3: Back At Your Door
It had been a week since Justin had gotten Zooey’s number that fateful night at Guys & Dolls and he had yet to use it “ mostly due to a hectic schedule “ but he had to admit that there was a bit of a tentative pause whenever he scrolled past ‘Samantha Baker’ on his list of contacts. The intent to deceive was clear, because why else would he need to give her an alias? And if he felt that he had to hide her from Scarlett, what else was he subconsciously planning on keeping from the woman he was about to commit his life to?
After he thought about it long enough, he was completely uncomfortable with the idea, so he changed the listing from her pseudonym to that of her real name, but made sure to add ‘NBC’ under the name of her company. And while that was nothing short of the truth, Justin knew that, having so many different affiliations with the network, if Scarlett did happen to see her name (and company), there would be no questions asked.
Pleased with himself and his ingenuity, he decided to go ahead and finally call his new friend after seven long days without communication.
And Zooey, who had been busy in her makeshift garden, was pleasantly surprised when her phone rang and ‘Jake Ryan’ popped up on the screen. She had decided that it would be disrespectful for her to call first, given that he was attached and she wasn’t. Even though this was a platonic thing, she knew the insinuations of a single girl calling an engaged guy and wanted him to be the decision-maker. She was happy that he got the hint. “Hey!” she greeted him cheerfully after running to catch his call.
“Hey,” he grinned at the sound of her voice and her heavy breathing. He liked that she’d clearly made an effort to speak to him. “What are you up to?”
“What are you up to?” she answered his question with a question.
“I’m asking you what you’re up to.”
“Well, I just got done freaking out about my car being stolen, and… now I’m planting tomatoes.”
“Are you serious? Someone stole your Range?”
“Well, no. The reason I stopped freaking out is because I realized it was towed. I was parked in front of a driveway.”
“Wow,” he laughed loudly. “That’s… special.”
“I’m special,” she admitted with a sigh, still happy that he thought to call her. “Besides pestering me, what are you up to?”
“Oh… nothing really.”
“I didn’t think you’d call,” she grinned meekly.
“I didn’t think I would either, but… I found myself dragging my feet this morning and you seemed like a good pick-me-up.”
“I can’t tell whether that’s a compliment or an insult.”
“Just a fact,” he reasoned. “Speaking of which, what are you doing today?”
“How is that speaking of which?”
“What?”
“What do my plans for the afternoon and-or evening have to do with what we were just speaking of?”
“Well I said I was dragging my feet this morning, and then I thought of all I have to do today, so I figured I’d ask what’s on your plate. Is that irrational?”
“Fair enough,” she allowed, pulling herself from the ground to head back inside her house. “But correct me if I’m wrong, didn’t you tell me you were engaged? Was that a nightmare? …Please tell me it was…”
He couldn’t help but smile in reply. “No, I am engaged. But we can be friends, right?”
“I guess,” she coughed uneasily, knowing that would be easier said than done. “I… I mean if you think that’s all right.”
“It’s fine. I have plenty of friends that are girls.”
“Is that so?”
“Well not really. But you wouldn’t be the first.”
“All right,” she sighed again, trying to figure a scenario where this didn’t end disastrously. “And to answer your question, I am… having a party tonight.”
“And you weren’t gonna invite me? Shit, maybe we can’t be friends.”
“Shut up, you can come. It’s just this little thing I do with my friends, one of my episodes is airing.”
“One of your episodes?” he asked in confusion, realizing he never quite got the full scope of her job. “What does that mean?”
“I told you I’m a writer for The Office, didn’t I?”
“You did,” he recalled, “but you said you didn’t act, so... what?”
“Oh right, you disappeared in the middle of our conversation.”
“I didn’t disappear! I told you I was leaving.”
“It was awkward, though, and pretty discourteous, actually. But no, I don’t act,” she confirmed. “When I say one of my episodes is airing, that means that the episode, the script was my idea, I wrote it all.”
“Seriously? No one helps you?”
“Well… no, not at first. The way Greg Daniels “ he’s the creator, executive producer, and head writer--.”
“I know who he is,” Justin assured her.
“Well ‘scuse me, I’m just trying to be informative,” she snapped jokingly. “Well, what he does is if we have an idea, we have to create an entire episode around it. We can get help from the other writing staff if we so choose, but before we submit it to him, it has to be a complete episode. So I usually like to do scripts on my own, get them approved “ because that’s where the real money is--.”
“Of course,” he injected.
“And then once we decide where to put the episode, it comes to the entire staff and we meet and debate over it for two months, we discuss direction and psychology and the broader questions, and eventually, we shoot it.”
“That’s interesting.”
“And then, of course, Steve Carell comes in and improvs everything so our jobs are kind of pointless,” she added with a laugh. “But I like it anyway.”
“That’s a pretty badass job,” he commented, feeling a strange tinge of pride for her. “How did you manage that?”
“Well, my parents are friends with Greg, so that didn’t hurt --.”
“Ah, nepotism rears its wonderfully unfair head.”
“Well fuck you very much, I’m good at my job. I’ve been with the show for two seasons and I’ve already had three episodes green-lit. The very first one that I submitted was aired and subsequently ranked number five out of all twenty-six last season. Trust me, no matter what favor Greg owed my parents, none of that would have happened if I weren’t good. I worked my way up, starting in college, I wrote for the Harvard Lampoon, the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, and I was the president of our improv troupe… so no, it was not nepotism.” She let her words sink into the air before adding, “…They just needed more women on their staff, so it was more like affirmative action rearing its unfair head, actually.”
“I stand corrected,” he chuckled awkwardly, not at all used to people speaking to him so candidly.
“Yes, you do.”
“What episode was yours last season?”
“Do you watch the show regularly?”
“Umm, pretty regularly, yeah.”
“Well, it was called ‘The Duel.’ When Andy found out about Dwight and Angela and tried to run over him in the parking lot.”
“Oh really? That was one of my favorite episodes.”
“Are you saying that just to humor me after you’ve pissed me off?”
“No, it’s one of few that I remember from last season,” he proclaimed sincerely. “Side note, you guys have taken a huge downhill turn from what you were in the first couple of seasons.”
“Do you want me to hate you? Is that it?”
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” he laughed happily. “Honestly, it is one of my favorite shows on right now, one of the few that I watch. So I’d be honored to come to your party tonight.”
“Don’t get excited, it’s really low budget shit, we drink cheap wine and eat Chinese food.”
“I’m game,” he smirked. “What time should I be there?”
“We convene at around seven-thirty, but as long as you’re here before nine.”
“Sounds good.”
“So… awesome. You’re gonna meet all my friends, and be nice to them, and it’s gonna be oodles of fun.”
“Why wouldn’t I be nice to them?”
“Well, you just told me I got my job because of my parents and that the show sucks now, so… clearly, you’re not known as the polite guy.”
“I said I was kidding!”
“Uh huh.” She knew he was joking, but she was undeniably pretty sensitive about her work. “I’ll see you tonight, stranger.”
“Later.”
____________________
Later came sooner than Justin expected, and he found himself running late to Zooey’s party. He meant to pick up some wine “ the non-cheap kind “ and stop by his house for one of his The Office DVDs for her to sign, but he wasn’t able to do any of that once he was done with a long day of handling business stuff with Trace.
When he arrived at the address she gave him, still dressed in his ‘work clothes’ “ William Rast jeans, plaid shirt, and blazer “ he wondered exactly what he had gotten himself into. Zooey lived in Los Feliz, an area notoriously known as a dwelling for hipsters, and her small home was a definite contrast to the $80,000 Range Rover she was driving around in. Still, he parked his Audi on a street full of seventies BMWs and hybrid Volkswagens, aside from Zooey’s car, and hiked up her steep driveway.
“Good evening, good evening,” Zooey greeted him before he could even ring the doorbell. She wore a green and white plaid sundress, managing to match Justin’s shirt as if they planned it. “Glad you could make it.”
He eyed her, clearly amused by her choice of clothing. “I told you I would come.”
“That’s what she said,” she giggled at her show’s well-known pun and stepped back to let him inside. “Let me give you a quick tour and then I’ll introduce you to my dudes and dudettes.”
Zooey’s house was pretty nicely decorated, a bit of a contrast to its exterior, where her small lawn was unkempt, her stucco was chipping, and the red paint on her front door was peeling. Inside, however, was much more charming, done up with contemporary square furniture and walls painted in rich yellows and purples. Most endearingly, she had paintings of one of the Beatles on each of the walls of her living room, one of the Rat Pack on each wall of her dining room, and her halls were lined with portraits of some of SNL’s greatest, including Gilda Radner, Phil Hartman, John Belushi, Eddie Murphy, and Tina Fey. Justin definitely liked what he saw, and regretted judging her house by its cover.
“You have an awesome place here,” he noted genuinely once they were back at the front of the one-story home.
“Thanks. I just bought it about a month ago, so there’s still a ton of work to be done, especially exterior-wise, but I likes it.”
“Well if you need help with any of that stuff, you can always give me a call…”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I know a great yard service.”
“Very funny,” she rolled her eyes, taking his hand to bring him back to the living room where her friends had convened to play Wii until the nine o’clock hour. “Guys, I want you to meet Justin.”
Her friends, an eclectic group of twenty-somethings looked up, a bit surprised that the Justin she had previously mentioned was Timberlake. “Hey,” some of them greeted him collectively.
The group read like a Benetton ad, all different colors of the rainbow, all unbelievably thin and uniquely attractive under their veil of tousled hair and clothing designed to make them look like they didn’t necessarily care about their appearances.
“That’s Lacey,” Zooey began to point them out, referring to a gorgeous dark-skinned girl perched on the couch with her mile-long legs crossed. “Besides Em, she’s my best friend.”
“Hi,” she grinned, lighting up the room.
“Hello,” Justin smiled back, admiring her extra large afro before meeting her gaze.
“She’s the first person I met when I moved here,” Zooey explained to him. “We were sitting together on a flight from New York, we became friends instantly.”
“You just make friends wherever you go, don’t you?”
“Pretty much,” she nodded, moving on. “That’s Andrew.” She pointed to a skeletal white dude with lots of facial hair, sitting on the floor at the coffee table, drinking a glass of red wine.
Justin could already tell Andrew was an asshole, just by the way he refused to look up, but Justin greeted him anyway. “What’s up.”
“Hey,” he answered, still avoiding eye contact.
“Tiana is the one playing right now.” She was a cute Hispanic girl with big multicolored hair, several tattoos adorning her wrists and forearms, and an awesome Wii tennis player.
“Nice to meet you,” she called out between shots.
“Nice to meet you, too.”
“And that’s Jon.” Jon was a tall Asian guy, his thick black hair covering his eyes, and lots of cookies sitting in front of him at the end of the table. When he got up to shake Justin’s hand, he realized that Jon was wearing William Rast jeans and immediately liked him.
“Good to meet you,” he returned with the handshake.
“Same here,” Jon answered.
“And Tennille and Adrian will be here soon,” Zooey finished. “But in the meantime, make yourself at home. I’m gonna finish up dinner, but play yourself a round of Wii golf or whatever.”
“I thought we were having Chinese.”
“We had that last week,” Andrew inserted, a bit obnoxiously. “Zo’s making pizza and sliders, if that’s all right with you.”
“That’s fine with me,” Justin retorted.
Zooey smiled to alleviate the mounting tension in the room and gently touched Justin’s arm. “You want something to drink? A beer?”
“A Corona if you have it.”
“Coming right up.”
As she headed towards the back of the room where her kitchen was situated, Justin took a seat on the sofa next to Lacey. He was about to ask her a friendly question or two, but Andrew glanced at him coldly, so he opted not to speak.
“What’s it like?” Andrew eyed him.
“What’s… what like?” Justin wondered with a nervous smile.
“Clueless,” he shook his head.
Rubbing his stubbly cheek, Justin turned to Lacey, who was already rolling her eyes at their friend. “Did I miss something?”
“No,” she assured him. “He’s just a bitter little dude.”
“Lacey, why don’t we play some music?” Jon piped up, wanting to subdue their conversation before it got out of hand.
“But not the soulless bullshit kept alive by people like this dude over here,” Andrew curtly supplied, clearly referring to Justin. “Play some real music.”
“Andy, chill,” Tiana hissed.
“What? Justin can probably tell you firsthand, everything played on the radio is responsible for the downward turn of American music. It’s the birthplace of mediocrity.”
Justin couldn’t help but laugh, as he’d been through this conversation a couple of times before with know-it-alls just like this dude. “Maybe it’s born there, but it’s conceived by hipster assholes who think they’re too disparate to like what’s popular. So we get people like Ke$ha infecting the airwaves for six months before I come in and reclaim my rightful spot at the top of the charts.”
“You’re perpetuating lies to people, you know. What exactly is SexyBack about? How do you sing something you don’t feel?”
“Come on, Andrew. We all compromise for some sake or another,” Zooey inserted in an attempt to simultaneously defend and criticize Justin.
Justin glanced back at her curiously, surprised that she thought him a sellout, considering what she did for a living. She wasn’t exactly some starving talent on a struggling television show.
“How do you sleep at night?” Andrew asked him seriously.
“On a bed made of money,” he shot back with a smirk, not missing a beat.
“You’re actually proud of what you do.”
“Well how would you people ever know what you’re supposed to like if all us successful folk weren’t around for you to hate?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, is success defined by how many times you’re played on the radio in an hour?”
“Only if you like being paid.”
“Well if it means peddling that swill you call music to the masses, then I guess I am unsuccessful.”
“And… what do you do exactly?”
“Right now, I’m a waiter at the Four Seasons,” he admitted cockily. “But I’m in the process of starting a record label.”
“I hope that works out for you.”
“It’s working.”
As the opening notes to a song by The Smiths began to fill the room, Justin realized that this evening would only get worse before it even got started. “I should go. I’m clearly too uncool for this crowd.”
“What’s wrong? You afraid your fancy car’s gonna get stolen?”
“Well, Zooey’s car is more expensive than mine, so… no.”
“It was a Christmas gift from my parents!” she called out from the kitchen. “If I were loaded, I would not live here.”
“Well either way,” Justin got out of his seat and headed to where Zooey was preparing plates. “I really should go.”
“Ignore them,” she countered quietly. “They’re sitting here waiting to watch The Office. They are the paragon of popular culture. Your album is probably the most played on Andy’s iPod, behind the rouse of some ‘underground’ band called Ekal Rebmit.”
It took a minute, but he laughed when he realized she’d said his name backwards. “Jon is wearing my jeans,” he recalled.
“Stay,” she maintained, placing her hand on his. She offered him a small square piece of her homemade pizza margherita, smiling at him as he took a bite. “I’ll protect you.”
____________________
Hours later, after airings of The Office and 30 Rock, and a delicious dinner to match, when the group began to discuss Dostoevsky, Justin took that as his cue to leave.
“You guys, it’s been an… enlightening evening,” he interrupted them to announce. “Lacey, Jon, Tiana, Tennile, it was really nice meeting you.” He purposely left out Andrew, as well as the newcomer, Adrian, who apparently shared Andrew’s musical philosophies, as they had made it a point to be rude to Justin all evening. “Zooey, thanks for having me.”
She quickly leapt from her spot on the hardwood floor in order to walk him out. “You stayed longer than I thought you would.”
“Did you tell your friends to act like assholes?”
“Well you know, whenever people are given the opportunity to talk about something, the subtext is always, ‘I’m intelligent,’ or ‘I’m interesting. Now discuss!’” She rolled her eyes at some of her friends’ off-putting smugness. “Don’t let them bother you.”
“But you do have to admit that there’s a difference between arrogance and outright rudeness. Adrian and Andrew were rude.”
She smirked as she opened the door for him, escorting him outside. “I know you’re used to people kissing your ass, but like I said before, it’s okay to get knocked down sometimes.”
“Says the girl who has a party just to make people a witness to her achievements.”
“If I don’t, no one else will.”
“Well, to be totally honest, I wasn’t a huge fan of your episode tonight.”
Her green eyes brightened in shock. “Rude!”
“Shhhoooouuumm.” He made a weird sound as he brought his hand from her actual height, down to that of a child. “Down to size.”
“Anyway,” she waved him off, offended. “Thanks for coming.”
“Really, thanks for having me. Scarlett is off in New York getting her wedding dress and being preoccupied with that…stuff, so I’ve been on my own all week. It was getting lonely.”
“Scarlett,” she nodded, her expression falling. Last thing she wanted was to be able to put a name to his fiancée’s existence. “You would marry a Scarlett.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he smirked.
“I don’t know. I just think of Scarlett Johansson when I hear that name, and she just seems like your type. Fucking perfect. Anybody named Scarlett would be your type.”
He couldn’t help but smile at the thought that his future wife was perfect. “I am engaged to Scarlett Johansson,” he confirmed, twisting the knife just a little more.
Zooey was a bit of a pop culture fiend, so she wasn’t sure how she missed that bit of information in the six years they’d apparently been together. “Of course you are.”
“We keep a low profile,” he added, reading her confused mind.
“Well then, I’m glad to be filling a void for your fucking perfect fiancée.”
“You didn’t do a bad job,” he decided, flashing his flawless grin.
“Asshole,” she whispered with a shake of her head, secretly loving the thought that she could even be mentioned in the same breath.
“Have a good night,” he saluted her goodbye and quickly turned from the scene, heading back for his Audi before he risked the possibility of being discovered by a camera lens.
He almost couldn't wait to get back to his car, back to even the slightest feeling of comfort. Zooey, as cool as she was, gave him an odd feeling. It wasn’t exactly an unpleasant one, but there was definitely something there that he couldn’t pinpoint, which he never liked. For much of his professional life, Justin was on the move, never really knowing what to expect, so in his personal affairs, he had come to crave predictability, security, and ease. Being around Zooey and her friends, he felt anything but. So he called Scarlett.
“I just sat around in my wedding dress for like three hours,” she answered his call gleefully. “Like in that one episode of Friends…”
“So I guess I don’t have to ask what you’re up to,” he chuckled lightly, though he was reminded of Zooey and her dislike for that show. He was constantly reminded of Zooey, it appeared. “Everything fits?”
“So long as I don’t gain a single ounce,” she nodded to the phone with a hoarse giggle. “And they’re gonna have to tape my boobs down.”
“Whoever ‘they’ are need to leave your boobs alone.”
“They’re a commodity, babe. They can’t be left alone.”
“I’m not sure how I feel about that,” he joked dryly.
“Anyway, where have you been? I called you a couple hours ago.”
“I went to this party,” he imparted honestly, looking over to Zooey’s house, as he hadn’t yet moved from his parking spot. She was still standing in her doorway, her thin frame illuminated by the light inside her house. “A get-together, really, for an acquaintance.”
“You sound like you didn’t have a good time,” she recognized his lackluster tone.
He looked to Zooey one last time before finally turning on his car. “I did have a good time. I just miss you.”
“Stop being adorable.”
“Ride home with me?”
“Gladly,” she agreed in a goofy, nasally tone. “Let’s play The Moment,” she suggested.
“Okay.”
“You go first.”
“Ummm,” he thought for a full minute as he pulled out of his sparking space and into the quiet street, silently saying goodnight to Zooey. “The moment you first found me repulsive.”
“Oh god, that night we had Jamaican takeout at my apartment? And you took the smelliest dump ever! I was so offended.”
“That’s nasty, Tess.”
“It’s repulsive, I know!” she laughed earnestly. “Like, we had only known each other a few weeks, I really had to think hard about calling you again.”
“I told you, though, that it was gonna be a bad one.”
“That did not help your case,” she was still giggling uncontrollably. “But, clearly, I got over it.”
“Clearly,” he suppressed a laugh himself. “You go.”
“The… moment you… knew you wanted to marry me.”
“I’ve done that one before.”
“Yeah, but I like hearing it,” she maintained, knowing that he liked telling it. “G‘head.”
“The moment I wanted to marry you was that night, it was during my second stint on SNL, the one when you introduced me,” he explained, even though she knew every detail of this story better than him by now. “…And during one sketch, you were just a few feet away at the side of the stage, watching me make a fool of myself, and there was a line that I messed up; I was trying to say, ‘A tiny beam of light,’ but pretty much everything came out but that. And I looked over and saw you cracking the fuck up, your face had turned pink, it was… moving. You were so happy. And I thought, ‘If that’s all I have to do to make her laugh… if I had anything to do with that, I would be the happiest man on the planet.’ Seeing you happy made me happy. And that was it for me.”
At least, back then, it had been.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Okay, so my laptop battery is dying, it's time for me to be in bed, but I wanted to post this today, so here we are. I went through and did a super quick edit, but I apologize beforehand for any glaring errors that I might've missed. And THANK YOU GUYS for the fantastic reviews. Like, I'm always nervous about a story until I get your feedback, so it really means a lot to hear from you guys. But anywho, I'm gonna keep it rolling. I hope y'all enjoy! - Ash
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