24. Ask the Girl
Something’s up. I can feel it in my bones, in the pit of my stomach and other places in my body that will allow that premonition to take over. I haven’t the faintest idea as to why Justin is taking me to one of the fanciest restaurants in Lost Angeles. I’m trying not to over analyze every move he makes or the fact that he’s been rather grim faced and silent for the majority of the night.
Trace was acting more like a freak than usual and even Elliot seemed to be stepping on eggshells with me before he headed off to one of the parties he was in charge of on this warm summer night. It seems that everyone knows something other than me and I really, really, don’t like being left in the dark.
When I got to Justin’s house it was like he was on autopilot. He wasn’t the goofy, fun loving, and dorky self that I’ve been used to the past couple of weeks and his change of mood is really starting to concern me. I don’t dare bring it up, however, because lord knows if I remind him of something that’s eating at him, the mood will suffer even more, and I really want to enjoy myself tonight.
Even if Justin is acting like something crawled up his butt and died.
Trace could hardly even look at me when I stopped by the house. He was mumbling about going to hang out with Joanna and seemed to either be on the verge of laughing or tears. I’m not even going to dwell on the fact that it seemed like he was looking at me as if he was seeing me for the last time. I honestly am not a fan of all this secret stuff and I hope it isn’t as bad as I think it is.
I mean, really, he’s taking me to Taverna Tony’s….one of the most famous and expensive Italian restaurants in the tri-state area…how bad could it be?
Well, I can think of a handful of things he could tell me…the majority of them not good things. And why should I focus on good things when it probably is going to be something like he’s dying or he’s bankrupt, or he’s breaking up with me.
No, I told myself I wasn’t going to think about that last bit. Why would he break up with me?
But he has been behaving like there’s a stick up his ass all evening and the way Trace was acting, and even Elliot…like they all know something I don’t. Well, can you blame me for being a bit paranoid?
“The alfredo is supposed to be really good,” Justin mumbles. He’s been hiding behind his menu ever since the hostess placed us in a secluded area of the restaurant. Most of the patrons are famous or wealthier than God, so the appearance of Justin stalking through the restaurant isn’t that big of a deal. Which I’m thankful for, I don’t know if I could stomach anyone watching me eat right now…not when I feel something terrible is going to happen.
“Yeah?” I muse as I place the menu down on the table. I’m a simple girl when it comes to ordering at Italian places. Just give me my spaghetti and meatballs and I’ll be a happy camper. I’ve known what I wanted to order since Justin called me yesterday asking me out on this rather subdued date and the fact that he’s been hiding better than Osama bin Laden is really starting to grind my gears.
The waitress comes back with the wine selection and after Justin picks a bottle of some really expensive ass merlot, we place our orders and settle into an awkward conversation of bringing the tour back on it’s feet and the insane account I just landed at work.
I’ve handled enough big budgeted weddings that when my time finally comes I’m just going to kidnap my husband and take him to Vegas or Reno. There is no way in hell I can deal with the big wedding because I’ve been around them for almost a year. I don’t want to deal with any bridezillas, overly expensive floral arrangements or really snippety gay best friends who demand that everything be matching and every fold of satin be exactly three inches apart.
Oh yeah, I had to deal with one of those and let’s just say that we almost had a catfight of Barbara Streisand proportions.
I’m trying to ignore the way Justin is fidgeting with the edge of the tablecloth and how his eye contact is more sporadic than someone with a lazy eye. He’s anxious about something and I feel like you can’t even cut the tension with a butcher knife.
And yet, all his fidgeting and erratic behavior aside, I still love him more than life itself and the way he’s been acting is concerning me and making me nervous. Why can’t he just say what’s eating him and get it over with?
The food arrives with lightning precision and soon we’re too busy stuffing our faces to really concern ourselves with carrying a fledgling conversation. I don’t know where our chemistry and camaraderie died. It’s almost like we’re on a first date or something and the awkwardness is reaching epic proportions. I feel like he’s pushing me away and keeping me behind some thick pane of glass. I’m suffocating here and it isn’t the enormous helpings of pasta I’m shoving down my throat.
What the fuck is going on?
Once the food is cleared off our plates and safely stowed away in our tummies does the waitress return to take dessert orders. I’m so anxious to get this date over with that I just want to skip dessert and just have Justin drive me back to his place so I can drive home to the apartment and bitch and moan to Elliot about how Justin is being an insensitive prick who likes to put his girlfriend through abnormal and overly awkward fancy date nights.
But of course, Justin wants to prolong this torture and orders at least three things off the dessert menu. He’s really starting to flip me out because for the most part, he could only pick at his food. When the waitress came back for our dinner remains, she seemed perplexed that only a third of his plate had disappeared.
Then again, I wasn’t that hungry either…talk about a fucking nightmare.
He begins to shift uncomfortably in his seat and my senses start working into overtime. For someone who always portrays himself as cool, calm, and collected, he’s a nervous fucking wreck and it shows in how he moves and jumps around at every single noise that’s louder than a whisper.
Something is up…and with the way he’s behaving it’s something bad.
I clear my throat and he jumps about a mile in his seat before he focuses his attention on me. “So…” he starts and his voice fades away before he looks over my shoulder at something else. God he’s driving me crazy right now.
“Um, listen…Lauren,” he starts again and suddenly I know what’s happening before he can even say anything else.
Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my sweet, ice skating Jesus! This cannot be happening to me right now!
He takes a sharp intake of breath and the table starts to vibrate due to the shaking of his legs underneath the table.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
“You’re breaking up with me.” I blurt out before I can even think.
“What?” he asks incredulously and I lean back in my chair, trying not to fully let my mind wrap around this one idea that is running through my head.
“You’re breaking up with me,” I gasp in a hushed whisper as I lean forward over the table, “I knew it. You’ve been acting weird all day. This is why, huh?”
“Wh-what gave you that impression?” he stutters and the table jumps so violently that the hand that was clutching my upper leg shoots across and forcibly pins his leg down to the floor. I half expect his teeth to start chattering because he is absolutely jumping with nerves.
“I don’t know, the fancy kiss-off dinner, Trace acting a fool, Elliot as well,” I add as an afterthought, “You’ve realized that this isn’t going to work and you’re cutting ties, right?”
“Holy shit, no!” Justin shoots back as he pushes away from me, the shaking apparently gone. I pull my other hand up and clasp them in front of me on the table, hoping he can’t see how my knuckles are white from gripping my hands so hard. I’m trying to keep my lip from trembling and I hope that my anxiousness and fear isn’t traveling across the table to him. “That isn’t it at all, Lauren.”
“Really?” I question. What else would he drag me all the way over here for unless….
“No! Jesus and here I thought I was the stupid one,” he mutters under his breath before he looks up at me in horror. Apparently he wasn’t supposed to say that little comment out loud.
“Then what is this then?”
The silence between us is deafening and I can feel the awkwardness rising into an unbearable wall over the table. The waitress hasn’t come back with our dessert and maybe she can feel the waves of despair and seeming disaster that is radiating from our table. I can only hope she doesn’t come over unless it’s to offer the check.
I watch in silence as he licks his lips and looks over his shoulder before sighing heavily. Here it is…he lied before hand. He really is going to break up with me and soon I’ll be back to what I was months ago “ a shell of a human being. I don’t know if I could survive that again…I don’t know if I would want to.
“I just think that it’s time for us to take our relationship to that higher level,” Justin finally relents, “I mean we’ve been doing really well lately and…”
I’m so excited by his revelation that I really don’t care what else he has to say, “Of course! Yes!” I all but squeal. I figured it would totally ruin the atmosphere if I jump out of my chair and scream to all high heaven. I can feel the tension leaving my body and the wall that was raised between us thanks to Captain Awkward has deteriorated to ruins amidst the crumbs from the breadbasket.
“What? Really?” his voice is higher pitched than usual and I watch as he gets to his feet, his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets.
“I totally agree,” I beam, “We’ve been doing well and yes, I think it is time for me to move back in.”
*~*~*~*~*
I feel like Frodo fucking Baggins.
This ring has been weighing me down all night and I’ve been aware of its presence ever since I picked it up from Harry Winston this morning. It has honestly been the only thing I’ve been able to think about since I brought up this whole proposal mess to Trace four days ago. I still can’t believe that I’m sitting here in this restaurant about to ask Lauren to be my wife.
Well I was going to ask her…but apparently she’s got other things in mind than marriage. Like the fact that she thought I was breaking up with her. I’m sorry, but if I want to sever ties with you I will stop calling, I will change the locks on my doors, and I will have security keep you a good twenty feet away from me at all times. The last thing I would do is take the girl out for an expensive dinner that will have my accountant calling me in the morning bitching about how the credit card company froze my card.
And Lauren has to know that this isn’t my style. If I wanted her to move back in, it would involve us sitting on the couch watching one of her reality television shows that I hate in her presence (but secretly love when she isn’t around), and me nonchalantly asking her to box up her shit and leave Smelliot’s place. I wouldn’t be spending a mint to bring that up. And hasn’t she noticed that my hands have been in my jacket pockets almost all of dinner? Jesus and I thought men were supposed to be oblivious with this shit.
“I’ve wanted to bring this up for ages, but I didn’t know how to go about it!” Lauren exclaims as she reaches across the bare table to grasp onto my right hand. My left one is securely fastened around the velvet box that is resting in my coat pocket. I want nothing more than to whip it out and throw the sucker on her finger…but that would be the worst proposal idea ever and I want this to be special for her. If there’s one thing I don’t want to fuck up for Lauren, it’s her first (and her last) marriage proposal.
“Really?” I question, her sudden confession almost taking my mind off this failed marriage proposal.
“Yeah, but you know you didn’t have to do all this fancy shit to ask me. You could have just said something when I came over the last time. You know you don’t have to go all out for that kind of thing,” Lauren adds and I want to do nothing more than to smack my face onto the table out of sheer frustration.
No shit, Sherlock. But I can’t start behaving like an asshole right now. She looks incandescently happy and I can only imagine what she would look like if I ever grew the balls to ask her to marry me again. It doesn’t help that she can’t read me right now, can’t see that I’m absolutely chomping at the bit to yank the stupid ring out and get it over with. God I feel so inadequate, I can’t even formulate a decent marriage proposal, she has to think that I’m breaking up with her before she can even think about something good.
Maybe this whole proposal thing isn’t such a good idea?
But shit I already called her dad to ask for permission and I know that her parents are waiting on pins and needles for their daughter to call for a confirmation. What can I say, I may be a callous son of a bitch, but I’m a gentleman first and foremost.
“God I feel so much better!” she exclaims with a huge sigh of relief, “I’m starving.”
Apparently our waitress was eavesdropping because at that exact moment she shows up with the three deserts I ordered for our table. Lauren snatches the tiramisu and begins to devour it ravenously. At least I didn’t fall in love with a girl who has no appetite.
“Yeah, I feel better too,” I say half-heartedly. I actually feel worse because I know that I’m going to have to come up with an even better way of proposing and I don’t know if my nerves, or my credit card can take another bruising like this.
In between her shoveling piles of Italian pastries in her mouth, we talk about the tour and how my record company isn’t so much taking off, but fledgling rather. I only have two artists signed and I won’t be able to put much into them until I’m done touring for my own album and have completed all of my other open ended endeavors.
“Did you pick a new P.A.?” she asks while we both clear our plates of ice cream. My appetite is steadily returning although I still feel like this damn ring is going to cut a hole in my pocket.
“I did. Rachel,” I state as I think about my cousin with a furtive smile. I would much rather have Lauren signed on as my assistant but we both know that would be the end of us in a relationship sense because we’d end up killing each other. She can’t be around the working Justin Timberlake all the time and I can’t be around the working Lauren Walters, hardly ever.
And then The Plan hits me like a ton of bricks.
Good God, I must be the direct descendent of Einstein because I am a mother fucking genius.
Genius.
Author's Chapter Notes:
So there's one more chapter to go and DD2 is complete! Again I apologize for the decrease in updates and how I've pretty much gone AWOL. You guys definitely don't deserve it and Lauren and Justin don't deserve it either.
Depending on how busy I am this week, keep your eyes open for the last chapter. I hope you won't be disappointed :)
-Amanda
Depending on how busy I am this week, keep your eyes open for the last chapter. I hope you won't be disappointed :)
-Amanda
Story Tags: boyfriendj justin
