Didi
Thursday has come round.
“This, or this?” I ask Jessa, holding up two dresses, one black and figure-hugging, the other a strappy white cotton sundress.
Jessa gets up from my bed and strolls to my closet. “I think you should wear whatever you feel most comfortable in.”
“But he’s used to hanging around actresses and beautiful people.”
“You’re beautiful,” Jessa says. “And you also have a brain. Most people in Hollywood do not. Believe me.”
I pull a face. “But I’m not, you know, beautiful beautiful.” Like you, is what I want to add. Jessa is effortlessly, turn-heads-on-the-street beautiful, and she also has the body of a slightly shorter than average supermodel. I inherited my parents’ short genes and my mom’s Kardashian curves. And whereas Jessa is beautiful even first thing in the morning without a scrap of makeup on, I require a helping hand from MAC and Bobbi Brown.
“Oh, shut up,” Jessa tells me, laughing. “How about this?”
She pulls out a blue, fifties-style halter-necked dress.
“That makes my boobs look massive,” I tell her, wrinkling my nose.
She arches an eyebrow and smirks.
“Well, even more massive than normal,” I mutter and shove the dress back on the rail. I’d like him to notice more than my boobs. With some guys that seems to be all they focus on. Sometimes I want to yell, Hello, I do also have a face. And a brain!
“Go with the sundress, then,” Jessa says. “You’re only going around to his place, right? You’re not going out?”
“No,” I mumble, “we’re staying in.” I hold the dress up and study my reflection in the mirror, sucking in my cheekbones and striking a pose. One of the joys of having two therapists for parents who regularly walk around the house naked is that I learned early on to love and accept my body, Kardashian curves and all. But Zac is a movie star and he’s drop-dead gorgeous and used to being around girls who are thinner than a matchstick.
“I don’t think it matters what you wear,” Jessa tells me with a smirk. “It’s not like it’s going to be staying on for long.” She laughs and flops back down on the bed, picking up the script she’s trying to learn for an upcoming audition.
“Hmmm,” I say, pulling on the sundress. “I don’t know if I’m going to sleep over.”
“Why not?” Jessa asks, looking up. “You stayed over last time, didn’t you?”
I shrug at her. “I don’t know. I just feel like maybe I rushed into it too fast last time around. You know . . . I got caught up in the moment.”
I smooth the dress down, thinking back to what my mom said and whether Zac is being genuine. I mean, he is an actor, after all. But then again, Jessa is an actor, and she’s genuine. “I think maybe I should make him work for it this time around,” I say, frowning at my cleavage. I tug the dress down a little lower, throw back my shoulders and lift my chin, feeling a jolt of nerves.
“Is that your mom’s advice?” Jessa teases.
I shrug. “Yes,” I admit. “But I think she’s right. I mean, look at you and Kit. You waited.”
Jessa smiles to herself like she’s guarding a secret.
“I don’t want a one-night stand again. I want something . . . more romantic. I want to be someone’s girlfriend, not someone’s bootie call. For once.”
Jessa nods at me. She gets it.
“How did you know Kit was the one?” I ask her, flopping onto the bed beside her.
She tosses her script aside and grins at me. “I just did.” She stops smiling and a sudden dark shadow passes over her face. “Without him, nothing made sense. I missed him so much I honestly thought I might die from it.” She laughs sadly, shaking her head. “God, you remember what I was like.”
I nod. I do. I remember it clearly—I remember her sobbing uncontrollably for days after we got the news, having to force her to eat and get out of bed in the morning, the black days that marched on for months, the blank expression on her face like she was lost and didn’t know how she would ever find a way out of the darkness.
“And it’s not like he completed me or anything,” she says now. “I’m not going all Jerry McGuire here, but I missed the me that I was when I was with him. Does that make sense?”
I nod. I remember how quiet and introverted Jessa was and how Kit brought her out of her shell, made her believe in herself.
“It’s like he made me a better person,” she goes on, “and I didn’t know how to be that person without him around.” She glances at me. “That’s totally cheesy, isn’t it?” she says with a grin. She holds up her script. “Oh my God, if acting fails, I could always write scripts for a living.”
I laugh too. But then her expression turns serious again. “Kit used to say that I was his north star. It’s the one they teach soldiers to navigate by,” she explains when I look at her, bemused. Her voice chokes up a little. “He used to say that I was the reason he would make it home.”
I clutch my stomach, feeling guilty for laughing. “Oh my God. That is so romantic.”
I think about the flowers Zac sent me and bite my lip.
Jessa laughs under her breath, but I catch the flicker of sadness in her eyes. “I think that pretty much sums up what love is, though. It’s the person you always want to come back to. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I don’t think home is a place. I think it’s a person. And when you find home, the place you feel the safest, the place you go to for shelter and where you can be fully yourself, then you know you’re in love, really in love, not just infatuated or head over heels in lust.”
Jessa smiles to herself, playing with the heart locket she’s wearing, and something twists a little in my gut. I recognize it as jealousy and force it angrily aside. After everything she’s been through, it’s impossible to be jealous of Jessa, but the fact is I want to experience what she’s talking about. I want to be loved like that. I want what my parents have—someone who, after thirty years of marriage, will come home and ravish me in the kitchen while I’m trying to cook spaghetti. I want someone who’ll tell me that I’m their north star. Someone who’ll look at me and really see me. Someone who isn’t cynical about love and, most important, someone who won’t break my heart.
My first semester of college I started dating a basketball player called Ben who I was convinced was the one. I got all the feels whenever I was around him—clammy hands, pounding heart, weak knees, all the textbook signs—and when he told me he loved me, I believed him and told him I loved him as well. I lost my virginity to him that same night—after he took me on a date to the Olive Garden. And then a week later I walked in on him in his dorm room in bed with another girl. I guess it wasn’t love after all.
It took me a year to get over that. I couldn’t eat, sleep, or focus for months. After Ben, I dated another guy I met speed-dating, who it turned out just wanted to be friends with benefits, though he really just wanted the benefits.
Then came Zac.
Will things turn out differently with him this time? Can I trust him? He’s been linked to a lot of his co-stars in the past, but, as Jessa points out, so has she. You can’t believe anything you read in celeb magazines.
I swallow, nervous all of a sudden about tonight, but then, without any warning whatsoever, my thoughts divert to Walker. My hand slips and I manage to scrawl eyeliner across my face. Damn. I grab a tissue and wipe it off. Why did he pop into my head?
I scowl at myself and try again, pulling the edge of my eyelid down. It’s because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him all day, that’s why. Even when I was sitting in on my dad’s sessions and helping out in the art therapy room earlier, my mind kept returning to Walker and what happened last night. I kept wondering if he was aware of me being in his room, if he wondered what I was doing there, and tried to rehearse what I’d say to him if he asked me about it.
I walked by his room twice today, trying to catch a glimpse of him, but the first time his door was shut—I think the doctor was in with him—and the second time he wasn’t there.
I guess I’ll see him tomorrow. I’m going in to help plan the Fourth of July party along with José and some of the other staff who’ve volunteered.
“Didi?”
“Huh?” I turn.
“I was just asking you how it was going at the center?”
“Oh, sorry.”
“What were you thinking about? Tonight and Zac?” She’s smiling as she says it, teasing me.
I shake my head. “No.”