The Corner House: A Reverse Harem

by Daisy Jane

  It is uncool to give yourself a nickname, I realize, but when Brynn’s fiancé Bryan threatened to call us the Boozing Broads, I took matters into my own hands. Core Four was what we were and despite the fact that Brynn was my best friend, the other girls were my close friends, too.

  “Do you ever feel like we should like, a read a book or watch a movie before girls’ night? Give these things more substance?” Brynn asks, scooping a hefty portion of Greek-yogurt ranch dressing with a thick slice of red bell pepper.

  “I don’t want to be in a book club,” Abbie says quickly, opening and closing every drawer in my kitchen.

  Abbie and Brynn were the kind of sisters you didn’t actually believe were sisters because they looked so different. If I hadn’t met their parents thousands of times, I’d probably not have believed them either.

  Brynn had the type of curves that made men drool—full breasts and hips you could really grab onto. Not to mention, her ass was just perfect. Granted, she worked out like a madwoman to maintain that perfect (jealously-inducing) perkiness, she was a knockout. She had just the right amount of tone to look fit. Her shoulder-length crimson hair, freckled cheeks and big amber eyes (framed with naturally long lashes, of course) made heads turn wherever we went. A real-life Joan Holloway.

  Abbie, on the other hand, inherited her father’s blonde hair. She’d worn it long, sitting on the top of her butt, as long as I could remember. She too had fair and freckled skin and wide amber eyes. Her body, however, was not like Brynn’s. She took after her father, there, too—tall, thin, very little feminine curves. She embraced it, though, by being in extremely good shape and wearing things all women with huge boobs were jealous of—tube tops, tanks without bras, cute little triangle swimsuits. Though they were physical opposites, both were utter knock outs.

  “You don’t know where it is by now?” Brynn says over her shoulder, annoyance in her tone. Girls’ night or not, they are still sisters and bicker from time to time.

  “It’s not in the drawer it’s usually in,” she snaps back. Leaning back against the couch, I watch her for a few moments before gathering my thoughts. I’d had a migraine two days ago, and my brain was still hungover, struggling to work at a normal pace. Thinking about where things are, answering questions, being timely to do, well, anything, is hard.

  “It’s over here.” I lean forward and fish the bottle opener from between a bowl of shelled pistachios and kale chips, and hold it out to her. She smiles kindly as she takes it, tossing Brynn an I told you so glance.

  Pouring the white wine in her own glass first, Abbie then pours Brynn and Kayla glasses, routinely skipping me. I could have one glass; I usually drank enough water that one glass didn’t trigger my brain to freak out. But coming down from a headache I learned it was smart to avoid triggers altogether. Part of the reason, I think, the Core Four never really adopted the idea of going book club or having movie nights. In effort to spare me from having to say the words I’d grown too familiar saying: “sorry, I can’t do that, I don’t want to get a headache.” I loved them for not making me say it.

  “Okay,” Kayla says, pulling her mess of blonde hair onto the top of her head, wrapping a scrunchie around the heap. “I think we need to start with the Officer Cute story because hearing it third-hand is just not cutting it.”

  “He called her, too,” Brynn says, lips pursed, nodding slowly, eyebrows raised. Her hair was down, sitting at her shoulders in beachy waves and her makeup-free face glowing. Girls’ night first rule: no makeup. Second rule? No bra. With those two rules being non-negotiable, the atmosphere of girls’ night was always relaxed.

  “What?!” Abbie and Kayla question in unison, Kayla holding a sweet potato chip to her mouth, freezing.

  “He called you?” Kayla repeated.

  “No,” I say, shaking my head, really hoping that my face didn’t flush just talking about him. Girlfriends or not, they’d still call me out and give me shit if I went pink over this guy. “I mean, yes he called me that afternoon to tell me they got the other driver for a DUI. That’s all. And he only did that because he promised he would follow up.”

  I reach for a sweet potato chip, scooping up some Greek-yogurt ranch, keeping to myself the fact that Officer Cute didn’t just relay information about the other driver.

  He also asked me how my leg was and recommended that I follow up with my doctor just to make sure everything was okay.

  “I think it’s okay,” I told him, “I worked eight hours today and it was just slightly sore.”

  “Damn, Sloane, you’re tough. I’m usually nursing my shoulder for a day or two once it’s popped back in.”

  With all of my headaches and all the time it stole from me, I hadn’t thought of myself as tough in a really long time. He couldn’t have possibly meant it as more than just a nice compliment but still, it gave me a small surge of confidence. I hadn’t had one of those surges in way too long. It felt really good.

  “By the way,” he added, “I poked around about your friend. Emerson.”

  I stifled a snort. “Client, not friend.” I made the important clarification.

  “Right,” he said. “Well, I know her husband. He is indeed my colleague down here at the precinct.”

  “Sounds like you’ve watched too much Law & Order, you know you can just call them fellow cops at the station, right?” I say to him with the biggest smile on my face, loving that I can give it back to him. When he responds, I can hear his smile, too.

  “That’s right, I’ll keep that in mind. Fellow cop, station, got it.”

  Like I did when I was with him earlier, it felt like we were old friends, sharing playful banter. We don’t feel like strangers. Me only knowing his name, job and street he lives on and him knowing my name, precisely where I live and work, what I drive and the fact that I didn’t shave my legs regularly. He knew too much.

  “John,” he’d said, “he’s a rookie. Just came out of the Academy a few months ago.”

  “Really?” I asked with surprise. Emerson was at least fifteen years older than me so hearing her husband was a rookie in any career was unexpected.

  “Yeah,” Officer Cute said. “A difficult wife and being the new guy on the force?” he let out a low whistle. “I don’t envy him.”

  I didn’t know I was going to ask it until I heard myself say it. “How long have you been on the force?”

  I wouldn’t classify myself as shy but rather, traditional. I was the girl that needed the guy to ask her out. I was the girl that gave answers when asked. I was the girl that waited to be flirted with, scared to put myself out there first.

  I don’t know what it was about Officer Cute. Something inside me just wasn’t ready to let go of talking to him.

  “Six years,” he said pridefully, his voice so thick and masculine that I swear those two words made my nipples get hard.

  “So, you’re experienced, then,” I’d said, without thinking. Realizing it sounded quite sexual and not wanting to be the stereotypical badge bunny, nervously I tacked on “at work I mean.”

  He chuckled softly then lowered his voice. “I am experienced in all the places it matters.”

  It was about that time in the conversation that my feminine wiles went into overdrive. It’d been a year since I’d slept with anyone, a year since my lady parts had met anyone besides my vibrator, and I was just so tired. So tired of headaches and being a slave to the headache life that Officer Cute felt like a vacation. A step away from my reality, no matter how long it was destined to last. I just wanted to enjoy it while I had it. Or, him.

  “Well,” I said, “thanks for sparing me a trip to the ER. I really couldn’t have afforded an ER bill. My deductible is like, five-hundred dollars.”

  “My job,” he said, then even lower, in a tone that made all the hairs on my arms and neck stand tall. “My pleasure.” I didn’t know what to say just then and after a moment of silence, I think he realized it. “How did your friend like the muffins?”

  “Loved
them,” I said, getting the idea that perhaps, though I have no clue why, it was hard for him to hang up with me, too. “I’d love to bake you something,” I found myself saying, surprising myself with my newfound boldness. “You know, to say thank you.”

  He made a noise, like a low rumble trapped in his throat, mouth closed. “I will never say no to homemade anything,” he said, “do you remember where I told you I lived?”

  “Stallion,” I say, perhaps too quickly, but it was too perfect. The hunk of a man with the last name Cute living on the street named Stallion. He was lowkey like a soap opera and hell, I wanted to be the star.

  He chucked softly with that deep, masculine, quiver inducing voice of his. “I live on the corner,” he said.

  I nodded, knowing exactly where that was as I’d walked my own neighborhood in the morning nearly every day for years before I started getting headaches.

  “I’m working the next two days but you can stop by Thursday,” he said, and I didn’t know if I was projecting or what but I swear there was hope in his tone. I don’t know why he would need to hope. Did he own a mirror? He was the lovechild of muscle and sex, wearing a uniform no less. He could probably get any woman in town.

  “Great,” I said, “I’ll see you then.”

  And without nailing down a precise time and asking if there was anything he didn’t like, without needing the exact plan—I agreed and hung up. Normally I’d need to know his food allergies, double check the house number, ask him exactly what time he wanted me to pop by. Normally.

  But I was not normal me. I didn’t know if it was something about Officer Cute, if it was simply receiving male attention after living in my house worrying about my head for well over a year, or if it was a little of all of those things but I felt different when I hung up.

  Happy and excited, with someone and something real to look forward to. Even if it was just dropping off a thank you cake. Still, it was something and sometimes something is all you need.

  I don’t know why I didn’t tell Brynn I was planning to walk to Officer Cute’s house on Thursday. With the Prius in the shop, Brynn was giving me a lift to work and I was walking everywhere else. Fortunately, there was a small organic market three blocks from me and I didn’t buy a ton of groceries. I’d never been a “must have my Starbucks” girl so my routine really didn’t get thrown all that much.

  I can’t decide if that’s good or bad.

  Girls’ night continued but only after I recounted the entire morning of the accident to the girls. They didn’t actually care about the accident portion of the story—only the portion where Bastian Cute showed up and had his hands all over me and listened to my phone call and drove me to the salon.

  “You should go by the station to thank him,” Abbie nudges, taking a long pull from her wine. She brought over two bottles tonight, as the three of them rotated alcohol choices, I usually make a different themed snack night. I’d done fondue night, complete with three different towers of melty goodness: dark chocolate (Kayla whined endlessly that it was ‘old man chocolate’ and tasted ‘like ass’), white cheddar (Abbie said that ‘just like white chocolate is the step-child of milk chocolate, white cheddar is to sharp cheddar’), and caramel (no complaints because, uh, caramel). All initial complaints fell away when they tried skewers of pound cake and fresh berries dipped in sixty-five percent cacao. Then when they had fresh peaches dipped in caramel with sea salt on top, they decided fondue night should be in the rotation.

  Tonight’s theme night is healthy, because collectively, we are all trying to be better. Brynn always drives us to make better choices and now that my headaches had gotten to an all-time low, I’m giving her ideas a try. I never really ate badly before, but I was missing a lot of good things just the same. Tonight’s spread: Hummus, freshly made guacamole, fruit, sweet potato chips, cut up veggies and some fruit.

  I shake my head. “I’m not going by the station.” Taking a big bite of celery loaded with hummus, I hope they move on. If they badger me too long, I might break. I am not a good liar. When Bryan approached me to help him choose an engagement ring, Brynn somehow sniffed it out and when she questioned me, I folded right away.

  And that was far more important than the fact that I am going to go to Officer Cute’s house in two days and take him a cake. A cake to say thank you. For doing his job.

  I am pretty sure my heart actually stops when I think about the absurdity in his invitation. Surely, women must offer themselves up to him all the time. He couldn’t possibly ask every single one of them to his house? The idea that Officer Nice wants to see me does something to my body that I think could be comparable to heroin, seriously. I’m numb and tingly both at the same time, every part of me hot and aware of this man being out there. Somewhere, he’s out there, and just thinking of him and talking about him sets my body on edge.

  I want Officer Cute and after the way things have been, I do not care if it’s a bad choice.

  I do not care if it’s out of character.

  I want him.

  “Why are you getting all weird?” Brynn scrunches her nose as Kayla does the honors and finishes the first bottle of wine.

  “What? I’m not weird, how am I weird?” I panic, thinking they all know exactly what I was thinking about. I feel like my mom just caught me having sex, I feel like the principal just caught me smoking a joint. Making brief eye contact with Abbie, I hold up my coconut LaCroix. “Cheers to girls’ night!” I say, a bit too loud and definitely weird and out of place.

  Let it go please, I think to myself, knowing that will never freaking happen.

  Abbie leans across the small table between us, the one I got at Ikea with my parents a few years ago, and pokes me in the chest. “You’re being weird,” she says flatly, taking a quiet drink of her wine.

  “I’m not,” I say, forcing a burning gulp of sparkling water down my throat, eyes watering. “I just don’t want to talk about the accident,” I lie, hating that I’m using the accident as a tool. A bad tool, no less, as I look up to Abbie and find her eyes trained on me, her arms folded over her chest.

  “Liar.”

  Clutching my pearls, I say, “I was in an accident!”

  She cocks her head to the side and does a long, slow sigh. Then she crosses her legs, her eyes still on mine.

  “Okay I just am really tired of being alone and being around this hot creature today made me realize I’m just sad about it, that’s all,” I say truthfully, leaving out the part where I am going to attempt to remedy this problem in two days. I think I am, at least.

  Abbie stares at me in silence for a few seconds longer and I try not to be irritated that she gets to decide the validity of my feelings with a head shake. Eventually, she nods, absolving me from the questioning. I may have to put X-Lax in her muffins next time.

  “How about Emerson’s husband being new to the force at what, age forty?” Brynn gossips, though I’m the one who told her about what Bastian had said.

  “She probably showed up to his last job, all demands and shiny rings, making everyone want to do anything they could to not have their space come in contact with hers. She seems the type to verbally assault anyone under the guise of “being honest” but really, she’s just a rude bitch,” Abbie says, knowing all about Emerson.

  Abbie is a school teacher at our town’s only private boarding school so she’s had Emerson’s kids in her class. Do you know what they call obnoxious people who have kids? Parents. And Abbie had to deal with tons of them. Some of the stories she told had my jaw in my lap. I could easily see Emerson being the headliner of any one of them.

  “Agreed,” says Kayla, who is also a teacher at Eastwood Academy. ‘Out in the sticks’ she claims, as the boarding school is in the foothills of sunny California. Yeah, Emerson sent her kids to a boarding school in the same town she lives in. If that doesn’t scream, I just want them out, I don’t know what does.

  Kayla teaches English to the juniors and seniors while Abbie teaches P.E. Her athl
etic build had her running high school and college track, so it was a given that she was the head female track coach at Eastwood Academy.

  “Maybe she has this secret, really nice side that she only shows him? Like, she rubs his shoulders and makes him a sandwich and gives him a blowjob every day or something,” I think aloud, wondering if it’s possible for people to really have two sides like that. I don’t think I ever could, then again, Emerson was almost my complete opposite.

  Abbie and Kayla give me a look like I’ve just taken a hit of the bad shit. “Not possible,” Abbie says, her messy top knot gliding to the side of her head the more wine she drinks. “A woman like that is completely the same, all the time. I’ve seen her out,” she takes a massive bite of fruit which she forks straight from the main bowl. Talking through a chunk of pineapple drenched in cherry juice, she says, “I took a HIIT class at the gym with her once at five am and she was still rotten, through and through.”

  I snort at the word choice. Rotten. She is kind of a bad egg. Coming in the salon every four weeks with all her mini-dramas and personal injustices she’s endured. Meanwhile, when she interacts with people, she makes Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada look like a damn saint.

  The rest of girls’ night is spend applying charcoal masks, which of course do not wash off nearly as easily as they say they do. And after all of our t-shirts have a ring of water around the neckline from so much rinsing, we settle onto the couch under a big, heavy blanket and do what we always do. Talk about whatever the hell we want. An episode of Friends will be quoted, The Office will be referenced, someone will attempt (and always fail) to shuffle dance or moon walk, for some reason we always try accents and stumble through really bad Nicolas Cage impressions (which surprisingly get pretty good after they’ve finished the second bottle of wine), and I’m not proud to admit it but we have prank called ex-boyfriends. Outrageously immature, maybe, but insanely therapeutic? Hell yes.