“Kim, I am so sorry.... I’m not sure I can offer what you want. I need to clear my head and think about the best approach.”
“Okay, well—then why don’t you just go. I hope I am not expected to pay for any of this.”
“I was thinking I could take a quick walk, which helps me think, and maybe I could come up with some solutions.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I could also come back another day—”
Jane did not like feeling defeated. She was a pro, after all.
“That won’t be necessary, thank you.”
Jane drove down the hill toward Ventura Boulevard. She felt angry, humiliated, and sad. All these emotions lodged in her throat, then her whole body seized up into a kind of living rigor mortis as she quelled incipient tears. No, she would not let this woman make her cry. Tears were drops of weakness, a leakage of spirit. She was stronger than that, she was better than that.
In fact, fuck Kim. She was going to find one good thing about her, goddammit, even if she was a despicable harpy. Maybe the harsh, judgmental affect was only a facade, something to protect the fragile, broken little girl she had been as a child. Jane imagined Kim’s mother was a sour, cynical woman with no kind words ever, a temperament she bestowed onto her unfortunate daughter. And then Jane thought about her own mother. The lines between all of them were blurring, and it was too much.She willed herself to stop thinking about any of it, and redirected to the task at hand, finding one good thing about Kim. After some fraught deliberation, Jane decided the only positive thing she could unequivocally stipulate about Kim was that she would never have to see her, or her ostentatious Buddha, ever again.
Jane was looking forward to unwinding with Teddy when she got home. Sometimes Teddy joked that Jane was as bad as people like Kim—always busy busy busy. He said she lived her life on fast-forward, impatient to get through whatever she was doing so she could tackle the next task. And sometimes, she was afraid he was right.
Jane had noticed Teddy’s talent for being in the moment soon after they began dating. Before their third date, Jane felt a flutter of anticipation because of the universally acknowledged truth, the Rule of Three, which dictated that not only was it acceptable to sleep with someone on the third date, you really should, in order to gauge if the relationship had any future. So Jane had come to her third date with Teddy prepared—she had even consulted Anna about which underwear and bra she should wear under her jeans and blouse. Anna suggested toeing the very fine line between “hard to get” and “up for anything” with a matching set from Victoria’s Secret—black, of course, because red was on the cusp of overeager and promiscuous, and pink or white would be too docile, too faux-virginal.
They went to a movie, one of those thrillers reputed to be adult and sophisticated that Jane found predictable and banal. This was a hazard of working in entertainment: rather than enjoying what she was watching, she was always analyzing, looking for ways to improve it. Like she did with everything in her life, really. Meanwhile, Teddy was enthralled, absentmindedlymunching popcorn that reeked of coconut oil. She rested her head on his shoulder. Maybe that would help her see the movie through his eyes, and she’d enjoy it more. This didn’t work, but it felt good nonetheless.
She’d planned to invite him in when he dropped her off at her apartment in Los Feliz. Might as well rip off the Band-Aid and fuck. She knew how ridiculous this sounded as she thought it—but still, best to get it over with, to know what it would be like.
“Would you like to come in?”
Teddy nuzzled her ear. “You sound... unsure.”
“No! No, I mean... it wouldn’t mean anything.”
“This is the third date.” It was as if he were reading her mind, though of course men as well as women knew about this Rule of Three.
“Oh, I know. But still, it wouldn’t mean anything.” Why did she keep sayingit wouldn’t mean anything?
“What if I want it to mean something?” he asked. The husky timbre of his voice was very arousing.
“So you don’t want to come in?”
“I do, but you don’t seem super relaxed, so—”
“I am never relaxed!”
Teddy laughed. “Yeah, I picked up on that. But I want you to be. At least with me. We don’t need to rush anything because I want to see you again.”
Teddy looked so earnest, and so irresistibly adorable when he said this, that Jane’s whole body slackened, and she felt blissfully relaxed. They weren’t playing a game with rules about the third date. There was no timeline, no deadline. She could simply be.
“That’s sweet, Teddy. I want to see you again, too.”
They made out for a while before he drove off. She went to bed and dreamed of Teddy.
For their next date, they met in Griffith Park late on a Saturday morning for a hike. It was a perfect day, sunny but not too hot, so the park was teeming with people—picnickers, exercisers, sunbathers. Lots of families having birthday parties for their kids.
Jane had planned on a proper hike, not a stroll. She wanted to break a sweat, get her blood pumping, burn some calories. It was a date and a cardio workout at the same time. A multitasker’s dream. Jane trod the trail with determination and an eye on her steps while Teddy loped alongside her, rather effortlessly—almost annoyingly effortlessly. When he stopped to make a funny face at a child, or to take in a view, Jane would pause only for a moment before forging ahead.
“What’s the rush?”
“No rush, just want to keep it moving.”
