Which explains why they got married after only four months of being together. I didn’t express any concerns, other than the required, “Are you sure? You haven’t known each other that long,” but Naomi assured me this was it, she was in love, and that was that. And considering I’ve never been in love before, I knew I had to take her word for it.
She was happy too. It was amazing, albeit jarring, to see. But now…well the honeymoon is more than over, and her marriage is starting to crumble.
“Did Robert end up agreeing to counseling?” I ask her gently.
She sighs. “Yes. But it took a good screaming match to get there. The fool doesn’t even get it, doesn’t understand why. I tell him my concerns, that I think he’s stepping out, and he’s just not budging. He’s lying. You know he’s lying.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. “So, another fight?”
“A huge one.” She sounds so tired.
“You should have called me,” I tell her.
“You were on a date. I’ve interrupted your dates before and I don’t want to keep doing that.”
“Naomi, believe me, it’s okay. Call me next time and I’ll pick you up. You can stay the night.” I pause. “Why not come over tonight?”
“Nah. I should be here. He said he would watch a movie with me. Anyway, I’m sorry I laughed at your disaster date.”
I chuckle. “Well, it was a disaster. But hey…that’s my life. I’m inherently undateable.”
“Marina, you’re not.”
“I am. I should probably start putting out on the first date.”
“Look, honey. I’m not going to tell you how to date because Lord knows it hasn’t worked out so well for me. But you do what you feel comfortable with. If you need to sleep with a guy on the first date in order to keep him interested, there’s something wrong with him. You do you.”
“But the more I do me, the longer I stay single. I wish I could be like Laz and just get a girl with the snap of my fingers.”
“Girls are just as complicated.”
“You know what I mean. He gets the opposite sex without any effort. He dates them for months, then breaks up with them. He’s not getting rejected, he’s not getting hurt. Then there’s me, who gets so far and then the guy just vanishes. They all vanish. They can’t be bothered getting to know me anymore. Fuck. Sometimes I just want to get laid.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that either,” she says. “I would if I could.”
“You can,” I tell her. Though I know she won’t. She won’t let go of her upper hand.
“When he goes low, I go high,” she says. “But still…some honest dick wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
I burst out laughing. “Honest dick. I like that.”
“Let me know if you find any.”
After we hang up, I discover a text from Laz.
How was last night?
I respond Shitty.
He texts back: How about we do lunch and go to B&N?
I smile, my heart growing warmer. Man, if he wasn’t my friend, Laz would be the perfect boyfriend. Lunch in Studio City usually means scarfing down tasty treats at Umami Burger and then heading across the street to the Barnes and Noble that they repurposed in an old theatre. Literally my idea of heaven and it’s become almost a tradition for us after we’ve had a bad day.
OK. I have to write a blog post and get ready. Pick me up in an hour.
Why can’t you pick me up?
Because you’re the guy and this is your idea. See you then.
My blog post doesn’t take too long. Usually I update it every other day or so while I make it a point to constantly upload to Instagram. My Instagram and social media feeds are the easiest part for me. I have a huge database of microphotographs I’ve taken of my hives as well as bees out and about. There’s a wealth of information about them I can share, so I usually just post a pic and a few lines about it. Sometimes it’s me doing a hive removal and showing followers how insane some of the natural hives can get. Sometimes it’s just of the queen, when I find her. Other times I do slow-motion photography of bees.
I know it’s an odd career to have, but I love it. When I went to university and got my bachelor of science, I got a minor in entomology. To be honest, I’m not a fan of bugs in general and even more so after studying them, but I’ve been fascinated by bees for a long time. Growing up just outside San Diego, my mother had several hives in our backyard and a huge garden. Every single happy childhood memory came from being in that garden with her.
My heart clenches at the thought and I take a deep breath through my nose, closing my eyes and centering myself. I’ve been trying to wean myself off of medication lately through breathing exercises and I’m not quite sure if it’s working.
I go back to finishing up the blog post then wonder if there’s something else I need to do. I started Palm Trees & Honey Bees two years ago, not really sure where my focus would be, but I was determined to become a full-time beekeeper. I finally quit my job as manager of a local garden center a few months ago when I officially reached my goal but even so, I need to expand and find new ways of creating revenue aside from educational classes and hive removals. The actual sale of honey, which I do out of the garage of the place I’m renting, doesn’t add up to much either.
Soon Laz is pulling up to the house in his vintage Camaro. It was originally a gift from his stepfather, and for various reasons he didn’t want to accept it. Now, thanks to Laz’s success as a poet, he’s been able to buy the car outright.
It’s black and sleek, with red leather seats, and it’s sexy as hell. I lock up the studio (which is pretty much a guest house) and make my way around the narrow slice of pool, a layer of leaves covering it, that sits between my place and the main house. As I walk through the side gate, the fig leaves brushing against me, I can feel Barbara, my landlord, watching me through the blinds.
I give her a wave without even looking at her and hurry across the lawn to the car.
“You know, I’d love to meet her one day,” Laz says to me as I climb in the passenger seat, nodding at the windows where the blinds are moving.
“Barbara?” I ask. “Good luck with that.”
“You said she enjoys handsome men,” he says with a waggle of his brows.
I roll my eyes. “Yes. She did. In the forties and fifties. She says you scare her.” I wave my fingers at him. “You know, the piercings and the tattoos and all.” With his aviator shades and leather jacket, he looks particularly badass today.
“She doesn’t know about my dick piercing, does she?”
I punch his arm, trying not to think about his dick. It’s hard with the pants he wears sometimes and I will myself to keep my eyes from drifting down to his crotch. “Grow up.”
In July I’ll be at the two-year mark of living at Barbara Sullivan’s place. For those that don’t know, Barbara Sullivan was a semi-famous actress from Hollywood’s golden age. She’s pretty much Gloria Swanson’s character from Hollywood Boulevard, all reclusive and living in the past, dressing up in old fancy gowns and piling on the pancake makeup from ye old days. She usually played the woman in B-movies that someone like Clarke Gable cast aside for someone else.
But despite Barbara’s borderline agoraphobia and quirks, we get along really well and I love living there. The property consists of the main house, the pool, the guest house, and the garage, on a half-acre backed onto the dry craggy hills of Coldwater Canyon. She’s owned the house forever, and because of that, the rent I pay is pretty cheap too.
Plus, she gets companionship and honey out of the deal. That’s when she feels like talking. Most of the time she watches old clips of herself and smokes a carton of Camels. After my mother died, I really missed having someone older to talk to on the regular and offer advice. I can’t talk to my dad, so Barbara is a pretty good substitute with some amazing stories to keep you entertained.
She has yet to meet Laz, though, or any of my friends. Like I said, she has her quirks.
<
br /> “So, are we going to talk about it?” Laz asks as we start cruising down the street. It’s May and the jacarandas are in full bloom, one of my favorite times of the year. I roll down the window and hang my head half out, closing my eyes, focusing on the smell of the flowers above all the smog.
“I take it that you don’t want to talk about it,” he says. “That’s cool.”
I bring my head back in and glance at him.
It’s one of my favorite things to do. Just take him all in.
My friend, Lazarus Scott, is extremely hot. He was hot when I first laid eyes on him at his band’s show four years ago, and he’s even hotter now. I don’t know what it is about men, but they honestly only get better with age, and even though Laz is still super young at thirty, he just gets more handsome every day I see him.
He knows it too, the jerk. He’s cocky but thankfully not in an obnoxious way, and he’s quick to point out his faults. But even so, he’s got this cool confidence that I wish I could siphon.
I sigh and lean my head back against the seat. “I wish it was as easy as this.”
“As what?”
“You and me. Talking. I wish the guys I dated got me the same way that you get me.”
He grows silent for a moment and I look over at him. He’s frowning, his attention focused on the road. “Maybe you’re just dating the wrong guys,” he finally says.
“You think?” I laugh. “I thought everything was going fine with David as the night started. He took me to this nice Italian place in Calabasas, and yeah, I was a little jumpy with the caffeine and then a little drunk with the wine, and then I…well, it doesn’t matter. But even before disaster struck, I could tell that he thought I was a weirdo.”
“What the hell are you doing on these dates anyway?”
“Nothing! I’m just being me.” I stare out the window as we cruise down Ventura. “But I guess that’s the problem.”
“I refuse to believe that.”
“I appreciate your loyalty,” I tell him as a current of warmth runs through me. It always makes me feel extra good when Laz lays on the compliments. Sure, I get them from Naomi or when I’m messaging with Jane, but when it comes from a guy, especially an extremely attractive one, it means a lot.
“I always have faith in you, Bumble,” he says softly, with just a bit of a smirk to his lips. He loves calling me that, I have no idea why. I think it’s because he thinks it bothers me, but honestly, I find it really cute.
“See, if you were my boyfriend, I’d have nothing to worry about,” I tell him. Then I immediately clamp my lips together. God, I have to stop saying the stupidest shit! “I mean, look at you,” I go on awkwardly. “I’m having a hard go and you’re picking me up, taking me out for my favorite food and to my favorite bookstore. You’d be perfect. If you were my boyfriend. But, of course, you’re not. Because you’re my friend.”
Bumbling. Bumbling fool. The nickname is apt.
Laz doesn’t say anything. He steals a glance at me, studying my face.
I shrink down in my seat and pull my hair over my eyes and nose, obscuring them from view.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Why are you staring at me?”
“I’m thinking.”
A few moments go past and then I straighten up, getting it together. This is Laz we’re talking about. Who cares if I just said he’d be the perfect boyfriend? He knows we’re just friends. He knows I didn’t mean anything by it.
“The thing is,” he begins to say, choosing his words carefully, “you know I would be a horrible boyfriend.”
“I was just joking.”
“I know. But honestly, I would be. We’re great together because we’re friends and nothing more.”
Shit. As much as I know that’s true and it shouldn’t be any other way, for some reason that really stings. I grimace, trying to hide it from him.
“I mean, I can’t seem to keep a girl around for longer than five months. All my relationships crash and burn and I’m the one at fault. I’m the one breaking up with them. So, we both kind of suck at this whole dating and love thing.”
“That’s for sure.” I don’t know where he’s going with this but it’s enough that my heart is starting to race. I start playing with my hair in order to calm down. Who needs a fidget spinner when you have a plethora of split ends?
“Maybe there’s something we could do to…help each other.”
I look at him sharply. “Help each other? Like be each other’s wingman, wingwoman…wingperson?”
He considers that with a tilt of his head, the sun catching the ebony strands of his thick hair and making them gleam. “Yeah. That could be part of it. Maybe at the end of it all.”
“At the end of what?”
He shrugs with one shoulder, wrist draped casually over the top of the steering wheel. He glances at me over his aviator shades. “Maybe we could date each other.”
I swallow hard.
Whoa.
Whoa.
I was not expecting that.
“Are you high? Did you smoke up with Scooby before you left the house?”
“No,” he says plainly. “I didn’t. I’m serious.”
“You just said that you would be a horrible boyfriend.”
“That’s true. But I don’t want to be. And I don’t mean that we would actually date each other. We would just pretend to date each other.”
I shake my head, trying to find the words to convey my confusion. “But…what? That makes no sense.”
“It does, trust me.”
“I ain’t trusting nothing from you right now. You’re crazy.”
He exhales. “Let’s get a burger in you and I’ll explain. You have low-blood sugar and are borderline hangry, so nothing will make sense until you eat.”
My stomach growls at the thought and I narrow my eyes at him. Sometimes I hate how well he knows me.
It’s not long before we’re sitting at the bar at the busy Umami Burger restaurant and I’m shoving their namesake dish down my throat when Laz starts at it again.
“Feeling better?” he asks, stealing a French fry and dipping it in wasabi aioli.
I swat his hand away. “Get your own fries.”
“Can’t. I’m watching my figure.”
I growl at him. Laz has the metabolism of a horse. He also works out a lot, so he’s incredibly ripped and in shape. Not that I often see it since he’s usually in layers except for in the most sweltering heat waves. It’s probably for the best. It’s hard to be friends with someone when you’re already aware of how attractive they are. Luckily I’ve trained myself to not look at him in that way.
“So, let me start again,” he says, adjusting himself on his seat so that he’s facing me, his long legs and shit-kicker boots hooked on the bottom rung of my stool. “What if the two of us dated each other? Just for a little while. Just as a test.”
“A test?” I ask, trying not to choke on the burger.
“Yeah. We go on some dates. Definitely at least three. And see what we’re doing wrong.”
“Who says I’m doing anything wrong?” I glare at him. “I thought we agreed that it’s their problem, not mine.”
“Even so, wouldn’t you want to learn?”
“But it would be your opinion.”
“And don’t you trust my opinion?”
I do. He’s got the experience that I don’t have.
“So, this whole thing would be about teaching me how to be a better date?”
“Kind of.”
“What about you? Like you’re so perfect.”
“I’m not. I know.” He chews on his lip for a moment. “Maybe then after the third date, we start getting into a relationship.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, putting the burger down and wiping my lips with the napkin. “Relationship?”
“A fake one.”
“How is that going to help?”
He runs his hand through his hair, pushing it back off his for
ehead. “I don’t know. I’m spitballing.”
“Maybe you ought to think this all through before you start spitballing. I mean, we’re friends and this…this seems like it’s going to get really complicated, really fast. I need a beer.” I wave at the bartender and order one.
“We’ll have rules in place so it doesn’t.”
“I’m not sleeping with you,” I blurt out.
He winces. “Not that it was an option, but ouch.”
“Sorry.” And I don’t know why I said that. It’s something I wouldn’t dare let myself entertain for a second.
The bartender slides me the beer, eyeing the both of us like we’re the most interesting customers he’s had all day.
I slam back half the beer, let out a burp I immediately cover with my hand, and then give Laz a sheepish look.
“Please don’t tell me you’re burping on your dates,” he says, grinning.
“I hope not,” I tell him. God, what if I am?
“This is what I mean,” he goes on. “We’ll go out on dates, pretend to be different people…or we’ll be strangers to each other. And we’ll see what happens.”
“Yeah, but while you’re judging and schooling me on whatever I’m doing wrong, what will I be doing?”
“You get to judge me,” he says. “Maybe there are problems I’m not even seeing, problems that might come up later.”
“And then later, what, it turns into a relationship? How does that even work if it’s not real? What’s the difference between that and, well, the fact that we’re friends?”
“I wouldn’t see anyone else. Neither would you.”
“I guess that’s fair.” I can’t even fathom dating anyone for real right now anyway.
“And we wouldn’t act like friends around each other either,” he adds.
“There you go with the sex thing again.”
“Or maybe we’ll just go on dates for a few weeks and that’s it. I don’t know. But it can’t hurt.”