Me Vs. Me
Sarah Mlynowski

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Sylvia Harris and Dora Stein,

grandmas extraordinaire

Many, many thanks to:

My fab new editor, Selina McLemore, my fab former editor, Farrin Jacobs, Tara Kelly, Margaret Marbury, Sarah Rundle and the rest of the RDI team, my awesome agent Laura Dail and superb publicist Gail Brussel.

For their brilliant insights and edits: Elissa Ambrose (thanks again, Mom; you’re the best), Robert Ambrose, Lynda Curnyn, Alison Pace, Lisa Callamaro, Jessica Braun, Melissa Senate, Kristin Harmel, Dari Alexander and Chad Ruble.

For their never-ending love and support:

Larry Mlynowski, Louisa Weiss, Aviva Mlynowski, Jen Dalven, Gary Swidler, Darren Swidler, John Swidler, Bonnie Altro, Robin Afrasiabi, Jess Davidman, Ronit Avni. Special thanks to Vicki Swidler for being a dream mother-in-law, and luckily for me, nothing like Alice. And of course, Todd Swidler, the one for me no matter which road I would have taken.

Contents

BEFORE

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

AFTER

BEFORE

“Close your eyes, Gabby,” Cam said.

“Now? I’m watching.” Closing your eyes during a meteor shower was like wearing a bikini when taking a bath. You were definitely going to miss the important parts.

We were lying in the back of his Ford pickup, admiring the desert sky exploding above, drunk on merlot sipped straight from the bottle (with cork remnants to spice it up—I could never open a bottle properly), while the light rained down on us from every direction.

“Come on, just close them,” he said.

As usual, I did as I was told. “Happy?”

I heard the metal creak. He squeezed my left hand and then slipped something cold and hard around my fourth finger.

Was that…did he…My eyes shot open. Holy shit.

Cam was no longer lying next to me, but crouched in an awkward wannabe-knight kneel. “Will you marry me?” he asked. A massive Cheshire-cat smile stretched across his normally serious face, making him look off-kilter.

Sparkle, twinkle, glitter. Ohhh. I had my very own meteor shower on my finger. At closer glance I could see it was a pear-shaped diamond (one carat or two?) set on a thin platinum band.

The man I loved had just proposed marriage.

The blood rushed to my head and my face felt hot. I wanted to say yes. Yes. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees! This was the moment I’d been waiting for my entire life. The moment I’d been romanticizing about since I first saw Cinderella when I was six and imagined my own glass carriage ready to roll me toward my happily-ever-after castle. A castle I later decided would be filled with thousand-thread-count bed linen and Italian-marble Jacuzzis. All I had to do was respond. To give some sort of affirmative response. Like yes. Or okay, let’s. And I was going to say yes. The word was at my lips, begging to be released. Yes! An orgasmic, hallelujah, couldn’t-be-happier yes. Yes!

All I had to do was open my mouth. Unfortunately, my lips were swollen and sticky, like I’d spent the day licking envelopes. They wouldn’t let me say yes. They knew I couldn’t say yes, because I was moving to New York on Sunday. In thirty-six hours. At least, that had been the plan until the will-you-marry-me curveball. Two weeks ago, when I had told Cam of the offer and my decision to take the job at TRSN in New York (the twenty-four-hour news network owned by the TRS network), he had agreed to try long distance. I had to take the job—it was the chance of a lifetime. It was national. It was cable. It paid a six-figure salary. I’d be producing legendary Ron Grighton’s show, which in any lifetime could not compare to my small-fry executive producer’s job in Phoenix. I’d invited Cam to come, to make the move with me across the country, but I knew he wouldn’t. I loved him, but this was my career. I had to go for it. And it wasn’t like the move was a surprise; I’d always told him what my dream was—apartment in Manhattan, jogging in the park (not that I jog, but I’ve always wanted to), snowflakes on my nose. Hadn’t I?

“Perfect, huh? This way you don’t have to go to New York,” he said, nodding. “We both know long-distance relationships never work out.”

We did? I wanted to ask since when, but my mouth was still annoyingly uncooperative. I smiled, no easy feat with frozen lips.

“And I don’t want to lose you,” he continued, oblivious to my condition. “I want to marry you.”

So he’d said. I smiled (sort of) again. I never would have pegged Cam as one of those lame-ass romantic-comedy run-to-the-airport-gate-with-flowers-to-catch-the-girl-before-she-flies-out-of-his-life guys, but what did I know? I yanked my eyes away from the sparkling diamond, up to Cam’s soft lips, to the slither of a space between his two front teeth that had made me realize way back when that he wasn’t perfect, made me realize he was a man—not just a guy with adorable curly blond hair, not just a guy who had the answer for everything, but someone with flaws (like me), someone I could fall in love with.

Except I had to tell him no. I was going to New York.

Nothing came out. Apparently, my lips were too swollen for that word, too.

Yes.

No.

Yes. No. Yes, no, yes, no. Yes no yes no. Yesnoyesno.

Cam was now blinking his eyes furiously. I was going to miss those swirling patches of greens and blues. They’d always reminded me of little globes.

Could I really say goodbye to his globe eyes? Should I? I hated making decisions.

The real problem was that Cam would never in a million years leave Arizona. Career-wise it would be a huge pain in the ass since he’s a lawyer, and he’d have to take the bar in a new state. Although the corporate bankruptcy firm he worked for, Banford and Kimmel, did have a branch in New York. Truthfully, the real issue was his close relationship with his parents (particularly his mother), his sister and her two and a half kids (she’s pregnant). California, maybe, but clear across the country? A different time zone? He didn’t see the point.

I wanted to tell him I was the point.

Now suddenly he’d decided that long distance wouldn’t work. Not that I blamed him. It was like after that breakup when you said you’d be friends, but of course you wouldn’t be. When you ran into him a year later at a shabby bar downtown, all you talked about was the weather. Which was always the same here. Hot.

So that was my choice: marry Cam or move to New York. I wanted to take a deep breath, but I was afraid to move, since I still had no idea what to say. Time felt stuck, frozen in a frame, paused by TiVo.

If I left, I’d miss the way he always bought me two cards every Valentine’s Day, one sexy and one mushy, in each envelope a chocolate heart. The way he’d throw me over his shoulder and spin me around. The way he’d wrap me in a towel when I got out of the shower and then kiss me on the forehead. The way he reminded me to use the bathroom before long car drives.

If I stayed, I’d miss out on a major job opportunity.

If I went, I’d have to sleep alone. I hated sleeping alone.

If I stayed, the Arizona heat, like a vacuum cleaner pressed to my head, would slowly suck the dreams out of my brain. I’d never go on another date. I’d be engaged. I’d never have another first kiss. I’d never get to wear cute pink earmuffs.

I needed to breathe. I inhaled sharply, but felt as if my air was turned off. What was wrong with me?

I’d never get to date an Aries, my true love match (I am a Gemini, and Cam is a Libra, which is nowhere near an Aries). Not that I followed such things, but that tidbit had stuck in my mind ever since I’d read it in Seventeen when I was twelve. If we got married, I’d never know for sure if I could have found eternal bliss with an Aries.

If I said no, would I ever again meet anyone as patient as Cam? Someone who had spent hours of his free time editing my final college papers, then later my résumés and cover letters, and more recently my story scripts? Someone who would calm me when a virus attacked my hard drive and ate my important files, and then reinstall all my software? Someone who would take off work to be with me when I got my wisdom teeth pulled, and then tell me he loved me even though I looked like a deformed chipmunk? Someone who would build me a bookshelf, not from IKEA, but from planks of wood he bought at the hardware store because he liked making furniture (hence the need for a pickup truck)?

If I said yes, I’d get to marry this wonderful man. Plus, I’d get to wear a diamond ring. A big, pear-shaped diamond ring. If I said no, I’d have years of girls’ nights out. Apple martinis till dawn. Sexy first-date outfits. If I said no, I’d break Cam’s heart. If I said no, Cam would marry someone else.

If I said yes, I’d be part of a real family. An annoying family, yes, but still. If I said yes, I’d spend the rest of my life with a man I loved. But was he the man?

His globe eyes were looking at me with expectancy, and I wanted—oh, I so wanted!—to say yes, and I tried, honestly I did. But my mouth still felt gummy and anesthetized, and nothing came out.

Did I still have a mouth? I wasn’t sure. I tried to shake it into working. Which Cam must have mistaken for an implicit yes, because the next thing I knew he was kissing my neck, my chin, my lips.

Interesting. Apparently, I was getting married. Getting married? Getting married! It sounded so mature. Married. A married woman. But Monsieur, I’m a married woman!

I ogled the ring while embracing him. It fit perfectly. How did he know my ring size? I didn’t even know my ring size. Though, why would I? I’d never been one of those wife-wannabes who went to jewelry stores and tried on engagement rings just in case.

Cam’s soft hands began to roam under my sweatshirt. I gently pushed him off. “What are you doing?” I asked, relieved that my mouth was back in working order. Well, not totally, because I think I meant to say, “What am I doing?” As in, was I really going to give in? Get married? Give up the dream of New York? “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?”

“Because—” because I wanted to move! “—someone might see.”

He tugged at the green wool blanket and held it to his shoulders like a cape. “We have a cover.” Cam the Man. Cam the Superman. Cam the Husband. Why didn’t men wear engagement rings? Maybe he should tattoo his finger to mark him as mine. Then I’d feel safe moving to New York.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “But still.” Actually, I didn’t know what to feel. My two longings were head butting against each other and I hadn’t yet decided whose side to cheer for.

“I want to celebrate. We’re engaged.” Engaged. To engage. To interlock or mesh. He started undoing my jeans, and I let him. “I want to make love to my fiancée,” he said, suddenly serious. The first time he’d used the expression make love, I’d thought he was kidding, until I’d seen the earnestness on his face, and realized he wasn’t.

He wrapped his long body onto mine, the blanket covering us both. My roommate Lila had once walked in on us when we were “making love” and claimed she couldn’t get the image of his naked, ashen butt out of her head for months. I gave the ass a squeeze. Cam took that as a sign.

Afterward, as Cam’s forehead nuzzled into my neck, and the stars above scribbled across the November sky like ink from a silver marker, I raised my suddenly sparkling hand into the air. Then I followed one of the stars, the brightest star, with my index finger as it shot diagonally across the blackness.

When I was a kid in California, I used to pretend that airplanes were falling stars, and I’d close my eyes and wish that I would marry a prince, that I would win the lottery, or that my mom and dad would stop screaming at each other.

With Cam still on top of me, I continued tracing the star’s path. And then I made a wish. I wished that I didn’t have to choose. That I could live both lives. Stay with Cam and move to New York. Have it all. The starlight burned out and I closed my eyes. And then I drifted off to sleep.

Blowing out the candles, pennies down a well. People made wishes all the time.

How was I to know that mine would come true?

1

The Hangover

I wake up disoriented, intense light spearing my eyes like hot pokers, pain stabbing my temples.

Ow. Where? Who? What the hell? Why is my pillow stuffed with metal?

Then I remember where I am and what I’ve done. Kind of done. Does it count as a yes if I didn’t verbally agree?

My stomach churns. Why did I lead Cam to believe I’d marry him, when tomorrow I’m moving to New York? I’m already packed! Lila has already (reluctantly) ordered office furniture for my room. An upstairs neighbor bought my double futon. True, she hasn’t taken it yet, but it’s scheduled to go on Monday evening. I’ve already ordered a mattress to be delivered to my new place in New York. I sold my car, too. On Wednesday. It was a two-door bright blue Jetta, which I loved dearly. Which is now gone.

I feel an uncomfortable pressure on my bladder and sit up, my elbows digging into the hard truck bed. Dumb wine from last night not only made me lose my mind, but it is also irritating my bladder. I can’t get married. I’m moving. Tomorrow.

I can’t deal with telling Cam no. Should I sneak away? Maybe just run the ten miles home? I don’t think I’ll get very far with an overstuffed bladder. I’ll have to sneak off somewhere and pee. With my luck I’ll end up squatting over a cactus. I hate those things. Another advantage of New York. No attack plants.

What did I do? What the hell did I do?

“Morning, beautiful,” he says now, his eyes still closed. He blindly reaches for me and drags me down and onto his chest. “Love you.”

I am borderline hyperventilating. As if I’m trying to breathe with my face pressed against a pillow. Can’t do this. “We have to talk,” I say in my quiet voice. Why, oh why, didn’t I say no last night? How did I get talked into staying?

Talked? It wasn’t the talking that did it.

He smiles, eyes still closed. “I know. So much to plan. A date, a place…lots to do. I’m starving. Let’s discuss over food.”

“No. I mean talk.” My voice cracks on the last word. I wriggle out of his stronghold, scoot backward and lean safely against the rear windshield. I reach for my jeans and struggle back inside them.

His left eye opens, focuses on me, and then his right follows. “What’s wrong?”

I’m not sure how to start. This conversation is going to be awful. Plus, I think I might be sitting on the rear wiper. “I want the TRSN job.”

His shakes his head, full of supposed sympathy. “I know you do, babe. But you’ll find a new job here.”

He’s not getting it. “You don’t understand. I’m going to take it.”

He continues shaking his head, not understanding. “That’s not practical. How are you going to plan the wedding from New York? And what’s the point of starting a job somewhere else when we’re going to settle here?”

Was he always this dense? “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t want to settle here.” I look longingly at my sparkling finger. “Can’t you move with me?” I squeak.

He’s shaking his head faster now, jaw clenching tighter by the half second. “You know I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t,” I say.

“Gabby, family is important to me. I’m not moving across the country. Be fair. I’m sure you’ll find a good job in Arizona. I love you, Gabs, and I feel awful, but I can’t.”

“But I already made plans…. I quit my job. Yesterday was my last day. I start my new job on Monday! Why couldn’t you have proposed before I quit?”

“Gabby, I needed a minute to figure it all out. Last month life was good, and then suddenly everything was happening so fast, and you were moving and it wasn’t until after I realized that you were really going that I knew how much I need you here.”

“But I need to be there.” How to say it…? I decide one fast, full vomit is best. He’s tough. He’ll get over it, me, eventually. “Cam, I’m taking the job. I’m moving to New York. I’m sorry.”

He swallows. Hard. I watch his Adam’s apple sneak up his throat and then sliver back down. His eyes tear up and he closes them, and then opens them again. “But…what about us? The job is more important than me?”

Holy shit. Cam? Crying? We’ve been together for three years and I’ve never seen him shed a tear. I feel as if I’m hacking his arm off with a chain saw. I can’t believe that I am capable of causing him pain. “You know this has always been my dream,” I choke out. Which is true. It has! On our first dinner date, I’d told him I wanted to move to New York. That I wouldn’t stay in Arizona forever.

A fat tear rolls down his sweet cheek. “I thought you had a new dream.”

“I have to think about my career.” My voice cracks. “I could never have an opportunity like that here.”

“You have an amazing job here.”

“Had,” I remind him.

“Have, had. Whatever. You can get a new one.”

“It’s not the same. Here I’m a big fish in a small pond.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that. You’d rather be a small fish?”

I shake my head. “You’re asking me to give up my dream.”

“Don’t make me out to be the bad guy.”

We’re both silent, attempting to regroup our thoughts, aka ammunition. Something I would be much better at with an empty bladder and a cup of coffee. I realize I’m too drained and hungover and tired for more talk. “I love you. But I’m moving to New York.”

“Then we’re not getting married.”

I slip off the ring and deposit it into his palm.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he says. “You’re so obsessed with that stupid Melanie Diamond scandal that you don’t even know what you’re doing.”

This isn’t about that, I want to say, but don’t. Because it kind of is. “Maybe,” I say. “But it’s my call.”

Instead of looking at me, he’s looking at my—now his—ring. And then he says, “I’ll take you home.” As his voice breaks, my heart breaks along with it.

“Endless Love” is playing on the radio when Cam pulls up in front of my apartment building. It’s so embarrassingly inappropriate for the moment that I almost laugh. He doesn’t put the car into park. Just steps on the brake.

“Well, goodbye,” he says.

I see that his tears are gone. See? He’s over me already. “I’ll call you when I get there,” I say. “I love you, Cam. But I have to do this. For me.” I open my purse and rifle through my junk for my keys. Shit. Where are they?

He shakes his head. “They’re in the pocket of your jean jacket.”

I feel inside my pocket. Oh. “Thanks.”

A long sigh escapes Cam’s lips. And then he says, “I hope it’s worth it.”

I hope it is, too. I open the door, squeezing my keys between my fingers, and slither out before I start crying and change my mind.

Crap. The bookshelf in my bedroom. As soon as I step into my room, I realize he was supposed to take it back. I don’t want to take any furniture to New York, and I don’t want to just give it to Lila along with everything else. It’s not right. Cam gave it to me, he should get it back. Although maybe she’ll use it. She’s an accountant and is turning my room into her home office. Anyway, I should give Cam the choice.

Maybe I’ll leave him a message. I pick up the phone. I pause in mid-dial. I can’t call Cam. Calling him would be torturing him unnecessarily. It would be torturing myself, listening to his soft voice on the phone.

I finished most of my packing over the week so I would have every last second free to spend with Cam. Which leaves me with nothing to do for the day. My mom is in Florida and Lila is working. Lila is always working or reading romance novels in bed. Honestly, that girl has no social life. Even in college she was always studying or reading away. As long as I’ve known her, she’s never had a boyfriend. She’s had flings—at least four times I saw her bring home some random guy, but she always kicked him out before her day started. Musn’t mess with her daily schedule. Anyway, no Lila. I’d call Melanie but she decided to take a spur of the moment road trip to L.A. She’s impulsive that way.

I have officially nothing to do. Which makes me reflect on my pitiful absence of friends. What kind of a life did I even have here?

Maybe I’ll call Heather and check in. I scramble through my pack of papers for her number and dial. Heather will be my roommate in the “two-bedroom, postwar, good-size rooms, hardwood floors, very generous storage space” that I’m renting. I found it on craigslist.com and my fingers are tightly crossed that my temporary roommate, twenty-something nonsmoking Fashion Institute of Technology student, Heather Munro from Long Island, isn’t psycho.

After three rings, a voice yells, “I’m not hanging out with you and your little couple brigade, okay? Stop bothering me!” Heather?

Groan. Maybe I should have been crossing my toes, as well. “Um, hi, Heather, it’s Gabby. Gabby Wolf? Is this a bad time?”

Pause. “Oh God, I’m sorry. My friend Diane is driving me insane. She doesn’t understand why I don’t want to come over and watch her wedding video with her three other bridesmaids and their fiancés. I mean, come on! I’d rather slit my eyeball with a steak knife.”

“Listen, I’m just calling because—” I stop midsentence. Is moving in with Steak-Knife Heather really my best move? I will be earning a whopping $125,000. Maybe I should stay in a motel until I can find my own place. New York has motels, right?

“Because what? Don’t tell me you’re going to bail. I just turned down someone else because you said you’re coming. I’m not giving you your deposit back, so you can forget it,” she huffs.

Steak knives aside, she does have a point about the deposit. Besides, New Yorkers aren’t like the rest of us, right? They’re supposed to be eccentric. Interesting. “No, I’m not reneging. I just want to confirm with you that I’m arriving tomorrow at 3:30. Will you be home?”

Long pause. “That’s a relief. Although…tomorrow? I don’t know if I can be home.”

“Oh. Okay. Um, well, I have to get in.”

She sighs. Loudly. “I suppose I can leave the keys with the doorman.”

“All right. See you tomorrow. Oh, did my new bed come? It was supposed to arrive today.”

“No, not yet.” She hangs up. Apparently, my new roommate is not of an easygoing persuasion. I will have to remember not to borrow her butter without asking.

I spend the rest of the day on the couch, flipping through the news channels, slowly refolding my clothes and re-squeezing them into my suitcases, and letting the excitement build and boil inside me. I catch myself singing “New York, New York” and doing a YMCA-like dance around the apartment.

“Hi, guys,” Lila says from the door at around four.

“It’s just me,” I tell her, flipping the channel from CNN to TRSN.

I know I have at least ten minutes before she’ll join me on the couch. The first thing she does every day when she gets home is change out of her suit and into her bathrobe and slippers. Then she scrubs her hands, carefully takes off her makeup, washes her face, ties her shoulder-length blond hair into a ponytail on top of her head, takes her many skin vitamins, moisturizes, stops in the kitchen for a glass of water, and then comes into the living room. She works seven-day workweeks and is very into her routine.

“Where’s Cam?” she asks, post-routine, getting comfy on her white velvety couch. “Doesn’t he want to spend every second of your last day with you?”

“We broke up.”

Her jaw drops. “You didn’t! What happened? He wasn’t into the long distance?”

“Kind of. You see, he proposed—”

“What?” she shrieks and throws a pillow at me. “And you said no?”

I recount the whole story, and she stays quiet throughout. Lila has always been a very good listener. She has this way of never making me feel judged. She’s a very soothing person. Like chicken soup without the salt. Almost bland, but in a good way. But Lila also thinks Cam is the best boyfriend ever. She constantly tells me how lucky I am. “Don’t you think it was wrong of him to give me an ultimatum?” I ask. “Stay or go? Why does he get everything and I have to give something up?”

“I suppose,” she says, nodding.

“I had no choice,” I say.

“I don’t know about that. You had to give something up and you did. Cam.”

Gave up Cam? Is that what I did?

She sees the expression of despair on my face and pats my knee. “You’ll be fine. Really. You were never sure if Cam was right for you anyway.”

I wonder if this is true. I didn’t want Cam to be Mr. Right because I was planning on moving. But is he? Was he?

“Finish packing and I’ll order us some dinner. Pizza?”

We order, we eat, we watch TV. We rehash the whole Cam thing. The phone doesn’t ring all night. My dad lives in L.A., although he’s currently working in Australia, and while my mom lives here, she’s working in Florida these days. There must be someone to call to say goodbye to. Although, my social life has mostly revolved around Cam and his family for the past year. Calling them to say farewell might be a little…awkward. There’s Bernie, my old news director, but he’s still a bit pissed off with me for quitting.

After Lila and I exchange tearful goodbyes, I retreat to my room. Before I climb into bed, I pull down the curtain. Okay, fine, it’s not really a curtain but a dark gray sheet that Cam found at his parents’ house and helped me staple to the ceiling to keep out the light. He nailed a hook above the window so I could pull it up during the day. I’m not going to bother removing it in the morning—I’m sure Lila will get around to putting up real blinds eventually. Then I check my Hello Kitty alarm clock (I have to remember to pack this in the morning—it was a gift from my dad when I was eight). It’s eleven-thirty in the evening. The alarm is set for six-thirty, since my flight is at nine. Cam was supposed to take me to the airport. I guess I’ll be calling a cab.

First I hit the radio button to make sure that the volume is on. “Like a Virgin” blasts in my ear. Then I realize I’m cold and sneak back into the living room, rummage through one of my two suitcases and find Cam’s J. Crew cotton long-sleeved shirt that he left here months ago (I wear it when I want to feel warm and toasty), and slip it on to punish myself. Back in the bedroom, his smell wafts over me as I turn off the light. I wrap myself in my pink top sheet that I have to remember to pack in the morning.

Did I set the alarm properly? What if I set it for 6:30 p.m. instead of a.m.?

I sit up and check—6:30 a.m. In six and a half hours. I’m never going to fall asleep. I bet Cam can’t fall asleep either. He’s not a good sleeper when he’s stressed. When he’s working on a case, he tosses and turns and flips his pillow. Bet that’s what he’s doing now.

Poor Cam.

I will not cry. No, I will not—I will n—I wipe the tears off my cheeks with the back of my hand. What a baby.

How could I have broken the heart of the one person who has loved me so fiercely over the past few years? Why do I think moving to New York will be good for me? What if I’m a failure? What if I never meet another man who will love me as much as Cam does? What if no other man ever asks me to marry him, and I become bitter and bitchy and start to hate all couples and throw up at the sight of any hand holding or Valentine’s Day cards?

I check the alarm. Again. I close my eyes and start to drift into a sad, desperate sleep. Cam…love you…changed my mind…

Blackness.

I wake to an intense headache. Like forks bashing into my forehead and both temples. To go along with the pain, swirls of green hot light burn behind my eyelids.

What the hell? Did I roll off my bed in my sleep? Did my lamp fall on my head?

I open my eyes slowly, intense sunlight spearing my pupils. The pain instantly dissipates. No one is attacking me. But I can’t believe how bright it is in here. Weird, actually. Then I realize why. This morning, of all mornings, the staples holding my makeshift curtain must have finally given out. How appropriate.

What the—

I blink my eyes. Once, twice. Three times. I do not believe what I see.

I’m back in the desert. In the truck. Wrapped in the itchy green blanket.

In Cam’s arms.

2

The Gabby Horror Engagement Show

I am going insane. That must be it. Obviously, the only explanation. How did I go to sleep in my empty bedroom, yet wake up in Cam’s truck?

Unless I’m dreaming. Yes, that makes sense. I’m still asleep. The truck and the desert are just an illusion. How weird is that? Normally a desert isn’t a mirage—normally you’d see a mirage in a desert.

When I put on one of Cam’s J. Crew shirts, his scent tortured me into hallucinations about what could have—would have—been.

What will be.

In my dreamworld, I snuggle up close to him. Mmm…feels so nice. That’s it. I’m going to wake up and call him. Cancel my move. Get married. He’ll take me back. Of course he will! I’m entitled to twenty-four hours to change my mind, am I not? I must wake up and call him immediately. Now. Wake up. Come on, you can do it! Wake up!

I have to pee. I hate when I have to pee in dreams. That means I have to pee in real life. I’m always concerned that I will pee all over my bed.

Now open your damn eyes! What’s wrong with you, you lazy ass?

Cam elbows me in the chin.

This dream feels awfully real. I tenderly stroke my injured face and check out my surroundings. My very authentic-looking surroundings. I sit up in my dream, in the hope that it will wake me up in real life. But instead, I am simply sitting up. In Cam’s truck.

I must admit, this is the most realistic dream I’ve ever had. I pinch my leg. It hurts. And the air feels so real. I take a deep breath and look up at the sea of blue. The Arizona sky always makes me feel as if the horizon goes on forever. To my left are the Superstition Mountains. They look like mounds of dirt, or children’s sandcastles, against the blue. My surroundings are too alive for this to be a dream.

My heart races. Which it doesn’t normally do when I’m asleep, at least, not that I’m aware of.

All right, I’m awake. This is not a dream. This is not a dream! But what does that mean? That everything that happened yesterday was a dream? If I’m still in the desert with Cam, does that mean that I never said goodbye to Lila? Never finished packing up the apartment? That I never told Cam no?

Does that mean—

I look down at my left hand. Sparkle, sparkle.

—that I’m still engaged?

I lean against the rear windshield to support myself. I’m still engaged! I’m getting married! I didn’t ruin it all to follow some lame plan to go to New York. When my breathing has returned to its normal speed, I slither back into my spot next to Cam. I lift his arm around me and cuddle into him. His breath smells sweet. His eyes flutter open and then closed, and he pulls me against him. His stubble brushes against my cheek and I feel giddy with relief. I can’t believe how close I came to ruining this. What was I thinking? People struggle their whole lives to find love like this. To find a guy like Cam. And I have him. How could I have thought for a second that a job in New York was more important? Was I crazy? Why did I want to live in the most alienating city in the world? With a psycho roommate—who’s going to haaaate me when I tell her I changed my mind.

She’ll live. As long as she doesn’t slit her eye with a steak knife.

Hurrah! I’m marrying Cam! I hug him as tightly as I can until his eyes pop open.

“Morning, beautiful,” he says. “Love you.”

Hurrah! He loves me! He’s in one complete emotional piece! There is no hurt in his eyes whatsoever. Officially unscarred.

“I love you, too,” I say, my feelings for him overflowing like a closet stuffed with too many shoes. “What would you like to do now, Mr. Engaged?”

He grins. “Since Lila is already planning the new decor for your room, I want you to move into my apartment.”

Oh. Right. That does make sense now that we’re officially going to be a couple. Married people tend to live together. Cam has been asking me to move in for the past year, but I wasn’t ready. You don’t live with a man because you want to save money on rent. You live with a man because you want to spend your life with him. And since I wasn’t sure what my ultimate plans were—staying in Arizona or hightailing it out of there—I didn’t want to commit to a shared couch, or a plant, or a lease, or anything we would have to divvy up six months later. But now the decision is made. We’re getting married. No need to divvy up the couch pillows. Ever. “All right. I’ll move in,” I say, then press my lips into his. Thank God I didn’t tell him no. Who cares about a job? I’m obviously afraid of being happy. My parents have screwed me up for years and years. I pull back and look at my watch. “It’s already nine. I don’t know how we slept in so late in a truck bed. I don’t know how we even fell asleep.” I guess sleeping out in the desert was a cool thing to do. Something to tell our kids about the night we got engaged. More impressive than the How We Met story. At a friend’s party in college. Boring. “What happens now?”

He rubs my two hands between his. “Now we get to tell everyone.”

Fun! Is there really any better announcement than a ring-sparkling, smile-beaming, guess-what-we’re-engaged one? I think not. “Who do we tell first? Should we call? Should we drop by?”

“Let’s stop by my mom’s. It’s Saturday. We don’t have anything else to do today.”

Yes, the day is wide open. I don’t even have to unpack—we can just move it all to Cam’s place later. I kiss him again and wrap myself in his arms. Tomorrow I’ll have to call TRSN to tell them I’ve changed my mind. Today I get to enjoy.

After showering quickly at Cam’s, we drive to his parents’ house in Mesa. By the happy way her arms are flailing, I can tell that Alice, Cam’s mother, is already aware of the news. Cam must have told her that he was planning to propose. If it’s true that you can tell how a man will treat his wife by the way he treats his mother, then I’m in for years of worship. Go, me!

She’s at the truck in her flip-flops before Cam even puts it in park.

“Welcome to the family!” she sings as I open the door and she throws her arms around me. “You jerks,” she says. “Why didn’t you call us last night? Your father and I were waiting.”

“Sorry,” he says.

“Dad’s inside.” She winks at Cam and we follow her to the door. As I walk through the stucco entranceway, a cacophony of voices shout, “Congratulations!”

“Dad” is about fifty people. The room is filled with Cam’s relatives—parents, sister, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. A surprise engagement party. Sweet? Or disconcerting?

Not that a family gathering like this is unusual. We see a whole crew every Sunday night for dinner, granted not this big. Alice insists that her entire family come over. There’s a barbecue in the back beside the pool. The women prepare the food, the men do all the grilling. Hello, stereotype.

Cam’s sister and her brood live in Tucson, which is two hours away. For Blair to come in on a Saturday, well, that had to have been planned in advance. And even Richard, Cam’s dad, is here, which is a bit of a shock. He’s normally at his frame store, er, framing away.

Imagine if I’d said no? And the whole party was planned and Cam came home and had to face the entire neighborhood? Sorry, you can all go home. Nothing to celebrate. Pass the potato salad.

The entranceway is littered with family photos and cheap shoes. I hate taking off my sandals, but Alice insists. If we were somewhere that had winter, meaning slush, I’d understand. But here the closest thing we get to slush is Ben & Jerry’s. Plus Alice has a white cockatoo named Ruffles that likes to pace the floor and gnaw at my pinkie toes whenever I’m barefoot.

“Let’s see the ring!” Blair screams, running over to me. She’s twenty-nine, only a year older than Cam, and three months pregnant. With her third. She’s five foot seven and is currently nestling her hands over her swollen stomach. Her blond curly hair—Cam and Blair have Alice’s golden-blond curls—is tied into a severe bun behind her head. Her face has a leathery quality to it, as if she’s spent too many afternoons in the sun. Honestly, if I ran into her on the street, I’d peg her more as mid-to-late thirties.

When I show her my hand, she squeals like a twelve-year-old. Suddenly, still in the entranceway, I’m surrounded by Cam’s aunts and cousins and cousins’-wives, and the questions are fast and furious.

“What’s the theme of the wedding?” asks Blair.

Theme?

“Aren’t you thrilled?” asks Jessica (wife of a cousin).

“When’s the date?” asks Leslie (another wife of another cousin).

“Who are your bridesmaids?” asks Tracy, mother-in-law of Leslie, sister in-law of Alice.

“Are you going to change your name?” Blair again.

Even though their mouths continue moving, suddenly I no longer hear what they’re saying. They seem to be on mute. The entranceway has turned into a steam room, burning hot liquid into my nose and mouth and ears, and now, not only have I gone deaf, I can’t breathe.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” I manage to say, pushing myself backward and tripping over a sneaker.

I steady myself and take off for a moment of privacy. I remember too late that the door’s lock has been broken ever since Blair’s youngest got locked inside a few months ago and Cam had to bust it open. How can anyone who has so many parties have a broken lock on their guest-bathroom door? I know this is a close family, but jeez. You have to push out your foot to barricade anyone from barging in on you.

How long can I stay inside before anyone notices I’m gone?

After doing my business, I sit on the furry orange toilet seat cover, my foot extended and pressed against the door, and try to catch my breath. The entire bathroom is orange. Alice loves orange. And brass. The two-floor split-level home is covered in gleaming brass statues, pots and massive picture frames. Since Richard owns a framing store, everyone is up on the wall. Many times. Many, many times. Everyone except me. But now that I have a ring on my finger, I’m sure to get up there. Many times.

Unfortunately, most of the brass has seen better days. The bathroom faucet is rusty, the toilet seat chipped. The orange carpet is squashed and stained. Alice fancies herself a Martha Stewart apprentice but can’t quite pull it off. It’s the antithesis of the übermodern houses my dad and mom used to favor. They had both been in love with chrome. Personally, I couldn’t care less about design. Whatever bedroom I occupied was usually a mess. It drove my parents—and now Lila—crazy.

I stand up. In the Windex-streaked mirror, there are deep circles under my dark brown eyes. Otherwise, I’m generally a fan of this mirror, since it’s a skinny one. I look at least two sizes smaller than my size-eight frame. Almost lithe. And my skin always has a nice glow to it because of the reflection off the orange wallpaper. My brown hair is tinged red. I hold my breath and push down my shoulders, trying to imagine what I’ll look like in my wedding dress. I try to smile. I’ve always been told I have a great smile. Two dimples, nice lips, naturally white and perfectly sized teeth. It’s my best feature. And it was the best smile of my class, according to my high school yearbook.

I hadn’t really thought about the whole planning-the-wedding part. All those details to work out…bridesmaids, location, ceremony…honeymoon? I’m looking forward to that part. I’d always planned on running off somewhere romantic for my wedding. Like Fiji. No muss, no fuss. Just bliss. Not that Alice would let me get away with that. Blair’s wedding was the biggest event this town had ever seen. And everything, everything, was done by hand. They hand delivered two hundred invitations so they wouldn’t get dented in the mail. Made fortune cookies from scratch with personalized messages for each and every one of her 375 guests.

Is Alice expecting us to do something similar? Do parents save money for this? Is my dad supposed to pay?

Budgets. Registries. Licenses.

Headaches.

Last year I did a story on the wedding industry and met plenty of bridezillas. That can’t be me. I don’t have the time. Actually, I do have the time, since I’m currently unemployed. But I won’t have the time if I’m going to be freelancing. Which I’ll have to do if I can’t get my job back.

Please tell me both my parents won’t have to come to the wedding. After the graduation ceremony from hell, where my parents started screaming at each other in the auditorium and my mother threw a program book at my dad’s head, I was hoping they would never again opt to be in the same city, never mind the same room. My mother is going to ignore him. Or throw a cake at him. It’s going to be horrible. This whole wedding is a mistake. A big, fat—

The door pushes open and I make a grab for it.

“Sorry,” says Blair in her nasal voice, slamming it closed. Okay, I’ll be honest. I don’t love Blair. Of the whole crew, she annoys me the most. She’s so bossy. And opinionated. (“You don’t waste your money and buy your shoes at shoe stores, do you? You should really be buying them at Wal-Mart.”)

“No problem,” I say.

“Is Gabrielle still in there?” I hear Alice say.

Blair: “Yup.”

Alice: “Beautiful ring.”

Blair: “Yes, it’s nice. Pear is the latest style you know. I told Cammy he just had to get it. He was going to buy it at some jeweler in Scottsdale, can you believe it? I turned him right around, and told him to go see Stan in Phoenix.”

Alice: “I told him the same thing! You know he needs a haircut. So does Gabrielle.”

Nag, nag, nag. It’s not hard to see where Blair gets it.

Or Cam.

I lift my thumbnail to my lips and start nibbling. Oh, no. I haven’t bitten since college. I should definitely not be starting again now. I take another nibble. I can’t help it.

“…I don’t know why she won’t let me clean up her split ends for her….” Alice’s voice trails off as she heads back toward the party. I can’t help but study my split ends. Which I will never let Alice touch. My future mother-in-law refuses to see a stylist. She cuts her own hair, in this very bathroom. She cuts Blair’s hair, too. She’s always offering to cut mine, but I keep inventing excuses.

I pull myself together, shoulders down, big smile, and rejoin the party.

The group is already in the process of piling potato salad and tuna wraps onto their orange paper plates.

“There you are,” says Cam, wrapping his arm around me. “Hungry?”

“Definitely.” I love Alice’s tuna wraps. She’s a nag, yes, but a nag who can cook. She is constantly copying recipes for me. As if I could cook. Not.

“So dear, what are you thinking, a May wedding?” asks Alice as she refills the (yes, orange) potato-salad bowl. “I know how much Arizona girls love a May wedding. Perfect weather to get married outdoors.”

Blair got married on May fourth. Alice got married on May thirteenth.

“I’m not really sure yet, Alice.” Um, we’ve been engaged for less than ten hours? Can I have some time to breathe, please?

“I told Cammy that he should have proposed months ago,” she continues. “So we’d have more time to plan, but did he listen to me? Does he ever? No. Now we only have six months to pull it all together.”

“Mom, six months will be plenty,” Cam says.

Hello? Have we picked May? Did that decision happen while I was in the bathroom?

Alice shakes her head from side to side. “Gabrielle, I tried getting in touch with your mom to invite her today. But she didn’t return my call. Is she out of town?”

My mother? Here? Thank God she’s out of town. I don’t know what she’d make of this quasi-Brady bunch, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

“She’s doing some work in Tampa,” I say.

I catch a look between Alice and Blair. They’ve never said anything outright, but I get the feeling that they don’t approve of my mother’s hectic career, her men, her marriages. “Ah, I see,” Alice says. “Well, when she gets back, I’d like the three of us to get together for tea. We should put our heads together and start planning. When will she be back home? Perhaps we can have a girls’ night this week?”

Is she kidding me? My mother? Here? What if she throws one of the brass statues? Even without my father as a target, she’s always throwing something at somebody. I’m not sure how’s she going to react to Alice. I can’t quite picture her hand-making fortune cookies. Throwing the cookies, possibly.

“She’s very busy,” I say. “It’s hard for her to get away.” Which is true. My mother is not in the best place in her life right now. She’s an entrepreneur and is always investing in the next “big” thing. Unfortunately, she loves start-ups, even though they don’t always love her back. Last year, she lost a mint and had to sell her Scottsdale house and move to a small condo in Phoenix. Right now she has her eye on some business opportunity in Tampa. Which is why she didn’t freak out when I told her I was moving to New York. She thinks we both have had enough of the dry heat.

Alice rubs her hands together. “I bet she can’t wait to dig her hands into the planning!”

“Um…I haven’t told her yet.”

Up shoot Alice’s penciled-in eyebrows.

When would I have found time to tell her? This kind of news takes more than the two seconds I had to myself while I was in the bathroom.

Alice fidgets with her hair. “Talk to her soon, please. We need to get cracking. I’ve already spoken to the church and told them to hold May sixth.”

Dread sets in. My mom and I declared ourselves agnostics, but we still fast every Yom Kippur. Just in case. I’m not religious, but I absolutely can’t get married in a church. And what about those wafers? Do they come in kosher? Do people actually eat wafers, or is that just in the movies? Are they carb-free? My mom is always on a diet. Oh God, my mom is going to throw the wafer.

Cam sees the panic on my face and quickly adds, “Mom, we haven’t decided on St. George’s. I told you that.”

“Calm down, Cammy. You don’t have to make a decision this second. But it is a family tradition, and it would make me very happy.”

For someone not of the tribe, she sure has the Jewish guilt thing down pat. She could put my mom to shame.

“And May six is the perfect weekend,” she declares. “Not that I’m pressuring, I don’t want to pressure, but Aunt Zoey and Uncle Dean bought tickets in from Salt Lake for the whole family.”

But no pressure.

Cam looks exasperated. “Why would she already buy her ticket?”

Alice shrugs and stares at her plate. “American Airlines was having a sale.”

I don’t believe this. The relatives bought their plane tickets before I even knew we were getting married. Is this normal? This is not normal. I know my own family history makes it difficult for me to understand normalcy, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t it. I should tell her to back off. Step back, missy.

The words are at the tip of my tongue, but they don’t come out.

“Anyway,” Alice says, “let’s talk about colors for the wedding. I think orange would be beautiful—”

“Let me just get something to drink,” I say backing away. Vodka, perhaps. In one of Alice’s orange-tinted tumblers.

“You know I’m not converting, right?”

“You don’t have to convert to get married at St. George’s,” Cam says. We’re lying in his king-size bed, wrapped in his sheets.

“I don’t even know if I want a big wedding. I always pictured myself getting hitched somewhere cool. Like barefoot on a beach in Fiji. Or at a campsite in Kenya. Or a mountain in Nepal.”

“My family can’t afford to go to Nepal.”

Bingo. “Who says our families have to come? I’ve always wanted to elope. So romantic.”

“Watching me get married will be a huge joy for them. I can’t take that away. This is the moment they’ve been looking forward to their whole lives.”

They could probably use a hobby. I lean up on my elbow and place my hand firmly on a patch of blond fuzzy chest hair. “Is this about them or us?”

“You know what I mean. I’m sure your family would be devastated if they weren’t there. Don’t you want your dad to walk you down the aisle?”

“Only if my mother is at the other end of the aisle at the time—and the aisle is five miles long.”

He squeezes my hand. “What did your parents say? Were they excited?”

Oops. I knew there was something I’d forgotten to do. “I’ll call them tomorrow.”

His eyes cloud over. “How could you not want to talk to them? Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“We’ve been busy,” I say and pull him closer. I squeeze my feet between his knees to warm them up.

“Phone them first thing in the morning. What if they hear from someone else?”

I roll my eyes. “Yeah? Like who? The National Enquirer? ET?”

“Your feet are so dry,” he says, wriggling. “Why don’t you use lotion? It’s right by the bed.”

“Because I don’t feel like it.” Nag, nag, nag. I pull my legs away. “Would you stop telling me what to do?”

“I didn’t realize you were a fan of dry feet.” He nuzzles his chin into my neck. “I’m sorry,” he says, and sounds like he means it. “And we can invite whomever you want to the wedding. And dress them in whatever color you want. It’s about us, not my mom. Now give me a Gabby smile.”

I smile. How can I stay mad at him? “Sounds good to me.” I kiss his forehead and rub my scaly heel against his calf.

He runs his fingers through my hair. “But it would mean a lot to my family if it was at St. George’s.”

You’ve got to be kidding. “We’ll see.” I’ll deal with it tomorrow.

“Love you.”

“You, too.”

I close my eyes, squeezing the annoyance out like the last drop of toothpaste. I do love him. But is my whole life going to be about bowing to his mother’s wishes? Did I make the wrong choice? I toss and turn, and finally drift off to sleep.

I’m awakened by blaring music, swirls of green hot light and another intense headache. Ow! What is wrong with me? I seriously have to see a doctor. My brain feels like it’s imploding.

“Turn off the alarm,” I mumble to Cam, wiping drool from my lips. Lovely. Head hurts. Needles in eyes.

The music is shrieking, “Let’s do the time warp again!”

“Cam! Turn it off! It’s Sunday!” He’d better not be going into work today. I’ll kill him.

“Well, I was walking down the street just having a think, when a snake of a guy gave me an evil wink—”

I groan and open my eyes. Strange. My headache is gone.

As is my fiancé. The spot next to me is empty. “Cam?” I wonder aloud. Where is he?

“He shook me up, took me by surprise—”

Why are Cam’s sheets pink? Am I…Is this…

I’m back in my own bed.

3

Splitsville

The alarm clock, my Hello Kitty alarm clock, says 6:30 a.m.

I stifle a scream.

I officially need to be institutionalized. What is wrong with me? I stare up at my ceiling in despair. Maybe there’s someone I can call? 1-800-CRAZY? I kick off my covers and peruse my bedroom. How did I end up back here when I went to sleep at Cam’s? I creak open my door and tiptoe around the apartment. The lights are off and Lila’s door is shut. My two red packed suitcases are in the center of the room, mocking me.

When did I come home? How much vodka did I have at Alice’s?

The apartment looks just as it did in my dream last night. After I told Cam I was moving to New York.

Am I dreaming now? As I search the apartment for some sort of sign, my gaze lands on my left hand. My now diamond-less hand.

What happened to my ring? Why am I back home? Was yesterday a dream? Did I never go to Alice’s? Am I moving to New York?

I need to speak to someone. I need to speak to Cam. I race over to the living-room phone and dial his number. It rings once.

“Hi, you’ve reached Cam. I can’t come to the phone…”

Why isn’t he answering? He’s supposed to be my fiancé. A fiancé should answer even if he’s sleeping. I try to squash my rising hysteria. Something is wrong with my brain. I’m delirious. Maybe I have a brain tumor? I hang up and dial my mother’s hotel number. And then I remember that it’s 6:30 a.m. and hang up before she answers. And then I remember that she’s in Florida and it’s therefore 8:30. Or is it 9:30? I never remember. I call again.

“The hotel has caller ID,” she says. “It’s not nice to prank call your mother.”

“Hi, Mom?” I sit on the couch and try to keep the rising hysteria out of my voice.

“Oh, God, Gabby, you’re not going to believe the day I’m having.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Well, me first,” she says. “I was woken up at four this morning by the fire alarm. I had to put on my bathrobe, and wait in the lobby. Naturally it was a false alarm, and a big waste of my time and energy. Anyway, you just caught me. I was on my way to work.”

“I think something is weird with me.”

“Are you throwing up? You’re not pregnant, are you?”

I lie across the couch. “Does being pregnant make you stupid?”

“A little. Are your breasts swollen?”

I examine my braless cleavage. “Not so much.”

“Morning sickness?”

“I don’t think I’m pregnant. It’s just that…Okay, I know this is going to sound weird. But I went to sleep last night at Cam’s and I woke up in my own bed.”

Silence. “Have you been smoking anything?”

“Mom, no.”

“Booze?”

“A little. But not enough to make me go crazy.”

“Moving is stressful, Gabby.”

“And to top it off, Cam proposed last night—”

“He proposed? Now? What a male thing to do. He waits until you quit your job, and then decides to propose? What is wrong with him? With all of them? Your father always tried to control me like that. You’re too young to get married anyway. You can’t get married at twenty-four—”

“Mom—”

“So what did you do?”

“I’m not sure. I thought I said no. But then I went to sleep, and when I woke up I realized I hadn’t said no. But now I’m home again. And not engaged. Is this making any sense?”

“No. You had a weird dream. You’re flying to New York today. Stress is normal. Healthy, even. Or maybe you ate something funny.”

“Maybe the potato salad was off.” But if I hadn’t gone to Alice’s, there would be no potato salad. Was going to Alice’s a dream? “Maybe I came home last night, after I left Cam’s.”

Suddenly, Lila’s door bursts open. “Gabby, it’s six-thirty in the morning here. Some of us don’t have to be up for another thirty minutes.” She’s wearing her long red silk nightgown and her matching fuzzy red slippers. Her blond hair is already tied into a neat ponytail.

“Mom, I have to go. I’ll call you later.” I hang up and turn to Lila. “Am I engaged?”

She narrows her eyes. “Are you kidding?”

I wish. “No. I’m serious.”

“You do remember what happened yesterday, don’t you?”

I remember two yesterdays. “I do, but I’m confused.”

“You turned Cam down. You’re leaving for New York. We said goodbye last night.”

I nod, slowly. Back to single Gabby. Alice’s must have been a dream. A vivid dream. More like a nightmare. I fell asleep worrying about whether or not I’d done the right thing, and I dreamed about what would happen if I had said yes. And the answer: a disaster of a brunch and a church wedding I don’t want.

She studies my face. “Are you feeling all right?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Let me get you an aspirin.”

“Okay. And then I need to get to the airport.”

I watch a movie on the plane. I’m trying not to think about my crack-up, or my new job.

Am I ready for the big time? With my mental condition, I might not even be suited for the small time.

I wonder what Heather will be like. Lila and I always did everything together. Maybe I’ll get lucky and have another roommate turned best friend. Maybe I’ll get even luckier and Heather will have the same shoe size as me. Lila has adorably small feet—her slippers barely fit onto my big toe.

I land in New York, wait twenty minutes for my oversize luggage, another twenty for a taxi line (freezing my butt off—damn it’s cold in this part of the country), have a terrifying journey into the city (both from the speed and jerkiness of the drive, and from the overwhelmingness of it all) and arrive in front of the apartment thirty minutes later. Holy shit. I’m here. I’m in New York. I’m here!

“Here you are,” the cabbie says. “Thirty-fourth and Third.” I do my best not to get run over as I struggle to pull my bags out of the trunk.

“Hi,” I say to the doorman, I take a deep breath to steady my racing heart rate. “I’m Gabby Wolf. You’re supposed to have keys for me?”

He looks behind his desk. “Nope. Nothing for you.”

Terrific. “Um. Has anyone left anything at all for apartment 15D?”

He takes another look. “Nope. But I think Heather’s in.”

“She is?” Thank God.

He picks up his phone and dials. “Heather? You have a visitor. Your name?” he asks me.

“Gabrielle.”

“It’s Gabrielle,” he says, nods and hangs up. “You can go up.”

Why did she make such a big deal about leaving me the keys if she was going to be home? Hello, drama queen.

I roll my bags into the elevator and then off at the fifteenth floor. The carpet is a mousy yellow. It looks like a grandparents’ apartment and smells like chicken soup. Whatever. I’m in New York!

I look both ways and then head to the right. A door opens and a woman is standing in the entranceway. She’s shorter than I expected, about five-two. Her bright turquoise shirt-dress shows off an hourglass figure. Wide hips, and a tiny waist held in by a tight belt. Funky outfit. Her hair is light brown, curly and down to her waist. Her eyes are small and just a bit too close together.

She looks me over. “You’re taller than I expected.”

“Sorry?” Nice to meet you, too.

“I guess you should come in.” She moves over to let me inside. She doesn’t offer to help with my bags.

On the other side of the door is a plain white living room featuring a boring beige, felty, scrawny couch, a red rug, a bookshelf filled with what looks like “How to get him to notice you” self-help books, framed posters of purple flowers and a tiny TV. The first thing I need to buy is a new TV for my room. Lila was never home, so I was allowed to monopolize the one she’d bought for our living room. But I’m not sure if Steak-Knife Heather would appreciate my constant news surfing.

“This is the common space,” she says and then leads me to a room off the hallway. “Your bedroom.”

The room is white and grungy. Tape remnants are stuck to the wall and dust bunnies litter the scraped wooden floor. A large blind-less window looks over Third Avenue. I guess I should have brought that sheet.

Honk!

Honk, honk, honk! Holy shit I’m really in New York!

It gets quiet here at night, right?

Heather heaves the window open. The honking gets louder. “You’ll need to air out the room,” she says. “Leigh was a pig.”

I wheel my luggage into the center of the empty space. “Wait a sec. Where’s my new bed?”

Heather shrugs. “It never arrived.”

You’ve got to be kidding. “What am I supposed to sleep on?”

“What do you want me to do? Call a mattress company.”

Crap. My phone. “I forgot to pack my phone.”

“Where’s the rest of your furniture? Where are you going to put your clothes?”

“At the moment, I’m more concerned with where I’m going to put me.” The couch did not look all that comfortable.

“It’ll probably come tomorrow. Are you hungry? What are you doing for dinner?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think that far ahead.”

“Do you eat Italian?”

“Sure.” Who doesn’t? “But I’d like to unpack first, if that’s okay,” I say, glancing dubiously at the miniscule closet.

“Obviously. I need to make us a reservation, anyway.”

At least I remembered my Hello Kitty alarm clock. I set the current time and the alarm for tomorrow. Then I pull my work clothes out of my bag and shake them out. I have no idea what I’m going to wear tomorrow for my first day, but whatever it is, it must not be wrinkled. I open the closet to find it…stark free of hangers. Wonderful. “Can I borrow some hangers?”

“I don’t have too many extras.”

Come on. “One? Two? I’ll buy my own tomorrow.”

She sighs and retreats into her bright orange room (which looks bigger than mine from this angle), and returns a few minutes later with three metal hangers, the kind you get at the dry cleaners. “I’ll need these back ASAP.”

I guess we won’t be sharing shoes just yet.

“So what’s your story?” she asks over our Caesar salads. We’re at a table by the window looking onto Lexington. Every time the door opens, a burst of cold air blows through my clothes.

“Which one?”

“Men-wise.”

This is one story I don’t feel like rehashing. “Had a boyfriend. Now I don’t.”

Her eyes gleam. “So you’re single.”

Single. I haven’t been single in years. The word feels foreign in my head, like another language. “I suppose so.”

“Good. I could desperately use a new single friend. All my girls have sold their souls. It’s the worst. Their men are their goddamn appendages. Tell me, why can’t a wife have dinner with her friends one night a week? Will her husband starve?”

“I don’t know.” Cam was actually pretty good about letting me have my own space. Although who knows if that would have changed if we lived together.

“Well, I do. Women let men control their lives. They don’t know how to create boundaries.” She draws a square in the air with her index finger. “They don’t know how to keep their own individuality. At least we’ll have each other. At least you didn’t bail. You wouldn’t believe the freaks I met trying to sublet this place. I wish I could keep the whole apartment on my own, but I’d be broke by Christmas. Leigh moving out totally screwed me, you know. What a bitch.”

If Leigh was a bitch, what does that make Heather? Our server arrives with our raviolis, and I shove a forkful into my mouth in case I’m suddenly tempted to answer my question out loud.

After dinner, I’m in my bedroom, staring at the apartments across the street, my sheets covering my makeshift bed (aka the couch cushions). It’s already eleven, but I doubt I’ll be able to doze off anytime soon.

First of all, it’s only nine my time. Second, I’m terrified of closing my eyes. I’ve been in denial all day, but I can’t ignore that every time I go to sleep, I seem to end up in an alternate reality. And since that isn’t possible, I must just be having weird dreams, right?

Maybe tonight I’ll dream about something normal, like failing a test in high school.

What if I wake up back in Arizona?

No. No, no, no. Must think positively. It won’t happen again! I will wake up in New York! I will…I will…I will…

My eyelids feel heavy. Yes, that’s what’s going to happen. I will wake up in New York. I will wake up back in New York. I will…

Blinding pain. Light.

“This week in sports…”

There’s a fire in my head! I blink twice and open my eyes. Shit.

“Morning, gorgeous,” Cam says. He’s sitting up in bed, shirtless, watching TV. “You must be zonked. It’s already ten.”

I try not to cry. I am going mad. What is wrong with me? Why can’t I tell the difference between dreaming and real life? Why is my brain playing tricks on me? I pull the covers back over my head.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nightmare,” I say.

“About what?”

About what, indeed. “A fire.” My brain is on fire.

“No fires here,” he promises.

I stay hidden until Cam eventually leaves to make us breakfast. “Omelet?” he asks from the kitchen. “Cheese and onion?”

“’Kay,” I answer. I am not coming out. I am temporarily crazy, so I will remain here until it passes. Like the flu.

My stomach starts to growl as the scent of onion and bacon wafts under the sheets. Yum. I doubt Heather is making me anything this good in my real life.

“Since you won’t come out for the chow, the chow is coming to you,” Cam says, placing a tray on my lap. Breakfast in bed. How sweet is that? “Eat, future wife,” he says. “You need your strength.”

I slither out from the sheets, lean up against the headboard and dig in. A girl’s gotta eat, even if she is asleep. “And why is that?” I ask, digging into my omelet.

“Because as soon as you finish, you have to call your parents. It’s not right.”

Yes! The man’s a genius! I’ll speak to my mom. She’ll remember our conversation yesterday. She’ll have to. Mothers know these things, right? They can sense if their children are losing their minds. I reach for the phone as I stuff another forkful of egg into my mouth. “I’m going to call her right now.”

He winks, hands me a napkin and sits down on the edge of the bed beside me. “There’s a good girl.”

I dial her room at her hotel, but she doesn’t answer. So I call her cell. “Mom? It’s me.”

“Oh, so nice of you to call,” she snaps. Do I detect a hard line of sarcasm in her voice? “Anything you’d care to tell me?”

“What are you talking about?” I take another bite of egg. A drop of ketchup smears onto the bedspread. Cam rolls his eyes and points to the napkin.

“Alice called me this morning.”

I smack Cam’s leg. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. Why is it that I heard about my only daughter being engaged from someone other than my daughter? Huh?”

“Sorry, Mom. I didn’t have a chance to call you yesterday.” Was it yesterday? I hear a smash and then a clang. I think she just threw the phone. “Mom?” I wait for her to pick it back up.

“I felt pretty stupid, Gabrielle. Pretty damn stupid. She called me to discuss the wedding, and I didn’t even know there was a wedding! In fact I told her she was mistaken, since you were moving to New York—”

My heart races. “Exactly! Mom, I just spoke to you, remember? About the—” I lower my voice so maybe Cam won’t hear “—move?” I called her yesterday. And discussed it. She has to remember—she’s my mom. Moms have a sixth sense, don’t they?

“Yes, just last week you said—”

Last week? No, it was yesterday! Or do I mean today? “What day is it?”

“It’s Sunday. And it’s been an awful day. First I was woken up at 4:00 a.m.—”

My blood runs cold. “Because of a fire alarm.”

Silence. “How did you know that?”

“You told me! Yesterday!”

“How could I have told you yesterday when it just happened?”

“You told me. Don’t joke. You don’t remember?”

“How could I have told you? You’re pulling my leg. Was it on the wire? There better not have been a reporter there. I was in my bathrobe. Do you need a quote?”

“No.” My head hurts. How is this possible? I spoke to my mother and she told me about the fire alarm. Yesterday. Or today. Am I living each day twice?

“Anyway, Gabrielle, I’m upset with you. How you could get engaged is beyond me. How you could get engaged without telling me is despicable.”

This is way weird. My mom told me about the fire alarm yesterday. Yesterday. “I’ll call you later,” I tell her and hang up. I look up at Cam.

He’s looking at me strangely. “What was that all about?”

“Nothing,” I murmur. “You know my mother. Sometimes she makes no sense.”

“Didn’t she want to talk to me? You know? Congratulations? Welcome to the family?”

“I’ll be right back.” I hurry to the bathroom. I close the door firmly and press my back against the door. My head pounds.

When did this craziness start? When was the beginning of my double life? I retrace my mental steps. Today is Sunday in Arizona. I’m engaged. Yesterday was Sunday in New York. I wasn’t engaged. The day before that was Saturday in Arizona. I woke up in the desert. We had brunch at Alice’s. The day before that was also Saturday in Arizona. I also woke up in the desert. I told Cam I didn’t want to marry him. I finished packing.

So what happened the night before that?

I shut my eyes firmly and try to visualize the night in question. The night that Cam proposed. The night we were lying in the back of the truck, watching the falling stars.

It can’t be. It can’t.

My wish? My wish. I wished I didn’t have to choose. That I could live both lives. Stay with Cam and move to New York. Have it all.

I sink to the bath mat. It’s not possible. Is it? How else can I explain what’s happening? How else can I rationalize how I’ve been living two separate lives?

I tell Cam I need to borrow his truck to return to my place to pick up a few last-minute things.

“Like what?”

“Clothes, makeup…not that I have anywhere to put any of it.”

“I’ll make some space.”

Instead of going to my apartment, I stop by the emergency room to see if there is something wrong with my head. Like a brain tumor. After a few hours, I finally get to see a doctor.

“Lately, I’ve been existing in two universes,” I tell him. “Is that a psychological condition?”

He rubs his chin, looks into my eyes with a flashlight and asks me if I’ve been under a lot of stress.

“A little,” I say.

“You look okay to me,” he says. “Try to get some sleep. Do you want antibiotics?”

“No thanks.” I decide not to tell him the whole story. It’s not like he’s going to believe me. If this is real and I’m not going bonkers, then someone else in the world must have gone through this, too. Someone who can tell me how to make it stop.

Back in my old apartment, I get comfy on the futon, laptop on my knees, and try to figure out what the hell has happened to me.

I Google multiple lives and get over forty-three million hits. There are mentions of reincarnation, cats and, inexplicably, real estate. But nothing about my weirdo predicament. I try alternative lives and get another thirty thousand hits. Most of these are scenarios of regret. About what could have/would have/should have been. Then I land on something called Many-Worlds Interpretation. According to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiverse, many-worlds is defined as: “…an interpretation of quantum mechanics that proposes the existence of multiple universes, all of which are identical, but exist in possibly different states.” Different states? Does that mean parallel universes?

I keep reading and reading and my heart pounds louder with every click, with every article. “These different states are caused by a divergence that splits the universe into two.” I discover that there is a whole theory in quantum mechanics (whatever the hell that is) that believes that whenever there is a choice, or a possibility, reality splits into a new world. Therefore, there is a new independent world for every different possibility. Anything that could happen does happen. There are books and information about this theory all over the Internet. There are over twenty thousand hits on this on Google. People have done experiments on this theory. Real scientists.

Could this really have happened to me? Yes. Yeeessss. My life verged the morning after Cam proposed. I’m not crazy. I am not crazy! What happened to me has been written about! Wahoo! Perhaps there’s a support group?

I get slightly nervous when one of the sites says that communication between these distinct universes in not possible, because I am, in fact, communicating with myself.

I search for another hour without finding anything specific. Not that it would help. Even though there are thousands of pages about many worlds, they’re all theoretical. There aren’t any real-life examples. As though no one else has gone through anything like this.

No one except me.

I keep reading and searching and end up seeing a lot of phrases like wave function collapse and relative state, which make me wish I’d taken a science class in college. I spend the next three hours searching until my eyes are tired. I type in green light, headache and wish, but still, nothing.

I close my computer and lie back. What I’ve learned today is that while there are lots of theories about multiple lives, no one has ever written an account of it happening. But if so many people have thought about it, written about it, and theorized about it, isn’t it possible? You can’t rule something out just because it can’t be proven, can you? There are like a million religions and none of them can be proven!

If the many-worlds theory is true, then everyone exists in multiple universes. There are many versions of me around, right now. There are many versions of everyone around, right now. Whenever anyone has to make a choice, a new version of her or him pops up. There’s a me who never dated Cam in the first place. There’s a me who went away to UCLA. There’s a me whose parents never divorced.

That seems a bit insane. There can’t be an infinite number of mes. Can there?

As a kid, I remember asking my dad how many stars there were. Living in California, he thought I meant celebrities and asked me if I meant movie, TV or both. When I clarified that I meant stars in the sky, he laughed and said, “It’s infinite.”

“How can that be?” I asked him.

“They go on forever and ever.”

“But how?”

“That’s just the way it is,” he said, playing with my hair. “Space, time, stars—they all go on forever.”

If all those things are infinite, then why can’t versions of people be infinite, too? Why not choices? And if so, did I somehow stumble into the ability to exist in two of these worlds?

Or maybe I just stumbled into the ability to remain conscious in two of these worlds.

At four, I hear Lila’s key in the door. “Hi, guys,” she says.

“It’s just me!” I holler, closing the laptop. As nonjudgmental as she is, she’d still think I was nuts.

Lila goes through her cleansing/changing routine and then joins me in my room. “What happened to you? I thought your flight was this morning. Where have you been? What’s going on?” she asks, sitting on the side of my futon.

I wave my bejeweled hand. “Change of plan. I’m not going to New York.”

Her jaw drops. “No way. I don’t believe it.”

“It’s true.” Half-true.

“Wow.” Smiling, she leans over and hugs me. “Congrats!”

“Thanks.”

“But Gabby, what about the new job?”

I shrug. “A person can’t have everything.” Most people, anyway. Apparently, I am not most people.

She gives me a hopeful look. “Does that mean you’re not moving out?”

I shake my head. “No, you’re still getting your home office. I’m moving in with Cam.”

She sticks her tongue out at me. “Aw. You lucky girl.”

“You know what?” I say. “I might be.” I’d choose lucky over crazy, anyway.

On my way back to Cam’s, I’m strangely invigorated. My wish came true. It must have. It’s the only explanation. My body feels alive and tingly. I decide not to tell Cam about my self and my other self—it’s not like he’d believe it. Who would? I barely believe it myself.

I find him in the backyard, surrounded by sawdust and some sort of table with a mirror.

“What are you doing?”

“Building you a vanity table for the bedroom,” he says, while hammering. “So you can have somewhere to put your makeup and jewelry and stuff. I got you a lamp, too, because I’m not sure there’s going to be enough light…. Do you like it? I still have to build the bench.”

I am so touched, I almost cry.

While he finishes, we return to his parents’ for Sunday night dinner. Afterward, we go straight to bed and I seduce him immediately.

“That was fun,” he says afterward. “Three nights in a row. Life is good.”

“Yes, it was,” I say, laying my head on his chest. His heart rate is beginning to slow.

“What are your plans for tomorrow?” he asks.

Tomorrow! I start work tomorrow. In New York. A fiancé in Arizona and a new job in New York. I really do get to have it all—except a job here. “Try to get my job back.”

“My mom mentioned that she wants to start planning the wedding….”

“Of course she does.”

“Have you given any thought to getting married in May?”

“Whatever you want, babe.” Since I’m only half getting married, why not meet Alice halfway?

His eyes light up like a slot machine. “Really? And what about the church?”

Halfway does not include churches. Then again, maybe it can. If I ever get married in New York, I can do it any way I want. And to someone else. It wouldn’t even be bigamy. Legally, that is. “Whatever makes you happy,” I tell him with a smile. But I’m still not converting.

He kisses my forehead and promptly falls asleep.

My thoughts are too loud and crazy to let me drift off. I’m wondering how to best take advantage of my fabulous science experiment.

Should I try out different hairstyles? Go blond in one reality, stay brunette in the other? What about different diets? No carbs in one, low-fat in the other, and see which version of me loses more weight? Invest in real estate in one, stocks in the other?

Check the winning lottery number in one, choose that number in the other? Though supposedly, the two universes have nothing to do with each other. The guy who wins in the first reality might remain a poor slob in the other. But it’s worth looking into.

The possibilities are endless, and I’m going to enjoy every one of them. I’m going to live it up.

Life is good. Both of them.

4

Lights, Camera, Action!

I’m late. How is it possible that I’m late for my first day of work? I have never been late for anything. I set my alarm for 7:00 a.m., a half hour earlier than I was supposed to get up. But it’s already eight, which means the radio alarm was singing for an hour before I even heard it.

I jump into the shower, throw on my clothes (no time to debate: black pants, green sweater), flip through the news channels as I scarf down my coffee (plane crash in Bali, hurricane in the Bahamas, kidnapped girl found alive in South Carolina), grab my bag, notebook and clipboard, then run for the elevator. No time today to test out the subway. Taxi, it is. The best part of living in New York is that you can hail a cab from anywhere, unlike Phoenix, where they’re as common as waterslides in the desert.

The cold air tackles me as I open the door. Damn, I really need to get myself a coat.

When I reach the street, I attempt to hail a cab, but a stream of occupied yellow taxis keeps passing me by. Hmm. How long is this supposed to take? Where are the empty ones? What if I’m here for hours and no cabs drive by and I miss my first day of work?

Oh, there’s one! Hello? Hello! Why didn’t he stop? How do I get them to stop? On TV, New Yorkers sometimes whistle. I don’t know how to whistle.

I see one coming and I step into the middle of the street. A Honda turns the corner, almost running me over. But then I realize something. What if I die in one life? I’ll still be around in the other. I think.

Just then an empty cab pulls up. He nods, and I get in. “Fifty-eighth and Broadway please,” I tell him.

And away we go. He chats on his cell phone while I watch the clock. Curtis Boland, the executive producer of Ron’s Report told me I’d be working from about ten to seven-thirty every day, assuming there is no crisis. Since Ron’s show tapes at six and airs at eight, I can leave after the post-tape meeting. But today, my first day, she wants me in at nine. It’s now eight-fifty.

“Excuse me, sir?”

He continues chatting.

“Sir? Can you tell me how far away we are?”

“We’re here,” he grunts and pulls over in front of The Gap, where a street vendor is selling Kate Spade purses (fake, I assume).

“Where?”

“Across the street.”

Oh. I pay him and face the tall, gleaming chrome-and-tinted-windowed TRSN building. A news ticker is featured prominently over the entranceway, informing me about the hurricane in the Bahamas. I have to maneuver my way past myriad flowerpots (security cameras, most likely) to get to the doorway.

I pull open the heavy doors and march toward the security desk, the click of my heels echoing through the room.

“May I help you?” the security guard asks, and after I show my ID, I’m told to go up to the tenth floor. The elevator doors are about to close and I throw my purse between the sensors to stop them. A woman clucks her tongue.

“Sorry,” I say sheepishly and slide inside. I slither to the back of the crowded space and accidentally elbow someone directly in the stomach. “Really sorry,” I say.

“No worries,” says a deep voice. I look up at the man I attacked.

Hello there.

The man I attacked is hot. Hmm. That stomach I elbowed was pretty hard. Muscled, I’d say. He’s tall, with short dark brown hair and big brown eyes framed in black wire glasses. Like me, he’s wearing black pants and a light green shirt. Now that’s what I call fate. He’s also giving me a big smile.

I feel my cheeks burn and I quickly turn away. It’s too early for me to even think about other guys. Stare at the floor, missy! Think about Cam, whose poor heart you broke two nights ago. Instead I glance at the outfits of the people around me. There’s a lot of black happening, I’ll tell ya.

The elevator stops on the third floor. Everyone except the hard-gut guy and me gets out. The tiny hairs on my arm stand up. Hello, sexual tension. I think. I probably shouldn’t be having that elevator-tension feeling so soon after breaking up with Cam. The entire time Cam and I were together, I never even looked at another guy.

But now you’re single! a voice in my head screams. Excellent. Now not only am I existing in two worlds, I’m also hearing voices.

Regardless, the voice is right. I am single. I’m allowed to bask in the sexual tension with other men. In fact, I should smile. It’s rude not to. Turn around. Ask him if he wants to show me the building…the city…his apartment….

I’m about to open my mouth, but I freeze. Excellent. I’ve forgotten how to flirt.

The door opens on ten and I step off. And then at the last second, I turn around. I can do it! I give him a big smile-for-the camera grin and a Miss America wave. And before he can return it, the doors close.

Well. At least I tried. Pretty cool that I’m in the building for five seconds and I’ve already spotted a cute guy. I love New York! He must work for TRSN too. A coproducer? A writer? We’ll both be here into the wee hours of the night and one thing will lead to another and—

I show my pass at the door, and am suddenly in the newsroom. No one except the mega-talent has offices here since it’s all open space: desks and cubes overflowing with papers, computers and screaming people. I might faint. I can’t believe I’m here. I made it.

What if I’m not up for this?

I walk over to where Curtis told me Ron’s crew is located and spot her waving at me from her desk. “I want that interview,” she says when I reach her. At first I think she’s talking to me, but then I notice her mobile headset. “Throw in a book deal if you have to. Just get it. No, I don’t want her talking to O’Reilly or Couric.”

Curtis is wearing faded blue jeans, a black T-shirt, a brown corduroy blazer and sneakers. Her skin is ghostly pale, as though she hasn’t seen the sun in months, and she’s not wearing any makeup. Her dirty-blond hair is tied back in a haphazard ponytail. I’d peg her as mid-to-late forties. She told me she’s been working with Ron for ten years. She’s the one who discovered him and brought him to TRSN to begin with. This show is her baby.

“Get her to talk to us. Do you hear me? I want the kidnapped girl. I don’t have time for your pathetic excuses….”

As she berates whoever is on the other end of the phone, I look around the room and think about how I almost didn’t make it here. As a kid, I had wanted to be an anchor (my dad used to tell me I had a face for television), so I decided to major in broadcasting when I applied to Arizona State. But when I got to school, I realized that everyone wanted to be an anchor and that the real power was behind the scenes, producing, so that’s what I focused on. The summer of my junior year, I interned at the NBC affiliate in Phoenix, but decided that after I graduated I would move to New York. I don’t know where my obsession with New York came from. Maybe from years of watching Law and Order, maybe from too much romanticizing about Sex and the City. All I knew was that I wanted to have a zip code that started with 1. The spring before I graduated, I applied to every available and not-available entry-level job in Manhattan and flew down for informational interviews, where I was told again and again, sorry, we’re hiring the interns from last year, why don’t you work at a local station outside the city? When you have more experience, when you’ve grown your contact list, when, when, when…So I returned to Arizona, my tail nestled firmly between my legs, and took a full-time job there.

My new boyfriend Cam told me it was for the best since New Yorkers were crazy, and anyway, he wanted me on this side of the country. I jokingly warned him not to get too attached. At my graduation ceremony, I figured I would be in Arizona another year, tops. I took typical hat-throwing pictures with Lila, with Cam (who had just graduated from law school), with my mom and with my dad. (He had come even though I’d told him not to bother, not because I believed it wasn’t worth the trip, but because I dreaded the fight that he and my mom would have if he did show up, which they had, and which I did my best to ignore.)

Lila and I kept our two-bedroom apartment in Tempe. (I had moved out of my mom’s place in Scottsdale freshman year when Goodwin, husband Number Three, moved in. Lila’s dorm room was right next door to mine. We became best friends at first by proximity, and then by habit. We moved into the two-bedroom sophomore year.) Even though I was earning decent money, I figured there was no point getting my own place, since I wasn’t planning on sticking around.

I started the new job, liked the job and got promoted from assignment editor to producer eleven o’clock news, to producer 6:00 p.m. news, to executive producer 6:00 p.m. news. I was good at my job. I could smell a story. Maybe smell is the wrong word. When something big is going on, my mouth gets zapped dry. I don’t know why, but that’s what happens, that’s when I know I’m onto something. My dry mouth has never been wrong. Anyway, I bought the Jetta, Cam made me a bookshelf, and after two years, I started settling into my life. I had my boyfriend, my job, my bookshelf. I got to go into work at nine and come home at five-thirty, watch my newscast from my couch. I started to think that maybe I didn’t need to move, that I could settle in Arizona.

And that was when a dark-haired Melanie Diamond, a twenty-five-year-old Phoenix elementary school teacher, was photographed leaving a hotel room with the very married, very “it’s all about family values” Senator Jim Garland.

My mouth was drier than the desert.

Every producer in the country wanted to talk to Melanie. And like everyone else, I called her. I pleaded with her to tell me her story.

“I know you must be going through hell,” I said repeatedly to her answering machine. “And the last thing I want is to make it worse. But until you tell the world your side of the story, it’s not going to go away.”

That night she called me back. “There’s something about your voice,” she said, sounding a little lost and overwhelmed. “You sound a bit like my sister. Like someone I can talk to. Get your butt over here.”

So I got the interview. I brought a camera to her place and got her to tell her side of the story. Afterward, when the cameraman was gone, she ordered me to stay for coffee and I did. She told me about how she hadn’t left her house in two weeks. How she never expected this to blow up in her face. How she can’t believe what a jerk the senator turned out to be. I told her about Cam, about my messed up parents, about my dream of going to New York. And I knew that we were going to be more than interviewer and interviewee. We were going to be friends.

After the show ran, every station in the country picked up my story. My exclusive interview. The details Melanie had given me. Illicit trips to Greece, promises of marriage. A tearful, black-haired Melanie, swearing that the bald and sweaty Garland had sworn he was married in name only, that he and his pig-nosed wife Judy didn’t even sleep in the same bed. I edited the pig-nose part out of my interview. I also edited out my own questions—like I always did in this type of interview. Producers stayed behind the scenes.

As the weeks passed, I became the one who listened to Melanie cry about how she would never love anyone again, and promise that she would. I found her a lawyer through Cam’s firm when her school threatened to fire her for the negative publicity.

As the weeks passed, doors that had been bolted only two years before were suddenly swinging wide open. Because of my newfound notoriety as the producer who got the Melanie Diamond exclusive, job offers around the country started flooding in. Opportunity. Cash. Health benefits.

“I’d like to talk to you about working for us,” Curtis said via cell phone.

I’d watched Grighton’s show—as a news producer you have to watch everyone’s show—and I thought he was smart, tough and intimidating. And I wanted to work for him. But most importantly, he wanted to hire a young, female producer who could deliver. Me.

And here I am.

“…Report back to me at eleven,” Curtis says to whatever poor soul is on the phone with her. Then she lowers the headset to rest around her neck and stares at me. “So, Gabby, you made it. Welcome to national news.”

In the next hour, I’m given a desk, a computer and a BlackBerry.

Curtis tours me around the building, barking out orders. “Morning meeting is at eleven, afternoon meeting at three, post-show meeting at seven-ten. All take place in the seventh-floor conference room. Ron hates tardiness, so don’t be late. Ever. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“He also detests guests who stutter, so don’t book them.”

“That’s fine.” N-no p-problem.

She shows her pass to the security guard and we enter a small puke-green room. “The green room. Obviously.”

In Arizona, the green room, where the guests wait to be interviewed, wasn’t actually green. But I always thought that was kind of lame. This one has a watercooler, a coffee brewer, a loaf of banana bread, a TV and VCR, and a blue leather couch.

“If he catches a grammar mistake in the script,” Curtis says, “he’ll think you’re illiterate. Watch out for sloppiness. And always get your facts right. He’s known as one of the most trusted newsmen in the nation for a reason. Us.”

“Got it.”

She presses her finger against her lips. “Control room,” she mouths and opens the door.

No one looks up as we sneak inside. Jane Hickey’s morning show is filming.

I love control rooms. I always feel like I’m in the center of the world. Two rows of producers at their computers face a wall of television monitors. The center monitor shows the two smiling blondes, Cameron Diaz and Jane, discussing Cameron’s new movie. The monitor beside her shows the police chief in South Carolina, the one who found the kidnapped girl. As soon as Jane finishes her interview with the movie star, the feed will switch to the police chief. Built into the side walls are fifteen television monitors showing the news on every other news station in the country.

“You’ll be working here,” Curtis mouths, pointing to one of the desks, which a tall, lanky man now occupies.

She motions me back toward the door.

When we’re back outside, Curtis continues growling orders. “Ron’s ratings are highest when he gets a good debate going, so don’t book any wimps. Make sure the guest can stand his ground.”

“No problem,” I say.

“And make sure to know who else the guest is talking to. If he appeared on Larry King last night, we don’t want him tonight. Ron won’t be happy with you. He won’t be happy at all.”

“Got it.” Butterflies are anxiously flying around my stomach. If I was intimidated by Ron before, I’m scared shitless now. What if Ron doesn’t like me? What if he thinks I’m some sort of hack? What if he thinks I’m illiterate?

“And remember,” Curtis says as we step back into the elevator, “he’s very happily married. And we want him to stay that way.”

I try to keep the shock from my face. What exactly does she mean by that? Does she think I’m going to try to sleep my way to the top? Or is it my responsibility to keep guests from hitting on him? He’s not exactly a rock star. I can’t exactly imagine screaming teen girls pressed against the tinted windows flashing him their panties. “I understand,” I say.

“Good.” With a glance at her watch she adds, “It’s time for the morning meeting.”

My hands are shaking. I’ve moved them under the conference-room table so nobody notices, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to make them stop.

Curtis, the reporters and the associate producers are all chatting among themselves. Ron is expected any minute and I can’t get my hands to stay still. Ron will probably think I’m some sort of crack junkie. Just as I’m about to try putting them on the table again, so I can use the right one to take notes, he enters the room.

“Good morning, you guys!” he sings.

“Hey, Ron,” everyone chants back.

Ron looks exactly like he does on television, only taller. He comes across as the ideal dad: smart, trustworthy, handsome and in control. His hair is short, dark gray and parted to the side. He’s wearing beige pleated trousers and a navy collared sweater. He places his steaming mug of coffee at the head of the oval table and sits down.

“Everyone excited for today’s show?” he asks, scanning the table. His gaze rests on me. “You must be Gabby. Welcome to the team.”

My cheeks flush when he says my name. I’m not surprised he knows who I am, but the familiarity of my nickname catches me by surprise. “Thanks, Ronald,” I say, trying to sound smooth and praying I don’t stutter. “It’s a pleasure to be working for you.”

He smiles, and I’m surprised to see that he has two dimples. “How do you feel about the cold, Arizona? No dry heat here, is there?”

He’s so sweet. And what a cute new nickname. “It’s a bit of a shock to my system.”

“Wait till January. You’ll be wanting to get on the first plane back to Phoenix.”

I don’t need a plane for that. I just have to fall asleep. “I doubt that,” I say, smiling. I am bantering with Ronald Grighton!

“Wow, what a great smile,” he says.

My smile gets even bigger.

Curtis rustles through her portfolio. “Welcome to Ron’s Report, Gabrielle. Now let’s get started on today’s show. Since we can’t get the kidnapped girl—I just heard she’s talking to Paula Zahn—”

Groans from the table.

“—I think we should stick to our program. We’ll do the segment about the elections first. Then the hurricane in the Bahamas. We have the director of the National Hurricane Center and the governor-general scheduled. Then we’re supposed to go to—”

Suddenly my bag begins to vibrate. What the hell?

In a split second, everyone at the table whips out his or her BlackBerry, apparently the cause of said vibrating.

“They lost the Cookie Cutter,” Curtis says.

Murmurs around the table. The Cookie Cutter is Jon Adams, heir to Cookie Creams, the chocolate-chip dynasty, who was arrested for raping and fatally stabbing three women in Spanish Harlem. “How did that happen?” asks Michael, an associate producer. “He was in custody.”

“He jumped bail,” she reads. “We have to run a story on this today.”

Ron sips his coffee. “Who can we get to talk?”

“The district attorney is doing a press conference at noon,” Curtis says. “We’ll need to cover that. Let’s speak to someone from the defense team. Do you think the Adams’ parents will talk to us?”

This all happens so fast, I barely have time to think. I need to add something. What can I say? “What about interviewing the victims’ families?”

Ron grins and taps his mug on the conference table. “Definitely.”

Wahoo!

Curtis continues flicking through her BlackBerry. “The mothers are Puerto Rican and Dominican. Who speaks Spanish?”

“I do,” I say quickly. You don’t live in Arizona without learning the lingo. Some of it, anyway.

“Good,” says Curtis, nodding. “Go to it.”

My hands stop shaking. I’m going to do fine. No, I’m going to do great.

“The chicken pad thai,” I order at the Thai restaurant counter. “To go.” I’m starving. All I had for lunch was coffee, coffee and more coffee.

What a day. What an amazing, incredible, exhausting, overwhelming day.

The show went smoothly. My segment went perfectly. I called the mothers and convinced them (in Spanish) to come on the show, where I got them a proper translator. Both Curtis and Ron praised me for a job well done.

When my meal is ready, I return to my apartment. My doorman informs me that my mattress and frame are waiting for me. Micha, the porter, helps me carry them up to my apartment. I give him a twenty and then sink into the couch, turn on the news and dig into my chicken.

Heather is in her room, chatting on the phone, and doesn’t come out to say hello. If I weren’t so damn tired, I’d be insulted.

A picture of the kidnapped kid flashes across CNN and I feel a pang that she went to Paula Zahn and not us. My BlackBerry buzzes a few times, but it’s only sports scores. When I’m done eating, I strip off my clothes, wash off my makeup, replace the couch pillows, make my bed and then climb underneath the sheets. Tired and happy, I think about potential stories for tomorrow. Maybe the defense attorney will be willing to speak to us. Maybe someone will find the Cookie Cutter. What will happen with the hurricane? I cannot wait to chase these stories.

Crap. Tomorrow—maybe I should call it re-today?—I won’t be doing any chasing. More likely, I’m going to be getting chased. By my future mother-in-law.

5

My Mothers, Myself

Considering how abnormal my life is, the next few days (actually several for me, a few for the rest of the world) pass by in a relatively normal way. Note relatively.

First, on Monday in Arizona, my mother calls at eight (yes, eight) to tell me that she’s still mad at me. I grovel until she’s satiated, and then just when I fall back to sleep, Alice calls. Groan. Both mothers on my first official day of being unemployed. Fate can be cruel.

Though, my mother, I can handle. My mother, I can tell off. But the Number One rule in any book of practical etiquette is “Don’t piss off your future mother-in-law.” In other words, wait until after the wedding to tell her, for instance, you will not be hanging that lovely portrait of her on your bedroom wall. Otherwise an argument might ensue, and what if your fiancé sides with Mommie Dearest? You get to be the queen only after you ascend to the throne. So when Alice calls me on Monday morning at nine (yes, nine), demanding that my mother and I come by that afternoon so we can all “get our heads together,” I remain composed.

My mother does not do the let’s-get-our-heads-together thing. At least, not well. “My mom doesn’t get back until tomorrow morning,” I explain, trying to keep the exasperation out of my voice.

Alice sighs. Loudly. “All right, Gabrielle, but don’t blame me if we can’t get everything done on time and your wedding is a huge disaster.”

“Why don’t we just meet tomorrow.” I pull the comforter over my head in the hopes that she’ll go away.

She sighs again. “Fine.”

“Let’s meet at night so Cam can come, too.”

She laughs. Shrilly. “No. We don’t need Cam.”

“Really? I think we kind of do.”

“Trust me, he’s not going to care. He doesn’t want to be bothered with the small details. Let him worry about work, and we’ll worry about the wedding. I’ll see you at four tomorrow.” She hangs up.

I call back my mother and ask if she’ll come with me to Alice’s.

She groans. “Do I have to?”

“Mom! It’s my wedding.”

“I know, but I don’t want to go to Alice’s. She sounded so…Martha Stewart. But without the good taste and prison stories. She made me want to throw up a little.”

“Hey, you’re talking about my future mother-in-law.”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But she does.”

“Mom.”

“Fine, I’ll come. My plane lands at eleven. Should I meet you there?”

“Yes. At four.” I tell her the address and wait as she types it into her planner.

“Done,” she says. “Wait. I don’t have to bring anything, do I? Like freshly baked cookies?”

This whole situation is making me want to throw up a little, too. “No. Just come.”

Once I’m up, I call the person who bought my car and ask him if there’s any way, if it’s at all possible, if I renege on the sale. “I’m really sorry, but I’m not moving now and I really need my car—”

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