How to Meet Cute Boys (22 page)

It’s funny. You can go away, come back two days later, and have everything be totally different. I walked in the door, in
a haze of depression after my abysmal weekend, and all I wanted was for Kiki to come over, preferably with beer, cigarettes,
and pizza, so we could deconstruct every thing that happened until the inexplicable became explicable.

Except when I dialed her number I got the machine.

“Wait,” I said, “where are you? Call me. Ummm … I’m home. Do I sound fucked up? Sorry. Are you out? Okay, then, call me back.
’Bye.”

Then I considered how
Sunday Night Movie of the Week
my message sounded and called back.

“Me again. I’m not stalking you. I just wanted to say I’m okay so don’t worry. I’m not lying on the side of the road or anything.
I’m fine. Well, not really fine, but I’m in good actual
physical
health. Okay. Good-bye.”

Now she knew without the slightest doubt that I was having a nervous breakdown. There was nothing left to do but wallow. So
I wallowed, crying until my pillow was wet and soggy.

All I could think about was how much I didn’t want the relationship to end. If it was, in fact, ending. Which I didn’t know.
I’d tried to broach the whole boyfriend/girlfriend mess in the car, but everything Max said only made me feel more confused.
Even when we pulled up outside my house, I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He just dropped me off, kissed me on the cheek,
and said he’d call me “soonish.”

I finally fell asleep wondering how soon soonish was going to be.

I woke up the next morning with the phone ringing on the pillow next to me.

“Where have you
been?
” I said immediately. “I’ve been trying to—”

“I’m around the corner!” Kiki was shouting into the phone. I had to hold it away from my ear while frantically scrambling
for the volume button. “Meet me at Back Door Bakery!” she yelled. “We have to talk!”

Now that’s what I call a good friend.

I dressed quickly, putting on whatever I found on the floor, and dashed to the café. Kiki was already there, sitting outside
the garishly painted purple restaurant, devouring a honey bun the size of her head and looking fabulous in black pants and
a Marc Jacobs blazer.
Wait,
I thought,
those look like evening clothes
. “Honey,” I said, “are you eating? What the hell is going on?”

“I met him!” she said, grabbing my arm and shoving me into the wrong seat (next to the busboy station, your basic auditory
nightmare).

“Who?” I asked, shifting uncomfortably as a waiter dumped a pile of dishes into a plastic bin that was only inches from my
head.

“
Who?
Ben, I met
The One!
”

It was the last story I ever thought I’d hear.

Last Friday, as I’d been getting ready to leave for my Palm Springs shit parade, Kiki had gotten so depressed she’d resolved
to actually take my mother’s advice and go on that walk. She figured she could at least get fresh air in her lungs, maybe
put some color back in her cheeks. So she showered for the first time in days, combed her hair, put on her favorite pair of
jeans and her beloved black sweater, and set off for a trek around the block.

Once she got outside, she found it so pleasant, she decided she’d actually walk to Aron’s Records. The store isn’t really
that close to her house, but the new plan was to buy as much up-tempo pop music as it would take to get her out of her funk.
So Kiki was walking along Highland and suddenly there was this loud
crack!
She looked up and actually
saw a human being falling out of a tree
. He fell through many branches, banging himself up pretty good in the process, and landed at her feet.

“Holy shit!” Kiki said. The crash site looked like a yard sale—his glasses went one way, wallet, keys, and one shoe another.
“Are you okay?”

He said, “Grab the cat!”

Kiki looked up and saw a shabby-looking red tabby running headlong into the traffic. Now, she was about to say she hated cats.
But then she noticed the guy’s perfect hipster-boy pants from Sears, his carefully broken-in white T-shirt, and his adorable
tousled hair (with bits of grass in it), and she dashed into the speeding cars after the crazed little thing, tackling it
just before it would have been smashed to bits by a gardener’s truck.

Kiki brought the stunned animal back to the cute boy, who was now on his feet and trying to get a cracked lens back into the
frames of his glasses. She handed the feral beast to him, and he said, “That was a close one, huh?”

Kiki stopped telling me her story for a moment to shovel in another drippy piece of honey bun.

“What was his cat doing in a tree?” I said, watching the pastry ooze a glob of syrup onto her black top.

“Just wait …” Kiki said with a huge grin, mopping up the syrup and licking it off her index finger. “It wasn’t his cat!”

It turned out he lived just over there and could hear the cat crying from his apartment window. When he’d gone out to investigate,
he could tell from the kitty’s chewed-up ears and dirty belly that it must be a stray, had gotten stuck in the tree, and since
he was a saint he’d decided to
save it
. He climbed up, and he turned out to be a pretty lousy climber, which was how he almost killed my best friend.

Holding the cat in his arms, the boy named it Weezer, even though it was a female. Then he asked Kiki if she would want to
share the cat with him since she’d helped save her life. Kiki said yes, deciding then and there that she loved cats (particularly
little Weezer). They brought the cat back to his place, and he actually offered Kiki a diet Coke, solidifying his status as
the perfect man. After some careful prying, the guy, whose name was Curtis, told her he worked A&R at a small indie record
company. He also volunteered for an animal rescue group in his spare time. Oh, and he’d gone to Columbia where he was prelaw
and in some garage band we would have heard of if we’d gone to Columbia. It was a true love connection, and they’d been together
ever since. Going to brunch at Roscoe’s House of Chicken ’n’ Waffles, watching
Citizen Kane
on his DVD player, having sex every five minutes, and walking back to Kiki’s apartment now and then when she needed clean
underwear. They were already using the same toothbrush. Which meant this was really happening.

“He’s so …” Kiki was at a loss. “My whole life I’ve been waiting for this guy, and there he was, just like”—she snapped her
fingers—“
that!
”

“Guys aren’t supposed to grow on trees,” I said.

“I know! But they do! They really do!”

We spent the next hour going over every detail. But finally, after we’d rehashed this sudden change of events a third time,
Kiki stopped midrhapsody: “Oh my God—how was your weekend? Was it just amazing?”

I couldn’t hold back any longer, so I told her the whole story—Max basically sleeping his way through the trip, how he’d told
me on the ride home he wanted to be “seeing each other,” but not “going out,” how he thought he “probably loved me,” but didn’t
know if he’d ever been “in love.” How he didn’t like the terms
girlfriend
and
boyfriend
because they were “meaningless.”

“If they’re so meaningless then what difference does it make whether you’re ‘seeing each other’ or ‘going out’?” Kiki said.

“Bingo.”

“Oh, so what the fuck? He brings you on this weekend away for … what, exactly? To make you fucking
miserable?
”

“So you understand why I’ve been crying nonstop.”

“Uh,
yeah
. And what’s this shit about his being sick?” She was becoming bloodthirsty on my behalf. “Like, as if he was
actually
sick and not just going through some insane commitment-phobic anxiety attack?”

“Right,” I said. “Except that I’m such a wimp, I spent the entire time catering to his every whim, driving through the seventh
circle of hell to find fucking cream for his coffee, and trying not to cry too loud in the bathroom. I felt like such a loser.”

“
Well of course
you wanted to cry.
Duh
. He tells you he’s not seeing anybody else, but he doesn’t give a shit if you do? That’s not what you want to hear. That’s
not what
any
woman would want to hear from a guy on a weekend that you are supposed to be together. Ben, look, I’m sorry. But the guy
is … He’s a total—”

“Wait.” I had to interrupt her.
“Please don’t say it.”

I could tell from the look on Kiki’s face I was going to have to explain.

“I believe …” I started. “No. Okay. I know this sounds crazy. But I believe that Max might really love me.” I paused, trying
to gauge how this was coming across. She was withholding judgment, determined to hear me out. Even though it was killing her.

“I think maybe he’s just scared because this is real,” I said. “And I think, to just bail because things are getting hard,
to just walk away, for what?” I took a deep breath. I was trying not to just lose it, in public, in front of all the Silver
Lake cool kids stopping in for coffee before heading up the street to the dog park. “If he loves me … I want to stick this
out.”

“Why?” she said.

Wasn’t it obvious? I put my head down on the table and closed my eyes. There was the way Max’s face lit up whenever I walked
in the door (provided he wasn’t on the phone, of course). The juice by the bed in the morning. The fact that he knew Tater
Tots were my favorite food, and he made them for me sometimes and they were never too undercooked, which I think can be one
of the most disappointing things in this world. And I could never seem to stop myself from staring at him. I always felt lucky
that he wanted to be with me.
It all has to add up to something real,
I thought.
It just has to. I can’t accept that it doesn’t
.

“It’s complicated,” I finally said. “He’s just confused, okay? He’s never been an out-and-out asshole to me. Ever. He brings
me the juice, right? That can’t be something he’d do for a girl he doesn’t want to, for a girl he can’t see himself with,
you know, for a girl …”

“For someone who isn’t his future girlfriend?” Kiki asked.

I nodded. “I don’t think he wants me to walk away. I don’t. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.”

“Well, I guess he did leave things kind of up in the air,” she said.

“So you don’t think he’s going to break up with me?”

I was starting to scare myself.

“No,” she said. “Not yet, anyway.”

Kiki sighed, pushed away what was left of her honey bun, and lit a cigarette.

“Look, to be honest, I kind of wish at this point that he would break up with you if this isn’t going anywhere,” she said.
“I know that’s not how you see it, but what’s this guy wasting your time for? I mean, yeah, maybe he does love you. But I
say
for all the good it does you
. If he can never make a real commitment, if he’s just too young—”

I shot her a look. One that said,
Don’t finish that sentence
.

“Look, he does seem crazy about you most of the time,” she said, “which at this point is the only good thing I can say about
him. So if you don’t want to ditch him, then don’t. If you’re not ready, then you’re not ready. I mean, you make a good point.
He’s never been a
complete
prick up until now.”

She took another puff of the cigarette. I took it from her for a hit, but when I went to give it back, she waved it away.
I got to keep it. “So what do I do now?” I asked.

“You want me to help you think of a way to keep him?” She was horrified.

“Yes.”

“Shit. Really?”

“Come on. Be brutal. Tell me what you really think, and tell me how to fix it.”

She considered this for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “Then I think he’s feeling smothered.”

Ouch.

“It’s not anything you did,” she said. “That’s what’s pissing me off. But it’s what’s happening. He’s got the Fear. So, I
would guess that it’s time for the Full Life.”

“I was doing the full life already.”

“No,” she said. “You weren’t.”

I thought it over. Max had met all of my friends; I’d never even met his roommates. Max and I saw each other twice a week,
but I always initiated the actual planning. And for some reason, I always slept at his house; he never came to mine.
Oh my God
. Suddenly the truth hit me: I’d been playing this all wrong.