode,” Scott states matter-of-factly. “You’re better off without him.”

I stare at him blankly. Seema glares at him. “Don’t say things like that!” she chastises Scott.

“Why?” Scott rebuts. “The guy’s not only cheating on her, but he’s lying about it with some insipid, ‘Strange girl only stuck her tongue in my mouth for a couple of minutes’ lie! He’s a total chode!”

“Because you don’t say things like that to someone who doesn’t even know they’re broken up yet,” Seema admonishes.

“What? You’re going to tell her to forgive the chode and marry him?” Scott argues.

“Of course I’m not going to tell her to marry the chode,” Seema counters. “But there’s a time for venting and a time for constructive advice. Check your watch.”

“Excuse me,” I say quietly. “What’s a chode?”

“Chode,” Scott repeats. “He’s a dick, a knob, a prick—”

“Thank you for the anatomy lesson,” Seema interrupts, cutting him off.

“He’s also an asshole,” Scott can’t help but add.

Seema throws down her hand on her coffee table as she asks firmly. “Will you stop that?”

Scott ignores her. Asks me with complete sincerity, “Do you want me to go beat the crap out of him? Because I am so there.”

Seema tries a different approach. “Scott, can you go get us some drinks please?”

“She hasn’t answered my question.”

“She doesn’t want you to beat him up,” Seema insists. “How is landing yourself in jail going to help her?”

“Actually, I would kind of like him to beat Fred up,” I admit to Seema.

She looks mildly horrified.

“I didn’t say I was actually going to have Scott do it,” I tell Seema. “I know that would be wrong.” Then I turn to Scott. “That is so sweet of you to offer, though.”

Scott looks a bit disappointed.

Seema takes my hand gently. “What do you want?”

“That’s the million-dollar question,” I tell her. “I want to find a way to get past this. I want it to have never happened.”

Seema doesn’t say anything— just nods her head knowingly. She gets what I’m saying. She pulls me into a hug, and we just sit there in silence.

Which is broken by the unlikeliest of heroes. “Nooooo!” Scott booms in his masculine voice. He gets up and begins pacing around. “I don’t get women sometimes.” He flips around to me. “Aren’t you pissed?!”

Scott’s clear green eyes stare right at me. I take a moment to collect my thoughts. “I . . . well, of course I am. I mean—”

“No, no,” Scott interrupts. “That’s not the sound of an angry woman. That’s the sound of a woman who thinks this is somehow her fault.”

I think about that for a moment, then admit aloud, “Well, you got me there.”

Seema’s jaw drops. I try to explain myself to her. “I keep trying to figure out what I could have done differently to make Fred not cheat on me. Maybe if I had gone to the gym more. I’m a runner, but I never lift weights. Or maybe if I had had that nose job— he always teased me about my nose. Or if I had just stayed on a diet—”

Scott interrupts my thoughts. “Jesus— do you realize how ridiculous you sound? You have a smoking body . . .” He turns to Seema. “Wait, I’m allowed to say that, right?”

Seema and I look at each other. “Um . . .” Seema debates. “Can he say that?”

Duh. I nod my head yes.

Scott continues, “Don’t be sad. Get angry!” He walks out of the living room and into Seema’s office, where he yells, “Sweetheart, where do you keep your note pads?”

“Top right drawer,” Seema yells back. Then she looks at me. “Can I get you something? Something with sugar in it? Something with booze in it?”

“Actually,” I say, “I would kill for a peach Bellini the size of a small horse.”

Seema pats me on the knee, then heads to her kitchen as Scott walks out of her office carrying a legal pad. “Here’s what I want you to do,” he says, handing me the pad. “I want you to write down one hundred things that you hate most about him.”

Seema emerges with a champagne flute just as Scott clarifies his assignment to me. “Not things that are going to make you blame yourself. You can write, ‘Number one, he won’t marry me.’ But only if you realize that that’s his fault— not yours. Only if the statement means, ‘He’s an asshole!’ Not, ‘What could have I have changed about myself?’ Personally, I would start with ‘He likes Nagel.’ And not as an ironic or a kitschy eighties thing; he actually likes him.” Scott stops talking as he notices Seema carefully pouring peach puree into the flute. “What the Hell are you doing?”

She looks up at him. “I’m making Mel a drink.”

“Are you out of your mind, woman? You’re going to give her a bridal shower drink on the day she finds out her boyfriend cheated on her? My God, it’s amazing we ever breed with you people. You make no sense.”

Scott walks out of the room and into her kitchen. I lean in to Seema. “Where’s he going?”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know,” she sighs. “But I’m sure he’s making some testosterone point.” She then whispers to me, “Why do I like this guy? He’s a total freak.”

Scott reappears with a bottle of Gentleman Jack and a shot glass. He opens the bottle, pours a shot, and hands it to me. “Here. Drink this.”

I hate whiskey. I look at Scott. “I’m not really a . . .”

“Drink it,” he says, in a low, commanding voice.

What the hell?— I drink the shot.

“Well?” Scott asks.

“It’s dreadful,” I sputter. “Like drinking broken glass.”

“For the next hour, if you want a drink, promise me you won’t drink overly sweet girlie drinks that will get you drunk, make you cry, and make you long for weddings, true love, or Fred. Drink a man’s drink— a hideous drink, if you will. Use it to get angry.”

He scribbles Why Fred is a Chode on the top of the note pad, then underlines it. “Okay, what’s your number one?”

I suddenly feel put on the spot. I have spent the last six years cultivating an image of Fred for all of the world to see. A happy image. A loving image.

An image that might not necessarily have been completely 100 percent true.

I mean, it was true when we met. Fred really was amazing. He was still in law school, and I had just started teaching, and we were both wildly in love, and absolutely sure about what we wanted in life.

Then, somehow, life got in the way.

It wasn’t just his high salary and seventy-hour workweeks crashing against my small salary and wanting to keep my summers off. Although certainly not agreeing on how much money and free time you can live with is big. It was sex that slowly got routine, and less and less frequent. And not being able to agree on a place to live together for so long that I finally had to move into his place, which I hated every day. Or not agreeing on a place to go on vacation, which led to not going on vacation together at all.

Sometimes, a relationship withers, and by the time you realize how close it is to death, you don’t know what to do to save it.

I desperately want the guy who brought silver roses to me on our second date back. I miss the man who lay in bed with me all day every Sunday, equipped with a Sunday Times, a few rented Blu-rays, and breakfast delivered to our door. I want my buddy back who watched BBC America with me every Thursday night.

I miss him, and I know he’s still lurking somewhere inside the too-sleek yuppie who crawls into bed with me every night. I know he’s still there.

Or, at least until tonight, I thought he was still there.

As I stare at the blank sheet of lined paper, I am at a total loss as to what to write.

1. Nagel.

Scott reads my number one upside down. “That’s cheating,” he says. “I totally served that one up for you. Show some originality.”

“But I can’t stand Nagel,” I point out.

“And I don’t like wet socks. Who does? Movin’ on to number two.”

I’m not really comfortable telling my friends the real reasons my relationship isn’t working. So I start by writing down some of my minor grievances:

2. Works too much.

Scott smiles. “Good.”

3. Cannot see a dish in the sink to save his life.

4. Will not shop for Christmas presents until December 24th.

Seema reads that one. “Hmmm . . . so basically number four just makes him male.”

Scott turns to Seema. “You loved your gift card.” Then he turns to me, “Keep going, sweetheart.”

5. Blares U2 at 8:00 A.M. on Saturday morning while getting ready for his softball game.

6. Accidentally deletes my DVRed Monday-night sitcoms every time a game is on that night.

Then I brace myself, take a deep breath, and write down the really painful ones.

The ones that sometimes do make me hate him.

7. Wouldn’t let me move in.

Seema’s eyes widen. I never let on to anyone that he didn’t want me to move in. Never admitted to her (back when she, Nic, and I were roommates) that I gave him an ultimatum one night: let me move in, or we’re over. He did— eventually. But he kept all of his furniture exactly where it was. All of my stuff went into storage. So I always felt like a guest in my own home.

8. Wasted six years of my life.

I scribble angrily.

“Great start,” Scott says. Then he puts out his hand. “House keys.”

I am confused for a moment. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re moving out,” Scott says matter-of-factly. “What do you need most between now and Monday?”

Seema sighs again, then says to Scott, “Um . . . honey? With all due respect, you’re pushing too hard here—”

“No, no,” I interrupt quickly, giving him my keys. “I either need a pair of Banana Republic blue jeans or the ones I bought from Target. My fat jeans, not my thin ones. And my flat Steve Maddens, my gray Ann Taylor long-sleeve T-shirt, a long T-shirt to sleep in, preferably the one with the Grinch and Max the dog on it, a toothbrush, and my Kiehl’s moisturizing lotion.”

Scott looks at me blankly.

I clarify, “I need pants, shirts, shoes, and a toothbrush.”

Scott smiles at me. “I’m proud of you. Most women would be curled up in a ball right now.”

He gives me a kiss on the forehead, kisses Seema good-bye, then takes his leave.

The moment the door closes behind him, Seema warns me, “Just so you know: he might very well come back with a pair of Gap blue jeans from 1993, tennis shoes, and your beat-up old Spice Girls T-shirt. I’ve gone on weekend trips with him: there is no rhyme or reason to what he packs.”

“I don’t care,” I say, feeling myself smile. “He could come back with a box of Tampax, a pair of pantyhose, and a flashlight. Tonight, I have a hero taking care of me.”

And as awful as this night has been, how Politically incorrect and wonderful is it to be able to say that?

Chapter Seven

Nicole

“And chances are,” I gleefully read to Malika, my soon-to-be step-daughter, “if she asks for some syyrruup . . .” I drag the word syrup out five syllables to wait for Malika to finish the sentence.

Malika looks up at me, her face brightening as she squeals, “She’ll want a pancake to go with it!”

“Yes, she will! Won’t she?!” I say, tickling Malika, who giggles as she squirms her little body beneath me.

We’re both in our pajamas, lying in her bed, and I have just finished reading her Laura Numeroff’s If You Give a Pig a Pancake while Jason reads Harry Potter to her nine-year-old sister Megan in the other room. On alternate nights, Jason reads to Malika, and I get to read Harry Potter.

“Switch!” Jason, clad in his nighttime ensemble of his team T-shirt and gray shorts, yells happily from the doorway.

I rapidly kiss Malika on the cheek five times. “I love you,” I tell her.

“I love you too.”

“I love you more. Who’s the cutest five-year-old?”

“Me!”

I smile, stand up, and walk past Jason. “Tagging out!” I say, making a show of high-fiving him.

“Tagging in!” Jason says.

I head to Megan’s room and catch her reading the next chapter of Harry Potter.

“Hey, that’s cheating.” I pretend to lecture. “I just have to know how it ends,” Megan says, as I walk over and sit on her bed. She looks up at me and whispers, “Do you think I could use my flashlight? Just for a little bit?”

How can I resist that angelic smile and those pleading eyes? I lean in and whisper, “Okay, but just one chapter.”

Megan smiles and pulls a flashlight from under her pillow. “Don’t tell Dad.”

“Your secret’s safe with me,” I assured her conspiratorially. I give her a kiss on the forehead and say, “I love you.”

“Me too.”

I take my leave and watch Megan throw the covers over her head, turn on her flashlight, and begin reading again as I turn out the light and close the door.

Jason closes Malika’s door and meets me in the hallway. “Did she have the flashlight?” he asks me under his breath, amused.

“Of course,” I say, my heart melting at how cute she is. “So, you mentioned something about wine?”

“Indeed I did,” Jason says, taking my hand and walking down the hallway, toward the stairs. “I want to hear about all those wedding gifts we got today.”

Our home phone rings as I joke with him. “Well, I know you had your heart set on a traif dish.”

We ignore the phone as Jason continues with the joke. “Not nearly as much as the fingertip towels.”

“We didn’t register for fingertip towels,” I tell him.

“Yes, we did,” Jason insists.

“No, we didn’t,” I assure him.

He actually looks confused by this. “Yes, we did,” he insists.

“That must have been for your first wedding,” I joke.

Jason mock glares at me for my joke as our answering machine picks up.

“Well, then, what were those tiny purple towels in the linen department if not fingertip towels?” Jason asks me.

“Those were washcloths.”

“No. I called them washcloths and was strongly chastised by the woman at Bloomingdale’s.”

“That was because you were looking at fingertip towels at the time— the ones in tea rose. We went with another manufacturer, so that we could get them in aubergine. But the other manufacturer didn’t make fingertip towels, they made washcloths.”

“Okay, you know the next time I talk about the differences between a zone trap and a pressing man to man, you are allowed to say nothing.”

“Hi Jason and Nicole, it’s Jacquie,” we hear Jason’s ex-wife say happily on the machine. “Listen, I know it’s getting kind of late, but I have some stuff I want to run by you both when the girls aren’t around. I was hoping I could just drop by tonight for ten minutes.”

Jason and I share an inquisitive glance.

“You know what?” Jacquie continues. “You might still be out with the girls. I’ll try you on your cell. But call me back the second you get this. Or Nic, call me back the second you get this. Whoever. Just someone please call me back.”

The machine beeps. About thirty seconds later, Jason’s cell phone begins ringing in our bedroom.

“What’s that about?” Jason asks me.

I shrug. “I have no idea.”

Jason makes a detour to our bedroom. “Are you sure she was okay being at your shower today? Did she seem weirded out at all?”

“No,” I say. “She seemed cheerful. As a matter of fact, she . . .”

I stop talking.

The charm. She got the typewriter.

Jason picks up his cell. “Hey, Jacquie,” he says into the phone. “What’s up?”

Jason looks at me in confusion as he talks to her. “No, Nic didn’t mention anything. . . . Yeah, I guess so. Is everything okay?”

I watch Jason as he listens to the voice on the other end of the phone. He occasionally looks in my direction in total confusion. I try to stare blankly back at him, like I don’t know any more than he does. Which, really, I don’t. But I have a nagging suspicion Charm #2 is about to come true.

“No, come on over,” Jason says tentatively. “Okay, we’ll see you in a few minutes. Yeah, bye.” Jason hangs up the phone. “Did Jacquie mention a job offer to you today?”

Shit! I knew it! I just knew it. Seema may think I’m half cocked, but I’m onto something here. “She said something about being up for a speechwriting job,” I tell Jason. “But she said it was a long shot, so I didn’t think too much about it.”

“Huh,” Jason says. “Well, she got the job. And she told me to tell you not to say anything until she came over. What doesn’t she want you to tell me?”

I open my mouth to answer him. But before I can say, “Your ex-wife wants to move your girls five hundred miles away,” the doorbell rings.

Jason quickly heads downstairs and over to the front door, with me half a step behind him. He opens the door to his beautiful ex-wife, Jacquie, who is beaming. “I got it!” she screams, then slips past her ex to pull me into a hug.

I look over Jacquie’s shoulder to watch my confused fiancé widen his eyes (couple shorthand for “What the hell is going on?”). Before I can answer him, Jacquie pulls away from me, then excitedly grabs Jason. “I start Monday!”

“Um . . . congratulations,” Jason says, feigning enthusiasm. “You start what Monday?”

Jacquie pulls away from him. “Didn’t Nic tell you?”

Shit.

“I didn’t think anything was definite,” I say weakly.

“Tell me what?” Jason asks. “What job did you get?”

Jacquie proudly tells him, “I am the new junior speechwriter for the governor.” Then for added emphasis she happily screams, “Ah!”

Jason’s face falls. “Of California?”

“No. Of Rhode Island,” Jacquie jokes. “Of course, of California. He announces his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in the next week or two, so he’s expanding his staff. The mayor put in a good word for me. I didn’t think I had a shot in Hell, but I flew up there yesterday, and I guess I made an okay impression, because I got it!”

Jason looks shell-shocked but like he’s trying to cover. “You flew up to Sacramento?”

“I did!” Jacquie says, looking so happy she might burst out of her own skin. “I didn’t bother telling you because I didn’t think it was going to happen. But senator. Can you believe I have a shot at working in Washington, D.C., next year?”

“But what about the girls?” Jason blurts out. “We have a custody agreement.”

“Yeah, what about the girls?” I hear from the staircase. The three of us look up to see Megan standing at the top of the stairs. “I’m not moving to Sacramento,” she states firmly as she walks downstairs.

“Oh, honey, you don’t have to,” Jacquie says, walking halfway up the stairs and hugging her daughter. “I’ve got it all worked out. Sacramento is only an hour’s flight away. You girls will live with your father during the week, I’ll fly home every Friday night, pick you up, then drop you off on Sunday night, and fly back up. It’ll be exactly the same schedule you had before, just with your dad and me having you on opposite days than we did last year.”

“But what about our family cruise?” Megan asks. “It’s next week.”

From the look on her face, I can tell Jacquie hadn’t thought that one through. “Well . . .” she stalls. “We can still go. Just not next week.”

Megan gets a look of disgust on her face that should be reserved for teenaged girls and Simon Cowell. “Malika has been looking forward to that trip for six months!” she nearly screams at her mother. “You already postponed it once. How can you do it again?”

“Honey, I have to work,” Jacquie tells her apologetically. “We’ll find a different time.” Jacquie looks over at us. Her face lights up as she says, “And you’ll love Italy.”

Say what now?

Jason and I have the conversation that only couples can, which consists of no words and fleeting looks.

First look, a pleading expression from Jason: I’m sorry.

Second look, a shrug from me: It’s okay. It’ll be fine. They can come.

Third look, relief from Jason: I love you so much.

“Who goes with their dad on his honeymoon?” Megan asks in disgust.

“Lots of kids go on honeymoons with their parents,” Jacquie assures her. “I’ve read about the trips. They’re called familymoons. Why, I’m sure your dad and Nic could find you guys amazing things to do in Venice. They have gondolas, and pizza, which you love. Plus there’s . . .”

As Jacquie continues to sell her firstborn on the idea of Italy, I look up to see Malika, standing at the top of the stairs, silent and devastated. “But why can’t they just come on the cruise with us?” she begs her mother.

The girl looks heartbroken. Utterly heartbroken. As her mother walks up to her, she bursts into tears.

How can I enjoy the romance of Italy, knowing it came at the expense of a five-year-old’s happiness?

I immediately walk up the stairs and kneel down to be at eye level with Jason’s little girl. Then I muster up all the enthusiasm and excitement I have in me and tell her, “You know what would be really cool after the cruise is if the four of us went to Epcot. I hear they have a pretend St. Mark’s Square that’s even better than the real thing.”

Chapter Eight

Melissa

By 3:00 A.M., Scott has gone home, Seema is in her room, and I’m in my old bedroom at her place, the one I lived in before Fred and I moved in together.

My old room.

God damn it. I loved living here— don’t get me wrong. I love my friends, I loved feeling like part of a family that I picked out, and being surrounded by people who loved me and accepted me for who I really am.

But, at the same time, when I moved out, I felt a little smug. Not smug— that might be the wrong word. But I was the first one of us to move in with the love of her life. And, at the time, I thought I was just months away from being the first of us to get engaged.

Back then, I was absolutely giddy that my life was moving forward. I had been sure that I was the smartest and the luckiest of the three of us. In my mind, I was the chosen one, because someone had literally chosen me! I wasn’t quite thirty yet, but I had managed to figure out the secret to having it all: a job I loved and a boyfriend who wanted me to move in. (Fine, allowed me to move in. But I’m not the first woman in the world who ever gave an ultimatum. I’m not even the first one today.)

And now, at thirty-two, my life has just taken a giant fucking U-turn, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.

I feel completely powerless, helpless, and useless.

And as much as I know I have to leave, my mind is racing for something he can do to win me back.

The rest of the evening wasn’t too bad. Fred called a bunch of times but, with the help of my friends, I had the strength not to answer the phone. Scott went to Fred’s house and packed a whole suitcase for me. I have no idea what he said to Fred, but somehow he managed to convince him to give me a night or two to cool off.

Then Scott came back to Seema’s and tried to cheer me up as I continued writing my list of things I hate about Fred.

I had written sixty-two things down and left room at the bottom of the last page for more. The list zigzagged from petty to huge: his blaring U2 I guess is minor— his lying and cheating is gigantic.

And now, sitting in bed alone, I look through my list and add number sixty-three.

63. Knew if I ever found out that he had an affair, it would break my heart. Did it anyway.

I begin to cry again. Soon, my crying turns into loud sobbing, and my stomach hurts again from my violent hyperventilating.

Seema is through my bedroom door in no time flat and pulls me into a hug. “I know . . .” she says gently. She hands me a box of Kleenex, and I quickly pull out a fistful of tissues.

After a few more minutes, I stop crying enough to blow my nose and dry my eyes. “I think I might be running out of tears,” I tell her through my stuffed-up nose.

“Do you want me to get you some water?” Seema asks me. “Or a cocoa or something?”

“Water,” I say weakly. She stands up. “You want to try and get some food into you too?” Seema asks. “I have tons of leftover cheese and crackers.”

I shake my head. “If I eat, I’ll throw up.”

“Booze?” she asks.

“If I drink, I’ll throw up.”

“Cigar?” Seema asks.

I raise one eyebrow. She found my weakness. I might be pathetically clutching at straws for any way to make myself feel better, but I do love cigars. They are decadent, and bad for me, and Fred hates them on my breath.

Perfect.

Two minutes later, we’re on Seema’s front porch, sitting in her side-by-side white wicker chairs. As she lights my cigar, I suck in deeply, attempting to enjoy the intoxicating caramelly aroma of a good smoke. I can taste it, but I still feel like crap. I hold the smoke in my lungs, then slowly exhale out.

“I just didn’t even see this coming,” I say to Seema, as she lights her cigar. “I mean, I knew he had a problem committing, but I just figured it would happen eventually. I figured if I could just stick it out long enough, he’d realize he couldn’t live without me.”

Seema gives me a sympathetic look. She doesn’t say anything. How could she? What can you say when your best friend gets cheated on?

I take another puff of my cigar and try to savor this treat that usually brings me such joy. “God, I’m such a fucking idiot,” I say angrily.

“You’re not an idiot,” Seema assures me, as she sucks on her cigar to get the whole thing lit. “You’re a woman in love. It happens to the best of us.”

“You’ve never been this stupid,” I point out to her.

Her cell phone beeps a text. She lifts up the phone so I can see Scott’s text. “Wanna bet?”

“What’s it say?” I ask, unable to focus through my watery eyes.

She reads the screen, “Just got home. Is she okay?”

“Nice someone cares,” I say.

“A lot of us care,” Seema says while texting something back.

“What are you writing back?” I ask.

“Just telling him we’re smoking cigars,” Seema says. She hits send, then tosses the phone onto the white wicker table between us. “So when do you want to move your stuff in?”

I love that it’s not even a question, it’s a statement. It’s not an offer, it’s a given. I’m family, I’m wounded. And I’m home now.

Nonetheless, Nic just moved out six months ago. I feel guilty for intruding on Seema’s new life without roommates. “I don’t want to cramp your style,” I tell her. “What happens when you finally begin your torrid affair with Scott? How’s it going to look that first night? I can just see it: the two of you are making out in a frenzied heat on your front porch. Clothes are unbuttoned, but still on. Tongues are flying everywhere. You unlock the door, bursting into the living room ready for a night of passion . . . and the two of you see me, in my pink fuzzy bathrobe, watching bad TV, a spoon of ice cream sticking out of my mouth and my face tearstained and red.”

Seema takes a moment to paint the picture in her mind. She shrugs. “I’ll just tell him Friday’s your self-pity night. I get Mondays, Wednesdays, and Valentine’s Day.”

I try to laugh. It comes out more as a loud smile.

Seema pats me on the back. “Come on. It’ll be fun. We could have your old room decorated in about a day.”

I casually look around my old neighborhood. “It would be nice to move back in here,” I admit. “It feels safe here.”

“Of course it does,” Seema agrees.

Her cell beeps again. She reads the text, then smiles sheepishly.

“What’s it say?” I ask.

“He says that watching a woman smoking a cigar is one of the sexiest sights on the planet, and that watching two should be illegal.”

I try to smile, but I think those muscles have atrophied. “He’s a good guy,” I tell her.

“You think?” Seema asks me, smiling from my approval.

“Yeah,” I say with absolute certainty. “Complete wimp in terms of what he’s going to do with you, but a really good guy otherwise.”

“If you listen to all those self-help books, they’d say he’s not interested,” Seema tells me as she frenetically flicks her fingers over her BlackBerry’s minikeyboard.

I shrug. “Not necessarily. You’re with someone, then he’s with someone. At some point, if it’s meant to be . . .”

“Oh, God, I hate that ‘meant to be’ crap,” Seema says as she tosses her BlackBerry onto the table again. “If it were meant to be, one of us would have done something about it by now.”

“Fair enough,” I say, not wanting to fight about it. Seema’s BlackBerry beeps again. She can’t help herself— she’s like a kitten staring at a flickering thread of yarn. She picks it up and reads as I take another puff of my cigar. “Although I must ask: if it’s not meant to be, what’s he’s doing texting you at three A.M. on a Saturday night?”

Seema looks over at me. Gives me a I have no fucking clue look with an accompanying shrug.

“Ah, men,” I say. “A mystery.”

“Wrapped in sharp spikes,” Seema continues.

“And covered in chocolate,” I finish.

Seema reads, “He says to tell you that he’s making filet au poivre at my house Tuesday night, and that you need to tell me you’re moving in or he’s not going to make you one.”

“He cooks?” I ask.

“He finds it soothing.”

“Look, if you don’t want him, can I have him?”

“Oh, honey, I love you,” Seema tells me warmly. “But if you touch him, I’ll break you like a twig.”

I try to laugh. It is funny. I take a big puff of cigar. “All right, you got me,” I say. “I’ll move in.”

“Good!” she says cheerfully. “With someone chipping in for rent, I might be able to afford those filets.”

Chapter Nine

Nicole

Chester ripped off Penelope’s bodice. Her nipples hardened. But was that from the cold air, or the promise of his

I drum my fingers on my desk. What’s a new word for penis?

the promise of his shaft of love

I actually saw that in a book once. Ick. I highlight shaft, and use my computer’s thesaurus. Rod of love, stick of love, pole of love, shank . . .

Good Lord, I’m scraping bottom here.

I highlight my passage and hit delete. So much for trying to make it as a romance novelist.

It’s three in the morning, I can’t sleep, and I’m not getting anything done either. I throw my legs up on the desk in my home office and stare at my computer screen.

Man, I hate writing. I mean, you know, I love being paid to be a writer. I love reading what I’ve written. I love telling people at parties that I’m a writer. I just don’t so much like the writing part.

As a matter of fact, lately I hate all of it. Seriously— why do people ever want to become writers?

It’s a weird thing when your job is everyone else’s hobby. Writing’s certainly not the only job like that. It’s just like any other job that, if done well, looks effortless. Jobs people are sure they would be great at (and get rich from) because they do it so well at home. There are the home chefs who make the perfect risotto who want to shuck it all and open a restaurant. The community theater actors in small towns around America who secretly want to shuck it all to try to become the next Cate Blanchett. The bakers who have perfected a red velvet cupcake in the privacy of their own kitchens and dream of opening a little shop. The bloggers who think they’re the next Bob Woodward. Or the people who are sure their lives would make a fascinating screenplay and who even buy a copy of Final Draft and begin typing:

INT. COFFEE SHOP— DAY

BLAKE CONNORS, good-looking but doesn’t know it (think John Krasinski), sits at a table drinking his coffee. A beautiful woman rushes in, wearing a wedding gown.

WOMAN

You need to hide me!

Seriously, I have read that opening line in a script on three different occasions. Once the character was described as (think George Clooney). Once it was (think Gerard Butler). Once it was (think Dane Cook). Which is just wrong on so many levels.

Anyway, I think the reason that most people never actually follow through on their dreams is because on some level they know that it’s not as easy as it looks, it’s not as fun as it looks, and it’s never as lucrative as we see on TV.

Case in point: actually being a working writer. That sounds pretty glamorous, right? Or at least fairly easy. You get up at noon, have your coffee, tell the world what observations you’ve made about your life. Very Carrie Bradshaw.

Unless you’re a screenwriter. In which case you get up at noon, go to a studio meeting or two, then hang out with your screen-writer friends in a coffee house or bar and talk about what you should be writing. Very . . . um . . . well, there are no famous screenwriters I can think of, but you get the point.

Most of my paid writing has been as a newspaper columnist. Which to most people conjures up a fantasy of traveling the world, putting one’s life in jeopardy while digging up stories, effortlessly speaking to the locals in any of the seven languages one is fluent in.

God, I wish. I am fluent in one language: English. And at seven in the morning, I wouldn’t even go that far.

Up until six months ago, I worked for a local Los Angeles newspaper. I was overworked and underpaid. I frequently worked for the Metro section, which meant I was the woman who showed up at City Hall early in the mornings, then wrote about anything from a contentious city council meeting to what was going on at the LAUSD to what zone ordinances were threatening the city’s water supply.

In short: I had the most boring writing job in the city. And I miss it every day. I worked way too many hours. I was paid so little that up until recently I was still living with a roommate. And I was constantly worried that my job was going to go away because people are more interested in reading about the sex lives of Jon and Kate than whether or not their local charter school license would be granted, or if the mayor would raise the parcel tax another hundred dollars annually.

Six months ago, during the third wave of layoffs in as many years, the company bought me out, and I was out of a job.

I was devastated. I was thirty-one and had spent the last ten years of my life building a career that was gone in a ten-minute meeting with my boss. And forget about going to another paper: circulation was down everywhere and no one was hiring.

So there I was, smack dab in the middle of a midlife crisis, at the ripe old age of thirty-one. I supposed I would die early.

I called Jason, who was, as always, perfect. He always knows when to listen to me vent, when to ask questions, and when I am emotionally spent and ready to listen to his advice. And that day was no exception.

“Okay,” Jason said calmly the morning I was let go, after listening to me monologue for at least twelve minutes straight. “How about if you take a few days off and regroup? You can come with me to Portland this weekend and think about your options.”

(Side note: Since Jason is an NBA assistant coach, he travels with his team on road games from October until as late as June. That weekend in February they were in Portland.)

“I have no options,” I remember whining to him from a locked bathroom stall. (I had gone to the ladies’ room to hide, cry, and use my cell phone to track down moral support.) “I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“The L.A. Tribune isn’t the only paper in the world,” Jason had said. “Why don’t you update your résumé and see what else is out there?”

“Nothing else is out there,” I said. “Circulation is down everywhere. And besides, I love you, and I don’t want to leave you. It’s not like I can move to Seattle or New York or anywhere else. You’re here.”

Jason proposed to me that night. And as far as everyone else knew, I chose to take the buyout from the paper because I wanted to plan my dream wedding, then get pregnant and become a housewife.

Everything sounded so perfect when I said “Yes.”

And, for the most part, it has been pretty damn perfect these past six months. Yes, I have been trying to get work as a writer (my latest botched attempt being this romance novelist idea), but honestly I’ve been a bit lazy.

The Politically incorrect thing is, for the most part I rather like being a house wife. I like not having to get up until nine in the morning. I like helping Jason’s girls with their homework during the school year, when they stay with us on weekends. I like having a maid come in once a week to clean the toilets. And I really like having enough money to pay my electric bill and my cable bill in the same week.

But I’m not so sure I’m going to like helping with homework every day, and I’ll admit I’m disappointed about Italy.

I pull the silver baby carriage out of my desk drawer and stare at it.

Babies. Motherhood.

When do you know you’re ready to start the rest of your life? How do other women know? And is something wrong with me that I’m so terrified of the thought of a person on this planet thinking my name is “Mommy”?

Everyone says motherhood is incredibly fulfilling. No one I know seems to have ever regretted having kids. Plenty of people I know regret becoming reporters. Why is looking at this damn charm filling me with such paralyzing fear?

I stare at the baby carriage. Is this my future? Is someone trying to tell me something?

Jason knocks lightly on my open door. “You working?” he asks me as he yawns.

I smile at him as I toss the charm onto my desk. “Trying,” I say. Then I turn to my computer screen and sigh. “I think you’re right. I’m not cut out to do romance novels.”

Jason smiles at me. “I’m not cut out to play point guard. That doesn’t mean I’m not a good basketball player.”

He walks over to me and gives me a kiss, then pulls me into a hug. “You’ll find your niche.”

“I found my niche,” I tell him sadly. “Newspapers. I just lost it.”

“You’ll find another niche,” he says, rubbing my back. He pulls away slightly to look me in the eye. “I really appreciated what you did earlier tonight.”

I smile at him, then give him a kiss on the lips. “It wasn’t a big deal.”

“It was a very big deal,” Jason assures me. “And it makes me love you even more that you’re acting like it’s not a big deal.” Jason notices the baby carriage and picks it up. “What’s this?”

I shrug and try to downplay it. “Oh, it’s just the charm I pulled at the shower yesterday.”

Jason’s eyes widen slightly. He smiles at me. “You got the baby carriage? I thought you wanted the work charm.”

“I did,” I say. “But I rigged the cake wrong. I got this instead.”

Jason looks at it. “Hmm.”

“Hmm,” I repeat. “What does ‘Hmm’ mean?”

Jason does some downplaying of his own. “It just means, ‘Hmm.’ ”

“No, it doesn’t,” I argue. “That ‘Hmm’ is fraught with subtext.”

Jason cocks his head, smiling at me in amusement.

“What?” I ask suspiciously.

“I love that you think that anything I do could be fraught with subtext. I’m a guy: we are rarely, if ever, fraught with subtext.” He wraps his arms around me and gives me a big bear hug. “You want to talk about it?”

I lean my head into his chest and say apologetically, “It kinda freaked me out.”

“Why?” Jason asks me, in a tone of voice that lets me know he suspected as much.

“I just don’t know if I’ll make a good mother,” I admit. “At least not yet.”

“Need I remind you, you just cancelled your honeymoon—”

“That’s different,” I interrupt. “Changing two weeks of your life isn’t the same as changing twenty-four/seven.”

“That’s true,” Jason agrees. “It’s a good start, though.”

I’m starting to get uncomfortable. I know Jason would like another kid. We’ve talked about it: buying a cute crib, getting the baby a little basketball, loving each other so much that we want to make a new life. But . . . I’m just not there yet.

“Can we talk about something else?” I ask.

“Sure,” Jason says. And I love him for that. “So what charms did everyone get? Did Seema get her red hot chili pepper?”

“No, Mel pulled that.”

“What’s Mel going to do with a chili pepper?”

Chapter Ten

Melissa

It’s Tuesday night, and I’m finally starting to feel like maybe I did the right thing.

I think.

I’ve just read an article about surviving breakups that instructs you to “journal” how you’re feeling about the breakup. You start by writing down three pages of what ever gibberish goes through your brain. It can be anything from, “I’m hungry,” to “Fred’s a jerk,” to “Why do men cheat?” to “Man, now I really want a cookie.”

After completing the three pages of non sequiturs racing through your brain, you should begin writing specifically about your relationship, your man, and any questions and fears you have about the breakup.

The process is supposed to help you see clearly what scares you about being alone, then help you find ways to deal with your fears and move on with your life.

I’m sitting in my room by myself, listening to deafening silence. Seema and Scott are out getting us filets. They’ve been great, and when I’m with them I can get through the hours, the minutes, the seconds of this hideous week. But when there’s no one else around, I immediately sink back into feeling desperate, sick, and rudderless.

I grab a blank yellow legal pad from my home desk and fiercely scribble down:

What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t he want me? Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that really was just a client. Maybe I’m an idiot for even entertaining that notion. Maybe if I had just

My cell phone rings. I pick it up from my nightstand and stare at the caller ID. It’s Fred again. He’s been calling nonstop for days.

Now I know how addicts feel. I’m sick to my stomach and miserable. I know it’s better for me not to have him around, but I’m not sure how much longer I can stand feeling this way. Fred is my drug. I know he’s bad for me, but I just want to be out of pain at this exact moment. I pick up the phone, succumbing to my fix. I’ll deal with the consequences of my actions later. I’ll have will-power later. Right now, I just desperately need to be out of pain.

“Hello,” I answer.

There’s silence for a few seconds on his end. “You picked up . . .” Fred finally says, a little startled. “I was going to leave you another message. How are you?”

“I’m fine,” I lie. “What were you going to say on the message?”

“That I happened to be in the neighborhood, and I wanted to know if you’ll have dinner with me. Any place— you choose.”

Fred lives and works in Brentwood. We’re all the way out in Hollywood. “What are you doing so far from home?” I ask him.

“Driving around your block over and over again, hoping you’d pick up the phone,” Fred tells me.

Inwardly, that rock that’s been in my stomach for days slowly begins to dissolve.

Fred continues, “I have a bouquet of roses resting on the passenger seat for you too. Can we go somewhere and talk?”

The tension in my body slowly, but continually, begins melting away. “Are they silver?” I ask him.

“Of course they’re silver. But you can’t have them unless you have dinner with me.”

I glance over to look at the mirror on my wall. I don’t want him to see me like this. My eyes are puffy, my skin is blotchy and red. “I can’t really go tonight. Scott and Seema are out getting us steaks.”

“And you want to be the third wheel watching Seema not make her move again?” Fred jokes. Then he boy-whines, “Come on. Go out with me!”

They are going to be so mad if I go out to see Fred. Still— I do need to get the rest of my stuff out of his condo, and it would be easier if I had a bit of closure. “Actually I wasn’t hungry for steak— I was just being polite to Seema. I could go for some seafood, though.”

“What about the Water Grill in downtown?” Fred suggests.

It didn’t take long for me to brush my hair, throw on a nice dress (the place is rather formal by L.A. standards), and leave a note for Seema and Scott.

Within the hour, Fred and I are sitting at a beautiful table against the wall in the dark, clubby, Art Deco dining room at Water Grill. We start with some drinks: Fred gets his usual dirty martini made with Grey Goose. I opt for a glass of Ariadne, a wonderful mix of sémillon and sauvignon blanc that Nic introduced me to.

Water Grill is known for its oysters, so Fred starts with half a dozen Beau Soleil oysters, then orders the Wild Skeena River king salmon. I start with the Long Cove oysters, then have the spiny lobster tail.

On the drive over, conversation was stilted, but safe: he told me how nice I looked and asked about my preparations for the coming school year. I asked him about his work. We talked about the Dodgers’s chances of clinching a spot in the playoffs and the latest U2 album.

But once we had ordered, and each of us had a drink in front of us, the real conversation began.

“I didn’t sleep with her,” Fred tells me softly but firmly as he stares into his martini glass. “I know what I did was really wrong, and I know that you’ll probably never be able to forgive me. But I just wanted you to know the truth. I would never do that to you. I would never hurt you like that.”

I look down at my glass of wine. “I know,” I say, and I think I mean it. “But you have to understand how humiliating that was for me.”

Fred nods his head almost sheepishly. His eyes flit around the room. I continue staring at my wine. Finally, he asks, “So . . . where are we?”

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