Louise shrugs as she falls back and sighs, almost spilling her champagne.
“Two days since I told you—five since the audition.”
“Hey, you’ve told me yourself that these things take time. That the casting people send the videos to producers, then those people take their time going through them, and then if they like someone they still have to convince everyone else—five days is nothing.”
Louise raises an eyebrow, skeptical. “I probably said that during the ‘optimism’ phase of post-audition stress.”
I laugh around a mouthful of ‘crazy’ chips. “What stage are you at now?”
“Ah!” Louise straightens up as if reciting a lesson. “It goes ‘optimism,’ ‘confused self-analysis,’ and then ‘deeply critical self-analysis,’ ‘utter nihilism,’ and then ‘trying not to think about it.’ Unless I’m interrupted by a call-back, of course.”
I look at Louise, only half-smiling as I try to gauge how much of that is humor and how much is genuinely the case. “Is there a stage after that?”
Louise beams at me and sips champagne through a grin. “This one. The ‘crazy’ chips stage.”
I laugh gently, clink my glass against hers, and drink.
“Ok, I’m done,” Louise says. “Tell me what’s going on with Mr. Big O.”
“Ugh…” I groan, as Louise stretches out, putting her legs on my lap. “I don’t even know where to start…”
“Well it’ll probably end with the fact that you obviously like him, so start anywhere you like,” Louise chides gently.
I shoot her a sarcastic glare, then sigh it away as I start talking.
“So at work they paired us up for this, like, dating show—”
Louise leans forward, eyes popping. “Like the Dating Game? They made you go on a date with each other?”
“No, not exactly. We’re supposed to date other people, and they film it, and then we get together afterwards to kind of go over what happened and make jokes about it.”
“Like those old reality dating shows?”
“Kinda. Yeah.”
She smirks. “And the problem is that you actually want to be dating Owen…”
“No,” I say, rolling my eyes. “That’s not the problem.”
“Well then what’s wrong? It sounds fun.”
“It is…but…”
I stare forward so long searching for the words that Louise sits up, grabs the bottle, and fills my glass to the brim, even though I’ve barely drunk any.
“Look,” she says, “if you can’t admit you like him—even a little bit—to me, then obviously you won’t be able to admit it to yourself. What’s your hang up?”
I look at Louise, and she gives me the straight-face, the ‘the-time-is-now’ face, the one she uses when she plays sympathetic detectives in interrogation rooms.
“No. I mean…I guess a little? Maybe.”
“See?” Louise says, throwing her arms in the air. “Doesn’t that feel better? Releasing all that truth? I know you used to be the queen of the hit-it-and-quit-it back in college, but that’s just not you anymore. And it’s not like you guys aren’t already super close. Admitting that you’re falling for him is nothing to be ashamed of.”
I look at her and try to match her enthusiasm but I can’t. “Yeah, we’ve been friends for eight years, so of course I like him—he’s a great guy. But thinking of him as an actual boyfriend? I’d be crazy to even try it. I’ve already told you all the reasons why.”
“Why won’t you even consider it?” Louise asks loudly, palms out in a dramatic gesture. “What’s so difficult here? You’ve been friends so long, you know that you get along. And if it doesn’t work out, at least you won’t spend the rest of your life wondering ‘what if…’! I mean, this could really work. And it’s sweet! It’s romantic! God, I would love to have a boyfriend I could call a friend as well. Especially if he looked like Owen.”
“You only think that because you read scripts, and things like this always work out in those. But this is real life—you know, with emotions you can’t control and nine-to-fives and cellulite. In all the time I’ve known Owen he’s never once had a long-term relationship—he hasn’t even had anything you could call short-term.”
“But this is different!” Louise insists. “You guys have something special together. I’ve seen it.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head adamantly. “That’s exactly what every other girl thought in college. Every girl who he let down after they had one date, or two or three, but three was always his max number of hook-ups with the same girl and he never broke that rule. I mean, they would basically fall at his feet, and Owen would just trample over them. And then they’d come to me, asking if I knew what went wrong or how to get him back, because they were so sure things had been going perfectly and they never saw it coming—even though they all knew about his reputation! There was this one woman last year—somehow she got my work number—and she kept calling me, day after day at my desk, begging me to put Owen on the phone. Of course, he’d tell me to say he wasn’t there. And I could just hear the desperation in her voice. For months she did that. I don’t want to turn into that person…I mean, listen to me, I already sound a bit like her.”
Louise shakes her head. “This is different. And besides, you’re too smart to get caught up in anything like that.”
“That’s what I thought with Carl. I thought at one point he was perfect—that we were perfect. Now I wonder how I even stuck with him that long. Brad, too. I thought since we were writers that we both wanted the same thing, that we were so compatible. Now I have to live with his ‘douchebag report’ every time he passes my desk. A constant reminder of how much I keep getting men wrong.”
Louise sighs sympathetically. “Owen isn’t Carl, or Brad. Not by a long shot.”
“In a way he’s worse,” I say. “I’m not saying it wouldn’t be fantastic, for about a day. The sex would be incredible—”
“Sounds like it already was.”
“And we’d probably have fun for a while. But there’s no way it wouldn’t crash and burn. And I’m done crashing and burning.”
“I see.” My sister is quiet for a moment before she asks, “But…do you think he might feel the same?”
I consider it for barely half a second before the memory of me and Owen in his apartment comes rushing into my mind like a backdraft. His mouth on mine, making his desire for me undeniable. The way his hand trailed over mine holding the golf club a little too gently, for a little too long, his full body hug a little too unnecessarily to be pure accident.
“No,” I mutter, to myself as much as Louise. “Or maybe he does. I don’t know.”
“Well you should at least find out, Margo. Before you go making up his mind for him.”
“No. I’ve made up my mind. I need to move on. At the end of the day, it’s not worth risking the friendship. He’s not right for me. And who knows, maybe I’ll even find some nice guy on this stupid video thing.”