by Emilia Finn
“No.” I press a hand to my stomach, and groan. “Why aren’t you sick like this?”
“I’ve had more practice than you, and I weigh a hell of a lot more. My blood-to-alcohol ratio is different from yours.”
“My kidneys are swelling.” I try to reach around and touch the throbbing organs. “Can kidneys explode like appendixes can?”
“No clue, Doogie. Shouldn’t you know the answer to that?”
“No. Shut up.”
I lift my head, and look down my body to find Luke’s eyes staring at the tops of my thighs. My dress has ridden up, and my legs are open, just a little. There’s no full-frontal exposure or anything, but there’s a hint, a tease, a temptation.
“Today is the worst,” I whimper.
Luke licks his lips and sends my brain swirling in a whole new direction. “Agree to disagree. I’m having a lot of fun.”
“You need to…” I push up to my butt and press my hands to his bare shoulders to push him away. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what? Like you look good enough to eat?”
The word ‘eat’ rolling off his tongue makes my stomach turn to lava, and my heart skip a beat.
“Don’t say that.”
“It turns you on, huh?” He looks back to my thighs, and groans in the back of his throat. “Your panties are a little wet, Allyson. And I know it has everything to do with that word.”
“I will not sleep with you. I can’t! And even if I wanted to—”
“You do want to.” He places his hands on my thighs and looks up into my eyes. “Don’t fucking lie to me. Omit, avoid, change the subject. But don’t fucking lie. Don’t ever look me in the eyes and lie. It’s a hard line for me.”
I sigh, push up to my feet, and skirt around his bulky frame. “I have to go home. In last night’s dress, so that’ll be fun.”
“Walk of shame.” He pushes to his feet and turns to me in nothing more than gray sweatpants that have the bulge – the bulge! – that draws every woman’s eyes for a fifty-mile radius. “I can drive you, if you want.”
“Actually, despite how heavy you are, I doubt you’re legally allowed to drive right now. That bottle of Jäger says you’re not allowed to operate heavy machinery until at least after dinner tonight.”
“I could walk with you.”
He moves across his room and digs around in one of his many washing baskets. Pulling out a tank, he shrugs it on to complete his jailyard bad-boy look that women lose their minds over.
I’m women. It’s me.
Dammit.
“We could walk past Dixie’s and see what’s happening,” he teases. “She’ll be so pissed when she realizes she forgot to lock up that poor llama last night.”
“Honest to god, Luke. I have no clue who the hell Miss Dixie is, or where we got the llama from.”
Snorting, he bends to search for a pair of socks. “I know exactly who Dixie is, and where the llama came from. She’s a bitch, so we stole the ice cream a lonnnnng time ago just to fuck with her. We switched the first one out with the second—”
“The llama?”
“Right. And it’s been the funniest shit for years. But I dunno. Taking the llama too feels like we’re bordering on cruel.” He straightens out with a pair of socks and meets my eyes. “You busy tonight?”
“What? Why?”
“We gotta sneak that bastard back to where he came from. And call me crazy, but I bet it’ll be a thousand times more difficult than it was for us to get it here in the first place. She’s gonna have Checkmate Security all up in that shop soon. Then we’re all fucked. Especially,” he adds with a flourishing wave of his hand, “when word gets out that Checkmate was holding on to the statue for years.”
“I don’t– This is just…” I press a hand to my forehead and turn to the bedroom door. “I can’t handle this right now. I’m going home.”
“Wait and I’ll walk you.”
But I don’t wait. I move into the hall and slow when I reach the living room to find the other brother lounging back on the couch. He’s still shirtless, his sweatpants are annoyingly alluring, just like his brother’s. His arms are resting on the back of the couch, he has the TV remote in one hand, and both feet on the coffee table in front of him. Beside him, best-friend-Emma sits with her feet on his thigh while she paints her toes and pokes a tongue out for concentration.
The brother – Rob – glances over and gifts me with a lazy smile when I don’t move. “Your name’s Allyson, right?”
“Um…” I wring my hands together and try to swallow down my nerves. “Ally. I’m Ally. And you’re…”
“The victim of mistaken identity. For the millionth time in my life.” He doesn’t get up or bump Emma as she works, but he extends a hand and winks when I move forward and take it. “Nice to meetcha, Ally. It was fun.”
“For you, maybe. Mostly, I’m making plans to purchase cement shoes and visit the lake.”
“Don’t do that,” he chuckles and releases my hand. “That wouldn’t be fun at all. You coming back?”
“Er…” I look around the room and chew on my bottom lip. “Nope. I’m probably gonna move to Arkansas after this. It’s unlikely we’ll ever see each other again. So… have a great life, living with your equally hot twin brother and fucking with women’s minds.”
“It’s easy to tell them apart after a minute.” Emma paints slow, careful strokes of hot pink onto her big toe. “They talk different. They walk different. They have different scars. And Luke has this one tiny chip in his incisor tooth,” she stops painting, and gestures toward her own pointy tooth. “We were playing tee-ball a while back at my family’s estate, and when Rob swung out with the bat – titanium, mind you – Luke was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Knocked him the hell out, chipped that tooth, and when he came to, he decided he wanted to finish the game.”
“Of course he did.” I shake my head. “And the tooth?”
She shrugs and goes back to painting. “We suspect he swallowed the bit that broke off. It’s not a lot. Barely noticeable at first glance, but if you’re ever in doubt, line them up, make them smile, and you’ll find which one is which.”
“Unless, of course, Rob chips the same tooth.”
“Can I be the one holding the bat?” She grins and waves her hand over her toes like that’ll help the drying process. “He pisses me off, and I think hitting him would be therapeutic as fuck.”
“Jesus.” Rob rolls his eyes. “She’s using her big girl words today.”
“Fuck you, Fart. Change the channel. I don’t wanna watch Ninja Warrior.”
“You’re not even watching the fucking TV,” he snaps back. “You’re using the stinky paint to summon the weird folks with foot fetishes.”
“I’m painting my nails. Stupid. Change the channel.”
“I’m just going to let myself out.” I leave the friends on the couch to bicker, and hurry into the kitchen to collect my things. I bypass the messy table and my half-drunk coffee. I snatch my clutch, and check inside for my phone, then I take one last look at the llama before I reach the door.
I don’t know if I’m going to prison today, and I have no clue if I’m going to have a job after all this, but the least I can do is not be here when the police arrive.
I open the front door in silence, and step into the hall without being called back, but then Luke skids through the kitchen in one shoe and one sock. “Allyson, wait. I said I’d walk with you.”
“Um… no. I don’t think so.” I tuck my clutch under my arm and smile for him. It’s small and fake, but considering I’m about to do the walk of shame right down Main Street, I think I’m entitled to my moment of falsity. “I’m going home, I’m going to shower and sleep. And then next week, when you’re back in the office, I’d really appreciate it if you could keep this and that separate.”
I take another step into the hall, and keep hold of the door handle – a type of defense, I think, so that I control when it closes. �
��I’ll see you around, okay?”
Luke’s expression falls. Dejection, rejection, and flat out ‘what did I do wrong?’
I pull the door closed and latch it with a soft snick. Turning away, I pass a cracked-open door, and fake a smile for an elderly lady who watches me through the gap.
Brushing a hand over my hair, I groan at how messy it feels.
You couldn’t take a single second to look in the mirror before facing so many effing people, Allyson? Three women, two men, and a single llama. And not once did you think to brush your hair?
I make my way to the stairs and start down, and since it’s tradition – sort of – I take out my dying phone and hit dial.
“Allyson?” Mom’s voice cuts through a lot of the fog still compressing my brain. She’s home to me, she’s my touchstone, and having her voice is almost as good as if she were right here with me. “It’s Saturday, honey. You didn’t think to sleep in?”
“Mom…” I sigh and turn at the next flight of stairs. “You will never guess what I did last night.”
“Oh, juicy!” In my mind, I imagine Mom was sitting on her favorite couch in the morning sunlight with a book and a cup of tea. But now, I bet she’s sitting up tall, sleeves rolled up, book and tea forgotten for something much more exciting. “Is he hot? Was it the guy from the bakery? The tall one? Honey, tell me it was fast and dirty and your feelings aren’t hurt.”
“You are sick, you need help, and if I had a fast and dirty night, I’m not sure I’d give you the details.”
“You’re no fun,” she huffs. “Alright, honey. Tell me. What did you do last night?”
“Well, I think I committed a crime, for starters. Grand larceny. I got blackout drunk, and I’m either seeing double from all the alcohol I consumed, or the tall, sexy guy is an identical twin.”
“Two of them? Allyson Moore! Not even I’ve done that.”
I roll my eyes and push through the building entrance into the sunlight. “There is seriously something wrong with you, Mom.”
Ally
Doctor Sonia
Silver cutlery scrapes against fancy white and gold plates. I sit alone on my side of the long table in a cute, cuffed dress that makes my shoulders look a little bigger than I like, but the cut of the rest of the dress is flattering and beautiful.
It’s a love/hate dress that I chose to wear, since having dinner with these people is somewhat of a love/hate situation.
Sonia sits to my left at one end of the solid oak table, and to my right, Christopher Rivera – her husband, and my great grandpa – sits on the other end. Despite my constricting dress, or Sonia’s perfect hair, or Christopher’s watchful eyes, this isn’t as horrible as it would seem from the outside. Dinners like these have the potential to be enjoyable, if only I could stop worrying about the line between work and home.
During the hours of nine to five, five days a week, Sonia is my respected and extremely knowledgeable boss. But here, she kinda wants me to call her Gigi. And though I’m not entirely against such a name for someone who is a direct living ancestor of mine, the word still catches on my tongue.
“So, I spoke to my mom just before coming here tonight.”
“Yeah?” Sonia’s smile ratchets up, just like that. “Is she well?”
“She is. She’s always well,” I chuckle under my breath. “Nothing can keep Miranda Laramie down for long. Except, perhaps, traffic. She hates it with a burning passion.”
Sonia brings a bite of her filet mignon to her lips and smiles around the perfectly cut piece. “Traffic is a bother in the city?”
“Assuming by ‘bother,’ you mean manic-inducing, homicidal tendencies, then sure, it bothers her.” I set my silverware down and bring my glass of red wine to my lips. “But she’s good,” I add after a sip. “I’ve been asking her for the last week to visit me.”
“Oh?” Sonia’s back straightens and locks in. “She’s coming here?” Her eyes flip to the antique clock on the wall. “Did she say when?”
“No.” I set my glass back on the table and relax. In a way, it’s fun knowing that I’m already in. I’ve already survived my weeks of nerves and stomachache as my visit to town loomed closer. I’ve already met with Sonia, we were able to move past the awkwardness. Now – eventually – it’ll be Mom’s turn. Hopefully. “She didn’t say she would come yet. But I’ve been asking pretty consistently, and her noes are getting a little less firm. She and I have never been this far apart—”
“She’s only an hour away,” Christopher inserts with a sly grin.
He’s old too, but not frail. He once worked in artificial intelligence – computers and robot stuff. He’s a man who could create with his fingers and imagination, and perhaps, using his brain so frequently for so long has left him with all of his faculties in place in his old age. Sonia, too. They’re both older than many achieve, but there’s no weakness among them. When this elderly couple walks Main Street hand in hand, they’re no one’s easy target.
“Like I said,” I smile back. “We’ve never been so far apart. And I’ve been here for weeks now. Have I told you guys about the time I slept over at my friend’s house in seventh grade? I was just a half a dozen blocks away, and it was only one night…”
“It didn’t go well?” Christopher asks.
“Well,” I laugh. “My mother was asleep on my friend’s couch when we woke the next day.”
“She what?” Sonia cackles. “Please tell me your friend’s mom let her in, and that she didn’t break in.”
I make a show out of shrugging. “It wasn’t really spoken of, and since Mom and I were already best friends, I didn’t really react the way most teens might in that situation. I laughed when I saw her crumpled on the small couch, I made her coffee, and brought it over so she could smell it while she slept.”
“You were wearing fuzzy bunny slippers, weren’t you?”
My eyes whip over to Christopher’s, and narrow. “Was not. And my attire has absolutely nothing to do with this story.”
“You owned fuzzy bunny slippers, didn’t you?” He smirks and glances down to his glass of wine. “It’s okay to admit it. Every mother and daughter duo who lives by themselves buys fuzzy bunny slippers at some point. It’s like… in the rules or something.”
“We weren’t alone.” I lift my nose in the air, the exact same way Mom does when she’s being insulted. “Mom had met Stan by that point.”
Christopher grins and tosses another piece of steak into his mouth. “Fuzzy. Bunny. Slippers.”
“Fine!” I snatch up my wine and glower. “Fine, we had the slippers. But you’re wrong about the being alone bit. Stan was already with us. In fact, he bought us the slippers as a Christmas gift.”
“He was mocking you, sweetpea.” Christopher’s lips twitch with the handsome smile that I’m certain, fifty or sixty years ago, is the very reason Sonia said yes when he asked her to marry him. “He saw two women, two crazy, wild women living together, and he bought the slippers, because every man knows about the correlation between fuzz and women.”
“What correlation?” I look to Sonia and lift a brow that says, “What’s up with this guy, huh?” But she merely snickers and sips her wine.
“The correlation,” he laughs, “is when women are first single, they’re wearing nice clothes, tight jeans, nice hair. The whole shebang.”
“I find it hard to equate nice hair and jeans to ‘the whole shebang’ when your wife over here is the epitome of elegance and perfect hair.”
“Well, thank you, sweetheart.” Sonia lifts her wine as though to cheers me. “That was a compliment, and I’m taking it.”
“But the longer a woman is single,” Christopher continues. “The more comfortable she becomes in herself. Perhaps, before that point, she felt that pleasing someone of the opposite sex was what is expected. But then she gets a little time by herself…” He grins. “And her beautiful daughter. She learns to love her own company, she doesn’t much care about dressing up for a man anymore.
“Now don’t get me wrong,” he adds when I open my mouth to speak. “That’s not to say she doesn’t do herself up, or that she’s,” he lifts his hands for the finger quotes, “let herself go. But rather, if she does those things, she’s doing them for herself, and no one else. The fuzzy slippers are like a symbol for – Sonia, darling, block your ears.” He looks to her, then back to me. “It’s a symbol to say ‘fuck men, and fuck society. We don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations anymore’.”
I sit back and study him with wide eyes. “Wow.”
“It’s a symbol for emancipation. For confidence, and the beauty that radiates from the inside.”
“All that from a pair of slippers?”
“Yes.” He picks up his wine and sips. “And the fact your stepfather bought them for you and your mother means he was mocking you, yes, but truly, he was celebrating you. He was acknowledging your independence and beauty, and subconsciously saying that he understands, and he won’t do anything to stomp on those wonderful foundations that you and your mother built before he came along.”
“That’s… like…” I stare into Christopher’s eyes, and fall a little bit in love. “That’s a lot for a pair of slippers to say.”
“And yet, it’s powerful and respectful. The fact your stepfather bought them for you helps put my heart at ease. It means he took care of the girls Sonia and I never got to meet, and he did a fine job of it.”
“I should call my mom.” I bring a hand up and wipe it over my dry cheek. I feel like I might start crying, or perhaps, like I might jump into my car and drive the hour just to hug her. “I wish I’d known. You know, before. I wish I’d been intuitive enough to see that in him.”
“Oh, don’t fret, sweetheart. I’m certain he knew it,” Sonia murmurs. “If he was smart enough to know what the slippers meant, then he was smart enough to understand you, even when you didn’t say the words.”
Contemplatively, Christopher sets his glass down and exhales so his stomach pops forward a little. “I think I’m ready for dessert.”