I Blew It With Scott Speedman
by Sarah Beller
It was a dark and stormy summer night. I was supposed to start law school in a month, and I felt a sense of doom. (I would, in fact, drop out a couple months later.) Max, a man I’d been seeing, had just broken up with me because he had “nothing to give.” My friends were going to see a band in Tribeca, and I really didn’t want to go out, especially into Manhattan, but they convinced me. I pulled on some baggy ripped corduroys as a cry for help, and put my hair up in what I hoped was an “artist’s bun.” We walked into the club and I immediately saw a ghost from my past: Steve, a guy I’d lusted after a few years before. I once texted him “Admit we’d have really good sex,” to which he’d texted back “Hmm.” We’d eventually slept together through the sheer force of my will, but he’d broken my heart as expected, and I still wasn’t actually, completely over him.
We made eye contact, and I tentatively went up to say hi.
“Wow, your hair is frizzy!” he said cheerily.
He was right; in the rainy walk from the subway my hair had come out of its bun and was looking extremely “full-bodied.” I smiled feebly, and wandered away.
I was going to become a boring lawyer loser with frizzy hair and have a depressing boring life forever.
I walked out of the club into the night. Streetlights blurred, and the rain on my face mixed with tears. I lit a cigarette and kept walking. I was getting soaked, and crying, but I was also reveling in my indulgent misery. I felt like the star of a movie right before things really start looking up. The only thing I needed was a car to drive by and drench me in a wave. That didn’t happen, but I did drop my cigarette in a puddle.
“Ughhh,” I yelled to the empty street. I paused on the corner, under some scaffolding, to light another.
“Got a smoke?” I heard a deep, sensual voice say.
I looked up to see the most handsome man I had ever seen in real life. I felt who he was with my body before my mind caught up: Scott Speedman, of Felicity fame. Who cared about Steve, or Max. I wanted nothing but to follow Ben to NYU and work at Dean and Deluca’s and record letters in a tape recorder to my friend Sally. I stared into Scott’s eyes, grinning uncontrollably; he was SO hot, cute, and sexy. After a few moments of my creepy stare had passed, I knew that he knew that I knew who he was. He smiled kind of sheepishly. I tried to hand him a cigarette but my hand was shaking uncontrollably. “Sorry, I’m nervous” I said.
“That’s okay, I feel nervous all the time,” he said.
He asked me my name, and I said Sarah, and he said “Hi, I’m Scott” and I said, “I know.”
“Are you having a rough night?” he asked.
“Yes, I am. But I want you to know you have just made it so much better.”
“Thank you Sarah, that really means a lot to me.” He touched my arm. “I don’t often get to hear that these days.”
Scott and I looked deeply into each other’s eyes. Was Scott Speedman … going to cry?
I wanted to say so much, but all I could say was that I had to go. I simply couldn’t wait one second longer to tell my friends what had happened, even if it meant leaving Scott.
“It was really good to meet you,” he said.
“You too, Scott.”
I waltzed back to the bar, feeling giddy.
The stars are just like us! I thought. Anything can happen in this concrete jungle where dreams are made! There’s really nothing you can’t do!
The next day I Googled Scott Speedman. IMDb provided some of his “personal quotes:”
“Sexy is a girl who’s comfortable with herself. Long legs are beautiful … and also a nice neck.”
Oh my god. I have long legs, and maybe I have a nice neck? Whatever, I don’t know what that means, and he probably couldn’t see my legs under those baggy corduroys but still.
“It’s hard to meet good girls down here. It seems like they’re all after something and interested in their own lives.”
OH MY GOD. I couldn’t be LESS interested in my own life. I’d be so happy to talk about his life forever!! What was going on? It was beginning to seem like these were written for me.
“You’ve got to just go do what you do — you can’t really worry about who was attached to the movie before.”
God he was smart.
As I continued snooping, I realized that he hadn’t been super busy with work lately. Maybe Scott was bored, lonely, and had been trying to reach out to me. What was he doing wandering around in the rain by himself in Tribeca anyway?
Scott was sick of actresses, and wanted to get to know a real woman. Someone who wouldn’t just be interested in her own life. Someone who would get that you couldn’t worry about who had been previously attached to a movie. How could I have been so blinded by own nerves? Scott needed me.
That day, I posted a missed connection for Scott. A part of me really, genuinely thought there was a chance he might respond.
I never heard from or saw Scott again. But just knowing he’s out there, hot-ly roaming the streets of New York, makes me think that this crazy world is a magical place.
Sarah Beller is a writer and graduate student. You can find some of her work at thefix, thoughtcatalog, and takethehandle.