5. Piper
FIVE
Piper
NOTHING STILL
Three Decembers Later
Being a twenty-two-year-old virgin hits different.
It’s poignant. I can’t decide if it gets easier or harder with each passing year. On the one hand, I have a lot more excuses for remaining virginal because I’m so busy going to classes, writing, studying, getting stuck in LA traffic, trying to find a parking spot at Trader Joe’s, doing the dishes and laundry, and waiting for my roommates to finish using the fancy hairstyling tools we all share.
On the other hand, I am surrounded by horny, drunk college guys a lot of the time.
Actually, that’s the same hand.
It turns out I don’t enjoy being around horny, drunk college guys—even the hot ones.
I’m still a hopeful romantic too, so I am now more determined than ever to hold out for the perfect guy and the perfect situation. Or at least I was until the day before I turned twenty-two in November. Like everyone else, I always become more aware of the passage of time right before my birthday and around New Year’s Eve.
I would just really love it if the perfect situation with the perfect guy could present itself before the end of this year because, to paraphrase the original theme song to my mom’s third-favorite TV show—the theme song you’ll only hear on the DVD set for the series, but not if you stream it, much to my mother’s dismay—I don’t want to wait for my life to be over; I want to know right now if boning is really as amazing as people say it is.
Until such time as I do find out for myself, I have writing of all kinds to keep me busy.
The phone in my hand dings with a text notification.
FUNNY COFFEE GUY: What?! Only one laughing face emoji for that one? That was worth three laughing face emojis or one ROTFL emoji at least.
Oh, Funny Coffee Guy. You aren’t as funny as you think you are. You must be really cute.
Before I even get a chance to shoot back a raised-eyebrow emoji, he sends another text.
FUNNY COFFEE GUY: Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is that not why you’re here?!
Nice. A Gladiator reference. That’s one of my dad’s favorite movies. Good thing I’m here because Lainey would not have caught that.
“Hey, Lainey?!”
I can hear my roommate Lainey stomping down the hall in her stacked heels. “Yes, Poops?” My name still autocorrects to Poops. Even if it didn’t, this will never not be my unfortunate nickname. “Are you guys still texting? Do we like him?”
“He’s definitely nice. He’s not as funny as he thinks he is, but he just used a promising quote from a movie. Do you want me to continue treading water for you, or do you want to shift gears?”
“Bring it, Piper baby. Text hard or go home! Give him a brainy slut reply.”
I ready my thumbs. “Brainy slut who’s willing to receive an indecent photograph in response to her response? Or brainy slut who wants to engage in more banter before getting to the?—”
“The first one, obviously. I have to decide if I want to see him tonight.”
“Okie doke.” I type out a text on her phone. It’s a clever little spin on a different quote from Gladiator .
LAINEY: Will you not win the crowd? Give me something I’ve never seen before, Maximus…
I hand the phone back to its owner. She scrolls through the conversation I had with Funny Coffee Guy on her behalf while she was changing outfits. “I don’t understand any of this but thank you. Wait, is his dick named Maximus?! Wow. We got a flushed-face-emoji response. Here we go!” She crosses her fingers. It’s sort of heartening that she still gets so excited by penis pictures. “Come oooonnnn, Maximus!”
Lainey Nicholls is a very good friend who is really good at getting guys to buy her drinks, excellent at making out with them, and terrible at text banter or carrying on any kind of meaningful text conversation at all, really. I’ve been helping her flext with guys since freshman year when we roomed together on campus. Now we live together in a three-bedroom apartment in Westwood, along with Tracy. I help Lainey sound brainy and sexy in text convos with her many suitors, and in exchange for this service, she makes sure I don’t—as she puts it—disappear up my own hopeless-romantic-wannabe-screenwriter asshole. She’s afraid that one day she’ll walk into my room to find a glittery puddle of virgin tears in front of a Final Draft document that just says ALL WORK AND NO SEX MAKES PIPER A DILDO HOARDER over and over again.
To be clear, Lainey is the one who keeps buying me sex toys. And IKEA storage solutions to hide them in. She also pays for all the Ubers and very often buys me dinner and reminds me to eat it when I’m lost in the second act of whatever rom-com script I’m writing, either for my screenwriting class or for fun. She can afford to do this because she has a trust fund.
I can afford to help her text guys because I am not too busy texting guys from my own phone. But that’s okay. I just haven’t met the right person to flext with yet. My thumbs are all warmed up for him when he’s ready.
I thought, for one night three years ago, that I had perhaps met my soulmate via email, but I haven’t heard from found your journal guy again.
Which is fine.
I also had this crazy secret fantasy for a while that maybe that guy who was emailing me was Holden Archer, because once he started doing more press for Riders of Storm and Fire I learned that he has a sister who’s eleven years younger than him. And he would have started preproduction right around the time he said he had to leave town! But I kept that to myself. It’s what I call a Piper Dream. I had to let that one go.
“Ugh.” Lainey blows disappointed raspberries at her phone. “No, thank you.” She slides her phone into her back pocket. “Let’s go out!”
“I’m doing a dialogue polish on my script.” I hold up my laptop and then nod toward the TV. “And I have to watch When Harry Met Sally… before it leaves Netflix in a week.”
“You’ve seen that movie a hundred million times, and you have every Nora Ephron movie ever made downloaded on your phone.”
“Well, I had to delete a few to free up some memory, actually,” I mumble. I didn’t delete When Harry Met Sally , of course. “I’m already in my sweats, though,” I say, knowing how foolish it is to fight her on this.
“I’m going to give you a fifteen-minute glow-up. You’re leaving for New York in, like, three days, right?”
“Yeah.”
“You have to come out with us. This time next year we might all be living in different cities.” She pouts.
That is true. I graduate in less than half a year, and unless I sell a script, which is admittedly unlikely, or if I don’t have a well-paying job here by then, I’ll have to move back home. Not that that would be the worst thing in the world. I do miss New York. But I don’t miss sharing a bathroom with my little brother.
“We need to get you out of your head and get a guy in you. Not the perfect guy . Just a guy. Get it over with. I can’t take the pressure anymore. Don’t make me tell you the story of my first time again.”
It was in the back seat of a Mustang in a Fatburger parking lot when she was seventeen. It’s really not a good story.
Tracy jogs into the living room, her hands in the air. She’s going through a retro Sporty Spice phase, and it’s working for her. “Yes! Seize the dick! My first time was on a basement sofa that smelled like Cheetos and beer, and the guy tried to convince me I had an orgasm even though he only lasted thirty seconds and foreplay consisted of him trying and failing to remove my bra.” She claps. “It did get better, but not with him. Where are we going?! I want to help with the glow-up. We should go to that place on Sunset that you puked in front of,” she says to Lainey.
“You’ll have to be more specific,” Lainey says with no irony whatsoever as she scrolls her phone.
I back up the current draft of my current screenplay, How We Got Here , and reluctantly close my laptop. Maybe I’ll meet a nice designated driver who’s a good kisser, with a butt that looks good in jeans, even if it’s not a ten. Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world either.
“Ugh. Why is she so horrible?” Lainey grumbles, staring at her phone. “Hey, Poops, you know how you’re obsessed with Holden Archer? My sister just posted a revolting selfie with him at a party.” She comes over to show me an Instagram post from her sister, Shay Nicholls.
“Didn’t she just break up with her boyfriend, like, three minutes ago?” Tracy asks.
“He dumped her last week. She is clearly hurting. Look how much highlighter she’s wearing.”
Shay Nicholls is an impossibly pretty starlet who is as talented as she is shallow. At least she seems shallow from what Lainey says, and from what I’ve seen in interviews. But she is as good an actress as anyone who’s been cast as the pretty mean girl in movies and TV shows over and over again can be. She is making a super casual duck face while leaning a little too far into Holden’s personal space. He frowns into the camera. He looks caught off guard to me, like he wasn’t expecting her to snap an “usie.”
But this means he’s here in LA now.
And he looks hot.
So painfully hot.
How can I explain just how handsome Holden Archer is? How the curves and angles of his jawline and chin do not resemble chiseled marble so much as sensual clay that was masterfully and lovingly sculpted by a lady artist who was remembering a young Robert Redford while listening to Zayn sing “Dusk Till Dawn.” How can I adequately describe how his chestnut-brown hair that has natural golden highlights, no matter what length it is, always arches and flops in front to the exact degree that makes my stomach flip. How his thick, dark eyebrows are as expressive as his penetrating blue eyes. The way his lips are shaped as though they were designed to kiss a woman hard enough to bruise, while whispering filthy poetry into her hungry mouth.
He has gotten even better looking in the past three years, in the way that actors do when they get more famous. And he is really famous now. The first Riders movie, which released at the end of last year, was the highest-grossing box office performer this year and last year. He has had a lot of stylists and trainers working on him. If Zac Efron and Shawn Mendes had a baby…that baby would look like an old shoe that stepped in dog crap compared to HEA. Yeah. His middle name is Everett . E . He is literally going to be someone’s HEA, and I wish he could be mine. He had to get in really good shape to play Zephyr, and they wrapped the second installment of that film series, Winds of Change , several months ago. He’ll be going into production on the third, Tempest Rising , soon after the world premiere of Winds of Change in February. Also, he was seen at a Post Malone concert with some of his costars and recently got a haircut.
I know way too much about Holden Archer, but I still haven’t seen him in person. I didn’t see him the night I left my diary in the cab. I didn’t manage to get tickets to any of the Comic-Cons he attended. I didn’t get to the Los Angeles premiere of Riders early enough to catch sight of him. I have never seen him while shopping at Whole Foods like numerous acquaintances of mine have in the times he’s been in LA. It almost seems impossible that I never once saw him anywhere in New York even though we lived in the same city for years before he was cast in Riders of Storm and Fir e.
I saw him in Riders seven times in the theater, though. I own the digital version—the director’s cut. He is beautiful in it. Truly. I know it was a special effect, getting his blue eyes to have silver flecks in them, but he acted like a guy who has blue eyes with silver flecks in them. And I am only one of millions of women who wishes he’d ride her like he rode that CGI dragon. Or that she could ride him like he rode the CGI dragon?
Doesn’t matter because I guess it’s never going to happen.
Which is why I keep telling myself to move on.
“Fine,” I say to Lainey, Tracy, and the Universe. “I will go out tonight. I will consider lowering my standards for my First Time, but I will not compromise my integrity as a romantic. The future of romantic comedies in Hollywood depends upon my positive outlook.”
“Atta girl,” Lainey says, holding up her hand for a high five. “Tomorrow night you can stay home to write a new script: When Cherry Met Salami .”
Half an hour later, I’m in the back of an Uber with my roommates, wearing Lainey’s boots with four-inch heels and false eyelashes that are so long they will arrive at the club on Sunset ten seconds before the rest of me will. I’m also wearing contacts, which I rarely do, but the tips of the fake eyelashes were touching the lenses of my glasses, making it hard to blink. I thought, at first, that we were just going to go to one of the taverns in Westwood Village, but my companions insisted that we should venture a little farther out so I can meet a different kind of guy. I don’t hate that idea. The outfit I’m wearing is so upscale and fashionable, I feel nothing like myself, and maybe that’s a good thing for tonight. I’m wearing my signature scent, though. Gotta smell like me. We pregamed while they were glowing me up, and by that I mean they made me drink one and a half shots of tequila, which is what it takes to get me out of the house after 9:00 p.m., unless it’s a trip to a twenty-four-hour diner for pie. But this is the opposite of that.
Lainey and Tracy are hate-watching Shay’s Instagram stories about the big Hollywood party she’s at, and I’m trying to visualize how I’ll feel after I have sex, when my phone vibrates. It’s a text from my dad. He somehow always knows when I’m going to be around drunk men—it’s incredible.
DAD: Hey there, sweet pea! We can’t wait to see you for Christmas, but I hope you’re having fun with some rizz peeps! Here’s a link to a fascinating news article I just read about a college girl who was abducted while she was walking home from a bar in LA because a young man asked for directions and she was kind enough to speak to him.
ME: Did Mom tell you to use the word rizz? Because you just told me you hope I’m having fun with charismatic people who are romantically and sexually attractive.
DAD: Well then, I would very much like you to avoid the rizz ones.
Sighing, I click on the article my dad sent. I have never once felt in any kind of danger since I’ve been out here, but there is something about December in LA that makes me homesick. All those Christmas lights on the palm trees. Instead of throwing a festive vibe, they look melancholy and maybe a little angry, even? Or am I projecting my feelings about Lainey’s sister meeting Holden Archer tonight when she probably doesn’t even like him half as much as I do? Which is a ridiculous thought—everyone likes Holden Archer, and he probably meets actresses like Shay all day, every day.
ME: Daddy, that article is from seven years ago.
DAD: And strangers have only gotten creepier in that time. Just want you to stay alert, angel.
ME: Once again, I will remind you that I grew up in Manhattan. I have the New York edge. The guys here need to be alert around ME. Please don’t worry. Why are you even awake right now?
DAD: Just felt like touching base, sugar. Be safe, see you soon.
When we get out of the Uber on Sunset, Lainey and Tracy take my hands, and the three of us bypass the long line waiting to be let into the bar. The bouncer unhooks a velvet rope without even checking to see if we’re on a list or asking to see our IDs. It’s pretty baller. Both of my roommates are snatched, and when guys check me out I realize it’s because they’re wondering if I’m Lainey’s assistant or something. I am the best friend supporting actress to Lainey’s and Tracy’s beautiful starlets in the movie of their lives when we go out. It’s fine. I’m just concentrating on not tripping.
This club is designed like a fancy old Hollywood supper club, and the music is, surprisingly, not ear-splittingly loud. The crowd is just so much eye candy. Seriously, everyone here is beautiful. This might not be terrible after all.
“Okay, this was too last-minute for us to get table service. Also, a bottle here costs, like, four hundred and fifty bucks, so no thank you,” Lainey informs me. “Let’s get a cocktail at the bar, do a lap, and see who’s here.” She waggles her perfectly sculpted eyebrows at me.
Still holding my hands, they lead me over to the bar. The lighting in this place is stunning. A cinematographer must have consulted on the design. Lainey and Tracy don’t let go of me until I’m resting my forearms against the counter for support.
The bartenders are all dressed in crisp white shirts and black tuxedo pants. One of them comes right over and nods at us. “Hey there, ladies. What can I get ya?” I detect a slight Boston accent, and I like it. He’s probably in his early thirties.
Lainey orders us Old Fashioneds with some kind of special bitters. The bartender is looking at me the whole time, and I start to open up my little handbag to show him my ID, but he just nods.
“You got it,” he says. He starts to make our drinks, pausing to check something on his phone, then he eyes me again.
Lainey wraps her arm around my shoulders and says into my ear, “He likes you! I think this bahtendah wants to pahk his cahr in your front yahd .”
I can’t help but laugh at that, but now I’m thinking about Billy Boston and how overprotective he was when he took me to that bar at Harvard when I went to the book signing. And that makes me think of Riders of Storm and Fire , because I went to Boston to meet the author, and that reminds me of Holden Archer, and now I’m feeling melancholy and kind of angry again.
When the bartender slides the drink toward me, I don’t even wait to clink glasses with my friends, I just take three big gulps.
“Whoa. Pace yourself, Poops,” Lainey says, rubbing my back. “You’re a lightweight, remember?”
I smack my lips together. “Delicious,” I say. “My compliments to the drink chef!” And then I try to wink at him, but my fake eyelashes stick together. I do not hesitate to use the thumb and index finger of my free hand to pry my eye open, but that causes me to wobble a little when I let go of the counter.
“Okay, honey…” Lainey and Tracy grab my arms.
“Let’s do a lap,” Tracy suggests. “Moving on.”
“That was supposed to be a wink!” I explain to the bartender. “I was trying to wink at you. ’Kay, bye-bye!”
“Hey, hang on. I like your bangs,” the bartender says to me. “I know this sounds weird, but can I send a picture of you to my girlfriend? She’s always looking on Pinterest for pics to show her hairstylist, and I think she’d like your hair.”
Girlfriend. Of course. “Really? My hair?”
“Sir, that is highly sus,” Lainey says, not at all accusatory. “But you look and sound like a young Ben Affleck, so go ahead. Give him your good side, Poops.”
“Okay. Which one is that?” I mutter, placing my drink back down. I rest an elbow on the counter and rest my chin on my fist, like a five-year-old posing for school pictures.
“Your right profile,” Tracy says as she adjusts my stance. “Hand down, chin up.”
I slap my hand down, lift my chin up, and part my lips, like a sexy fish gasping for air. Then I remember this is for his girlfriend, so I snap my mouth shut and smile demurely. “Cheeeese!” I say, because I’m fun.
The bartender holds up his phone, taps the screen a few times, and says, “Awesome, thanks.” He winks at me, in a friendly way. Without any parts of himself sticking together. “Lemme know if you need anything else, ladies.”
“You got it,” I say, giving him the double finger guns, and I don’t even lose my balance. I take a few more sips of my Old Fashioned cocktail, and when I turn around, I realize Tracy and Lainey are being chatted up by a couple of fellas, but I find a real tall drink of water standing right in front of me.
He’s wearing a fitted black-collared shirt and I cannot see his chest or abs, but I know they’re in there and I bet they aren’t super hairy. My gaze slowly travels up to his very attractive, intense-but-not-in-a-creepy-way face. “Hi there,” he says. His voice is deep, and I don’t think anyone has ever said hi there to me with so much intention.
“Well, hello there, sailor,” I say. “Come here often? I don’t. I prefer to live in my imagination most of the time.” I try to take a girly sip from the little straws in my drink, but I can’t get them to go in my mouth, so I very wisely give up before doing anything embarrassing.
“I, uh, I’ve been here a couple of times before, actually. When my buddies drag me out.”
“Hah! My buddies drug me out tonight too. Dragged me out? Is that right?” I cock my head to the side. “I probably seem drunk, but I am just a tittle lipsy .”
He laughs amiably. “Okay, that’s cool. My friends and I have a table over there, if you want to?—”
“Hey! I don’t think so, friend!” The bartender leans over the counter behind me. “I know a guy in Boston who would not like that you’re standing so close to this young lady.”
Oh my God.
The tall drink of water takes a step back. “Are you married or something?”
I sigh. “No. But I also know a guy in Boston. He’s married to an amazing woman and has two really cute little kids. He isn’t my uncle, technically, but he acts like one, I guess.”
“Huh?”
“Move it along, hotshot,” the bartender says. “I got my orders.”
My tall drink of water salutes the bartender and walks away.
“What is happening?” Lainey asks.
I turn back to face the bartender. “Let me guess—Billy Boston is a friend of yours, and you owe him a favor.”
He smiles, kind of sheepishly. “He sent a picture of you to a bunch of us who work in bars around town and made sure we remember your face. Said to keep an eye out for ya. I couldn’t quite tell if it was you because of the…” He indicates my fake eyelashes and all the other makeup that was applied to my face. “So I sent him a pic just now. He confirmed that I should protect you, and I quote, ‘like a little baby lamb that fell out of its nest.’ Sorry, but I gotta look out for ya.”
“Let’s go to Maloney’s, then,” Tracy says, shrugging. “You can take your pick at that place.”
“I know aaaalllll the guys that work at Maloney’s, sweetheart,” the bartender says.
Billy Boston knows people who know people everywhere.
I blow out a breath and shift around. My feet are starting to hurt already. Maybe this is a sign that I should still wait for the right guy and the right situation. That my virginity is not something that must be lost or given away like a hot potato—or even something sacred that has to be protected like the crown jewels or a baby lamb. My sexuality is a part of me that’s evolving, and I get to share it with the person or people I want to share it with when I want to share it. Or maybe I just can’t wait to take these damn boots and lash extensions off. “Can we please just get diner pie and go home?”
Lainey and Tracy exchange looks.
I hold up my finger. “Don’t say cherry pie.”
“Fine,” Lainey says, rolling her eyes. “Girls’ night in.” She polishes off her Old Fashioned and puts her arm around me. Leaning in, she whisper-yells, “I just gave my number to a guy, so you’re probably going to have to text with him later.”
“Bring it,” I say. “I’m feeling extra frisky.”