The Rule Book: A Novel

I’m just getting home from the office after having scanned all the contract papers and digitized them post-atrocious-coffee-meeting with Derek. Of course Marty dropped by my door with his favorite man-minion, Joe, to talk down to me. Be careful, Mac. You wouldn’t want Pender to see you frowning like that. I’d keep that smile up if I were you, sweetheart.

Right, because my beauty is what got me where I am. Because a woman is only as good as her smile. But here’s the thing, I refuse to let these absolute corn nuts take the wonder out of smiling for me. To taint it. If I want to smile every damn second of my life, I will. If I wake up tomorrow and decide to never show my pearly whites again, it’s my choice. But what I won’t do is be manipulated one way or the other. So I just pretended to get a call and ignored them until they walked away.

It was an exhausting day, but now I’m home in the comfort of my lovely little abode and I sigh with relief as I unzip my jeans and drop them the second I step through the front door. They hit the ground with a satisfying thunk. I shed my hot pink blazer next and then scoop them both up and deposit them in my laundry hamper (sorting by color because I like to have fun in my off time).

Now I’m alone in my apartment with my polar bear undies and Let’s Go Girls graphic T-shirt and everything is right with the world. I refuse to allow Derek’s comment about my pantslessness to permeate my brain, because despite what he thinks, he doesn’t know me anymore. Like everyone else, he sees the flashy colors and my pinky-pink lipstick smile, and he underestimates me and what I’ve gone through to get to this place in my career.

I decide to call the one person who truly knows and understands: my mom. I wait for the line to connect while removing a pint of ice cream from the fridge along with a box of cereal from the pantry so I can make my ultimate feel-better dish: a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a dash of cinnamon sugar squares on top. I should eat dinner first, but honestly, my day was such an emotional roller coaster that I doubt even the strictest of nutritionists would blame me for counting this as my meal.

The line connects just as I’m hopping my polar bear butt up onto the counter. (No one judge me, I live alone so there’s no one here to complain about the countertop butt germs that I’ll most certainly sanitize away before bed.)

“Hi, Mom.”

“Hey, sweetie pie!” Mom says, brightly toned and out of breath.

I shove the cold spoonful of ice cream and crunchy cereal into my mouth. “Are you answering my call in your exercise class again?” I ask, my words littered with crumbs.

The instructor in the background sounds over a grainy microphone. “And kick, kick, and step, step! Faster this time!”

“Yes—but I’m still doing the moves.”

I smile down into my bowl of ice cream, imagining my mom holding her phone to her ear while attempting a high kick in a YMCA exercise class. Ever since I was little my mom has been throwing herself into every group activity under the sun. I don’t need a man to enjoy my life! That’s why community activities were invented, sweets.

She’s one of those infectious souls you can’t help but come to life around. Honestly, I have no idea how she’s still single. I’m starting to believe it’s because she genuinely prefers it. She’s had a few men come and go from her life after I hit my teenage years—but they were never anything serious. Just someone fun to spend time with now and then, but it’s always been very clear that Mom was the one holding them at arm’s length.

Because when a man doesn’t encourage you to reach for the stars, Nora Bug, he’s putting you in a glass jar to contain your light. We don’t have to settle for air through holes poked in the top of a lid. We get to become stars ourselves is what she’d say to me with a wink after I asked why she and so-and-so broke up.

My mom has had many different career seasons in her life. Times of really going for something and times of working for my school simply so she could be home with me in the afternoons. But one thing is for certain, she’s approached each of her careers with equal drive and passion. She’s shown me that every season of life is important and that no one path is more meaningful than another.

“Anything specific you want to talk about?” she asks, panting for air.

“Uh…let’s see…was there something I wanted to talk about? Oh yeah—just one. I signed my first client today!”

My mom squeals with delight just like I knew she would. She’s always been my biggest champion—never once letting on that she resented the load that single parenting put on her. We couldn’t count on my dad to be a dad, but my mom was parent enough for both of them.

The instructor reprimands her in the background and tells her she has to leave the class if she wants to talk on the phone. She calls him a fuddy-duddy and then walks out of the class.

“Mom! Don’t leave. I can talk to you about it later.”

“Oh please. And pass up an opportunity to miss out on high kicks? No thank you. This way I still get my postclass donut but can also move and sit down on the toilet tomorrow without screaming in pain. Now, back to your client—would I have heard of him or her?”

Hmm. He was pretty much all I ever talked about senior year of college. He came home with me for Christmas and helped you make waffles. He sent you flowers on your birthday, and oh, yeah, took your daughter’s virginity in her college dorm room (not that my mom knows that last part, but Derek brought it up and now it’s on a constant loop in my mind).

“Yep,” I squeak. “You might have. It’s…Derek…Pender.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“That’s…”

“Uh-huh.”

“And you haven’t…?” Seen him since you broke up is what she doesn’t have to voice.

“Correct.”

We both marinate in this for a second. And to be honest, I think it’s the first time I’ve really let myself sink into the painful parts of it since seeing him again yesterday. I looked in his eyes. And I watched those eyes shutter when they looked at me.

My heart hurts.

“It wasn’t my idea,” I tell my mom. “The agency paired us together last minute. They obviously don’t know our history and I plan to keep it that way as long as possible, so things don’t get weird.” Or weirder…

“And how did it go? How did Derek act when he saw you again?”

“Umm…it could have gone better.” I pause, thinking of the frown between his brows. He never used to frown at me. “I just can’t stop thinking of how ironic it is that I ended it with him to pursue my career, and now my career is hinging on him.”

“It’s not hinging on him, Nora. Your career will go forward even without him. But through him might be the easiest way to make it happen sooner. So…you’ll just have to decide what this new working relationship is worth to you.”

More than I want to admit—but maybe not for career advancement reasons.

Wait, no!

I’m in this with Derek for career advancement only.

“I’ll figure out a way to make it work.”

“I know you will. You always do, sugar peach!” Somehow my mom rarely calls me the same pet name twice. “I have complete faith in you and will show up to your cheering section with a bedazzled sign any time you need me.”

I smile because I know she’s not kidding. Would probably appear outside my office building like that if I asked her to. Because that’s the thing about my mom—she’s supportive. Even back in the eighth grade when on a whim I told her I wanted to cut off my long hair I had spent years growing, she didn’t ask me a thousand questions and make sure I knew what I was doing. She simply made an appointment and let me chop it to my chin. Her motto has always been to encourage me to listen to my inner voice. To trust myself and learn from my choices as I go.

And so, when out of the blue I broke up with my college boyfriend who I had been hopelessly in love with, she didn’t question me or my logic. She said: Come home this weekend and let’s eat ice cream and watch movies and you can tell me about it.

Ugh, why does my brain continue to run toward Derek every chance it gets. It needs to be put on a leash.

“While I’ve got you,” my mom starts, giving me the distraction I need. “I want to give you a heads-up about some news I just saw on Facebook.”

“Why do you still get on Facebook?”

“I love the drama. Especially when the neighborhood gets their panties in a wad about whose dog pooped in whose yard. Gets really juicy…the gossip, not the poop.”

“That was both disgusting and hilarious. I loved it.”

“Good, because you might not like the next bit.” She pauses, and I tense. “Your dad is getting married again.”

My lungs deflate in a rush.

The subject of my dad is a tricky one. My parents were never a couple, and so in between his visits, I started keeping journals full of stats on teams and players just so I could wow my sports-loving dad over on his next visit, and then maybe…just maybe he’d want to spend even more time with me. (And then fall in love with my mom and we’d all live happily ever after like in the Disney movies.)

It worked in some seasons of my life, and in others it didn’t. And the older I got the more I realized it wasn’t that my dad wasn’t choosing my mom—it was my mom who didn’t choose my dad because she had good standards, and god love him, my dad would never meet them.

But the reward of his attention was enough that it kept me hungry to learn everything I could about sports. And then when I was ten, my dad married someone—not my mom, the woman he got pregnant in college and never bothered trying to deserve. Someone with a daughter of her own that he seemed to completely trade me and my mom for.

But I let go of that anger toward him a long time ago, because if anything, I can thank my dear ole dad for instilling in me a passion and a dream. I rarely talk to him these days, but somewhere along the line of trying to impress him, I truly fell in love with sports. I’ll always feel thankful to him for that at least.

I drop my spoon into my quickly melting bowl of ice cream and set it aside. “Of course he is! He probably heard I haven’t had a good excuse to wear my wedding cocktail dress in a while,” I say with a fake laugh that I really hope is convincing.

“That’s your dad, always so conscious of your closet!”

We chuckle. Both of us knowing the other is full of shit.

My smile falls. “You know, I wouldn’t care that it’s his third marriage if I felt like he was going to put some effort into this one. But he’s not—we both know it. It feels like he’ll never grow up. Never put anyone before himself.”

I dread the uncomfortable phone call on my horizon where he expects me to be happy for him and his new soon-to-be wife. I dream of not answering and letting it go to voicemail. But in the back of my head, I know I never will. Because no matter how hard I try to resist it, I’ll always be the girl hoping this is the time he decides to stick around in my life instead of trading me out for a new family—only circling back around again when the other one fizzles out.

My chest constricts with a memory of the last time I put misplaced faith in my dad, only for him to stand me up at dinner. The night before the college exam I failed. The exam I put off studying for so I could go on a vacation with Derek to visit his parents—and then should have spent the night I was home cramming for the test instead of agreeing to meet my dad for dinner an hour and a half away from school because he missed me so much and wanted to see me. Only to sit at that damn restaurant for an hour before finally leaving without so much as a returned text or call from my dad. As I found out later, he was swept up in the moment and decided to propose to his girlfriend that very night—which is why he forgot about our dinner. I failed the test and a few days later I broke up with my boyfriend.

That was the day I realized no one would care about me as much as I cared about myself—and I needed to fight for my dreams because no one else would.

“I agree,” my mom says. “And…I’m sorry he’s your dad, Nora. I’m sorry you don’t have someone who invests in your life and stays put like you deserve.”

My mom has always partly blamed herself for conceiving me with my dad. Which is infuriating because she’s been present in my life enough for a mom and a dad.

“I’m not sorry one bit. He ignited my love of sports and gave me my fabulous auburn hair. Just imagine how weird I would have turned out as a blonde or something. I love you, Mom, and you continue to reign supreme in my life. Just under Dolly Parton.”

“It’s because of her bedazzled outfits, isn’t it?”

“Her boobs actually. I’d give anything to have a pair of glorious melons like hers.”

My mom laughs. “Maybe one day after you make tons of money from endorsement deals with your ex-boyfriend-slash-client.”

After a few more unholy conversational turns, we hang up so my mom can return to her class. I go settle onto my couch and turn on The Great British Bake Off for background noise while I review Derek’s contracts and deals because I don’t like to be alone with my thoughts and therapy is too expensive. British people kindly competing in a low-stakes baking competition to win a plate is the next best thing. I just need something to drown out the thought of my dad getting married again. And that’s why I’m a little too excited when I hear my phone ringing.

“Hello?” I ask even though I don’t recognize the number. It might be a telemarketer, but honestly, I’m ready to talk about my car’s extended warranty if it means I don’t have to sit here and think about the sadness creeping into my chest after that conversation with my mom.

“Nora, it’s me.”

There’s only one man who still calls me by that name, and I was not expecting to hear from him so quickly. Unjustified butterflies surge at the sound of his rumbly voice on the other end of my phone, and I don’t quite know what to make of that. Shouldn’t I hate the sound of his voice after everything? Must be muscle memory.

“Hi, me. It’s nice to meet you.” I hop up from the couch and run back to my room so I can dig through my dirty clothes and find my pants again. Probably ridiculous, but somehow, I feel like he’ll hear it in my voice that I’m mostly naked and then claim I’m breaking a rule.

“That was a terrible dad joke.”

“No such thing.” I shimmy into my jeans and pull up the zipper.

“Did I give you enough time to get your pants back on before asking if you’re wearing any?” His tone is not teasing or playful. It’s smug.

My jaw drops but I’m careful not to make any sounds that indicate my surprise. “We can file that one under inappropriate questions. And I’ve had my pants on the whole time, thank you very much,” I lie through my teeth.

“I heard the zipper.”

Damn.

“What can I do you for, client of mine?” I ask extra chipper, more than ready to change the subject.

His voice is low and muffled when he speaks, sounding like he’s lying down. “You can start by being fifty percent less happy all the time.”

“Got it. Writing it down. Fifty percent…less…happy,” I say like I’m taking studious notes. “And now I’m wadding it up and throwing it in the garbage where it belongs. Anything actually productive I can help you with?”

He sighs deeply on the other end and for some reason, that has me grinning. “Well…I was calling because…I need you.”

There’s a deafening silence after those words and my body pulls taut. If I were a cat, each of the hairs on the back of my neck would be standing at attention. “You…?”

“Sorry. I choked on some water and had to mute you for a second so I could cough.” He clears his throat one more time. “I need you to come to my house and help me with something. It’s important.”

My shoulders droop. With relief! And no other reason. Definitely not disappointment at his wording mishap. “Oh. Sure. Yeah. Whatever you need. Should I plan to come by tomorrow around—”

“Now,” he says in that sharp demanding tone I’ve already heard from him too much.

I look at the clock. It’s already six, which means traffic going anywhere in L.A. will be horrendous right now. More than that, I just got home from work and haven’t eaten dinner yet. Ice cream doesn’t count because my stomach is already growling again. I’m one of those people who eat eight small meals a day (read: medium to large), and I need every single one of them or my chipper turns into a chip on my shoulder. And when I have a chip on my shoulder…well, no one knows it because I’m not great at expressing frustration, but still! I feel rough internally.

“Are you sure it can’t wait until tomorrow?”

He barely waits for me to finish speaking before he replies curtly. “Are you my agent or not?”

I blink and grip the phone tighter. “Yes. You know I am.”

“Then you’ll have to act like it. I need my agent to be available to me 24/7. If that’s too difficult for you…” I hear the arrogant smile in his voice and instinctively know that this entire agreement is one big trap. I see it now for what it is. He’s going to be as annoying as possible until I quit. Maybe he never really planned to let me be his agent in the first place. I can feel it in my cheery little bones that this is going to be our next competition. Who can outlast the other person.

“Of course that’s not an issue. I was only thinking of how tired you might be at the end of the day. I will always keep my client’s very best interests at heart.” And make him eat crap when I’m the best damn agent he’s ever had. Which is why I’m running to my cupboard to shove my half-empty box of cereal into my oversized purse and steal my keys off the counter. “Text me your address, Dere-Bear. I’m on my way.”

“Never cutesify my name again,” he says and then hangs up without another word.

Well, now a new nickname pops into my head. Derek the Dickhead. At least this attitude of his will help me get rid of these pesky feelings I’ve been carrying around for him.

But first, I change his contact in my phone to Dere-Bear.