“Are you okay?” Erin asked as we walked to the car post-concert.

“Radiohead gets me emotional, you know? It was just so powerful.”

She looked at me like she understood. This was an acceptable answer.

“Where are you meeting Adrian? I can drop you off somewhere. I have to go meet some friends.”

“I’m supposed to call him,” I said, looking at the black cell phone he’d given me for the first time that evening and noticing I’d missed five calls from his number. “I guess just drop me off at a bar and I’ll tell him to go there. What’s around here?”

“The Dresden is nearby, how’s that?”

“Sure,” I said, pressing the talk button as we slipped into the Cabriolet. Erin started the engine.

“Hello?” Adrian sounded annoyed.

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” I said. “The concert ran way over schedule. Now there’s so much traffic leaving the Greek.”

“I’ve been driving around for an hour. Where are we meeting?”

“The Dresden Room in Los Feliz?” I squeaked.

“Where the fuck is that?” Okay, he was definitely annoyed. Adrian’s flipside was not pleasant. Part of what got him ahead so far in his career was how intimidating he could be when he turned up the volume and got aggressive. Did I want to marry someone who had the potential to become so enraged? I lacked the anger gene myself. Even when I was furious, all I could do was cry. Not that that was preferable somehow. We were programmed however we were programmed.

Adrian showed up at the Dresden Room forty minutes later. He was pissed.

“You are so fucking selfish and inconsiderate,” he said after we ordered drinks and a quesadilla appetizer. Marty and Elaine, the notorious lounge singers that had been in that Vince Vaughn movie Swingers, were crooning away. I always wondered whether they were bad on purpose, or if on some level they actually thought people flocked to see them because they were good.

“I’m sorry, baby, I told you, the concert just went long.” Why couldn’t he just understand?

“I don’t know. You’ve haven’t been yourself these past few weeks.” I hadn’t?

“However I’m being is part of how I am,” I snapped.

“Well I hope this isn’t how it’s going to be,” he said.

I’d tried to be careful to keep my doubts and nerves under wraps, because the reality was, I loved Adrian and didn’t want to upset him with anxious nonsense. I wanted to be strong and real and wonderful for him. I wanted that for myself. Looking back, if I had come clean about my fears right there, everything might have taken an entirely different turn – for better or for worse.

“I’m probably just in kind of in a funk I guess,” I said. “Maybe it’s PMS.”

“Whatever it is, you’ve been acting weird,” Adrian said, and I sniffled a little. “Stop already with the goddamn sensitivity,” he continued. “Toughen up.

Whatever it is, just suck it up for a change.”
The tears I’d been holding back spilled over and I reached for a triangle of quesadilla as the waitress put the plate in the center of the table. Elaine hit a warbled high note as Marty banged on the piano and I felt like running someplace far away, to be anywhere but here.