Wedding Fever. Kim Gruenenfelder

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СКАЧАТЬ Nic asks. From the scowl on her face, I’m going to guess this is the first she’s heard of it.

      “Tragically, yes,” I say. “I also bought orange juice for mimosas. Apparently destroying twenty dollars’ worth of sparkling wine with fifty cents’ worth of sugar during a bridal shower is as traditional as the bride throwing the bouquet, unmarried wedding guests having a fight on the way home about why the guy won’t commit, and a bridesmaid waking up on top of someone horribly inappropriate the next morning.” I hand Mel my phone to read Scott’s text. “What do you think this means?”

      Mel clutches her chest. “Oh my God! The poor guy. He liiiikes you. Why don’t you just let him be your boyfriend already?”

      I shrug. “I don’t know. Is it worth jeopardizing a really good friendship just because I want to have sex with him?”

      Mel answers with, “It would be so romantic. The best relationships start out as friendships,” just as Nic talks over her with, “Absolutely. Pin him to a wall and show him who’s boss.”

      Mel glares at Nic disapprovingly. Nic shrugs. “What? I didn’t say she had to be the boss.”

      They’re both right in their own way, of course. I desperately and achingly want to have sex with Scott. I think about it all the time.

      Actually, that’s not true.

      What I desperately want is to have that first six-hour make-out session where you just kiss and dry hump on someone’s couch until one of you falls asleep and the other one sneaks off to the bathroom to wash off her makeup, brush her teeth, and prepare to look radiant when you both wake up three hours later. At which time, hopefully he suggests brunch, and you both keep sneaking kisses all day.

      But I’m afraid what would happen instead would be the morning that has haunted every girl for months or years after the actual event. When, the next morning, the man that you have finally caught, the man that you have dreamt about kissing for so long, now has that look on his face that men get when they want to find a way to nicely let you know that you were a giant mistake, and that they wish the night had never happened. But it’s not you, it’s him. Really. And can you still be friends? Because he just loves you so much . . . as a friend.

      And what do we girls typically do when presented with this humiliating situation? Most of us stupidly pretend that nothing happened, that everything is okay, and that we can go back to being “just friends.”

      But not one of us has ever really felt comfortable around the guy again. How can you relax around someone who doesn’t think you’re enough?

      In my experience, the breakup goes one of two ways: either you pretend to stay friends and slowly drift apart— canceling on dinners or not scheduling movie nights anymore. Or, worse, you do keep seeing each other. And while a taste of honey is worse than none at all, a taste of tequila is deadly. Someone inevitably makes a move, someone says no, you both start yelling, and you never see each other again.

      Oh, or I guess there’s the third dreaded kind of breakup: the one that happens three months later, after you’ve declared your undying love for him, he has said he loves you back, everything’s going incredibly smoothly, you’re picking out wedding china in your head, and Bam! He breaks up one night. Doesn’t even give a good reason, just doesn’t “feel the sparks” you feel.

      This is the biggest reason for why I haven’t kissed Scott. I’ve already felt the heartbreak of him breaking up with me hundreds of times— all in my head. Depending on the night, I either go to bed fantasizing about him kissing me or I think about the breakup that would inevitably follow.

      It would happen. I know this logically. We are completely wrong for each other.

      I am a key fund-raiser for the Los Angeles Museum. It’s a job I kind of fell into, but I like it very much, and I’m pretty good at it. I organize sophisticated parties and showings for the well-to-do in Los Angeles, and try to get them to become patrons and donate money to the various programs and exhibits within the museum. I have no artistic ability whatsoever, but I am the biggest fan of a good exhibit. I’m stable. I have a steady job, a mortgage, and a 401(k). I get my teeth cleaned twice a year.

      On the other hand, Scott— sexy, delicious Scott— is a walking disaster. He’s an artist: like a real painting, sculpting, honest to God that’s his job artist. As such, some months he can barely cover his rent. He goes to the dentist only when a tooth is exploding in his head. Getting him wrangled into a suit for a fund-raising event usually requires negotiations, flattery, and bribery. He sleeps until noon, then works until three in the morning. I get “booty calls” from him at 2:00 A.M.— because he actually wants to talk. (And, like an idiot, I always take the call. Then we stay up until four or five in the morning talking, and I spend the next day at work exhausted and inhaling Diet Monsters and plain M&Ms to get through the afternoon.)

      I met Scott about ten months ago at a show a curator from the museum had put together on modern life. I’ll admit, contemporary art frequently escapes me.

      Scott had done a piece everyone was raving about that night called The Conformity of Imagination. The piece was a white couch from a thrift store, a dark blue table, and some red, white, and blue tissue paper ribbons strewn from a red painting to the white couch.

      I didn’t get it.

      So, when the incredibly sexy guy with wet hair and freshly washed Levis walked up to me and asked what I thought of the piece, I diplomatically said, “It’s crap.”

      He laughed. “Don’t let the artist hear you say that.”

      I looked around the room nervously. “Where is he?” I ask Mr. Hotness. (One thing I’ve learned as a fund-raiser is never to discount an artist in public. You can say you “don’t get” a piece. But don’t cut them out completely— that may be the next Hockney or Picasso you’re dissing, and you will pay for it later when his pieces show up in Paris and three billionaires call you wanting to sponsor him in L.A.)

      “Oh, I have no idea,” he who could be Orlando Bloom’s hotter brother said to me at the time. Orlando took two glasses of champagne from a passing waiter and handed me one as he asked, “So why don’t you like it?”

      “Well, it’s so unoriginal,” I said to the insanely handsome man. “It’s like the artist was on deadline, knew he needed to turn in a piece, and had nothing. So he looked around his living room, and said, ‘Got it! Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke,’ gave the piece a good title, and turned it in.”

      The man smiled at me. “Wow. You’re even meaner than the art critic from the Times. She said she thought I went to IKEA to pick up some cheap wineglasses, and when I was looking at their display modules, decided to duplicate one and call it art.”

      My face fell. “Oh. Shit. You’re not . . .”

      “I am,” he admitted with a glint in his eye.

      I let my shoulders fall. “I’m so screwed.”

      “I would love to take you up on that, but unfortunately I’m here on a date,” the man told me flirtatiously. Then he flashed me a sexy smile as he put out his hand. “Scott James.”

      I reluctantly put out my hand as I tried to figure out a way to apologize. “Seema Singh.”

      Scott cocked СКАЧАТЬ