Going Off Script (14 page)

“Well, I wish
you
did,” he called back over his shoulder.

So ended our entirely imaginary, one-sided affair.

It’s funny, given how focused and ambitious I was about my career, that I never even noticed how my love life was following a similar trajectory, save for a few minor detours: When I was blowing off school and doing nothing to prepare for my future, I sought out abusive loser-boys who underscored my unworthiness. Then, when I started getting serious in college, I graduated to starter men, like Richard. Now, I finally had gotten the big break that would shape me as a broadcaster. I was eager to be molded into star material. Romantically, that same hunger for affirmation catapulted me straight into the arms of a master manipulator.

It was January of 2003, and the San Diego Chargers were hosting the Super Bowl. For the first time since starting at E!, I didn’t have to work a weekend. Some friends had invited me to drive down to San Diego with them for the game, but I politely declined. I’d been working nonstop, and I was looking forward to just staying home, ordering in, and vegging out. When Saturday rolled around, L.A. was a ghost town, and I was suddenly restless. I just felt something pulling me to San Diego. I didn’t even want to go to the game, and didn’t have a ticket, but I felt compelled to just go. I drove down by myself, figuring I could catch up with friends and enjoy some party-hopping. When I pulled into San Diego, the city was jam-packed and jumping. My friends were at a street festival downtown, where we met
up for a while before I headed by myself over to the W Hotel, planning to join my friend Pete Yorn and his bandmates. They always threw the best parties. As I walked through the W’s buzzing lobby, I heard a deep male voice boom out:

“Oh my God, it’s like an angel from heaven just walked into my house!”

I turned around, assuming Halle Berry or Charlize Theron had made an entrance.

“You!” the voice said. I found myself looking into the grinning face of actor Jerry O’Connell. Jerry is one of those actors you feel like you see everywhere, but can’t quite place. He had basically grown up on screen, from his starring role as the fat kid in the movie
Stand by Me
to a string of film credits as an adult. By the time I laid eyes on him in the W lobby, he was costarring in the popular TV crime drama
Crossing Jordan.
He was as entrenched in Hollywood as I was green.

“Oh my God, I just think you’re the cutest thing ever!” he gushed. From that night on, Jerry was the most incredibly loving, hilarious, amazing boyfriend I had ever had. He was my biggest cheerleader and best friend. Over the next two years, we spent only one night apart, when he went out of town with his dad for a football game (and spent most of the time on the phone with me). We spent nearly every weekend in Palm Springs, where the manager of the La Quinta resort would save us our favorite bungalow with a private pool. My parents adored Jerry, and his warmly welcomed me into their close-knit clan, too, inviting me along on their Hawaiian vacation and to their beach place in Montauk. When Jerry and I were in New York, we’d stay at his folks’ townhouse in Chelsea and play Boggle with them all night. The O’Connells loved word games and were killer at them. I always lost.

In L.A., Jerry and I spent our free time indulging a mutual passion for karaoke. We discovered all these private hole-in-the-wall
Japanese and Korean karaoke clubs where you could rent a little room and they’d provide the music catalog and serve you drinks and you could belt out Bon Jovi to your heart’s content. Jerry and I would slip in at eleven at night and spend hours singing to each other, or performing sappy duets like “Endless Love.” We were no Lionel Richie and Diana Ross, but we were pretty good. Jerry insisted in the most heartfelt, convincing manner that my solo of “Don’t Know Why” was better than Norah Jones’s. More cynical types might think that should have been the red flag for the silky-smooth lies to come from Jerry, but I must say, I have been known to hit those high notes better than Norah. (I actually auditioned for
Rent
and got a callback, but that was as close to Broadway as I got without a ticket.) Occasionally, Jerry and I would lasso friends into going to karaoke with us, but they’d gradually peel away because we always came with our well-rehearsed songs and were totally obnoxious.

When Jerry landed a role in a movie called
Fat Slags,
I went with him on location to London, where we had a fabulous mini-vacation while he got settled for a four-month shoot. We were crazy in love, and the thought of being away from each other was unbearable. I promised to visit again, despite my deep fear of flying, and Jerry would pop back to L.A. as soon as he got a break. When he dropped me off at the airport, we swore we would speak a hundred times a day and never let the eight-hour time difference get in the way as we wiped away tears and hugged till the last second. I hadn’t been back long when Ken Baker, a correspondent for
Us
magazine who frequently appeared on air for E!, stopped by my desk.

“Hey, how’re things with Jerry?” he asked me. “Are you guys still together?”

I knew Ken well enough to know that he wasn’t asking because he cared about the state of our relationship. The journalist in me knew instantly that he had to be asking because he had
something on Jerry. I needed to think fast and quash whatever ugly rumor was about to surface. I decided that being vague and uncertain was the safest route to go.

“Well, he’s been in London and we’ve been figuring things out lately, so…” I hedged.

“Oh, good,” Ken broke in, “so this won’t come as a shock to you.” He handed me copies of some photos
Us
was planning to run of Jerry with Geri Halliwell, a former Spice Girl who was his costar on
Fat Slags.
“Whatever you do, don’t go on the Internet,” Ken added cryptically as he walked away.

Which, of course, I did the instant he left. Up popped pictures of Jerry coming out of a London restaurant, arms locked with the former Ginger Spice. The caption said they were a hot item. When Jerry and I had gone to set the first day of shooting the (huge flop) movie, Geri was being a diva over something unrelated to us and refused to come out of her dressing room to meet Jerry. Seeing pictures of her flaunting him as her latest conquest was shocking. My heart fell to my feet, and I felt as if the wind had gotten knocked out of me. What the hell was going on? She hadn’t even been top Spice! I was being two-timed for one of the lesser Spices? I kept Googling. There were more pictures, more hand-holding. Picture after picture showed them coming out of or going into her London house, going to work in the morning with bedhead and bleary eyes, coming “home” after a night on the town. Disbelief turned to fury. How could Jerry talk about what we were going to name our children, constantly tell me how we were meant to be together forever, tell everyone he knew how obsessed he was with me, and then cheat on me as soon as my flight took off? I would have emasculated the scumbag, but the online photo gallery indicated that Bitchy Spice had beaten me to that: now Jerry was holding her hand, carrying her tote bag, and clutching her little dog. Jerry
hated
little dogs. The faint scar above
his lip was from a childhood bite. I hit speed dial in a hurt and tearful rage.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I screamed when he answered. “Are you
dating
that little
puttana
?”

Jerry was nonchalant.

“Yeah, I know. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what happened.” He had as much emotion as the customer service representative who tells you your bag missed the flight.

“You don’t know what happened?” What happened was, he put fleeting gratification ahead of lifelong commitment, lust ahead of love. He screwed his cast mate and he betrayed his lover. What happened was this: He destroyed me.

I hung up and bawled my eyes out. I had been completely blindsided. This was the love of my life, and now he had been taken from me just like that. There had been no dramatic quarrel, not even discussion of a breakup.
We were happy.
And now, I assumed, he was going to marry this amoral bitch and carry her stupid dog forever. I wasn’t some random starlet he’d dated and left behind in America; I was his partner of two years. Pictures of us together and stories identifying us as a couple (including many that erroneously described me as his fiancée) would pop up if you Googled his name. I had been right there on set with him when Carrymypurse Spice was too indisposed to come out of her trailer and act like she had proper manners that first day.

In no time at all, the tabloids and gossip columnists were all asking me about Jerry’s affair with the former pop star. Trying to preserve some dignity, I told everyone that Jerry and I were on a break while he was in London. Total lie, but no one doubted it, since Jerry was acting like it, anyway.

A month later, I was walking into my condo building when Jerry appeared out of nowhere. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I didn’t even know he was back in L.A. I wanted to strangle him
and hug him at the same time. I resisted the urge to do either, and pushed him aside.

“Get out of here, Jerry!” I said.

He kept insisting he just needed to speak to me, and tried to block me as I headed for the elevator. He followed me inside, and we didn’t say a word the whole ride up. I stared at the numbers…two…ten…fifteen. I was fuming, and Jerry was just staring at me.

When I unlocked my apartment door, he barged in. He kept begging me again to talk to him, and I kept trying to walk away. I felt trapped and upset. I went out to the balcony to escape him. He followed, then dropped down to his knees.

“I love you, I made the biggest mistake of my life, and you’ve got to take me back!” he blubbered.

I urged him to stop, to get up and get out. Jerry was literally begging me to forgive him, saying he couldn’t live without me. I had no idea if he was being overdramatic or not, but I half worried that if he did anything crazy, he would take me with him. I started crying and Jerry came back in, and we both cried and cried all night, and by morning, I had taken him back. I believed he really was in love with me, had made a terrible mistake, and was genuinely contrite. I still loved him. Nothing like this would ever happen again, and this whole drama only proved that we were meant to be together.

I can’t remember why, but we later ended up in London again for a quick trip. We were back to normal, and it felt like our love had survived a test. I forgave Jerry, and his love felt all-encompassing again. We even hit a karaoke bar in Soho and ridiculed Disposable Spice with a side-splitting version of her former group’s hit, “Wannabe.”

So tell me what you want, what you really really want,

I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want

Forgiving and forgetting aren’t the same thing, though, and when we were taking a romantic stroll through the city and Jerry mused aloud about getting engaged, I stopped him short.

“If you’re even thinking about proposing in London, please don’t,” I cautioned. “This city has a lot of negative connotations for me, and I don’t want to get engaged here.”

It wasn’t that I would refuse him—Jerry knew that. I just wasn’t going to say yes in London.

Jerry backed off but told me months later that he had been genuinely upset, “because a proposal is a proposal, it shouldn’t matter where.”

When I made the
Maxim
list of 100 Hottest Women in 2004, Jerry and I went to Vegas that June for the magazine’s big party for the honorees. I was number ninety-four—”That’s bullshit!” Jerry had proclaimed—but still flattered to be included. Jessica Simpson was number one that year, and model turned
X-Men
actress Rebecca Romijn was also on the list. E! actually has the footage of Jerry and me being interviewed on the red carpet by my field producer, Lee. “Behind us!” Jerry suddenly murmured, alerting both Lee and me to a star sighting. I turned around to see Rebecca in all her cartoon villainess glory. “We should wrap up,” Jerry said, urging Lee to go interview Rebecca. We were all, “Oh, boy, big star here, okay, bye, Lee!”

Inside the party, while I was doing interviews and taking pictures, Jerry wandered off to mingle. Little did I know he was in the VIP area talking up Rebecca. As a prelude to feeling up Rebecca.

A week later, when we were back in L.A., Jerry announced out of the blue that he had to go to Vegas for some guys’ weekend. One night turned into two nights, then three. On the phone, he seemed in a hurry to say he loved me and hang up. Next thing I knew, radio silence. I kept calling and calling, but he wouldn’t
answer. That childhood sense of evening-news dread overtook me, convincing me that the worst must have happened, that Jerry had been in an accident, that he was hurt, or dead. I left one more message, saying I was worried and calling the police. Finally he called.

“Oh my God, you’re blowing up my phone!” he complained. “I’m back. I’m fine!” He told me he had to go, and hung up again.

I was confused. Why hadn’t he told me he was home, or come by? I headed over to his condo. I rang the bell but got no response. I could see his lights were on. I started yelling up at his second-floor window, like Brando in
A Streetcar Named Desire.

“Jerrrrrrrrry! Jerrrrrry! Are you up there?”

He came out on the balcony.

“Jerry! Can you please buzz me in?”

He laid his arms across the railing and casually leaned on them, peering down at me.

“You should go,” he said.

“Jerry, what’s going on? Just let me in!”

He shook his head.

“Nope. Sorry, homegirl.”

“Jerry! What’s
wrong
with you?” I was sobbing by now. It was pretty obvious why he didn’t want me to come inside.

“Yeah,” Jerry sighed. “I dunno. Things change, but you take care, okay?” He went back inside and shut the door.

I don’t remember how I even made it home, I was so distraught. I literally wanted to die. It was over. I knew it was over, but a lifetime of never allowing myself to feel pain, of avoiding it at every cost, all caught up to me that night. I couldn’t believe this was happening. There had been no sign of trouble. One day he loved me; the next day, nothing was there. I had never
suspected that the man I loved had a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde switch until he flipped it on me. Jerry left me with the same intensity that he had loved me. I sank into a depression.