by Daisy Jane
“Totally,” Brynn adds, but Kayla and I will never agree with them on this. I hold out my closed fists and Kayla abandons her dual grip on her taco to fist bump me back.
“Sour cream for life.” We bump knuckles.
“So, which one of them is Vegan, again?” Brynn asks, sifting through the guacamole with a spoon to pick out any obvious chunks of tomato. It’s gross but we let her do it because we love her. Never mind the fact that there’s so much tomato blended into the guac that she’s literally eating tomato in every bite.
“Bodhi,” I say, finally picking up my own taco to have a bite. “The one you did the Dutch braids for,” I nudge her back to the memory and her eyes light up with recognition before they go a bit shadowy.
“Oh yeah,” she looks at me with a mouthful of taco. “He’s not the one you like?” she says with surprise in her tone. “I think I’d pick him.”
The other two girls, who haven’t met any of the guys from the corner house, now have opinions.
“Men in uniform, though,” Kayla says, referring to Bastian. She licks the sour cream from the corner of her mouth and drives a chip into the guac. “I think that’s why all the male teachers at Eastwood turn me on. The uniform.” She nudges Abbie.
“I bet you like Devers in his uniform,” she teases, and Abbie goes red. She’s been so shy about Mike Devers and while it isn’t uncharacteristic of her to not overshare, this seems more like she’s guarding what they have. Because maybe it’s the real deal.
“A police uniform is way hotter than a boarding school teacher’s uniform,” Brynn says, rolling her eyes at them. She’s been to Eastwood many times. In fact, she goes before each school year starts to help Abbie set up her classroom.
“Eli,” Brynn says with a snap of her fingers when his name drifts back into her memory. “That’s the one you like.”
“Wait, you like one of them?” Abbie asks, leaning back against the chair. She’s got one of my dining table chairs pulled up next to the couch. One of the chairs that she asked if she could have as soon as she walked in tonight. “The whole set. I’ll either borrow them until you have your own place again or I’ll buy them from you.” I told her borrow. As much as I’d like to accept that I may not live on my own again for a while, I couldn’t accept it quite yet. Too many changes all at once.
“Thanks a lot, asshole,” I say to Brynn whose eyes go wide.
“They don’t know?” she frowns at her slip and I turn to see two women, annoyed but temporarily sated by tacos.
“I don’t like Eli anyway,” I clarify, doing my signature hand wave that mentally erases things. Or so I tell myself. “He’s just, I don’t know. A bit quieter than the other two but in like, a very mysterious way. Like he’s holding back or that he has thoughts he doesn’t want to share.”
“He sounds like a very broody Don Draper,” Kayla responds.
“What’s he look like again?” Brynn asks, wrinkling her nose before burping, attaching a far-too-small ‘excuse me’ to the end of the wall-shaking belch.
Leaning back against the arm of the couch, where I’ve carved out a sliver of room, I sigh. A loud sigh that comes from my belly, that warms my cheeks and makes my skull tingle. Because when I think of Eli, my body just does that. Goes all desperate and needy, excited and wanting.
Eli does something to me. Different than my attraction to Bastian or Bodhi, wherein my thoughts are mostly primal and tethered emotionally to the rush of newness and sexual gratification.
Closing my eyes, I picture Eli on the other side of the dining table from me the other night. How his eyes held onto mind, not letting them go even when they attempted to wander. How rich and deep his voice was when he chastised Brett, saying “that’s fucking weak.” I remember how he was somewhat shy when I was trying to learn about him, how Bastian and Bodhi offered up many of the details.
And his hobbies. I clutch my chest.
His hobbies are reading and craft whiskey. No video games and Coors Light.
“Captain America,” I reply, fanning myself with the paper menu that Juan slipped into our bag. The man really needs to reduce his footprint. “He looks like Captain America. And I don’t mean he looks like Chris Evans. I mean he looks like the actual superhero in the suit.”
A sea of sighs. One random “ooh” which I think came from an over-wined Kayla.
“And he has tattoos.”
“Mmm.” Abbie looks out the window lazily, a smile on her lips.
“Oh, Daddy, yes.” Kayla finishes her wine and her cheeks are red as she raises her eyebrows to me.
Brynn licks her lips. “Bryan should get a tattoo, huh?” she asks aloud, but more just to herself.
“Anyway, I don’t like him. I barely know him. But when you guys meet them, you have to be cool, okay? Like, don’t tell them I read romance novels and talk about what a loser Brett was, please?” I clasp my hands together in an exaggerated beg.
“When do we get to meet them?” Kayla asks, sitting up straight.
I clasp my hands together in front of me. “They’re moving me in this weekend.”
Brynn already knew this and had rescheduled some of her appointments. Bryan will be helping out, too. Though to be honest, Bryan doesn’t seem like he’d fit with the guys at the corner house. Bryan is just a guy, as nice as he is, that’s just always trying a little too hard.
“Can we tell them about the time you microwaved a metal to-go mug?” Abbie’s spine goes straight as the memory of my first mini-fire comes flashing back. She was there. She’d spent the night after a very successful girls’ night wherein we drank much vino and watched The Godfather. Then she was drunk and too scared to Uber because “you never know who’s gonna be a Corleone!”
“Oh!” Kayla leans forward, almost knocking over the table full of food. She steadies it then herself before returning back to her thought. “What about the time you thought you lost the earring your dad gave you so we had to walk ten blocks backwards in heels after drinking all night to find it?”
“And it was stuck in your hair, remember?” Abbie nudges me and I cup my face in my hands. I nod.
Brynn laughs and pulls my long hair behind me, down onto my back and smooths her hands over it.
“Don’t worry,” she says sympathetically, adding, “guys usually think absent-minded is cute.”
I jump up from the couch. “I am not absent minded! I have made a few mistakes and you guys just all remember them really freaking well!”
Kayla and Abbie lean back at the same time and Brynn rises and puts her hands on my shoulders, unexpectedly. She smiles and I know our teasing is over.
“I think you need this,” she says, quietly. I nod, a sudden rush of emotion inside of me.
“I do,” I admit, freely. Though Brynn knows more of what I need, I still don’t know if I’m ready to share with the other girls.
“So, which one can I hit on?” Kayla asks, filling a Styrofoam to-go container with anything she can. I’m broke but she’s a teacher. That’s a whole new level of broke. And while I wasn’t ready to share my fantasy plan with my other friends, that tiny bit of white wine has me feeling safe.
That and the threat of Kayla snagging the attention of one of the guys. She can have them once I get my fantasy plan in action. Until then, though, I can’t afford a wrench in the plan.
Sitting down, I pour everyone another glass of wine and tell them exactly what I want: a sexual escape with all three of those men involved, however it looks, I don’t know. But that’s what I want.
We drink in silence for a few minutes while they digest, and now that Brynn’s met Bodhi as well as Bastian, I know she gets it. Finally, Abbie breaks the silence.
“We get the details, right? Like, after?”
I nod and sigh at her acceptance.
Kayla puts her hair into a small ponytail, the logo of Eastwood showing on her now visible lapel. “I mean, I’ve never done that but you know what, you do you. I think it’s cool.”
I sigh
again.
They didn’t have to accept it for me to still want to do it. It just makes it all that much nicer than they did. And that they didn’t embarrass me about it, either.
I smile to myself as I usher the girls out the door an hour later.
I have more than headaches.
I have a fantasy plan.
Chapter 11
Moving day with three superheroes is quite the experience.
There are no groans and straining noises, no “put it down for a second” under the guise of needing to “adjust their grip”, there are no dolly’s or moving straps needed.
These guys point to something, grab it, put it on the truck and are back inside grabbing something else in less than a few minutes. Being a minimalist put me on the easy scale when it came to moving, but with their help, we’re done before my girls even make it over. Though they are running late because they went to the next town over to get some Mr. T’s donuts, the best donuts in all of the valley. Seriously.
The only things my superheroes don’t move are the table and chairs that Abbie is borrowing, and my refrigerator.
After just three trips to the corner house with Bastian’s truck (wherein we all hear that “a Tesla can’t do this”), all of my things are moved. I have my own bathroom and while it’s not attached to the room, Bodhi said it could be all mine. Not that I’m going to hang posters of Johnny Depp and light rose-scented candles or anything but still, it’s nice to not share a bathroom with anyone.
When we’re back at the house, I realize that Eli has been almost completely silent all morning. Bodhi and Bastian agree to get the plants off my back patio and lock up while I’ve offered up lunch at the hands of Eli and myself. He doesn’t verbalize whether he’ll help or not, so when the other two leave, I let him off the hook.
“You don’t have to help, I think I can handle some sandwiches,” I smile, trying to be casual despite the raging flame between my legs that ignites every time I’m alone with Eli. Which isn’t often but when it does happen? Holy hell.
Pulling sandwich items from the fridge, I angle the cutting board so that I can stand sideways in relation to where Eli is sitting. Trying to hide my hard nipples that are waving their damn hands in the air, begging to be spotted under my faded and well-loved “You had me at enemies-to-lovers” t-shirt. He makes no attempt to help me, anyway, but rather sits at the table, watching.
“Hey,” I say, while putting together the first sandwich. I’ll have to get used to making Vegan sandwiches, as I’ve never really done it until now. “I’m sorry if you felt pressured into letting me move in here. I know it was kind of just, sprung on you and honestly—”
“It wasn’t sprung on me,” he says, and when I look up, I see his eyes are trained on me. He watches the knife slide through the block of cashew cheese, and then his gaze travels up my arms, across my chest and up to my mouth. Then my eyes.
The way he takes me in feels like he’s tasting me.
And the small smile that curls on his lips for the briefest and most fleeting of moments tells me he likes what he tasted. And my body goes hot. My spine wants to melt. My cheeks definitely get flushed. I’m shamefully hungry for this man—these men—and part of me feels like it’s time to get bold. After all, that’s why I’m here.
“We talked about it in depth after that first afternoon you were here,” he says, shedding some more insight onto the trio’s tight-knit relationship.
“Oh,” I say, not really sure what else to say. Captain America is sweating through his gray t-shirt as he takes another drink of his water, steel eyes still on me.
“I’m just guessing here,” I say about the sandwiches, “I definitely could be making sandwiches that everyone hates. Seriously,” I hold up a bottle of yellow mustard. “This could make or break a sandwich.”
“Nah,” Eli says, pushing off the table to his feet. He’s wearing black jeans and a faded gray t-shirt, his Captain America hair is covered with a baseball cap which he knocks upwards, exposing more of his face. Taking a spot next to me, I can feel his sweat and heat from inches away. And I can feel how much I want that sweat and heat all over me. I bump my hip into his, boldly.
“What’s a make or break for you?” I ask, making a heart on each slice of bread with mustard. No one sees it but I’ve been doing hearts and penises with condiments since I was sixteen. Can’t do a penis in mixed company though. That’s a bit too embarrassing.
“Tomatoes,” he says, surprising me because everyone and their damn mother loves tomatoes. They can’t get enough tomatoes. But after being best friends with Brynn for so long, I no longer want tomatoes by themselves on things, either.
“They have the audacity to not just have a bad texture, but then they get all their juice on everything. You want to make a sandwich and pack it for later? The tomato laughs at your wants. The tomato fills your delicious bread with acidic pink juice that ruins your meal. It’s just, awful,” he says, knocking his baseball cap up again so he can run his hand through his hair.
Laughing, I nod as I place three washed pieces of romaine over the provolone I’ve just added. “Totally, tomatoes have ruined many meals for me, too,” I added.
“What about you?” Eli asks, the smell of his sweat making my hands work slower because I have to focus a lot harder.
“Tomatoes and probably onions,” I tell him.
“But onions are pure flavor,” he debates.
I nod, completing two of the three sandwiches. Time for Bodhi’s, which means I have to clean the work space and change utensils, so these sandwiches don’t cross-contaminate with his Vegan sandwich. I rinse the cutting board until the sink, adding a squirt of eco-friendly dish soap. Why make anything but eco-friendly? It lathers and cleans, and it doesn’t hurt the environment, so where’s the upside on using the other stuff?
“They are,” I add, “but Br—well, usually it’s just easier to not like them.”
Eli stops what he’s doing—which was making Bodhi’s sandwich on the cutting board he pulled from the soap and dried for me, as I was washing the knife. “Easier… for what?”
I stumble through an awkward laugh.
“Ahh,” he says, putting his massive hand flat on Bodhi’s sandwich, pressing down. With the sprouts, onions, cucumbers, devilish tomatoes, avocado slices and cashew cheese, the sandwich looks like a New York city high-rise once Eli slides the bamboo toothpick into each half. “So, it’s not a what but a who.”
I shrug.
“They guy who doesn’t want to take care of his girlfriend is also the guy who doesn’t want to have to brush his teeth after a meal?” he suggests.
“Yeah,” I laugh at exactly how stupid Brett is. Or was, I don’t know. I haven’t seen him or heard from him since the day we broke up. He never even text messaged me once to see how I was doing, which I kind of thought he would given how serious the migraines had become. But nope. He couldn’t be bothered. The same way he couldn’t be bothered to simply brush his teeth after eating something with a strong odor. “He’d rather avoid foods and drinks that he loved if it meant he could keep his playing his video game.”
I turn to Eli and put my hands on my hips, cocking my head with a sarcastic annoyance. “You know, Eli, you can’t just pause some video games. Because, despite the entire thing being fake, it’s still very important to not pause the fake world with your online friends. More important than your real life,” I say, maybe imparting too much of my failed relationship onto him. Maybe.
But there’s also something freeing in finally just saying whatever the fuck I want.
Not trying to be kind in case we get back together, not trying to reframe things so we’re at equal fault for our relationship ending. To just say “Brett was a shitty, selfish person” without saying those words? It feels nice.
“You know,” I tell Eli, who is still smirking from me talking about Brett. “I didn’t even care that he played video games a ton. Like, I get it, your job as a tax accountant is mega… stressful
,” I say, using finger quotes to impart the fact that I never thought his job was hard at all. I toss a wink with the air quotes and Eli laughs.
His laugh temporarily throws my brain off track because it’s so deep and so sexy and the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he throws his head back—I want to lick it.
Is that a thing? Wanting a guy so bad you want to lick his Adam’s apple?
I clear my throat. “I just hated that video games came before everything else. Like, have that for you, that’s fine. But don’t have that before everything else.”
“Your girl should be the most important thing in your life,” Eli says, all joking drained from his tone. I want to look at him, meet his eyes and see what’s brewing inside. Until this encounter today, he’s been closed off and hard to read. I want more Eli. It’s not because I have some high school crush wherein, I am picturing meeting his mother and wondering what kind of dog he thinks will be best for our three children—no, I’m not doing that at all. That’s old Sloane.
Besides, we all know golden retrievers are what’s up.
But when I look up to him, where’s he’s wiping the counter with a dish towel, he doesn’t turn to face me. It’s almost as if he’s shy and can’t face me, because his neck grows pink under my gaze.
I shake my head, feeling almost under a spell when I’m this close to him. Like my body is a raw magnet and he’s the other half I’m attracted to, and even though my brain is telling me to reread those signals (because they in no way point to make a move), my body goes to him, inside and out. I cannot help it.
Seriously.
I break the ice, wanting to talk about him. Hear him talk about himself.
“It’s not every day you meet a twenty-six-year-old whiskey connoisseur.”
We sit at the table together and he scratches at the side of his face. “I don’t think of myself as a connoisseur. Yet. But I am very interested in it.”
“What makes you interested in it?” I really want to know. I also want to know what whiskey tastes like straight from his lips. Or maybe off those abs I know he has under there.