“Only because you got sick.”
She shakes her head. “No.No.Professor Sherman always gave you the harder work, always handed you the trickier parts.”
“Because he was a hard-ass.”
“No,” she says, squeezing my shoulders. “Because you were the best. How did you not know that?”
“Easy for you to say.” Praise was never my strong suit, perhaps because my dad gave me so little of it, perhaps because my mom was so overly effusive that her endless compliments came to mean nothing, were just jumbles of words. “You’re already, like, taking Broadway by storm.”
“Off-Broadway,” she says. “And by the way, it’s basically for minimum wage.”
“It’s gotta beat the tip jar at P.F.Chang’s,” I say.
“Well, I still think he owes you a honeymoon. It’s the least he could do for making you lose that bet.” She winks, then dips her fingers into my drink and pulls out the remaining olive. “Also, to bring this back to yours truly, I think you have me to thank for this: (a) the bet, (b) getting the chicken pox.”
“I’ll be sure to thank you in my acceptance speech,” I say with a grin.
“Assholes who don’t give credit to the people who get them there are the worst.” Daisy sticks out her tongue. “Blech.” She makes a retching noise. “Ooh, so you’ll also have to thank that ex-girlfriend. If she had stuck around New York, who knows what would have happened?”
“Amanda.” I make my own retching sound. “But no talk of ex-girlfriends tonight.”
“You’re right.” She nods and pulls me closer for a hug. “You guys were meant for each other. No one is more meant for each other than you and Ben.”
“My cup runneth over,” I say.
Daisy motions for the bartender, and we toast to my good fortune.
11
BEN
FEBRUARY 2011
My face hurts from smiling, and I hate that I’m aware of this. I’m happy for Tatum. But the press line on the red carpet is endless, and her publicity team keeps shuttling me to the side for each interview, escorting me to the back when the photographers call out for a “single.”Singlemeaning just her.Singlemeaning all the ways she outshines me.
I’m not throwing a pity party; it’s simply true. Tatum has ascended above me in all the ways that matter to this town.
“I’m sorry,” she’ll say each time as she’s swept off into that photographer sea. “It doesn’t mean anything other than they want a shot of my dress”—but it’s hard not to feel like she’s splintering off from me, leaving me behind.
I wave to Eric, who is on the arm of a producer he’s been dating, as I wait for her to wrap another interview. Ryan Seacrest now, fawning, making her spin in a circle. The racket on the carpet is too loud to hear the two of them, but I see Tatum throw her head back into a completely realistic cackle, and I wonder if I’m the only person out here who knows that she’s faking it. I still know her, still love her, still see her, which I think she both values and demands.
“This is nuts,” Eric says as he weaves his way toward me. He’s grown a goatee in the two weeks since I’ve seen him; I’ve had no time for my own friends or my own work since I’ve been out with Tatum at industry events each night.
“Nice goatee,” I say.
“All the A-listers are doing it.” He grins.
“Which makes us A-list adjacent, I guess?”
“On our best days.” He laughs. “On our best days, dude.”
I shrug. “No room for the plebian TV folks here.”
“(A) we’re not plebian TV folks:Code Emergencyis going to kill it, and (b) you’re with the night’s only sure thing, so take up a little more space.”
Tatum’s publicist waves me onward.
“Gotta hop, duty calls. Find me at a party later. Save me, more like.”
