Girl Act Read Online Free

chimes by the small hands of three elves dressed in off-white painter pants, matching shirts, and white baseball hats, barefoot and sitting on the high ceiling rafters of Kenneth’s studio. The “yes” letters attached to fishing rod lines. I felt this sudden sense that an answer was coming to me in the next day: a map, or a written outline of where I should go.
    Later that night, he showed up, the Tennis Actor with his dirty blond hair slicked back, and for the first time I said, “You know what? I can’t hang out tonight; I need some alone time, some me time, some un-male time.”
    In a bitter tone he replied, “I got a callback, thought we could celebrate, but if you’re not in the mood, then so what!”
    I could have been soft and explained that I needed to be alone only for a few hours, so I could hear my own thoughts and figure out where my life needed to go and where the “yes” was going to come from, but I didn’t.
    “Congrats on the CB (callback). Talk to you tomorrow,” I said and took Shadow and went inside. I used to be the most dumped girl there ever was, til I turned twenty-six (I’m twenty-seven now) and decided to stop waiting by the phone, to stop trying to cross paths with a guy, to stop begging for some guy to let me stay over night, for the whole night, including breakfast, when he really wanted me to leave his place after the sex. To stop screwing him to just fill in the gap between me—and nothingness.
    I watched the Tennis Actor amble away, half wanting to run after him and jump on his back and hump his left leg just to prove that I had him, that I could keep him, but I forced myself to close the downstairs screen door and let go. I had never done that, I had always been the one walking away after a guy had asked to me leave or even hinted that I should. I had listened to guys telling me that they “needed their own space for a while” or that they’d “be back in touch, real soon.” I walked up the stairs and into my apartment. Shadow raced to his water bowl. I locked the door and sighed. I felt strangely different.
    Ugh, I have no plans ever to be a woman without a man, and yet I wasn’t lonely. Okay, so I also knew one night was one night and not a thousand. TG (Thank God). I opened my fridge and then made a delicious vegetarian plate of sesame pasta, with huge chunks of tofu and heaps of spinach. Good food calms me down. And tofu rocks! I gave Shadow his Science Diet dinner, and spread my turquoise bed sheet onto the hardwood floor. I took off all my clothes and there I lay naked, just waiting for the sign, the life-size moment of change to appear—the “YES”.

3
EGGS
    Waking up and looking for the sign of “yes” was no picnic. First, I had slept on the wood floor with just a sheet under me—which was fine for Shadow, asleep at my left hip, but my body was stiff in all the wrong places. And from the floor, I saw the used condoms the Tennis Actor had flung nonchalantly when he was ready to ejaculate on top of my belly, face, or against the wall in my little alcove bedroom.
    So much for my trying to act ‘as if’ I could attain Elizabeth Bennet’s love success in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice —which, incidentally Keira Knightley had done a great acting job in the movie version of, and the Mr. Darcy actor (Matthew Macfadyen) was beyond vulnerably perfect for what I had imagined. I read the book in high school and had had the twisted naive thought that I, too, was going to grow up and fall in love with a modern day Mr. Darcy—one who wouldn’t toss his used condoms on the floor and who would be in love with me, body and soul. What was I doing? And for how long had I just been doing nothing with my love life? Not that the Tennis Actor wasn’t exciting, good looking, and well-built in the area between his legs. But was there really a future?
    I sat up as Shadow started licking my thigh. “Is there a Mr. Darcy in LA?” I asked. Shadow barked as if I had said,