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Mia: You said you wouldn’t read it!
Michael: Oh my God, you should see your face. It’s the same color red as my Converse.
Mia: Thanks for pointing that out. Actually, I changed my mind. I don’t want you to have a copy anymore. Give me your phone, I’m deleting it.
Michael: What? No way. I’m reading this thing tonight. Hey—cut it out! Lars, help, she’s attacking me!
Lars: I’m only supposed to intervene if someone is attacking her, not if the princess is attacking someone else.
Mia: Give it to me!
Michael: No—
Waiter: Is there a problem here?
Michael: No.
Mia: No.
Lars: No. Please excuse them. Too much caffeine.
Mia: Sorry, Michael. I’ll pay for dry cleaning….
Michael: Don’t be stupid…are you still recording this?
End recording.
Sunday, April 30, 2:30 p.m., a bench in
Washington Square Park
Yeah, so, that didn’t work out so well.
And it got even worse when I was saying good-bye to Michael—after I’d tried, then failed, to wrestle his iPhone away from him so I could delete that copy of my book I’d so stupidly sent him—and we got up to leave, and I stuck out my hand to shake his hand good-bye, and he looked at it and said, “I think we can do a little better than that, can’t we?”
And held out his arms to give me a hug—an obviously friendly hug, I mean, it was nothing more than that.
And I laughed and said, “Of course.”
And I hugged him back.
And I accidentally smelled him.
And it all came rushing back. How safe and warm I’d always felt in his arms, and how every time he’d held me like that, I’d never wanted him to let go. I didn’t want him to let go of me there, right in the middle of Caffe Dante, where I was just interviewing him for the Atom, not on a date or anything. It was so stupid. It was so awful. I mean, I had to practically force myself to let go of him, to stop breathing in his Michael-y smell, which I hadn’t smelled in so long.
What is wrong with me?
And now I can’t go home, because I don’t think I can deal with running into any of my various family members from Indiana (or Genovia) who might be there. I just have to sit out here in the park and try to forget what a complete idiot I was back there (while Lars stands guard to protect me from the drug dealers who keep asking me to “Smoke? Smoke?” and the homeless people who want to know if I can give them “a five dollars” and the packs of touring NYU kids with their parents, who keep going, “Oh my God, is that—It is! It’s Princess Mia of Genovia!”) and hope eventually I’ll go back to normal and my fingers will stop shaking and my heart will stop beating Mi-chael, Michael, Mi-chael like I’m back in freaking ninth grade again.
I really hope that hot chocolate washes out of his jeans.
Also, I would just like to ask the gods or anyone else who might be listening…why can’t I conduct myself in a grown-up fashion around guys I used to date and with whom I broke up and whom I should be completely and one hundred percent OVER?
It was just so…weird sitting so close to him again. Even before I could smell him. And I get that we’re just friends now—and, of course, I know I have a boyfriend, and Michael’s got a girlfriend (probably—I never did get a straight answer about this).
But he’s just so…I don’t know! I can’t explain it! He sort of emanates this…touchable quality.
And, of course, I knew I couldn’t touch him (before I did touch him…which he ASKED me to do. He couldn’t have known what that hug would do to me. Did he know? No, he couldn’t have. He isn’t a sadist. Not like his sister).
