“Please! It’s not like I’m asking you to actually have this relationship for me, I just need a buffer.”
Dana shook her head. “No, no. It’s not that. I can’t date. I’m off men.”
“Oh no. Please don’t tell me you’re trying that lesbian thing again, ” I said, sipping my Diet Coke.
Dana shook her head. “No, it’s not like that. It’s…well…I can’t have sex.” She put her hands on my shoulders, turning me to face her as she put on her serious look. “I have a problem.”
“A problem? What, like an STD?”
She shook her head again. “No, Mads. This is worse.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Okay, I’ll bite: What’s worse than an STD?”
“I’m addicted to sex.”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh good. I thought this was something serious.” I laid on the sarcasm as I grabbed another handful of popcorn.
“This is serious!” she protested.
“Dana, you are hot. Men like you. Since when is that a problem?”
“That’s not true, Maddie. I’m sick.”
“You’re lucky is what you are. You know how many push-up bras I own just to have half your cleavage?” A lot. I was pretty sure that Jack Black and I were the only people left in L.A. who still wore B cups.
Dana ignored me. “Sex can be like any other addiction. It’s a disease. One I have to accept and learn to manage one day at a time. I’m practicing positive sexual sobriety.”
I crunched down hard on a popcorn kernel to keep from laughing. “Positive sexual sobriety?”
Dana nodded. “Uh-huh. Therapist Max says it’s the only way to break the cycle of addiction.”
I blinked. “Therapist Max? You’re seriously taking advice from a guy named ‘Therapist Max’?”
Dana nodded again. “Yes, Maddie. We’re all first names at SA. Even the therapists.”
I knew I was going to regret asking. “SA?”
“Sexaholics Anonymous.”
Mental forehead smack. “And I thought Magnolia Lane was over-the-top.”
“Oh, Maddie, ” Dana said, her eyes lighting up, “you should totally come with me to a meeting. There are tons of hot guys there, and they’re always super-nice to new girls.”
I’ll bet. “Thanks, but no thanks. Besides, I have a boyfriend. Sort of, ” I added ruefully, thinking of my Vicky’s thong going to waste tonight. “You sure Ramirez isn’t blowing me off?”
Dana opened a bottled water and took a long drink. “Positive.”
“All right. Then I promise not to freak out about it anymore tonight. I mean, if he wants to go with the boys to the Cabana Club, I’m not going to be one of those whiny kind of girlfriends about it.”
Dana’s head snapped up and she did a little cough/choke thing with her water. “The Cabana Club!”
Uh-oh. “Yeah…why?”
“Maddie, have you ever been there?”
I shook my head. To be honest, my idea of a night on the town started with dinner on Ventura and ended with a turn around the Beverly Center and a new pair of pumps. I wasn’t exactly a regular on the club circuit.
“Ohmigod, Maddie. It’s a total hookup place. You didn’t tell me Ramirez was going there!”
Oh shit. I felt my stomach bottom out, fizzy Diet Coke mixing with fake buttered popcorn mixing with pure dread. “Oh God. This is it. He’s totally dumping me, isn’t he? It was all about the chase, wasn’t it? Now that he’s got me where he wants me, he doesn’t want me anymore! I’m stale, Dana. I’m like that day-old bagel no one wants. Oh God, what am I going to do?”
“I’m sorry, hon.” Dana laid a hand on my arm and sent me the same pitying look she’d been giving me ever since my mother insisted on giving me a bob with bangs in seventh grade. “Look, I’m sure it’s nothing. I’m sure he’s just…” She trailed off, unable to come up with an adequate lie.
“Right.” I took a big gulp of my Diet Coke, the carbonation burning all the way down my throat. “But, just in case, you feel like grabbing a drink?”
The Cabana Club was a large brick building on the corner of La Brea and Sunset, painted pink and flanked by flashing neon flamingos. Since it was Friday night, there was a line to get in. Luckily Dana knew every bouncer in town (most on a more intimate basis than I knew my gynecologist), and we were in-side before you could say, “Lindsay Lohan.”
As my eyes adjusted to the dimly lit interior, which was punctuated by pink and green flashing lasers, I realized Dana was right: the placed reeked of hookup. A crowded dance floor to our right held L.A.’s hottest bodies-actress-slash-waitresses, model-slash-waitresses, a bunch of CW actors, and that girl from Survivor everyone hated-all gyrating together in a way that couldn’t even air on HBO. Tables to the left were filled with groups of men and women doing the heads-bent-together thing and drinking tall cocktails while grabbing one another under the table. The bar straight ahead was two people thick with singles looking to score a martini and a phone number. I squinted through the darkness, praying my boyfriend wasn’t one of them.
“This is so not a boys’ night out, ” I shouted over the techno beat pulsating off the walls.
“This is so not the place a recovering sex addict should be spending her Friday night.” Dana eyed a guy at the bar wearing leather pants, an unbuttoned shirt, and a “how you doin’?” smile.
He winked at her.
Dana bit her lip.
“Let’s find Ramirez and get out of here fast before I do something I’m going to regret, ” she said.
Fine by me. We wove our way through the crowd, circling the bar. I got elbowed by an Olsen twin look-alike, and a guy in a cowboy hat spilled a margarita on my capris, but I didn’t care. I was on a mission. I had been patient with Ramirez. I had given him his space. I had even waited a record two months before having sex with him. (Not entirely by choice, but that was beside the point.) I had done everything known to woman to make this relationship work. And what did he do? Blow it all for a night in hookup heaven. “Woman scorned” didn’t even begin to describe the anger surging through me as I scanned the club.
Then I spotted him. He was sitting at a table near the back, a half-empty glass of beer in front of him. I gnashed my teeth together, my vision going red as I stared my worst fear in the face.
Ramirez was sitting next to a woman. A tall woman. If there’s anything in this world that my five-one-and-a-half self hates more than being dumped, it’s being dumped for someone tall.
Her legs were almost as long as I was, tucked under the table beneath a barely-there leather mini. And her top didn’t cover a whole lot more. A plunging neckline dipped almost to her belly button, showing off cleavage that was obviously man-made. Over her shoulders was a little red shrug jacket, more for fashion effect than actual coverage, and her long black hair was loose, flowing down her back, giving her that dark, exotic look that a blonde Irish/English mutt like myself could never pull off.
And then she put her hand on his thigh.
I felt my nostrils flare, my hands balling into fists at my sides. That was it-police officer or no, I was gonna kill him.
I vaguely heard Dana yelling something along the lines of, “Maddie, wait!” but I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to. My body was moving all on its own as I marched straight toward the happy couple.
“You sonofabitch!” I yelled once I was in earshot.
Ramirez turned around, his dark eyebrows hunching together at the sight of me. Despite my anger, my hormones did that little happy sigh they always did when he was around. Ramirez had perfected the tall, dark, and dangerous look-his black hair just a little too long, his dark brown eyes just a little too hard, and a sleek panther tattooed on his arm, just a little too big to hide beneath the sleeve of his black T-shirt. His tan skin was interrupted by a thin white scar running through his left eyebrow and a perpetual dusting of rugged stubble across his chin. The bad boy-slash-sex god effect of it all was almost enough to stop a girl in her tracks.