I name a big sitcom that Michael told me he worked on for a few years as a lighting tech, and also tick off several A-list directors he’s worked under as a gaffer, though that was all before fatherhood took him off the prime-time circuit.
“Okay, cool, cool.” Cat sounds relieved that Michael’s film pedigree is respectable enough. She wants me with a decent guy, like any best friend, but deep down she still wants me with someone from our artificial universe. That she doesn’t notice any inconsistency in that tells you plenty about my dear friend.
“I’m seeing him tonight, actually.” I lower my voice for no particular reason. “We’re going to the Dodgers game.”
“Uh-huh. So he’s one of those guys.”
“Which guys?”
“The macho, gotta take you to a sports arena kind of guys.”
I laugh. If only she knew what kind of guy Michael really is, she’d let loose a spattering of Spanish expletives guaranteed to permanently damage my hearing. Or even more likely, she’d tell me she finds it a freaking turn-on when a guy swings both ways, then gossip about five other people she’s heard might be bisexual too. Obviously, Cat can be a loose cannon sometimes, and I don’t want anything getting back to Jake, so I keep the rest of Michael’s story to myself for now.
“So how’d you know Jake phoned me?” I ask, wondering where their paths crossed again after the recent run-in at The Derby.
“Well, that’s the other thing I’m calling about,” she answers, serious, and my heart palpitates in anticipation of whatever’s coming next. “And I’ll say straight up I don’t like it. But you should know.”
“Okay.”
“He e-mailed me last night. Wanted to know why you haven’t been returning his calls.”
“Call,” I clarify. “He called once.” Everything expands at a geometric rate in Jake’s universe.
“He wants to see you, but, Rebecca, don’t do it. Stay away from him, okay? He thinks I’ll rep him in the deal or something, but you know he’s always been crazy. That’s the only way he can’t realize what a total loser he is.”
“Come on, Cat. He’s not that bad,” I say, feeling surprisingly defensive on the snake’s behalf. “I wasn’t totally stupid to be with him.”
“Stupid is as stupid does, but I love you anyway.” Yep, Cat knows him like a bad brother, after all the seasons they worked together on About the House—including two final ones after I was gone, which makes her a good reality check whenever I start revising our personal history.
“You’d like Michael,” I announce, picturing the way his rangy frame contrasts boldly with Jake’s smallish, sinewy one. Thinking of how honorable and gentle he is, and that I’m already sure he’d protect me at all costs—not destroy me if given the chance. “He’s the anti-Jake.”
“That would make him like the anti-asshole.”
“He is that.”
“Well, sister, you can’t go wrong with a good guy,” she assesses knowledgably, then adds, “Just don’t call Jake.”
“Geez, give me some credit, okay? I do have a few ounces of self-respect left.”
“Those aren’t the few ounces I’m worried about when it comes to Jake,” she snickers.
“My point exactly.”
***
After doing some research—in other words, asking Trevor—I located some good old-fashioned fried chicken at a place on Ventura, and I’ll admit that I’m using soul food like any well-bred southern woman. As a form of flirtation. Call it pure instinct, but I’m betting Michael Warner will respond to a down-home piece of chicken like a grubby-handed child at a church picnic. Then again, maybe I’m putting too much store by that soft twang that periodically colors his dialect. But hey, if the fried chicken fails me, there’s always the foil-wrapped package of buttermilk biscuits. They’ve transformed the interior of my Honda into the front parlor of my nana’s house back in Dorian, Georgia. “Sugar,” Nana always said with a sly smile, “a good supper is the key to all life’s masculine mysteries.”
I keep thinking that maybe Michael had a southern Nana, one who loved to cook for him like mine did, and these biscuits and chicken might take him back to that.
Driving up into their cul-de-sac, my stomach knots with nervousness. Like I’m sixteen or something, not a thirty-three-year-old woman who lost her virginity a decade and a half ago. What can I say? My dating muscles are seriously underutilized and flabby after a three-year hiatus. Somebody ought to get me a Pilates dating video, stat.