Perky

by Julia Kent

“I am.”

  “Then what am I doing?”

  “Being you.”

  Across the room, I catch Saoirse and Jennifer in animated conversation just as Fiona whispers, “Uh oh.”

  “What?”

  In front of Parker, she holds up her phone. It's one of Saoirse's Instagram accounts.

  With a picture from last night of Parker and her, at an event, his arm around her waist, casual and loose.

  His satisfied smile changes in an instant.

  “I can explain.”

  “Don't bother.”

  Before I can move away from him, he's wending our way into the cooler, an ice-cold place where we mostly store dairy products. My elbow is firmly in his grasp, and it feels like I've lost seconds of my life, as if I blinked and suddenly I was in the back of the store. The cooler is the size of a walk-in closet and it's pitch black as the door snicks shut.

  “Parker! What the hell?”

  “I knew if I didn't contain you, you'd bolt.”

  “So y-y-you decided to f-f-f-reeze me in place?”

  Warmth in the form of body-heated wool covers my shoulders, the scent of Parker filling my increasingly frozen nostrils as I realize he's given me his suit jacket.

  Hot breath warms my ear as our noses bonk. I look up, lips grazing his, and then suddenly my hands are all over the fine cotton of his dress shirt, fingers tickling the waistband of his pants, the thick leather belt making me remember taking it off him, that one time he tied me to the bed with it, how he looked when his face shifted to intensity right before he came.

  All of the memories of being naked together, of skin and tongues and heat, oh, the heat, rush through me, Parker's hands in my hair, his tongue in my mouth, his heart holding mine and begging me to let it go.

  Let it pitch into his arms and trust him again.

  “What are you doing?” I ask as I step back, my ass hitting the shelving, my mind spinning completely out of control.

  “Kissing you.”

  “You're relentlessly pursuing me while you're doing Saoirse? That's a new low, even for you, Parker.”

  “It's not what you think with Saoirse. She invited me to some journalism event and asked me to play it up to make some guy jealous. We're old friends. Nothing more.”

  “Nothing is ever what it seems with you. You've spent five years telling me not to believe what I see right in front of my nose.”

  “What do you see now, Persephone?”

  “N-n-nothing! It's pitch dark!”

  “What do you feel?”

  Everything.

  I feel everything, Parker.

  “I feel... confused. Conflicted.”

  “Then that's progress.”

  Light shines in the cooler suddenly, a very angry woman appearing in stark relief as the door opens.

  “There you are!” Jennifer's chiding tone makes me feel like an eighth grader caught making out in her parents' basement. “Parker! CNN is looking for you.”

  “CNN can wait.”

  “CNN isn't going to wait so you can screw your ex-girlfriend in a coffee shop cooler. Good God, Parker, what on Earth do you think you're doing? She's tricking you into this?” Furiously looking around, Jennifer hisses, “Saoirse was right?”

  “Right?” Parker shrugs back into his jacket. “About what?”

  “Never mind.”

  “PERKY!” Thiago bellows. “HELP!”

  I take my out.

  I run to the front.

  I become the Perfect Employee.

  I pull espressos for so many hours, I subluxate my shoulder.

  The pain is so much better than what my heart feels.

  But you bet your ass I'm parking in Raul's spot tomorrow.

  And suddenly, I know exactly how to handle Parker.

  It’s so simple.

  I just have to sleep with him.

  9

  If a jellyfish covered itself in glitter and smelled like flower essences, it would be named Fiona.

  Except I know better.

  I know this isn't all there is to my best friend, the one I met when we were the same age as the little kids she now teaches. I remember her Doc Martens phase. Her shaved-head, henna-tattoo, baggy-jeans-held-up-by-a-rope phase. Her lean, muscle-bound phase, when she wore tank tops and looked like the “after” picture for a CrossFit gym that advertises on Ninja Warrior shows.

  And then there was the kickboxing.

  She might look like a rainbow in human form now, but she'll always be Feisty to me.

  And right now, Feisty is standing at my front door holding a take-out bag from Thai Me Up, wearing a frown, the corners of her eyes covered by the enormous shell-pink glasses she's wearing.

  “How can you look so sad when you have chicken satay in your hands?” I ask as I unburden her of the olfactory sensuality of an orgasm in a bag. Four orders of yellow-spice-colored grilled chicken on sticks are in there, followed by plastic containers of peanut-coconut sauce. She smells like curry, peanuts, and frankincense. The frankincense is just because Fiona is so extra.

  Fi has come to my house to hang out.

  “House” being a very fluid term. I spend some of my time in the main house at Mom and Dad's place, but this is the pool guesthouse where I mostly live, a two-bedroom cottage Dad jokingly called Kato's Chaos.

  I have no idea what he means.

  “Because I read your text about Parker. You can't be serious. You're seriously planning to sleep with him?”

  Suddenly, the curry and peanut aroma smells like indictment.

  “Yes. But I'm going to sleep with him for a really good reason.”

  Pulling containers out of the bag, I ignore her interrogation as she flops down on one of the giant soft cushions in my living room. Last year, I removed all the furniture and replaced it with enormous beanbag-like structures filled with broken coffee beans and buckwheat hulls. My house looks like a posh preschool.

  And Fiona loves it.

  Mallory may have the superior apartment, but my living room is a preschool teacher's wet dream.

  “You're just planning to sleep with Parker so you can have an orgasm that doesn't involve batteries,” she says flatly.

  “What?”

  “That was a vibrator joke.”

  I huff. “What makes you think we didn't use vibrators when we were sleeping together? Parker was very inventive.”

  The skewered chicken in her hand lowers, mouth puckering. “TMI!”

  “You made the bad joke!”

  “And you made it worse.” Palm flat against her belly, she groans as she uses her other hand to guide the long, thin, pale piece of chicken toward her mouth, eyes crossing as it gets close. “And now, damn it, this looks just like a penis.”

  “If that looks like a penis, Fi, you're having sex with the wrong guys.”

  She chomps down. “I haven't seen a penis in the flesh in nearly a year,” she confesses around a mouthful of meat. It's not much of a secret, because Mallory and I already know how long it's been. We track each other's dry spells the way you calculate a split check.

  And we won’t even mention my dry spell.

  “Then perhaps you've forgotten, but I promise you, they don't look like that.” I take the satay stick from her and start chewing.

  “Ew!”

  “And we need to get you laid.”

  “I want to talk about you getting laid. With Parker! Why on Earth do you want to sleep with him?”

  “Revenge. Plus, he's got a tongue that operates with such wondrous precision, it's like he's part robot.”

  “More TMI. But get back to the revenge part. How is it revenge to sleep with him?”

  “If I get pics or a video I can release to the media, it is.”

  “No. No no no. Perky, you can't!”

  “I can. And I will.”

  “But he just introduced a bill to make revenge porn a crime!”

  “Then I’d better hurry up and do it before the law passes.”

  “You've b
een carrying around this weirdly self-abusive attachment to him for five years. When are you going to let it go?”

  “Weren't you the one who wondered if he was telling the truth all along?”

  “I was,” she admits.

  “And then there's the whole Saoirse thing. She’s posting pics of them together on Instagram. He's totally screwing her. He's screwing her and weaseled his way into Mallory and Will's wedding party. It's all a big mind game to him. Chase me down, get me hot for him, give me an orgasm, and play some sick little joke on me.”

  Getting over her chicken-penis aversion, Fiona gnaws on a stick and nods.

  “Bet you're right,” she says around a mouthful of yum. “The anti-revenge-porn bill is just a cover.”

  My heart sinks. I said that because a part of me wanted to hear No way!

  Or Of course not!

  Or You're so much better looking than her!

  Instead, I get pragmatic confirmation of my worst fear.

  Sometimes my friends are just a little too down to earth. Would it hurt Fi to shine me on a little?

  Her phone buzzes. She ignores it.

  “Mallory?” I ask, cracking open the subject.

  A nod.

  A wince.

  A sigh.

  “You're ignoring her, too?”

  More nodding.

  “At least I have an excuse. All her group texts about the wedding include Parker, but I’ve still got him blocked. It’s a mess, but I just don't want to deal with him until I've strengthened my resolve to terrorize him with leaked sex videos.”

  “VIDEOS?”

  “Yeah. I decided a video is way better than just a still photo. Social media algorithms really favor videos.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Your brother.”

  Fiona looks up like she's begging God for divine intervention. Either that, or she really likes my Swedish stars hanging from the ceiling. “This is an indoor hot springs conversation.”

  A few years ago, Mom and Dad upgraded the indoor pool to look like an underground cave. Natural hot springs don't magically run under our house–and trust me, Mom hired five different geopathically sensitive dowsers to search for anything–so instead, they went ahead with the design elements and just trucked in water from New York to recirculate in some sort of mineralized process that mimics nature.

  Kind of like Saoirse's boob job.

  “When you come over, every conversation demands the hot springs.”

  “That's because I have to talk to you.”

  Laughing, I munch to the end of my skewer, “Food first, mineral hot springs second.”

  “And your morality intervention third.”

  “My morality is just fine.”

  “Not if you're planning to stoop to Parker's level.”

  Bzzzzz.

  “Ignoring our best friend doesn't exactly put you on high moral ground, Fi.”

  “She wants me to help pick a font for the wedding rehearsal dinner invitations! And she's talking about using Taco Cubed for the rehearsal dinner!"

  We both grimace.

  “It's that bad?” I gasp, calming myself with peanut sauce. It's like an EpiPen for dealing with Malzilla, the bridezilla of the North Shore.

  “Pretty much. Hasn't she been bugging you about these details?”

  “Only as they relate to coffee.”

  “That's not so bad.”

  “Except she wants me to find hypoallergenic civets for the Kopi Luwak coffee so that people with cat allergies can drink it safely at the reception.”

  “Kopi Luwak? Isn't that the coffee where the animal eats the coffee cherries off the bush, poops, and you scoop out the undigested coffee beans and brew it?” Fiona asks.

  “Yes. And civets aren't even cats, but Mallory didn't like being corrected, so...”

  “That's disgusting enough, but she wants what?”

  “I got a three-page Word document from her about proteins in civets and asking whether people who were allergic to cats could still drink the coffee. She suggested I go to the CEO of that coffee chain the billionaire bought for his wife. You know, that one called – ”

  “She's...”

  “Mallory,” we say flatly, in unison.

  “And the dance lessons! She's making us take dance lessons!” I protest.

  “I actually like that part,” Fiona says, suddenly defensive.

  “You realize Fletch will be there? You’re going to have to dance with him.”

  “WHAT?”

  “The guys who are local are coming. Same with the women. So no Hasty or Raye. No Parker,” I explain, voice going sad at those last two words.

  “I knew Raye had to get back home, but Hasty?”

  “She was invited to some mastermind in Micronesia where a Chinese billionaire built a manmade island. It's all about how to profit from climate change refugees,” I inform Fi, thrilled that Mallory’s overbearing sister is gone.

  “Climate change what?” Fiona asks as she crosses her arms over her chest. “And I am not dancing with Fletch.”

  “You shouldn't have to.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Your foot belongs in his gut, not on the floor next to his.”

  “Stop it. I'm not that person anymore.”

  “Of course you are.”

  “No. I'm not.”

  “Yes, you are! The Fiona I knew in middle and high school was awesome!”

  “I'm awesomer now.”

  “And so is Parker,” I sigh, turning the subject back to him. The memory of his shoulders under my hands as we kissed makes my palms tingle. The feel of his breath on my neck. The tingling moves south. “Damn him.”

  “If he's so awesome, why would you trick him into sleeping with you so you can make a secret sex tape and leak it to the media to ruin his entire career?”

  “And life. Don't forget the ruining his life part.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that's what he did to me.”

  “And doing it back will make you feel better?”

  “Yes! No! Wait... Damn it.”

  “Aha! There's a glimmer of morality in there! We have hope after all, ladies and gentlemen!” Her sigh comes out with a disturbing growl at the end. “Besides, Perk, if you make a video of him while you're having sex, you end up being exposed, too.”

  “I've thought of that! I'll just position the camera so you only see him and his naked body. Not me. It's perfect, and just like before, when I was the naked one – ”

  Fiona puts her hand on my shoulder. The warm, soft pressure of her palm makes me cringe. It should be comforting, right? She smells like fairy farts and popsicles on a hot summer day.

  But that hand. The look on her face. I know what’s coming next.

  “You know what you need?” she asks, except it's not a question.

  As she opens her mouth, before her tongue can form the first consonant against her teeth, I head her off. “No. Absolutely not, Fi. We are not doing the dowsers.”

  She shakes her head, negating my rational, one hundred percent grounded, not-at-all-woo response. “This is definitely a job for the dowsers.”

  “I am not sitting in a circle touching crystals and stirring herbs and holding sticks at various energy angles because I need my energy to shift. I have more than enough energy.”

  “All your energy comes from caffeine.”

  “Maybe I’ve invented a new form of energy. My potions don’t involve eye of newt and toe of frog. They involve coffee cherry skins from Malabar and Kopi Luwak.”

  “You’re comparing coffee to dowsing?” She’s aghast.

  “It’s a good comparison. One involves summoning energy into your body using a shaking stick, and the other involves letting your hand shake to approximate energy.”

  She ponders this. “Huh. You're right in more ways than I want to admit.”

  “That describes our entire friendship.”

  “You need the dowsers. Bad.”

  “I n
eed a lobotomy if I let you drag me to them. I wish my mom had never, ever let you come over the day the first one came.”

  “I am grateful to Tristania! It's because of her that I found the quantum healer who helped me discover my true energetic self.”

  “Three shots of espresso on an empty stomach can do that. And it's a lot cheaper.” I grab a spring roll. “I refuse to go to your next dowsers group.”

  “Oh, absolutely not. I wouldn't take you back there. Not after the last time you went. You broke Janet's Y rod!”

  “I thought you were supposed to use it like a wishbone. Anyway, those women were weird. Like witches.”

  “It’s not a coven. It’s just a gathering of women. But if it were a coven–and I'm not saying it is–you’re not allowed in my coven of dowsers.”

  “Why not?”

  “They all say you have bad energy.”

  “Hold on.” It’s one thing to choose not to be part of Fiona’s mystical weirdness. It’s another to be banned from it. “Bad energy? My energy is fine!”

  “You’re stuck. You can’t let go of what Parker did to you.”

  “What does that have to do with energy?”

  There goes that warm, comforting, insufferable hand on my shoulder again.

  “Perky, you will never, ever find peace if you can’t let go of this.”

  A long sigh, stretching back five years to the day I opened my phone and received the first of millions of notifications about my boobs with two dogs humping above my head, makes my ribcage expand until I am nearly levitating. Opening my phone, I reluctantly navigate to the small folder I labeled Receipts.

  Because I'm in receipt of so much pain.

  Pulling it up, I tap the picture, forcing myself to look.

  “Persephone,” she says mournfully, “You don't have to do this.”

  My phone reflects the light above, the tiny flash as I rotate it for her to see like a portal to the past. “He sent this to the media, Fi. He thought it would be funny to send this picture to a cheesy website where some geek spread it.”

  We stare together at the impulsive split-second moment in my life that meant nothing when it happened. Nothing more than a laugh. A daring, bare-breasted shot of me after sex, my skin still pink with his touch, the scent of our lovemaking together filling the air. I remember how the door cracked open and suddenly Bunny and Billy, his mom's teacup Chihuahuas, leapt onto the duvet. Parker was sitting at the foot of the bed, on his knees, pointing my phone’s camera at me.