“I DON’T WANT TO SPEAK TO YOU,” ASHTON SAID WHEN Julian ran into the house at nearly eight.
“Traffic was a motherfucker. Sorry.” He threw down his keys on Ashton’s front hall table, right below the Bob Marley poster.
“Pick those up. You can throw the keys around at your own place. The girls will be here in ten minutes, and you’ve left me to do fucking everything. You didn’t even set the table. I had to do it.” The table was set out on the pool patio.
“Sorry, man. I’ll make it up to you.”
“What am I, Gwen?” Ashton said. “You’re going to make it up to me? Buy me flowers, take me to dinner?” They stood. The smoke from the grill wafted inside the house. It smelled good. Ashton loved to grill.
On the way to his own house, Julian sank into a chair by the blue pool. Ashton had turned on the LED lights, lighting up the palms and the ficus trees in shimmering aqua.
“Dude, are you insane?” Ashton stood over him. “They’ll be here any minute. What’s the matter with you? Go get changed.”
“I will. I need a minute.”
“Time for sitting is over. You had a whole lengthy car ride from wherever you were to sit. No more sitting.”
“Ashton, five minutes, and then I’m yours. Five.”
“Fuck, Jules.”
“Five minutes without you speaking.”
After five minutes, Julian got up, his body like concrete.
The traffic was bad on Benedict Canyon. It was a bitch driving up the mountains at rush hour. Gwen and Riley were running late, too. But the girls being late gave the men a chance to calm down. Julian changed, got the music ready, made an extra large pitcher of margaritas. He and Ashton opened two beers, sat by the pool and chatted about the Fox meeting, the inventory at the store, about Buster “The Executioner” Barkley’s fight coming up in Vegas next month, and about Riley.
“Last Sunday she told me I wasn’t meeting her emotional needs,” Ashton said. “She said that after three years I was still nothing but potential.”
“So, like a parent–teacher conference?”
Ashton laughed. “I said, Riles, I’ve been the same the whole time you’ve known me. She said that was one hundred percent her problem with me. I never changed.”
“Did you ask her why she went out with you in the first place if she wanted you to change?”
“I did! She said she went out with me because she had hoped I would. She said I was too wild. Like I was an untrained poodle or something. I’m not wild!”
“Sometimes you are.”
“You’re not helping. Don’t say that in front of her. Call me domesticated and house-broken. Next time you buy coconut water at Whole Foods, talk to her, put in a good word for me. I really don’t want to have another fight. I’m beat.”
“Me, too.”
“You too what? You love fighting.”
Julian took a breath. “I think I met a girl,” he said.
Ashton downed his beer, laughed, and sat up straight. “Which part are you not sure about? Whether or not you met her, or whether or not she is a girl?”
“Oh, she is most definitely a girl.”
“Really? Dude!” Ashton grinned. “What did she look like?”
Julian was quiet a moment. “Bliss,” he said.
“Dude!”
The doorbell rang. Gwen and Riley were here.
“Whose idea was it to build a place on Mulholland?” Riley said, striding into Ashton’s house, holding what looked like a bakery box. Despite the long ride, she looked as effortlessly creaseless as ever. “It took us an hour and a half to go eleven miles.”
“Definitely Julian’s,” Ashton said, cheerfully throwing his friend under the bus.
Julian took the bakery box from Riley. “What’s this, Riles? Don’t tell me—bean sprout cookies?”
“Yes! Wait—are you mocking me? Ugh. You two are impossible. Not everything has to be a joke. These are very good. They’re made with honey.”
Julian turned on the music too loud, deliberately, so no one would feel any need for real conversation. He drank the margaritas liberally, but had no appetite, making the odds of success for any later, more serious conversation negligible. He didn’t want to talk to Gwen because he had nothing specific to say. His feelings were a jumble. He couldn’t talk to Gwen about every girl he casually chatted with. And when Julian had nothing specific to say, he always preferred to shut the hell up.
Unfortunately it was taciturn Julian’s very nature that Gwen wanted to address. The couples ate, swam in the pool, lounged in the Jacuzzi, sat on the upstairs deck, drinking and chatting about nothing, and then retreated to their respective homes.
Gwen was all set to have a long discussion about the state of things between them. After a pitcher of tequila, Julian was less inclined to do so. She said his brooding nature was getting under her skin. He wanted to tell her he wasn’t brooding, he just had a lot on his mind, but didn’t want to detail exactly what it was he had on his mind and didn’t want to lie. So he said nothing, trying to smooth things over between them with his silence, which was precisely the wrong thing to smooth over the problem of his silence with—more silence. Gwen continued to bristle, and Julian continued to respond in monosyllables. She suggested taking a break, and instead of the requisite protest, he gave her no argument. He said—because he wanted to be agreeable—if you think that’s what you need, that’s fine. I want you to be happy.
Clearly, what would’ve made her happy was a fight. As if she didn’t know him, as if she didn’t know he didn’t like fighting with girls. She announced she was going home, which was difficult since she had come in Riley’s car. Julian offered to drive her. “Are you insane?” Gwen said. “What kind of a storming out is it if you drive me home?” She called a taxi, shouting at Julian before it came, shouting and shouting, and then stormed out.
Afterward Julian sat a long time in the silence by the lit-up nighttime pool trying to hack through the jungle inside him. That night he dreamed the brown-haired girl was on top of him, completely naked, her hips gripped in his hands, while he was fully clothed, wearing his suit and tie and even his shoes, sexy, yes, but also as if to protect himself from her. When he woke up, he thought, yeah, right, no confusion there.