Didi
A dozen red roses sit blazing on the table by the door. I notice them as soon as I walk into the house and smile to myself while simultaneously rolling my eyes. My parents are the most loved-up couple since Anthony clapped eyes on Cleopatra.
They’ve been married twenty-eight years and they still go on dates and they still make out like sex-crazed teenagers at any and every opportunity, including when there are other people in the room. In fact, an audience seems to spur them on. When I was a kid I was crucified by the embarrassment of it, especially when I had friends over. One time my parents gave an impromptu sex-ed lecture to a group of my friends using a condom and a banana as props. My mom is a famous sex therapist with her own radio show and several books that have made the New York Times bestseller list. She thought she was doing us all a favor because the sex education at our school had seemingly been written by the Pope, but my friends went home and told their parents, who weren’t that happy that their eleven-year-old daughters were being taught how to roll condoms onto pieces of fruit.
Now, though, I’m no longer embarrassed. I’m thrilled that my parents are still together while most of my friends’ parents are long-divorced. But at the same time, though I’d never admit it out loud (partly because it would be an open invitation for them to sit me down on the couch and delve into my psyche), I also blame them for my own relationship issues. Well, them and one particular ex-boyfriend.
They say that a girl’s relationship with her father colors all the future relationships she will ever have with men. If you have a good dad, it raises the bar—you’ll have high expectations of men and how they should treat you. Well, I not only have the highest expectations of men, but I also have the highest expectations of love. I’ve spent my life staring it in the face. I know it’s real and not just a fiction. I know it’s attainable.
I just don’t know if it exists for me.
“Did you see the flowers?” my mom asks as I walk through into the kitchen where she’s busy cooking up a storm.
“Yeah, what’s the occasion?” I ask, dumping the bag full of my yogurt-stained clothes on the floor. “The anniversary of the first time you and dad peed in front of each other?”
“Ha-ha,” my mom answers as she expertly dices an onion, pausing to brush her wild red curls out of the way with her forearm. “They’re actually for you.”
“For me?” I ask in surprise. “Who are they from?”
My mom raises an eyebrow at me. She wouldn’t know, is what she’s saying. In our house privacy is sacrosanct. When I was a kid, my parents used to encourage me to shut my door and “experiment with self-love.”
My mom frowns at the sight of my green scrubs. “Why are you wearing surgical scrubs?”
I don’t answer as I’m already walking back into the hallway. Spying the little card buried in the bouquet, I fish it out and tear it open.
Didi,
Thinking of you,
Zac x
My heart does a little splutter and I stare at the card for several seconds, dumbstruck. Zac? Why on earth is he sending me flowers? I haven’t heard from him in close to three months.
“Hi, darling,” my dad says, coming up behind me and startling me. He’s wearing his glasses halfway up his forehead and carrying an armful of files. “Who’s the lucky man?” he asks, nodding at the flowers.
“They’re from Zac,” I say, turning to him, shock making me feel a little faint.
“I thought you two weren’t a thing anymore,” my dad says.
“We never were a thing exactly,” I say, shaking my head in confusion and following my dad in a daze back into the kitchen.
“Our daughter has an A-list admirer,” my dad informs my mom.
“Well, of course she does,” my mom says, smiling.
I watch my dad dump his files on the table and then walk over to my mom. They’re roughly the same height, but while my dad is a pencil-drawn straight line, my mom is a curve drawn with a highlighter pen. My dad puts his arm around her waist and kisses her full on the lips. I turn away and ignore the wet smacking sounds.
“Are they from Zac or is another Hollywood star trying to court you?” my mom asks once she has disengaged from my dad and come up for air.
“No. They’re from him. I just don’t know why. And courting? We’re not living in the eighteenth century, Mom.”
I grab my bag of dirty clothes and head through to the laundry room, my heart still doing a wild skittering dance.
Zac Ridgemont, recently voted into the top ten actors under thirty, just sent me roses. There are armies of teenage girls and probably a sizeable cohort of middle-aged women who would kill to be me right now. As I empty my dirty clothes into the washer, I ponder what these flowers, sent out of the blue, might mean. . . .
• • •
“Excuse me.”
I turn and almost spit out my mouthful of champagne.
Zac Ridgemont. It’s Zac Ridgemont. The Zac Ridgemont. Standing in front of me.
“I was just trying to get something to eat.”
“Oh,” I say, as my face flames red hot. Of course he didn’t come over here to talk to you, Didi. You’re just blocking the cheese table.
I move out the way and Zac starts perusing the cheese.
“No one ever eats at these things, have you noticed that?”
Is he talking to me? I glance around but we are the only people in this corner of the room. Everyone else is networking as though their lives depend on it, including Jessa, my “date” for the night.
“Um . . . ,” I stammer, my mouth as dry as sand. “Uh, no. This is my first time at one of these things.” These things being Hollywood industry parties.
Zac turns around, holding a cracker laden with Brie. His skin is so smooth and so perfect that I have an urge to stroke his cheek and check if he’s real. He looks like he could be made out of plastic and fairy dust.
“But if they have cheese tables like this at all of them, it won’t be my last,” I blurt. “I’m going to become a more regular attendee than Lindsay Lohan at rehab.”
Zac flashes me a grin that reveals his dimples and makes my stomach twist into a fisherman’s knot. “You’re funny,” he says.
“Thanks,” I answer, because I’m not sure what else to say.
“Are you an actress?” he asks next.
I shake my head. “God, no. Though I did play the role of a manservant in a school production of Hamlet once.”
Zac cocks an eyebrow.
“I went to an all-girls’ school,” I explain.
“No,” he says, “I was just wondering how you managed to convince anyone you were a manservant.” His gaze falls briefly to my chest and I feel momentarily self-conscious before I realize that Zac Ridgemont—the Zac Ridgemont—is checking me out!
“I was a late developer,” I answer, feeling my skin start to warm under his gaze.
“Who are you here with?” he asks.
“Um, Jessa Kingsley,” I say. “She’s my best friend,” I add, then mentally slap myself for sounding like a five-year-old.
Zac nods and takes a bite of his cracker. I might be mistaken, but his gaze seems to flit over my body again. I throw back my shoulders and suck in my stomach.
“Awesome,” Zac says. “You want some cheese?”
I nod, words temporarily deserting me.
“Let’s try the Camembert,” he says.
• • •
“Didi!”
My mom appears in the doorway. “What are you doing? I’ve been calling you. Dinner’s on the table.”
I start. I’m standing over the washer, staring into space, remembering that first night with Zac.
“Coming!” I say, and in my fluster hit the on button before remembering I’ve forgotten to add detergent.
We talked for most of the night, standing beside the cheese table, and then, when I left, Zac asked for my number. He called two weeks later, after I’d given up on ever hearing from him and had resolved that that night would just be filed away as a story to tell the grandchildren.
He took me to dinner the following night, and the week after that we went to the movies together and kissed in the back row while on the big screen Channing Tatum saved the world. I felt as giddy as a teenager—couldn’t eat, kept checking my phone every three seconds to see if he’d texted, bored Jessa senseless debating every single look and word that we’d exchanged and what they might mean, even let my imagination leap ahead to red carpets and the moment he’d introduce me to his parents.
On our third date he invited me to his place for dinner—Chinese take-out—and I slept with him. I never heard from him again.
I gave myself a stern talking-to about not allowing myself to fall either for a guy or into bed with a guy ever again, not until I knew beforehand whether I could one hundred percent trust him. Because the fact is I don’t want one-night stands. I want something more meaningful than that. I want a relationship, but you’d think that I was asking for the moon. Most guys I meet just want sex with no strings.
I’ve pored over every detail of the last night Zac and I spent together, wondering where it all went wrong. I’ve worn the memories thin examining them, from the moment he opened the door—barefoot and holding a bottle of champagne—to the moment he took me by the hand and led me down the hallway to his bedroom, to the moment I stood in front of him in my underwear, shaking with nerves and buzzing from the champagne, and he pulled me down onto the bed, to the actual deed, which was good but not mind-blowingly, headboard-breakingly good or anything. And, if I’m being totally honest, over a little fast and less than satisfactory on my part. But it’s never like it is in the movies, and it also was our first time together, and what percentage of women have an orgasm with a partner the first time anyway?
I actually know the answer to that. It’s in one of my mom’s sex books. It’s eleven percent.
“What are you thinking about?” my mom asks as I sit down at the table.
“Oh, nothing,” I say quickly, reaching for the bread.
“How did it go today?” she asks.
I shake away the image of Zac smiling up at me from his bed.
“Not so good,” I sigh, the images of Zac bursting like bubbles as they’re replaced by images of Walker yelling at me to get the hell out of his room. “I don’t know,” I say, stuffing a hunk of bread into my mouth. “I just feel like I kept putting my foot in it all the time. By saying things like that to people with no feet, for example.”
My mom and dad nod their heads thoughtfully in unison but don’t say a word. They remind me of those nodding dogs you sometimes see on car dashboards.
“In fact,” I say, “I think I really messed up with one patient.”
“Which one?” my dad asks.
“His name’s Walker.”
My dad reaches for his wine and takes a sip. “Ahhh yes, Lieutenant Walker.”
I wait a few moments but he doesn’t continue.
“What’s his deal?” I ask, taking a sip of my wine.
My dad looks up and gives me a wry smile. “You know I can’t discuss my patients with you.”
“So he is your patient,” I say. I’d been curious to know. My dad only deals with the most serious cases at the center: those on suicide watch or who are dealing with psychosis or other extreme symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
“I assess everyone when they’re brought in,” my dad says. “You know that. But yes, I’m still seeing him a few times a week.”
“Does he talk about it? About what happened?”
My dad shakes his head. “No. Not so far. He’s what you might call a recalcitrant patient.”
I nod. That’s an understatement. Does he yell at my dad too, I wonder?
“What’s his story?” my mom asks.
“He was in an ambush,” my dad answers. “Helmand Province, I think. His whole unit was caught up in a gunfight. It was on the news about six weeks ago, do you remember? Five marines were killed.”
“Oh yes, I remember that,” my mom says, shaking her head. “So terrible.”
I chew my food. I hadn’t put two and two together, but now I remember the story: the photographs of the five dead marines, all in their Dress Blues, the shots of the funerals, the flag-draped coffins, a still image of the charred and twisted metal ruins of the car, a photograph of the heroic survivor who dragged his team member to safety. That was Walker. It’s hard to reconcile that image with the man in the hospital bed.
“How do you even start to help someone heal from that?” I ask, shaking my head in bewilderment.
My mom reaches across the table and takes my hand. “By listening, darling. By being kind. And patient.”
“Every mistake is a chance to learn and improve,” my dad says—something he’s been saying to me since I was a kid and accidentally burned down the kitchen trying to make my parents breakfast in bed on their anniversary.
I look between my mom and dad, feeling overwhelmed by all the advice but also grateful. I’d forgotten how much I enjoyed their company. Being away in LA at college I don’t get to see them that often anymore.
I exhale loudly. “It’s just so much harder than I thought it was going to be.”
My dad smiles at me. “Darling, you’re not there to fix them. You’re just an intern. It’s my job to help them get better. You’re just there to observe and learn.”
I open my mouth to protest. I don’t want to just observe and learn, I want to help—but I remember my mom advising me just now on the need for patience and shut my mouth.
“How’s Zac?” my mom cuts in. “Did you speak to him yet?” Though she tries to keep her tone and expression neutral, I know there’s a judgment behind it. She’s wary of Zac because she doesn’t think he behaved in a gentlemanly way. Respect and honesty are big buzzwords with her.
I reach for my wine.
“What? Why are you rolling your eyes?” my mom asks.
I take an exasperated breath and pull a face at her. “I haven’t called him yet.”
“Well, if you need to talk about sex, or anything else, you know my door is always open,” she reminds me.