I Like You Just the Way I Am Read online

  “I’m hungry. This is annoying. I’m missing a screening,” she bitched.

  Roughly a half hour later, Baz pulled up.

  “Sorry I’m late. This is so sweet of you!” she said.

  I watched two legs move toward the right side of the car.

  Then, standing there, her hip to my eyeball, I saw her. She looked like every picture I’d ever seen, except more eccentric. She wore these white furry yeti boots and a sequined beret. She had broad shoulders and a deep voice. Her hair was calico colored and her hands were rough and scarred, like she’d spent the last decade blowing glass. I tried to imagine my husband having sex with her, but I just couldn’t get past the yeti boots. I guess I wanted her to be softer, more vulnerable, broken. This didn’t look like a girl who was destroyed over her ex-boyfriend. This looked like a girl with the self-possession to stab me in the head if she discovered I was watching her from the trunk of an SUV.

  Sarah helped Baz pull the chair from the backseat as I tried to give off a glow from my spot under a blanket. They carried it upstairs to her apartment and slipped out of view. They were gone for roughly ten minutes before I started psycho-texting Sarah’s cell phone.

  Are you OK?

  What is happening?

  Did she kill you?

  When Sarah did finally return, she got in the car and said nothing. As soon as we got around the block, I started in.

  “So, what happened? What does her apartment look like? Did you guys talk about me? Please tell me you took a picture together!”

  “Jenny, you need to move on.”

  “What does that even mean?”

  “Get over her! She’s completely over you.”

  Was this true? Was Baz totally over me? And if so, why?!

  Sarah would barely talk to me for the rest of the ride home.

  It took a few days of cooling off before she could discuss with me what happened that night in Baz’s apartment. Jason did come up, but never by name. Baz just made reference to a really hard breakup. There was zero mention of her ex’s new fiancée, or sleepless nights spent thinking about what her ex’s fiancée looked like in lingerie. I almost believed Sarah was right. Maybe Baz had chosen the high road and moved on. For a minute, I contemplated the high road myself.

  Then I decided that it sounded super boring.

  There was no way I was gonna let Baz get away. We had something special and real. She was obsessed with me and I loved her for it.

  * * *

  A month went by and I drove past Baz’s apartment twice a day religiously, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Sarah, meanwhile, wasn’t returning my phone calls and was being overly cryptic about her weekend whereabouts. Then one afternoon, I was accidentally CC’ed on an Evite to a wine party Sarah was throwing at her boyfriend’s house. When I read through the list of attendees, I spotted Baz’s name.

  Sarah and Baz were friends now. And it was my fault.

  “What the fucking fuck is this about?” I screamed on Sarah’s voice mail as I sped past Baz’s apartment, convinced I’d catch Sarah outside with an overnight bag. “You weren’t supposed to befriend the mark! You were just supposed to hand off a fucking chair!”

  They’d obviously forged some kind of sick friendship that I was completely left out of. My abandonment neuroses kicked into high gear.

  “I’m coming to that fucking wine party!” I texted her.

  Seconds later, Sarah wrote back, “No. You aren’t. You are not invited. That Evite was supposed to go to a different Jenny.”

  “See you there,” I wrote before powering off my cell in a fit of frustration. It was the first time someone had officially uninvited me to a party since that cunt Natalie Pierson tried to leave me out of her My Little Pony birthday party in second grade. (Her twinkle-eyed pony, Gingerbread, went mysteriously missing the next week. It was found hanging from the monkey bars the following morning, in an attempt to re-create the autoerotic-asphyxiation scenario I’d recently seen on an episode of HBO’s Real Sex with my mom.)

  The Evite said cocktail attire. I racked my brain, trying to think of the sexiest dress owned by anyone in my circle of friends, and decided on a slightly whorish D&G hand-me-down from my friend Simone. I spent the rest of the day staring at myself in the mirror.

  Jason could sense something was off between us, but didn’t know what. I was carrying around such a heavy load of guilt that it was almost impossible to connect emotionally. Every time he’d ask if I was all right, I’d try to deflect it by saying something like: “I just can’t believe how partisan our political system has become,” or “I was just thinking about how I’d totally kill myself if my name were Irene,” or “How weird is it that Steve Carell didn’t play the neighbor Steve on Married … with Children.”

  The truth was, my thoughts were consumed with Baz. The more I focused on her, the further I drifted from Jason. She was providing me with something he couldn’t: a chase.

  And just like that, I found myself cheating on my husband with his ex-girlfriend.

  It may have been an emotional affair. It also may have been completely one-sided. Regardless, it was happening, and I didn’t have the willpower to stop it. Yes, I felt like fusing with her initially subdued my own insecurities and somehow helped me absorb her power. But I also felt I owed her something. I got invested. I started to believe it was my obligation—to understand her in her own words, to hike Runyon Canyon with her, to help her come to terms with the fact that Jason married someone else and she was almost too old to have children.

  The more fulfilled you are by one person, the harder it is to maintain intimacy with another. And the longer it’s left unattended, the harder it is to come back from. Though I didn’t see it at the time, my pseudo-relationship with Baz was subtly sabotaging my marriage.

  I managed to get out of taking Jason with me to the wine party (by not telling him I was going to a wine party). When I walked in, Sarah was already tipsy and hanging off the side of her couch.

  “She’s not coming!” she shouted to me from across the room. “Didn’t say why.” She then slammed a fistful of Laughing Cow cheese cubes into her face.

  Irritated, both by the fact that I wasted a spray tan on an event that didn’t bring me any closer to Baz and that Sarah would serve Laughing Cow cheese at a party that required jackets, I left.

  Somewhere between unclipping my hair extensions and devouring three thinkThin bars in my kitchen, I had a moment of clarity. I was being pathetic. Like, attending-a-social-event-thrown-by-my-agent pathetic. Baz wasn’t reaching out to me in any way. In fact, she probably wanted nothing to do with me. I needed to be done.

  * * *

  The next day, I woke up with an air of “I’m married and Baz is dying alone” confidence. I told myself I’d wasted enough energy trying to gain the affections of my husband’s ex and it was time to move on with my life. I kissed my husband extra hard, took in my amazing life, and tried to put all things ex-girlfriend out of my head. I agreed to meet my sister for lunch. Driving down Sunset, I had two options: turn down La Cienega to avoid Baz’s apartment or take Crescent Heights. I took Crescent Heights. But only because La Cienega looked congested and Baz lived on Crescent Heights.

  I drove with purpose, not expecting to see anything. At this point, cruising past her apartment was more ritual than obligation, and since I’d recently gotten off Zoloft, I allowed myself small compulsions. I must have stopped for a pedestrian or small child (they’re not pedestrians yet), I don’t really remember, because when I looked left, I was staring at Baz. She was finally outside her place, walking the dog I’d started to believe must just shit in a colostomy bag because it never left the building.

  Without hesitating, I did a huge U-turn in the middle of the road and drove down the block after her. Knowing this could be my only chance, I rolled down my window, honked my horn, and called out to her.

  “Baz!”

  She spun around and instantly her face went white.

  “I’m Je
nny!” I called out, as if she’d just won the lottery.

  She looked both ways, no doubt trying to decide which direction to run. But it was too late. I’d trapped her. She was going to have to interact with me whether she wanted to or not. I threw my car into park in the middle of the road and hopped out.

  “Hiiiii!” I said as I went in for a hug.

  Baz looked like a disaster. She pulled the hood of her jacket over her calico head as she explained that she’d just gotten back from a wild night in Vegas. I wasn’t really listening, though, because I was too busy making a mental note of all her flaws in case I ever needed to draw a picture of her.

  “I saw your photo in a pile of old stuff Jason and I were burning.… I was just driving through the neighborhood, looking another house for us to buy. You know, for our rental portfolio. I didn’t realize you lived up here!”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, I’d love to grab coffee sometime. I feel like we have so much to discuss. I don’t know why I’m crying, sorry.” I was tearing up the way I do after sex.

  “Sure,” she said, completely weirded out by the mascara dripping down my face.

  “Well, what are you up to in like an hour?” I smiled and wiped snot on my sleeve.

  “Ummm. Not sure. Can I … text you?”

  “Of course!” I gave her my number as she backed away.

  Two hours went by and I still hadn’t heard from her. After lunch, I decided it wouldn’t hurt to check in.

  “Hey you, it’s Jenny,” I texted like we were best girlfriends. “Just wondering if coffee is still happening? I’m avail. Let me know.”

  “How do you have this number?” she texted back. “I didn’t give you mine, just got yours.”

  Fuck. I’d forgotten the reason I had her number was because she’d given it to me when I was impersonating Sarah.

  “Jason gave it to me,” I lied.

  “That’s unexpected and cool, I guess,” she wrote back. “Can you meet at Hugo’s on Santa Monica around four?”

  Could I ever! I’d have traveled to fucking Anaheim to sit face-to-face with Baz and her fake nose. This was turning into the best day ever.

  Four P.M. rolled around, and Baz walked into Hugo’s in a sundress and Doc Martens with so many leopard scarves wrapped around her neck, I thought she might be hiding a tracheotomy. She reminded me of a Betsey Johnson store circa 1993. I stuttered at first, trying to figure out where to begin, before accidentally launching into my history with Lance and Carmen. My hope was to disarm her, to sort of say, “Look I’m just like you—except engaged to the man you thought you were going to marry.” On some level, it worked. I could see Baz wanting to hate me but at the same time being compelled to open up. Jason cut her off cold turkey, and I was like a crack dealer who had shown up at the end of her ninety-day rehab—just too hard to say no to.

  She wasn’t stupid. If, as I told her, Jason knew about our coffee date, he would no doubt be hearing about what was discussed. Baz regaled me with stories of her relationship with Jason, and I was riveted. The man she described was in no way the guy sitting at home, folding my laundry. She made him out to be a controlling, self-involved douche. Some of her tales had me cracking up, laughing, like the one about him not letting her put a hot pink pillow she liked on his sofa because it wasn’t his taste. Others had me staring openmouthed in disbelief, like the one about him throwing a tantrum in Madrid because he was pissed at her for getting food poisoning. It wasn’t like he ever beat her or did anything outrageous enough to warrant arrest. It was just obvious that he wasn’t into her.

  I left Baz that night caring about her more than ever. I tried to soothe her pain by saying things like, “Well, you both were young and he obviously had some shit to work out.” And, “If it makes you feel any better, he is nothing like that anymore.”

  When I got home that night, I was sort of secretly pissed at Jason. He hurt my friend Baz. After dinner, I started asking questions.

  “So, did you really leave Baz in Madrid one night because you were mad at her for getting food poisoning?”

  “Did my sister say that?”

  “Yeah,” I lied.

  “Come on, Jenny, really?” he laughed. “Do you know me at all?”

  At this point, I wasn’t sure I did. Baz seemed so cogent in her retelling, I didn’t know what to believe.

  “Baz was completely psychosomatic,” said Jason. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to be with someone who is constantly ordering a wheelchair everywhere they go because they feel faint? Also, I told you I don’t want to talk about her. Ever.” He walked out of the room, slightly offended.

  Just then my phone beeped with a text. It was from Baz.

  “I had such a nice time today,” she wrote back. “Let’s definitely do something again.”

  By the tone of the text, it was clear Baz now wanted something from me. I wasn’t naïve enough to believe it was just friendship. I’m not a fucking idiot. I was a gateway drug to her actual addiction: Jason. Through me she could not only find out what her ex’s new life was like, but she could also work through her anger by telling me all the things she lacked the balls to tell him. If I were her, I’d have done the same thing.

  As I was reading the text, Jason passed by. “Who’s that?” he asked.

  “Your sister.”

  “Tell her to stop talking shit,” he said without stopping to make eye contact.

  My heart was racing. Thinking fast, I shifted my cell settings into “shady bitch mode.” I couldn’t risk Jason picking up my phone and seeing a barrage of texts from the one person on the planet he didn’t want me talking to. I already had her number listed under the pseudonym Professor Plum. But if he looked at the actual digits, he’d know it was Baz. My affair was no longer one-sided. I knew I was playing with fire, but my addiction to the attention outweighed all logic. I needed more.

  * * *

  Baz and I agreed to hike Runyon Canyon together the following week. Somewhere near the dog piss-covered park benches, my guilt became unbearable. I finally confessed to Baz that Jason knew nothing about us hanging out. I needed to talk to someone, and though she was the problem, she was also my closest confidante besides Jason.

  “It’s not that I don’t want to tell him. It’s just that … well, he thinks he hates you for robbing him of three years of his life and for being as nuts as his mother,” I explained delicately, using the skills I assumed I would have learned had I not dropped out of psychology grad school. “Look, I know in time he will realize his anger is misdirected and that you only represent a time when he felt trapped on a myriad of levels, you know?”

  Baz looked at me, incredulous, then called me on my bullshit: “If your husband doesn’t want you seeing me, why are you doing it?”

  I hesitated for a beat. The truth was, I didn’t have a good answer. I mean other than that I was an empty shell of a person desperate for love and attention. But I figured she already knew that.

  “I guess I’m here because I’m a healer. I like to heal people. I’m a healer.”

  For the next month, Baz and I continued seeing each other. The fact that she kept accepting my invitations to hang out, even after I admitted that Jason knew nothing about our relationship, told me she too was getting some sort of sick satisfaction out of the friendship. My assumption was that she liked knowing she had something on the guy who’d always had her by the balls. For me, it wasn’t so much that I enjoyed hanging out with Baz, but more like I’d witnessed a car accident, and I couldn’t not jump into the road and scream, “Clear the way, people! I’m a doctor’s daughter and you need my help!”

  She and I were night and day—we shared none of the same interests, and had little or nothing to talk about other than my husband. But that was enough. I knew it couldn’t go on forever, and I justified my actions by constantly telling myself it was just a phase, something I needed to explore in order to put behind me. She started it, after all (except for the part that I started). If she ha
dn’t shown signs of obsession, I wouldn’t have been provoked. Besides, there was some good coming out of it. Every time I was around her, I felt great about myself! She helped me appreciate how good my life was.

  I always paid for our meals and would joke whenever the check arrived that after putting up with Jason for three years, the least I could do was buy her lunch. Once, I found a box in the garage filled with things she gave Jason back during their breakup. The best part was that it was composed exclusively of gifts he bought her—as if forcing him to see the neon-colored trench coat and bedazzled Mousketeer ears was going to make him think better of his decision to leave her. I couldn’t help but think that if I’d been in her life earlier, I would never have let her send a box like this to anyone. That said, I loved the box, and once I’d tried every article of clothing on to make sure it fit me loosely, I started systematically gifting things back to her. You know, as like a little treat.

  As she drove us to Sheila Kelley’s pole dancing class one afternoon, I whipped out a pair of Sam Edelman sandals and dangled them in front of her face.

  “Remember these?”

  Upon seeing the gnarled-up gladiators, Baz burst into tears. “I can’t do this anymore,” she whimpered as she slammed on the brakes and buried her face in the steering wheel.

  Baz explained that the shoes represented to her the night Jason moved out. She’d lost her temper and kicked her foot through a skylight. Unsure how that was physically possible, I just nodded and held her hand in support.

  “Maybe we’ve moved too fast with things,” I said with sadness. “Maybe you need some time before we can have a friendship that isn’t fraught with these kind of potholes.”

  “Or maybe we just can’t be friends,” she said.

  I paused, feeling the sting of her words. But I knew deep down she was right. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t doing the breaking up. And for the first time in my life, I was willing to accept the rejection. Baz had the courage to do the one thing I’d struggled to do my whole life: let go.