The Leftover Club (5 page)

June 27, 1998

Charlie
Charlotte threw her arms around me with a squeal the minute I crossed over the threshold of her Huntington Beach apartment. She grabbed my hand and pulled me through the door, shutting it behind me. “I’m so glad you could come over. It’s been so long since we got to really hang out.”

“If you don’t count last night,” I nodded.

Her eyes rolled back happily. “Last night! Oh, Roni. Last night was a dream.”

She still dragged me by the hand over to h
er sectional sofa facing patio doors that overlooked a stretch of Huntington Beach. We landed together with a flop. She wore short shorts and a tank top fitting the warmer weather, and her tiny body was tanned to a golden glow. Her blonde hair was tied back in a perky ponytail, and her makeup was minimal. It was like she had just gotten out of bed.

From the radiance of her smile, I suspected I was righter than I knew. She was quick to indulge me with all the dirty details.

“I dreamed of last night since the very first day of our sophomore year. Remember?” she asked, as if I could forget. “The first time I saw him there on that football field, I knew that I wanted him. There was something in his face, you know? Like he’d be… the ultimate.”

I nodded. It wasn’t the first time we had talked about Dylan Fenn, but I got a sinking feeling it might be
the last.

She remembered her manners. “Would you like something to drink?”

“Water,” I eked. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

“Don’t be silly,” she grinned. “We’re still best friends, right?”

We were? News to me. “Right.”

She fetched a bottle of water from her fridge before prancing back to the sofa. “I would offer you something to eat but I haven’t made it to the store yet. I was supposed to go this morning, but I got distracted,” she added with a wink.

I drank a long gulp of water and waited.

“It’s kind of incredible, isn’t it?” she mused as she twirled her ponytail around one finger. “He looked even better last night than the night we graduated. Remember?”

I nodded. I remembered.

“My hair could have caught fire that night and he wouldn’t have noticed me. He looked through me like he did all through high school. All I ever wanted was for him to see me. You know?”

I nodded. I knew.

“Oh, but last night.
Last night when our eyes met and held and I knew I wasn’t just some face in the crowd… it was everything I ever dreamed of. I felt it all the way down in my core. It could have ended there and I would have been happy.” She grinned. “But it just kept getting better and better.”

I finished off my bottle of water.

“When he took me in his arms to dance, I thought I might melt all the way to the floor.”

“I know what you mean,” I commented.

She scrunched her nose at me. “You do? I thought you guys were more like brother and sister by now.”

“Is that what he said?”

She shook her head. “No, we didn’t talk about anyone else once we left the hotel. He kept asking me questions about me. You know, what I’d been doing with myself the last ten years. We talked about the weight loss. He was really interested in that journey. I think that’s when he made the connection of who I was in high school.”

I gulped hard and nodded.

“I tried to ask him about himself, but he’d always swing the topic right back to me. Until finally he asked me where I lived and if he could take me home.” She flushed a little with the memory. “Of course I said yes. I mean, who wouldn’t, right?”

I nodded again. “Can I refill this?” I asked, indicating the bottle as I stood.

“Sure, make yourself at home.” She kept talking as I walked to her kitchen, conscientiously raising her voice so I could hear her. “The entire ride here, he held my hand in his. He kissed it several times as he gave me that look. You know the one.”

I drained another bottle. “Yeah,” I answered finally, as I headed back into the living room. She waited until I was seated to lower the bomb.

“The minute that door opened, he pushed me up against the wall and kissed me like he had waited ten years to do it. He lifted me up in his arms just like a doll and carried me right to the bedroom.” She smiled wide. “He just left an hour ago.”

I didn’t know what to say. Any remark was a possible land mine. It was her story to tell and I decided to let her tell it.

“God, it made everything worth it. Living off of lettuce for six months, working out three hours a day, giving up meat, sugar and dairy. The minute he pulled me across his lap, it was everything I had ever hoped it could be. I felt so delicate, like a china doll. And he was so tender, Roni. I wasn’t a virgin before but oh my God…”

She trailed off, but then again no further description was really necessary.

I decided to dip a toe in the water. “I’m glad it was everything you hoped it would be,” I offered.

“More,” she said with a sated grin. “I’m seeing him again tonight.”

My kneejerk reaction, put into play many times during high school, was to talk the moony-eyed girl down from the stratosphere so that she would not crash and burn like every other moony-eyed girl who came before her. Instead, I just said, “Oh?”

“That’s why I wanted to see you.
To talk to you about all this. Do you think I’m making a huge mistake here? I mean, this is Dylan Fenn we’re talking about. I’ve been in love with him since tenth grade. This is a mistake, right? To get involved now, after all this time? I mean, we don’t even really know who he is anymore, do we?”

This was my chance. Speak now or forever hold my peace. “It’s not really for me to say. I haven’t really seen him much in the last few years, not since I had my daughter.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right. You’re in another phase of your life. I mean you’re married, you’re settled. And that husband of yours is quite the charmer.”

She meant it as a compliment. “Quite,” was all I could
say.

“Maybe I just wanted to brag. I mean, this is huge. One of the Leftovers finally got The Great Dylan Fenn into bed. Who would have thought?” She laughed and I glanced at my watch.

“I should probably get going,” I said as I stood.

She hopped to her feet.
“So soon?”

“I have to pick Meghan up from her play date,” I offered as a lame excuse. I still had a twenty minute window.

“Right,” she nodded. She walked me to the door.

“You know you’re the most successful out of all of us,” she said. “You are a happily married twenty-something with a career and a child. You have it all, just like they always told us we could. I’m kind of jealous, really.”

Ditto. “You’ve obviously done just as well for yourself. The other stuff will come in time. There’s no real rush, is there?”

She laughed. “Not for another ten years and another reunion, I guess.” She reached for another hug. “It really was good seeing you again.”

It was the most sincere thing she’d said all day. “You, too,” I lied right through my teeth.

“And don’t you dare lose any more weight,” she playfully scolded. “You’re skinny enough as it is. Who thought we’d ever say that, huh?”

“Not Coach Marcus,” I supplied.

She laughed heartier. “Oh my God, if he could see us now. He’d have a stroke.”

“Let’s call him,” I said with an impish smirk before I finally broke free.

I arrived early to pick up Meghan, so I had a few minutes of quiet time before I had to resume motherhood. I pulled
Bryan’s card from my purse, along with my mobile phone. He answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

“It’s
Roni.”

“Hey, girl!” he said happily and my heart swelled with happiness I hadn’t felt in very long time.
Bryan Dixon was my friend. My true friend. And I couldn’t “have it all” unless he was a part of it. Wade would just have to learn how to deal with it.

“
Wanna grab lunch some time?”

“What took you so long?” he asked with a smirk I could hear in his voice.

I was asking myself that very same thing.

September 12, 2007

The strobe lights flickered as I entered Eleete, a West Hollywood hotspot where Bryan and I spent many a Saturday night up to and following my divorce. The gay club culture had been a revelation to me, as I was totally accepted despite being a straight woman. Of course, I’m sure that had a lot to do with the fact Bryan was on my arm. Now that he had finally emerged from the cocoon he had been stuffed into as a closeted teen, he was able to live life as a beautiful social butterfly. He had nothing but friends from the time he walked in the door, and, by association, so did I.

After
such a stifling marriage, it was like I was coming out of a closet of my own. I had been in a cocoon myself, a designer one fit for a 90s upper-class professional. But even though that person looked like me and had everything we had always been programmed to want, she was bitter and unhappy.

The divorce really didn’t do much to change that, not for a long while. I ended up gaining back the weight I’d lost, plus ten, as I juggled a new house, a new job and my new role as a single parent.

But when I walked through the doors of Eleete, no one cared about the struggle. They wanted to dance and to drink and to revel in upbeat music made to move your feet, all of which sounded good to me. It took years for me to realize this was my rebel teen phase. I married Wade to replace my missing father, and once he had reached the end of what he could teach me, I went a little crazy in delayed adolescence. It helped to fill the weekends when Meghan stayed with her father, when I was as depressed as any woman could be.

At first, Wade had decided to use that against me so he could have Meghan more and more often. He called my fitness as a parent into question because of the questionable company I kept, and the conservative
family courts wanted to make sure that I wasn’t exposing my young child to hedonistic influence. Of course I wasn’t, but it didn’t take long for it to be a non-issue. Eventually Wade discovered that he liked living life unencumbered. Without a wife and child at home, he could wine and dine younger women by the dozen. As the years wore on, he shoved more and more custody onto me, using me as a convenient babysitter whenever he wanted to fly off to Europe or vacation in the Bahamas.

Apparently that was a lot
more fun to do without a moody, needy preteen.

I was thrilled to have my daughter more and more, even though she wasn’t particularly happy about it. She punished me with her nasty moods and open defiance, and I was at a loss how to establish any kind of authority. The minute I sent her to her father, he used his money to buy her loyalty for the two weekends a month he had custody
. Worse, the bastard overcompensated when those two weekends reduced down to one, depending on which twenty-something he was dating at the time. Whenever Meghan came back, she came laden with material goods and a chip on her shoulder the size of Alaska.

It was my fault that we no longer lived in Costa Mesa, didn’t have the nice
, new cars or fancy friends. Most of all, I was the reason she had to split her life in half, simply because I had chosen my friends over my family. It was chapter and verse of all the criticisms that Wade had leveled at me over the years, so I knew he was fueling her hatred of me just like he was padding her wallet and filling her closet.

Nothing seemed to make it better.

So I would use these random weekends when she was staying with her dad to recharge my own batteries, and no one had ever done that any better than my best friend, Bryan. Tonight was his birthday, so I knew we were going to celebrate in style.

He swept me up in a hug. “Now it’s a party!” he exclaimed. He dragged me to his private table on the upper level of the club. The circular booth was padded in purple velvet
with silver accents that sparkled under the flashing lights from the dance floor. And if you sat on the right spot you could feel the vibrations from the sound system below. On tap for that night’s festivities was a drag show, which Bryan normally hosted. This was more like a roast to celebrate the man of the hour.

A shirtless man delivered a tall tumbler full of unidentifiable purple liquid. “The Deadly Dixon,” our handsome waiter said as he handed me a glass.

I glanced at Bryan, who shrugged. “They felt we needed a brand new cocktail to celebrate my birthday. Who was I to argue?”

I took a drink and choked instantly. “It’s strong!” I said.

“It would have to be. Otherwise how else was I going to face the big 3-8?”

If I thought age was a big deal to straight women, it was even more important to gay men. I nodded as I commiserated, then took another gulp.

Bryan had little to fear, however. He owned his own special effects and makeup company and had worked on several notable sci-fi shows in recent history. He’d been nominated for several awards, though he hadn’t won yet. “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride,” he’d lament with that smile I loved so much. But his credentials were impressive, as were his bank account and his historic 1920s home in the Hollywood Hills.

He was still fit, with a body that rivaled men half his age. This was thanks to a grueling workout regimen. And thanks to a few little tucks here and there, his face was youthful and flawless.

It depressed me endlessly that I knew men who were prettier than me. Meanwhile I wore enough bags under my eyes to fly around the world, with a body more at home in mom jeans than designer clothes.

I leaned in. “Please,” I said, dismissing his concerns about age. “You’ll be the envy of everyone at the twenty-year reunion.”

He laughed. “They tracked you down too, huh?”

“
Sorta,” I said, thinking about Dylan and his unusual invitation.

“You
gonna go?” he asked.

“Are you kidding? The last reunion blew up my marriage. I don’t think I’ll be tempting fate by attending another.”

“Your marriage was a time bomb that was going to detonate with or without our reunion,” Bryan reminded. “From where I sit, it was the best thing that ever happened to you.”

I shrugged. In many ways it was. Without that reunion, I wouldn’t have gotten in contact with
Bryan. That gave me the courage to make the changes that needed to be made.

It helped make up for the
Dylan/Leftover Club fallout.

“But look at me,” I said. “I can’t face those people looking like this. It’s a total step backward from where I was ten years ago.”

“Bullshit,” he corrected. “You are the package, darling. Not the wrapping.”

“That’s easy to say when you are voted one of the hottest eligible bachelors in West Hollywood!” I pointed out with a chuckle.

He shrugged. “You just have to get your outside to match your inside. It’s not that hard.”

“Good. I’ll come to the gym and work out with you.”

He laughed. “That’s not what I mean.”

“You may need to spell it out,” I said as I held up my drink. “A few more sips of this and I may not have any working brain cells left.”

“You change what you want to change and you keep what works for you. The way you are isn’t some condition you’ve been afflicted with. You decided a long time ago to stay outside the norm. So make the outside match the inside. You’re meant to stand out, be seen, be different. If you wanted to conform, you’d have done that in high school.”

“Bee
n there, done that,” I remarked.

“Exactly,” he said. “And you broke free and returned to the same
Roni we knew and loved way back when. Trust me, if you go to that reunion, the people that would love you would do so no matter what you look like. It’s not about a dress or a number on a scale. It’s about who are you are.”

I sighed.
Who I was. Now that was the question.

I was still mulling it over when Meghan came home Sunday night. She was in a particularly nasty mood, though she’d never tell me why. She slammed into her room and blasted Pink as loud as she could get it without the neighbors banging on the wall.

She came out about two hours later to dump her laundry in the hamper by the washing machine. She spotted remnants of my fast food weekend, with a pizza box and some Chinese takeout cartons stuffed under diet cola cans.

“Don’t you care about our planet?” she snapped as she scooped up the aluminum cans and put them in the recycling bin. “I guess that’s a stupid question. Anyone who doesn’t care about their body clearly doesn’t care about anything else.”

I took a deep breath and counted to ten. These were Wade’s words, not hers. She was angry and I was a convenient target. Nothing would be gained by my rising to the bait. When the storm had blown over, we’d discuss issues like respect, and why I deserved it even if she didn’t think that I did.

She slammed back into her room and I didn’t see her by the time I left for work the next morning. It was probably for the best, given I wasn’t in that hot of a mood myself. I made the mistake of stepping on the dusty scale in my private bathroom
. I was now at the heaviest I’d ever been.

There was no fucking way I’d go to the reunion now.

When I got to the office, I told my assistant to hold all calls and refuse all visitors, especially one Dylan Fenn.