The Corner House: A Reverse Harem

by Daisy Jane

  For some reason, though, I can’t find the case now. I move my hand around the inside of the cabinet, hearing the Tylenol bottle tip over, followed by the Benadryl. There isn’t much in the cupboard so the fact that I couldn’t find it had me in a panic.

  I was already cancelling three clients today.

  I couldn’t ask Brynn to leave work to help me.

  “Oh my god, how bad?” she asks with genuine concern in her tone. Brynn isn’t a friend that suggests lavender essential oils and more rest. She’s seen me at my sickest and knows this isn’t a small thing.

  “Bad,” I say, feeling the pain spread to the right side of my brain, making every nerve ending in both of my eyes feel like they were being twisted with needle-nose pliers. “I can’t talk,” I exhale, setting the phone down on the kitchen counter before padding my way down the hall.

  Feeling the familiar metal in my fingers, I push open the bathroom door, thankful as hell that I cleaned it yesterday morning. Because now that I had a migraine? I’ll be lying on the floor in here crying for at least the next two hours. Minimum.

  And before the first wave of pain-induced nausea rushes through me, I think of the guys.

  Bastian, Bodhi and Eli. How much I want to see them. How I want to get more time with Eli, since he seems a bit quiet and shy with me. I want more time around this affectionate-with-each other group of drool-worthy men.

  Before I can wallow in the depression that comes over me realizing I won’t see them and I’ll be completely flaking on them without so much as a text message, I pull myself to the toilet in time to be sick.

  I don’t know how long I’ve been on the floor when I feel Brynn’s soft palm tenderly stroke the side of my face. It could be mere minutes and it could be hours. Before I blink my eyes open, the pain is there.

  “Ears,” Brynn says quietly, and I press my palms to my ears as she flushes the toilet.

  No, flushing the toilet isn’t loud. But when your head hurts this bad, the smallest of noises can trigger another wave of sickness. And I didn’t get my medicine before I went down. So just as I suspected—I push myself to sitting, leaning back against the tub. My head pinches and throbs, two distinctly different pains overlapping with recognizable ease.

  “I couldn’t find the injection,” I whisper as Brynn moves around the bathroom. My eyes are closed but I know what she’s doing. A Lysol wipe around the floor, then another around the toilet. There will never be anything I can do to repay Brynn for how well she cares for me when I’m in this state, and despite the fact that I’m not out of the woods yet, I want her to know that her sacrifices are not unseen.

  “You left work,” I whisper, holding my temples with my fingertips, moving small, pressure-filled circles over the sore spots. Everything is sore. But not everything reacts to a massage the way my temples and the base of my skull do. Only, I can’t massage myself there. “I’m sorry,” I say, not knowing what else I can say. It’s not enough but it’s all I have right now.

  “It’s been an hour since you called,” she says, knowing I lost concept of time. I always do. She leaves the room and I can hear her straightening up the bottles in the medicine cabinet. When she returns, her hands wrap about my upper arm.

  “On three,” she says in a gentle tone. Then she counts off and injects me on three. I don’t even wince. When my brain hurts this much, sometimes pain in other places of my body actually feels good. It feels like I’m temporarily giving my brain a break from the focus on its own agony. It can feel the needle piercing my skin, it can feel the medicine crawling through my blood, hot and thick. It can feel my neck muscles turn to lava, burning and fatiguing my shoulders and head. Then my brain can turn back to its own pain when the side effects of the injection wear off. Because the injection doesn’t touch that pain right away. Just lessens the duration.

  Brynn pushes her hands under my armpits and helps me stand and my body is so exhausted that I really don’t know who is doing the work. On my feet, we pad down the hall together until we’re at my bed. I feel around until my head is on the pillow, Brynn pulling a blanket over my legs.

  “Electrolyte water on the nightstand, two Tylenol, one Benadryl, the bowl is on the floor and there’s half a turkey sandwich and a bag of avocado oil chips in the fridge,” she says, not rushing but I realize she needs to leave.

  “Thank you,” I say, “and I’m sorry. I’m sorry to make you leave work and call my clients, all of it,” I say, feeling the hot tears slip past my closed eyes. There’s always a rush of guilt when she helps me.

  “Sloane,” she says, rubbing a hand up my side, ignoring my apology. She always ignored my apologies. ‘It’s what friends do’ she’d said once.

  “Hmm?” I say, keeping my eyes closed, glad she left the bowl by the bed. The bowl was a big green Tupperware bowl I’d brought from my parent’s house when I first moved out. Every family had one, sometimes they were yellow but ours was a murky mint green and it was the puke bowl. Anytime you were too sick to make it to the toilet, the puke bowl was there. When I brought it from my parent’s house, it was kind of a joke. A way of saying, see, I’m going to be so wild.

  These days, it came out for migraines, not for wild parties.

  “Who did you make those desserts for?”

  Oh shit. I forgot. The Vegan peanut butter chocolate chip bars and the peanut butter blondies I’d made to take to the guys were still on the counter.

  The guys.

  See, now would be a time where it would have come in handy to have told Brynn about my insane crush on all three of these guys. But then she’d have to know I went there last week, which I’d kept to myself.

  My face, pain and all, must’ve scrunched or reacted because her hand stilled on my side and she shook me with one hand, ever so slightly.

  “Sloane, where were you going with those? There were potholders underneath, your keys were next to them. You were going somewhere,” she sleuths, and she’s right. And I’m so tired and my head throbs to a painful staccato beat of its own, so I don’t attempt to be elusive or vague.

  I can’t in this state, she knows it.

  Exhaling, I talk slow so she can follow and so I don’t have to repeat myself. I’m pretty sure I’m cringing a little but with feeling of my ocular nerves being grated, I don’t care.

  “Last Thursday I took a cake to Officer Cute’s house. To say thank you. He gave me his address. Anyway, his roommates came home when I was there and they were all really hot and we had lunch together and I have a crush on all three of them and really want to have sex with them.”

  Brynn leans back on the bed, laughing hard before swatting her palm over her mouth, stifling the noise. “Sorry,” she whispered, realizing it could’ve been loud. And it was. But my heart was racing so fast, thinking of what her response would be, that I didn’t hear. Just the throbbing in my brain and the beating of my nervous heart.

  “I didn’t tell you because I was afraid you’d judge me,” I admit, feeling some freedom in the fact that I can’t see her amber eyes, can’t see her true feelings reflected in them.

  She snorts. “Judge you? Girl, you know before I met Bryan, I was um, how do I say it nicely? Eager? Eager to be with a guy?”

  “Horny,” I deadpan, taking advantage of being able to be out of character right now.

  She laughs gently. “Yeah, that. So why would I judge you for wanting some sex with a hot guy? If his roommates are anything like him,” she does a low whistle and I imagine she’s shaking her head, too. “You said he looks like Superman,” she says dreamily.

  “He does,” I say, pressing my palms to my eyes, rubbing lightly.

  “Okay so, are they hot too?”

  “It’s unbelievable. It’s like taking a portal into a romance novel,” I admit.

  She laughs and tells me that she’s fanning herself, since I can’t see her. Then she says, “so what’s the problem? You want to fuck these hot guys. That’s normal.”

  I swallow hard. “Yeah, but, there
’s something else.” A searing sensation tears up my spine and spreads through my neck and as I jolt in bed, titling my chin up, hands on my collarbone, I wonder if my head not going nuclear is worth feeling like my bones are fucking melting.

  “What?” she asks quietly, seeing me in the “after” of the injection. She hates it as much as I do, I think.

  “I want them all at the same time, like, really bad.”

  There’s a silence and after a few seconds, I consider counting out of order to soothe my uncertain nerves. But then she clears her throat, my heart beats faster. I don’t need her approval but I do need to know she won’t judge me.

  “Sloane,” she says, her voice faltering a bit, as if she’s emotional. “That may be the fucking coolest thing you’ve ever said in your whole life.” She grips the back of my calf under the blanket and I wince, my entire body starting to become heightened to every sensation, another side effect from the lovely injection. “Sorry,” she pulls her hand away before smoothing the blanket back over me. In a whisper, she says, “we will talk about this when you feel better but that is the gnarliest, coolest thing and I think you should do it, Sloane.”

  It’s not that I need her approval. I don’t. But Brynn in my corner, rooting for me to take this crazy leap and tell these guys what I want? It makes it seem possible. Real, even. No longer just a crazy thought bouncing around my brain. I’ve spoken it out loud. Made it real.

  After Brynn left for work, I took the pills she set out for me, drank the entire bottle of water and sunk back into my bed. I felt awful—my head and now my entire body, about flaking on the guys, about not having told Brynn what I was feeling earlier—and the only way to feel better was to sleep.

  So, I slept for hours. So many hours that when I awoke to a knocking on my door, it was dark outside.

  Who is knocking on my door at eight o clock at night?

  Chapter 7

  “Hi, Sloane,” Charlotte, my client whose appointment I had to cancel this afternoon, said in a tired voice. “I hate to come to your house like this, I know you had another headache today. I called but there wasn’t an answer.”

  “I was asleep,” I said, and while it sounded defensive, I didn’t mean it that way. After a headache and all the medication that came with it, it was really hard for me to process conversation and respond normally. My brain had to parse out each word and re-decide it’s definition, so when it came to conversing, it took me a long time to respond.

  “I figured. Listen, Sloane, I’ll make it quick. I came here to tell you I’m changing colorists. I love your work but sick or not, I need consistency. You know my schedule,” she said, her head titled sympathetically. “I have limited time so cancellations just don’t work for me.”

  “I understand,” I say, my brain feeling like a ping pong ball in my skull the entire time she was talking.

  “I’m not paying for today,” she forces out, her face pained to say the words. I don’t have it in me to soothe her discomfort, not right now.

  “I understand,” I say again, just wanting her to go away. I don’t have the energy to face the severity of her choice, realizing that even one less regular appointment will probably do me in. The last thing to officially move me from financially uncomfortable to you can’t afford this house anymore. Not to mention the three other appointments I lost today.

  “I’m sorry Sloane. You understand, right?” she steps closer and I step back into my house a pace, not wanting her to get close. Not wanting this conversation to go on a moment longer.

  You understand, a statement, tethered to right, meant to passive aggressively force me into agreeing with her. I understood, but hated her phrasing. Hated how she, more than anything else, needed me to see it from her side. I nodded, wondering if she’d ever seen it from my side. But she hadn’t. She could see my pale face and the darkness pooling under my eyes, she could see the weakness in my frame as I gripped the doorway and slumped into it, needing it to hold me up if this conversation was to keep going. She saw it all but I was just a girl who provided a service. An important service—clearly, since she isn’t waiting for me to get better. She’s going to someone else because her color can’t wait. Not for me to get better or have a better day, even. But the person who’d performed that important service for the last handful of years? Apparently easy to give up.

  I closed the door as Charlotte told me she hopes I feel better, advising heat on my neck. Yes, I’m slowly losing my life to the spread of these headaches but no, I’ve never heard about a hot towel on the neck. Thanks so much Charlotte! I bet that will solve all the problems. Things I didn’t say.

  Running a bath and filling the tub with CBD bath oil Brynn and Bryan picked up for me at a farmers’ market out of town last week, I started a cup of coffee. Caffeine and sugar were two things that always helped with the lingering soreness in my head and while the tub filled and the coffee brewed, I cut myself one of the blondies.

  I hadn’t planned on eating these by myself in the bathtub at half past eight at night but here I am.

  The coffee and the sugar help some and after I pull the drain about twenty minutes later, I am feeling less shitty. My senses are still sore and only partially working, but I keep the lights in my house off to remedy that. Setting the alarm on my phone, I promise myself I won’t succumb to the day-after migraine ‘hangover’, that I’ll go to work tomorrow and do a great fucking job, trying to salvage whatever is left of my career.

  Then I get back in bed and allow myself a solid hour of feeling bad. I turn on the PaleyFest I recorded a few weeks back and watch the second panel of the cast from Parks and Recreation. Amy Poehler is asked her first question and immediately tears up, saying she’s overwhelmed by how many people still want to talk to them about the show.

  It’s the small bit of human breakage I need to let myself completely break. And I do, ugly sobbing into my pillows, knees to my chest. My head almost feels relief while I cry like this, though I know it will be sore later. I don’t even care anymore.

  I just want to feel good.

  Maybe I got t-boned so I’d meet Officer Cute and his two roommates. Maybe they were like my sexual destiny, crashing into me in the form of a drunk farmer with a lead foot.

  My phone vibrated, causing me to choke on a sob then cough, a bubble of snot popping out of my nostril. Maybe I was a lost cause. I’m sure gang bang girls don’t have crying snot bubbles.

  “Hey Brynn,” I say, seeing her name on the screen.

  “Hey doll, how’s your head?” she says, keeping her tone quiet, as if she’s unsure of how I may feel. “I’m glad you answered,” she adds.

  “Hey, it’s better. I mean, bad, but better.” I grab the remote and turn the show down before pausing it.

  “You sound stuffy. Have you been crying?” she asks, though I don’t know why she does. I have a distinctly stuffy and hideous voice after a good cry, and I can never imitate it.

  “Yes,” I admit on a sigh, relaxing back against my pillows. “I’m watching the PaleyFest panel with Parks and Rec and oh my god I love and miss it so much,” I sob, feeling absolutely ridiculous for actually sobbing over my extreme disappointment for missing my lunch date with the guys at the corner house because of a headache. I don’t really even know them; how can I be disappointed? What if they don’t like Parks and Rec? What if they don’t recycle? What if they like sauerkraut?

  Even with the unknown, I know what I want.

  “It was a good show,” Brynn starts, slowly. “But are you really sobbing over missing Leslie Knope?”

  “She was such a badass woman,” I snort, wiping my nose with the back of my hand. “And she invented Galentine’s Day. We celebrate Galentine’s Day!”

  Brynn snorts. “Sloane, we’d drink wine and eat chocolate on Valentine’s Day together even without a fictional character creating a fictional holiday.”

  I sniffle and pull the covers back, padding my way out of my room to the kitchen. Now that my head isn’t trying to murder
me, I need to hydrate. I grab my Yeti tumbler from the drying rack and push it under the water valve on the front of my refrigerator, Brynn still talking.

  “Listen, first of all I’ve been thinking about what you told me earlier. And no, I didn’t tell Bryan,” she says, and I’m thankful because while I didn’t tether my admission to the words ‘but please don’t tell anyone’, they were definitely there.

  To want something so bold, to admit that want out loud—it was a lot of vulnerability. I couldn’t handle Brynn’s boyfriend—or anyone else for that matter—knowing. “As long as you’re safe,” she says, sounding more like my mom than Brynn. Then, less like my mom, she adds: “I think you need something like this. Something wild and different and fun.”

  I nod, as if she can see me, agreeing with her. I do need this. I always thought self-care was more along the lines of an afternoon nap, splurging on the pricey Kombucha, getting a pedicure for no reason at all. I could’ve done those things but none of those made me feel alive. None of those made me feel like I was actually Sloane, a single fun female, the way this idea did.

  Having those three at once, their brawny bodies holding onto me, tugging at me, spreading and stretching me—it was the only thing keeping me going. I didn’t even know if they’d be willing to do something that crazy, but I had a death grip on hope.

  “You don’t think I’m a huge slut, do you?” I ask, genuinely hoping she gives me an honest answer.

  “No,” she says, quickly. “A man can have a menage with two women and no one bats an eye. If a woman had a menage with two men, they’d have to justify it. They’d have to say her husband wanted her to do it, or whatever. But the continual double standard for everything we are shamed into or out of doing, its bullshit,” she says, enunciating the s in shit for dramatic effect.