Chapter Four
THERE WAS NO appearance of Sam for a while, except on the news, because he’d saved a kid from a burning building. I didn’t exactly expect to see him around the apartment, but still, I felt a twinge of the doldrums because I was experiencing my first case of the, as Jamie called it, love termite. Finally, casting had ceased on Joan D’Narc, and a week of simplicity (ish) had taken root. As I continued working with Megg and Becki, we grew busy setting up the next casting week for a romantic-drama television program. This involved dealing with agents and setting up times for all the bigwigs needed at the casting panel. Yet I appreciated the end of a month of casting responsibilities for one darn TV pilot.
The weekend had come for Chelsea Villanueva’s wedding to Jim Baycroft. Thursday night served as our rehearsal dinner at a restaurant catering to fish lovers. Friday included the bachelor and bachelorette parties, while Saturday would serve as the wedding date. Our party took the patio outside overlooking Newport Harbor, where the water glittered against the backdrop of the setting sun. I thought Chelsea’s wedding party was huge until Jim brought his entire Mormon family along, plus his friends and colleagues and random pals he met in Bermuda. So, in total, we had about fifty people sitting outside on a patio that should only have accommodated thirty, but it made the atmosphere personal and something I didn’t experience much.
I sat with some of the other bridesmaids at the edge of Chelsea’s grandmother and aunt club. Chelsea’s four grandmothers were anxiously addressing each other in either heavily accented Spanish or indeterminable English. Even as a somewhat speaker of Spanish, I strained to understand if they asked me a question about anything.
The other bridesmaids included one of the women whose wedding I would also “work” as a bridesmaid. It felt like a job acting as a bridesmaid, even though I dearly loved my friends despite wanting to strangle them at times. So, as I sat with Chelsea’s fiery sisters, high school buddies, and one of the Lucky Six, I sipped on my water and dreamt of a trip to the Bermuda Triangle.
Lacey noticed my dozing off and elbowed me in the rib. “What are you doing, Em?” Her big cerulean eyes always reminded me of a deer, and she whispered, “At least act interested.”
“What do you mean?”
“You literally started falling asleep. One of the grandmothers started ranting in Spanish, a mix of words I’d never care to pronounce, and then bam! You’re out of it.”
I sat up straight, noticing the sun had almost completely disappeared, leaving behind a greenish hue to the light. Down the table, Chelsea was animatedly laughing and crying with Jim and their immediate posse. Lacey, meanwhile, pulled out a compact to check her makeup. “It is your job, isn’t it? I mean, I could never imagine being a casting assistant. What a busy thing to do!”
“It is fun, though,” I offered, glad that Lacey had nudged me awake, but disappointed in my own self for dozing off. A lot of the table was gone, probably to walk off some of the food, so I asked, “Where’d they go?”
“Well, a bunch left already to get prepared for tomorrow night or even Saturday, I guess. Some of the others went down to Newport Beach, just to walk it off. Want to go?”
I nodded, eager for a stretch in my legs. We kissed Chelsea good-bye, who insisted we come over tomorrow night for some good-old fashioned fun at the bachelorette party. To be honest, it would be my first real bridal event, and the only thing I had to base my perceptions of the party sphere was what I’d learned from movies.
Lacey and I walked quietly down to the beach, and she said, “My wedding won’t be as chaotic. I want it to be gentle, smooth, and relaxing.”
“I appreciate that,” I said honestly, noting the beginning of a rip in my purse. I cringed. “I bet Chelsea’s wedding will be gorgeous and fun. But it isn’t as fun when everyone else is getting married except…I’m sorry, Lace. I didn’t mean to…”
“Don’t worry about it,” Lacey said, stuffing a piece of short blonde hair behind her ear. “Your time will come, Emma. Plus, it will be even more special when it’s not in the seemingly daily hubbub of wedding plans. I’m sick of it, too, and my wedding’s not even a month away. Plus, even if you choose not to get married, it doesn’t have to be a big deal. Sometimes I wish I’d thought more about my answer to Carson.”
“Really?” I asked, thinking about how cute a couple Carson and Lacey made. Carson was a pastor at a non-denominational church in Malibu, where their nuptials would take place high in the Santa Monica Mountains at sunset. I was unusually excited about Lacey’s, even though it wasn’t going to be in a destination like Annabel’s Kauai, but because I appreciated the fact that Lacey and Carson would be pledging to each other in an atypical setting compared to the normal atmosphere of a church service while still remaining true to God.
Lacey nodded quickly, looking out in front of her. “I’m young. I don’t know if I want to commit this young. I mean, I’m absolutely in love with Carson. I would die for him, you know? But I’m afraid that what we have is too young to withstand the confines of today’s society.”
“If you have him,” I said, using my best Dr. Phil voice, “and you make a commitment before God, things will work out. I guarantee it. Why wait, if you know you love him so much you’d die for him? You don’t sound like you’re afraid of being married to him—just afraid of losing him.”
Lacey pulled her arm around my shoulder. “Will our friendship change when I get married?” She rested her head against my shoulder.
“It changed when you first started dating Carson, Lacey. But I still love you, and now I love him, too. If it changes, it is meant to change. I really believe that. I will still be your friend, no matter what, unless you do something really stupid like join a socialist party.”
A trickle of liquid spilled down her face, but she didn’t move to clean it. “Thanks, Emma. You’re snarky, relatable, and spunky—which is exactly what I need in a time like this. What they say about the stress that comes with a wedding is a thousand percent true. My first gray hair, my first wrinkle…”
“Shut up, Lace,” I said, nudging her as we entered the sandy beach area. I saw a few people from Chelsea’s party straggling down the beach. There were some guys lobbing a volleyball over a net, which made me cringe, as I’d eagerly quit after one year of varsity play. It had been very straining on my poor muscles, and I’d even bummed my thumb that year.
“Should we go check it out?” Lacey asked, her eyes alit with the prospect. Of course she would jump at the idea, since she played in college, a long year ago. She rushed over like a thirsty puppy discovering an oasis, and I lagged behind, the slow, crabby scorpion.
I moaned as I followed, listening as she introduced herself as one of Chelsea’s bridesmaids to three guys, two of whom I’d recognized as groomsmen. One was named Skylar, and the other was a tall Asian man, Luke Cho. I’d remembered his name because I associated the biblical Luke with him. The third guy was Jim’s older brother or something, a man named Scotty.
“I’m Lacey, and this is one of my best friends, Emma. How about we challenge you to a match?”
“Oh, I’ll sit out. That way it can be even.”
“Emma, come out here right now,” she said in her best matronly voice, which added to my impending grumpy mood. The darkness was soothing to my soul, reminding me that hello, bedtime is soon! Scientifically, my melatonin levels were like an old cat—I needed a bed, a bowl of soup, and a good foot massage. As practically a pauper and secondly a bridesmaid, none of these options were physically, emotionally, or spiritually possible. The sand looked like a good bed, but then Lacey suddenly had snaked her arms through mine and snuck me into the confines of the sand court.
“I haven’t played since I was fifteen, Lacey. I will die.”
“Emma, shut your mouth and play. This will be good for you.”
“I don’t think it would be very fun to play three men on two pretty ladies like yourselves,” Scotty said, clearly not taking in Lacey’s very posh
solitaire engagement ring. I gagged when I realized she would be playing with it on. Yet I’d learned to accept the idiotic things of my friends without judging—and if I didn’t say something, it would work as payback for making me play.
Lacey feigned any knowledge of the sport. The men had no clue they were about to be faced with an effective tornado in the sport. But, eh, I wasn’t going to say anything. “Are you suggesting we can’t handle ourselves? Come on guys, it’s not 1955.”
The tall Asian, Luke, gently nodded. “Okay, well, let’s split up the teams fair and even. I say the big talkers should be together. That way, the underdogs can reign superior.” He winked at me, which made me cringe. I’d decided to do nothing, but when Lacey punched me in the shoulder, I groaned.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked, propositioning me. I wanted to kill her and steal the ring. Maybe pawn it and donate the money to a knitting club.
“Okay, you’re on.”
“Okay, we’ll see about that.”
I took my time limboing under the net, and when I got to my team, I inwardly gagged. We had no chance, no chance at all. The competitive spirit in me was ballooing higher and higher, just because Lacey had challenged me to a duel, Hamilton-Burr style. I assessed Luke Cho and Skylar. Luke would be an effective blocker on the net due to his impending height, but I had a feeling we would need him on the offense. Skylar, a guy a tad shorter than me, seemed scrappy, and a perfect match for the back as the libero. Oh wait, this was informal. I scratched my head and wrapped my hair into a long ponytail.
“So, you guys got any experience?”
Luke shook and then cocked his head. “Nah, but how hard can it be?”
“Well, when you play Lacey Chapman, a former nationally ranked player who was offered a position on the Junior Olympics team, you will understand. We have no chance. But if your friend is awful as he talks, that could be used to our advantage.”
“He called her the big talker, but maybe it is really you.”
“I like to think of myself as deadly, lethal, and silent. But I haven’t touched a ball since freshman year of high school, Luke. We need to use our brains on this one.”
Skylar laughed. “This is a tactical operation, I see. Well, if I analyzed correctly, I’d say you want me in the back. I have some experience, since I was born and raised on the sport.”
I glanced at him. He didn’t look like the one to play anything except video games, but I checked my judgmental streak and nodded. “Precisely. I could try to set, see how that works out.”
“You were a setter when you played?”
What could I tell him? I was a Texan raised on athleticism and grain, but I’d quit the sport in the midst of my parents’ brutal divorce. Volleyball did not mean the same thing to me when I came back sophomore summer, and eventually, I just gave it up. “Yes.”
“Well, I’m tall. I’ll jump and assist?” Luke asked, a smile peeking from his lips.
“Okay. Let’s try this.”
Eventually, our little planning session ended with the first volley, and the next thing I realized, Skylar was passing the ball to me. My fingers ached to feel the leather, to remember what it was like having people cheer. I jumped up and did a move etched in my memory from years of conditioning—but years of rust. As it landed in Luke’s unsteady range, I assessed my own move. It was rusty, but it would work. The ball floated over the net, and it was returned with a minor smack by Lacey. She sent me a little grin—she wasn’t even playing. She probably wouldn’t play the entire game.
Eventually, despite our losing streak, Skylar passed a ball to Luke to set, and I killed it with all the power I could muster. As the ball touched the tag of the bounds, I was momentarily overcome with the memory of my teenage years. Of how much I loved my life—how much I liked the here and now. As Luke and Skylar hooted, Lacey tossed, “Not so bad, Em.”
“Who’s the Olympian?” Luke asked quickly, which one of my friends would have diagnosed as a flirting gesture. He seemed like a nice guy, but I wasn’t interested in guys in my reminiscing mood. I silently waited for the next set, and then the game continued as before.
WE DID NOT lose as miserably as possible, but it was still pretty bad. I picked up my purse and hung it over my shoulder after the game was done, but Luke sidled up to me and said, “So, want to take a walk?”
“Not really,” my brain said. Yet my lips said otherwise. “Why?” Noting his nervous and expectant demeanor, I offered, “Maybe just a little one.” I nodded to Lacey, who was tilting her head as she shielded herself from Skylar and Scotty. She seemed happy to have the attention, though I wondered if she would ever threaten them with the impending Mrs. of her position.
We walked at the breakers, where the water latched onto our bare feet in translucent drops. I loved the feel of cool water and sand, so in a momentarily relaxed manner, I asked, “So, Luke. How do you know Chelsea and Jim?”
He licked his lips. “Well, Jim and I went to college together, back at UCLA a few years ago. We were roommates, actually.”
“So were Chelsea and me.”
“Really? Well, that’s something we have in common.” I smiled, though I was glad the darkness hid the feature. He continued, his voice more unperturbed around me now. “But it is interesting because Chelsea and I met a few months ago, after the release of her indie movie. So I’ve been able to work with Chelsea’s career while also keeping up the status of best friend to Jim.”
“Best friend, huh? Anyway, what do you mean, you help Chelsea?”
“Inquisitive, aren’t you? I work in the business. Mostly director nowadays on small budget projects. Well, Chelsea has interned with me, and I helped her get into UCLA for film school. She has talent, and I like helping people. So…”
“You’re a director?” I asked.
“Yes. What’s the big deal? We’re in Los Angeles, aren’t we?”
“Oh, nothing, I suppose.” I decided to keep my career hush-hush, as the devilish part of me wished to see what he’d do if I happened to be the casting assistant working with him on a movie. The thought flickered in and out until I said, “So, are you the rom-com indie type, or sci-fi with a twist, or what? You don’t seem like a wallflower to me.”
“Thanks for that, it is a really touching compliment.” He bumped into me. “Primarily science fiction of all things. Scary alien thrillers, or like my latest film, one about the unlikely appearance of Sasquatch in a Colorado mining town in the 1800s. Sometimes I stray from the genre, though.”
“Scintillating.”
“Very.”
“So, what do you do?”
I shrugged. “Well, right now, I’m just busy with life.”
“Really?” he asked in disbelief, although he wasn’t the pressing type and remained silent on the subject. He did whisper in my ear: “Does that mean you’re a closet serial killer?”
“Nice, very nice,” I said, twisting from him, spinning in a little circle from sheer tiredness. My watch read almost nine-thirty, and I still had work in the morning, plus the magnitude of Chelsea’s bachelorette party and just simply socializing like a normal human being.
“Should we head back?” he asked, though it wasn’t a question he wanted to slip through his teeth.
“Probably,” I whispered, though I wondered if I wanted to go back. For whatever reason, I enjoyed Luke Cho’s presence, even if we’d only been together for a few minutes. It was long enough to gauge a person’s deportment and decide if there was any possible connection, in the friend or more-than-friend stratospheres.
The salty air mixed with Luke’s faint cologne, which surprisingly didn’t smell too awful. I grinned at him, and next thing I knew, he grinned at me. He seemed genuinely carefree and personable, which was interesting. “So, tell me about yourself.”
“Well, what do you want to know?”
“I don’t know what I don’t know.”
“That is a non sequitur if I’ve ever heard one before.”
/> “What? That was definitely not a non sequitur.”
“Okay, well you should know that I am undoubtedly three things. You must not judge, do you understand? These three things will either make you laugh, make you happy, or make you kinda pissed.”
“So? I can handle it. This is America.”
“Exactly. So, here you go: I’m Texan, Republican, and Christian.”
He broke out into a round of hysterics. Even when he was bowing down from laughter, he was a good few inches taller than me. Waiting for a snarky comment, I tapped my foot against the sand. Instead, Luke said, “Well, that explains your aura, I guess.”
“What does that mean?”
He gently nudged me and offered, “I’m Californian, Independent, and agnostic. How about that?”
“You wanted to know about me—so I told you the most important things about me. You should feel honored.”
“I do.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes,” Luke said, his eyes glowing. “I’m not going to blackball you now because you told me who you are. That’s not me. I credit myself as an open, accepting human being—and I’d like to assume we’d agree on more things than we’d disagree on.”
“You sure about that?” I winked, mimicking the mannerism he’d done to me only an hour before.
“Honestly, Emma, I’d rather be with a person who’s honest about who he or she is than in a room where everyone just stands in agreement. There is absolutely no learning from agreement. There has to be some sort of varying viewpoint if there is going to be a real relationship.”
“Philosophical, are you?”
He pursed his lips in a joking manner. “Of course. As a human being, I would have to say I pride myself in being philosophical—even if it is plain mêlée 99% of the time.”
We were back at the restaurant, whose lights glittered in the midst of the darkness cascading from the ocean. If one looked straight at the sea—through all the lights displayed in the mirror—it could be thought that millions of people didn’t lurk just a walk away. Now the patio was filled with couples and a group of teenagers, and with a quick peek to my phone, I’d discovered that Lacey had gone home already.
I directed my path to my clunker-junker automobile. Before I opened the car door, I turned to Luke, who dug his hands in his pockets. “For your information, I had fun tonight.”
“Me too,” he said. “See you Saturday?”
“Yeah, sure. Bye.”
The drive home was blessedly quiet, though I turned up the speakers as high as they would go so I could have a deep, personal connection with the newest Coldplay album without any judgment. My mind was so sleepy, so ready to dream, that when I got home, I didn’t even recognize that there was a woman’s voice in my best friend’s room. Sometimes, I truly believe that the Divine rescues us, because if I had not fallen immediately asleep, I probably would have committed a double-murder.