Engaging Men. Lynda Curnyn

“I love azaleas. My mom used to grow them back in Oak Park when I was kid.”

      So much for romance.

      “What’s the card say?” Kirk asked as I set the offending plant carefully on the coffee table.

      “Yeah, what does it say?” Justin said, clearly curious as to what my little game was.

      Curious myself, I opened the card. At the words printed there, I felt my perfectly ridiculous plan take a turn for the worse. “Best wishes for a speedy recovery. Love, Sam and Stella.”

      “Who’re Sam and Stella?” Kirk asked.

      Wouldn’t I like to know.

      As it turned out, I made an (almost) complete recovery from the azalea fiasco. After dining on asparagus, potatoes and roast chicken (ordered up from BBQ when the meat had been rendered inedible by excessive overcooking), Kirk and I retreated to my room, leaving Justin to the azalea, which he was so taken with, he even moved some of the heaps of books he kept on the windowsill to make room for the latest addition to our happy little home. And while Kirk and I were languishing in bed, cozily watching a rerun of Seinfeld, the phone rang.

      Kirk immediately looked at me, his brow creased. “Who the hell is that?”

      Shrugging, I reached for the receiver. Late-night calls were not uncommon for me, though Kirk didn’t know that. After all, he didn’t spend enough time at my place to know my habits.

      “Hello?” I said tentatively.

      “Were you never going to call me back?”

      “Josh!” I exclaimed. “I’m sorry, I’ve been, uh, busy,” I said. “So, uh, how are you?” I asked, not daring to look over at Kirk, who was probably wondering why Josh was calling me at—quick glance at the clock—11:47 p.m. But Josh’s and my friendship was such that we could call each other at any hour of the day for a consult on anything from the dangers of medical mismanagement (Josh was in insurance, now that he had given up his acting career) to the pitfalls of auditioning (because somehow Josh still had lots of career advice on the career he had himself given up). Though the late-night calls had all but ended since he’d moved in with Emily, he still sometimes resorted to them when he couldn’t get in touch with me otherwise.

      “Didn’t you get my messages?” he asked.

      “Yes, yes. I did. That’s, uh, wonderful news.”

      “Yeah, well, it’s not every day a man finds the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with,” he said smugly. Then, as if to console me that I hadn’t been that woman, he continued, “But I want you to know, you’re the first person I told—after Emily’s family, of course.”

      Some consolation. Who else would Josh have told? He didn’t speak to his parents anymore (years of therapy had shown him that they had not only damaged him in the past, but would prove even more damaging to his future), and I was probably one of the few friends Josh had left now that he had thrown his whole life over for Emily.

      “So what do you say to a little celebratory dinner Monday night?”

      “Monday night?” I replied, realizing that, as usual, I had nothing planned other than the usual takeout-and-a-rental with Kirk. “What time?”

      “Around eight?”

      “That’s fine,” I said, resigned to my fate.

      “Looking forward to it, Ange.”

      “Yeah, uh, me, too,” I replied, hanging up the phone feeling something like dread.

      But a quick glance at Kirk’s expression revived me immediately. Judging by the scowl that now creased his handsome brow, he was jealous. Jealous!

      “What the hell was that about?”

      Very jealous, obviously.

      “Oh, nothing.” I waved a hand nonchalantly and burrowed in beside him again to watch TV. “That was Josh. You remember Josh, right?”

      They had met over a year ago. I had been playing Miss Julie in an off-off-Broadway production of the play of the same name, back in the days when I believed playing obscure characters in even more obscure venues would actually get me somewhere. Though by that time Josh had given up all pretensions of having an acting career himself, he still came to see me whenever I managed to land something juicier than, say, a crowd scene in a Christmas show. Josh had been dating Emily at the time, though he hadn’t brought her for one reason or another—I suspected because it had been too soon in their budding relationship to introduce her to the ex-girlfriend. I had introduced him to Kirk as merely “a friend,” though months later, during one of those relationship talks in which you ’fess up to your past, I did let it drop that Josh and I had dated. At the time, Kirk took it in stride, but now that my ex-boyfriend had given me a midnight call, it seemed the playing field had changed….

      “What did he want?”

      “Oh, he wants to have dinner Monday night.” See? Not a lie.

      “Don’t we usually hang out on Monday?”

      “Oh, did we have plans?” I asked innocently.

      That was the crux of the problem with relationships. Those presumed dates. Just because I often hung out with Kirk on Monday night, I suppose he had the right to assume I would continue to do so without any sort of prior confirmation. But, if I was practically living at Kirk’s place four out of seven days a week, didn’t I have a right to presume we would one day make that seven out of seven days? No, I was not allowed that presumption. And, therefore, Kirk would no longer be allowed his.

      “So you’re going out to dinner with your ex-boyfriend,” Kirk said, his gray eyes wide with disbelief.

      “Oh, I don’t think of Josh that way,” I said. “We’re just friends,” I added. “Very close friends.”

      And then, before a smile of satisfaction threatened to blow my cover, I rested my cheek on Kirk’s bare chest, presumably to settle in to television once more.

      But who was I kidding? My heart was racing out of my chest with the thrill of victory. Kirk was jealous! That had to mean something, didn’t it?

      6

      Love means never having to pack an overnight bag.

      What it ultimately meant was that I had to suffer through an evening with Josh. Not that he wasn’t a good friend—he was. Or he used to be, pre-Emily. I just preferred him over the phone or via e-mail. I think it was because I could…manage him better.

      “Hey, Angie, how are you?” he said as I approached him where he stood outside of Holy Basil, a Thai restaurant in the East Village we had agreed upon after much debate. Josh always tried to coerce me to go the Upper East Side, where he now co-habitated with Emily. But, truthfully, the only time I ventured higher than midtown was to see Grace, who lived on the Upper West Side.

      Despite what I knew about his flossing habits, Josh looked spectacularly well-groomed in a navy pinstripe suit, hot-pink tie (this, I suppose, was his attempt to show that despite his dreary nine-to-five life, he still had a wild side) and wire-rimmed glasses.

      We hugged hello. Actually, Josh hugged, while I went for a quick kiss on the cheek. The end result was that I wound up kissing his neck. I stifled a groan. Somehow, no matter how hard I tried to avoid it, I always did something to convince Josh I still “wanted” him. This was what happened when you broke up with a guy before he got a chance to break up with you, even though it was evident to both of you the relationship was over.

      When he leaned back from the embrace, Josh stood staring at me in a pose that looked surprisingly like his head shot: chin down (drawing attention to his dimpled cleft), blue eyes forward, a slight smile lingering on his well-shaped mouth. Yes, Josh was a good-looking guy. The problem was, he seemed to need constant affirmation of that fact—especially now that he wasn’t acting anymore and having agents and directors