This Will Only Hurt a Little(57)

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Marc Silverstein was a grown-up. The most grown-up adult of anyone I had ever known. Emily started calling him my fiancé in the days leading up to our first date. He took me to Islands, in Burbank, as a sort of joke—like we kept running into each other at cool Hollywood bars, so we needed to get down to who we truly were. It was the same chain burger place where Craig had made me run to the bathroom in tears a few years earlier. But I obviously didn’t tell that story.

After Islands, we weren’t ready for the date to end, so we went to a bar called the Cat & Fiddle and got distracted by what were clearly Russian call girls and their dates and spent most of the time silently listening in on the insane conversations they were having. When we couldn’t contain it anymore, we ran outside to smoke, laughing about the insanity of Los Angeles. He drove a car that looked like something a chauffeur would drive, something I’d never seen or heard of before, a Volkswagen Phaeton. Apparently it was a luxury Volkswagen that they tried to launch in the U.S. for one year but it didn’t really go over well. I think only Marc and William Shatner had one. (That’s true, by the way, that William Shatner drove one. I saw him like twice driving it around town.)

Marc drove me home and we sat in the driveway of my duplex and talked for four hours. We didn’t stop. And only when I was almost actually falling asleep did I say I thought I needed to go to bed and he finally leaned over and grabbed my arm and kissed me over the gearshift in the center console. I knew the rules of dating. We were supposed to play it cool. But he called me the next day.

“Hey. I’m leaving for that wedding in Tulum tomorrow,” he said, “so any way you’d want to hang out again today? Is that weird?”

It wasn’t.

I went over to his house (HE OWNED A HOUSE) and took him to a frozen yogurt place that Abdi and Candi and I were obsessed with called Pinkberry in West Hollywood. He hadn’t heard of it yet. Abdi and I had discovered Pinkberry shortly after it opened and we quickly became regulars, even making friends with Shelly (whom we called Shellyberry) and her boyfriend Young (whom we called Youngberry), who owned the place and were the only employees in the early days. I think people sometimes roll their eyes when I’m like, “Ummm. We were into Pinkberry before anyone else.” But TRULY. Abdi went there on opening day and evangelized it to us immediately. It became our hangout. I didn’t even have to tell them my order. They knew. Shellyberry even came to Abdi’s birthday party. We talked about trying to franchise it. HA! I MEAN! IF ONLY WE HAD.

So anyway, I took Marc there and told him what to order. While we were sitting outside eating, he got a call on his Sidekick, which he answered right away and had a furtive conversation, laughing and getting off the phone as soon as he could.

“Sorry.”

“No, that’s okay.”

“It was my writing partner, Abby.”

“Oh. Cool. How long have you guys written together?”

“Ummm. Since we met at grad school. Actually, you tested for one of our shows years ago, it was called Close to Home?”

Oh my God. The writer with the good taste in music. OF COURSE.

“Wait. Weren’t you guys like married??”

He laughed and shook his head. “No. But we were engaged and then we called it off before the invitations went out.”

I raised my eyebrows. “But you still work together.”

“We still work together. But she’s engaged now. She’s getting married in December.”

Oh. Okay. So, this was how grown-ups did things? I could deal with this, I was certain. Marc seemed worth it.

“I’m bummed you’re leaving for two weeks. Plus it’s my birthday on the twenty-fifth. I’m having a party. I’m trying to make up for last year, which was kind of a disaster—I wish you could come.”

“I know! Well, we’ll see. Maybe Tulum will be boring and I’ll come back early.”

We made out on the couch in his professionally decorated home and said goodbye and that we would talk when he got back.

Gabe Sachs said, “If he comes back early from his vacation, you should marry him FOR SURE.”

Kate, my BFF from high school, said, “You know, after my first date with Larry, he left town for two weeks and we got married. I think this is a good sign.”

Emily BB said, “My grandma is gonna be so mad that you’re dating a Jewish guy and I’m not.”

Abdi said, “I’m obsessed with this for you!”

My mom said, “He sounds great, Biz! What has he written?? Anything I would know?? Also, say, have you seen if maybe you could get on Grey’s Anatomy?? I think you’d be so good on that show!”

Marc called to tell me Tulum was nothing but rain. The wedding had been fun but there was no reason to stay for the rest of the time if it was just going to rain. Plus, Abby was annoyed he was taking such a big vacation since they needed to start thinking about TV pitches for fall. He would come back the day before my birthday.

Yes. I would marry him. It was decided.

The week after my birthday, he took me to a Fourth of July party at his close friend’s house. It was everyone he knew, his giant group of extended friends, most of whom I had never met, the exception being Ike Barinholtz and Josh Meyers, who I knew because Carpenter had dated Seth Meyers off and on and another friend of ours had dated Josh. Almost as soon as we got there and he’d introduced me to a few people, he disappeared. I saw Molly, his roommate—who used to be his and Abby’s assistant—and her boyfriend and chatted with them for a while. And then I sort of wandered around, trying to figure out who to talk to. I sat and smoked with a guy named Devin, who seemed closest to my age. He knew Molly from college. Everyone else was in their thirties, many of them married with babies, firmly ensconced in adulthood. I saw Marc talking to a blond actress who looked in my direction and then laughed and put her hand on his chest. I felt so self-conscious. I asked Devin who she was.