Page 17 of The Spirit of Love

Chapter Ten

“Wow, rough day?” says the woman in the pantsuit who opens the door when I buzz at LouLou’s Bridal.

“It’s that obvious?” I’d planned to make it inside the shop, and hopefully into the comforting arms of my friends, before my total emotional breakdown.

But this woman—with her blond ponytail pulled regulation tight and her taupe lipstick matching her taupe uniform—tells me with one look of her pale-blue eyes that she can read me like a billboard.

I spent the drive from the Huntington Gardens to the bridal shop imploding like the big bang in reverse.

Because the reason for my crisis is entirely my fault. I did the thing I’ve spent my whole life trying to do: I moved someone with my work. The poetic justice is a little absurd.

Sure, Rich and the president of CBS helped out by being douchebags.

By sidelining me because they know I’ll wait my increasingly long turn.

By bowing to the industry’s overinflated idea of Jude’s worth compared to mine.

But the real shock here is that my current situation isn’t actually Jude’s fault. All he did was laugh at my jokes.

I imagine him in his living room, fighting over quinoa salad and my writing with some beautiful girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend.

And now that I know all this, I have to go back to work tomorrow, demoted, but I don’t even get to hate him for it. Which leaves me feeling a little adrift. If I can’t blame Jude de Silva for stealing my job—if I am, in fact, the master of this disaster—then what the hell can I blame him for?

It’s his eyes I can’t stop thinking about—and believe me, I have tried. At sunset tonight, I was sure of it: same color, close in shape, similarly unforgettable brows as Sam.

And yes, I know it’s impossible.

Maybe everything that happened today was so shocking, it was the emotional equivalent of a blunt blow to the head. And now I’m concussed and confused, wishing I had amnesia.

Google failed to help me sort it out. She served up plenty of Getty images where I could study Jude de Silva’s eyes from the safety of my car.

Google was scarcer on images of Sam, whose last name I somehow never caught.

His face didn’t pop up when I tried his first name + a slew of reasonable keywords.

Sam + Parsons Landing

Sam + Search and Rescue

Sam + carpenter + Jet Ski + sex stallion

In sum, I couldn’t do a proper side-by-side comparison, which means I’m having to rely on my memory of Sam.

Similar eyes, but not the same. Sam’s eyes are blown wide with wonder and presence, but Jude’s eyes… aren’t , on some fundamental level. Even on the red carpet, surrounded by staggering beauty, Jude’s eyes look closed to the world’s possibilities. Not color-blind. Beauty-blind.

They look different in person. Tonight in the garden, when we were alone, when Jude was telling me he had not a single hobby, he looked at me straight on.

And he looked—I don’t know—a little lonely, a little lost. Like all of us are sometimes.

But Jude de Silva’s inner world is not my problem.

I don’t care what’s missing from his life; I just want him out of mine.

“Ma’am?” the woman still in the door of the bridal shop says.

“Sorry. Hi. It’s just this guy…two guys…no one.”

“Ah,” the woman says knowingly. “Repeat after me.”

I realize I’m ready to repeat anything this total stranger says. Is this how cults recruit?

“Men,” the woman says.

“Men,” I say.

“Are the devil.”

I laugh, but the woman isn’t amused.

“Say it,” she says sternly.

“Are the devil,” I say, carefully enunciating. “Men are devils.”

“Welcome to the fitting,” she sings, dancing out of the way. “Champagne is everywhere.”

“Thank you?”

“I’m Yas, your bridal stylist. Your friends are in there already.” She tilts her ponytail toward the interior of the small shop, where racks of white taffeta make a pure and glowing forcefield as far as the credit card can see.

I step past Yas onto plush pale-pink carpet and inhale rose-scented candles. There are worse places to melt down.

“I’ve been serving the bride bubbles,” Yas calls from a wet bar on the far side of the room. “Can I offer you—”

“A healthy pour for me,” I say.

“Fenny!” Masha curves toward me like a fairy in a taupe terry-cloth LouLou’s Bridal dressing robe.

Her dark curly hair is pulled back loosely in a bun, and her other bun, the one in the oven, is just beginning to rise.

I blow her belly kisses. She gives my shoulders a squeeze.

“I can’t wait to hear everything. Everything . ”

I’ve been friendly with Masha ever since we both joined the same book club a few years ago.

I admired her instantly. Her job as conservator of antiquities at the Getty Villa seemed so cool, and her comments about the book were glib and insightful—a clear indicator of good friend material.

But for years, we stayed in an acquaintance holding pattern.

Masha’s an introvert, and I have introverted tendencies, and sometimes two such likely friends can orbit each other for years without either one making a move.

It took us running into each other at the massive CBS Christmas party last year, where Masha introduced me to her oldest friend, Olivia Dusk, for things to really click.

The moment I met Olivia we started cracking each other up with our impressions of old-Hollywood dames.

She does a pristine Katharine Hepburn dropping the olive in Bringing Up Baby , and no one can beat my Bette Davis landing on a cactus in The Bride Came C.O.D .

Masha, it turns out, does a mean Myrna Loy—chin up, eyes narrow, pretending not to be absolutely charmed.

By the time we started talking about our favorite recent movies, I felt like the three of us had been friends in another life.

We were three undrinkable chardonnays in at that point, so, like the candid poet I am, I announced my everlasting devotion:

“You two,” I said. I pointed at them and shook my head as I searched for further language. “You two.”

Olivia hugged me tight and said she knew exactly what I meant. The three of us clicked into a triangle of close friendship, laughing for hours and never looking back.

Now Masha fills my hands with hers and tugs me toward the dressing room. “Olivia? Fenny’s here!”

“Right out!” I hear Olivia’s muffled voice call. It sounds like she’s deep inside many layers of a gown.

“How was the doctor’s appointment?” I smile at Masha’s belly, which is the happiest thing I’ve seen all day.

“Eli Junior is auditioning for the Rockettes,” Masha groans as she flops down on the couch. “And my feet are so swollen they look like I am, too. But fuck that—how did your first day of directing go?”

I fall face-first onto the couch and feel the largest sob of all time rising in my chest—

“Wait!” Olivia calls from behind the curtain. “I’m stuck with one boob in and one boob out of this dress, but I need to be out there for this download! I want to hear all about the shoot, and all about Catalina!”

“I can help with your boobs,” Yas calls, waltzing into Olivia’s dressing room.

Masha strokes the back of my head. “Fenny? You okay?”

I hear a squeak. A zip. The casting aside of a curtain.

“Wow, you’re good,” Olivia tells Yas as she steps into the shop’s main room wearing nothing but a slip. “Fenny, what’s wrong?”

Then both of my friends are at my side, and although I can’t think of a more sympathetic audience, I’m still dreading what I have to say. Because telling your best friends the disastrous details of your life makes the disaster real.

It’s all a dream until you say it out loud to someone you love.

“Upsy-daisy.” Olivia rolls me over, hoisting me up on the couch until I’m looking into her soft brown eyes. “Take it from the top.”

“Did something go wrong on set?” Masha asks, scooting closer. “It was just your first day. I tell Eli this every time he’s starting new rehearsals: It takes time to get in a flow—”

“There will be no flow,” I say, blowing my nose on the tissue Masha hands me from her purse.

Yas holds out a tray with flutes of champagne. I toss back one glass quickly and then reach for another.

“What do you mean ‘no flow’?” Olivia asks. “Wait, you’re not pregnant, too, are you?”

The next thing I know, the three of us are curled up together on the couch, sipping champagne and sparkling water. Masha brings out a Tupperware of pierogies. Yas keeps topping us up and then goes back to pinning the bust of Olivia’s middle-finger-to-tradition, deep-purple wedding gown.

“I’ve been replaced.”

Masha gasps. “On your first day?”

“What’s his name, and where do I find him?” Olivia’s face twitches. She’s gone into fight mode. “I’m going to make Beyoncé’s video for ‘Hold Up’ look like a bouncy-house party.”

“Jude de Silva,” I say through my teeth.

“ JDS ?” Olivia says, hand to her mouth.

“Why are you calling him that?” I ask.

“People call him that. The internet. Emmanuel Macron. Jake.”

“Oh, really? Whose side is Jake on?” I dare her to respond.

“Jake had JDS on the show when his latest film premiered,” Olivia says. “He has a reputation for being very intense, but actually, he and Jake hit it off.”

“Ahhhhh-hhhhh-h!” I cry and resume my face-down position.

Now the whole awful story tumbles out. I tell my friends about the vision board I made for Buster, about Aurora’s gift this morning, about Ivy running to get me, and the horror film that followed, right up to the compliment bomb Jude de Silva detonated two hours ago in the Huntington cactus garden.

“So in a way, he’s your biggest fan and your biggest rival?” Olivia says, biting into a pierogi and then slyly trying to put it back in the Tupperware and take another. “That’s going to be tricky.”

Masha busts her pierogi switcheroo, handing Olivia back the half-eaten one. “Mushrooms are good for you.”

“I know,” Olivia whines. “But I like pork better.”