The Man Cave Collection: Manservant, Man Flu, Man Handler, and Man Buns

by Ryan, Shari J.

  “You look like you’re not feeling so hot. Are you okay?” Logan asks as he opens the door

  “Oh, I—I was just thinking about my ex-husband’s hairy a—wow, okay, um, yeah, I’m fine.”

  The look on Logan’s face is one of sheer discomfort. “I’m sorry, were you just about to say you were thinking about your husband’s hairy ass?”

  He releases the door to the cafe, closing us outside of the warmth. “Um.”

  “It’s either a yes or no?”

  “Why does it matter to you?” I come back with. Smooth, Hannah. Real smooth.

  “Well, we were walking into the restaurant, I asked you if you felt okay and you shouted something about your ex-husband’s hairy ass. Obviously, you can’t blame me for wondering what the correlation is?”

  There are many days, and moments within those days, where I just say screw it and release what my big trap was holding in. “Well, since I’m already at risk for sexual harassment, I might as well be honest with you and just say I was wondering what your ass looked like, and it made me realize I’ve never actually seen a nice-looking, naked ass because I was with my ex-husband since high school.”

  “I’m flattered that you think I have a nice ass, even though you’ve never seen it, hopefully, but if you knew your ex since high school, there had to be a point in time where he had a nice ass?” Logan crosses his arms over his chest as if he were honestly intrigued by my statements.

  “Never,” I tell him honestly. “It was his worst feature … before he cheated on me.”

  “Inferiority complex,” he says.

  “What?” I wrap my arms around my body because I’m beginning to shiver from the cold. Logan notices and reopens the door to the cafe. “I meant he was probably feeling down about himself since you probably have a pretty nice ass, so he needed to see if someone else would take him with his funky ass, or if it was just you.”

  “Wow,” I say, walking into the warmth. I’m flattered he thinks I have a nice ass. That’s sweet. Let’s hope he never finds out that it’s a little saggy, with a touch of cellulite mixed in.

  “What do you eat here?”

  “The roast beef sandwich is pretty good,” I tell him.

  “Good, go sit down. I’ll grab us a couple of sandwiches. I’m sure you want to call to see how Cora’s feeling.”

  I love you. That almost just came out of my mouth. It’s a good thing I still have some sort of a filter left.

  I take the booth in the back corner and call the house phone first to see if they’re still there. No answer, though. I love calling Rick’s phone. It’s like the highlight of my life.

  Yo? Rick speaking. Asshole.

  “Yo, Rick speaking.”

  “Why do you need to announce yourself when you have caller ID?”

  “Habit,” he says.

  “Kind of like infidelity?” Why can’t I help acting like a five-year-old every time I talk to him? “How is Cora?”

  “The fever broke. I had her in the tub for a bit this morning since she was freezing, but after some Motrin, she seemed to get a little energy. She’s napping now, though.”

  “I feel awful that I’m not there,” I tell him. It was an inside thought that should have stayed inside.

  “She’s in good hands, Hannah. I am her father. I can take care of her.” He can’t see me squinting my eyes at his words. How come he never took care of her while we were married? He was always too busy doing something else, to stop and give me a hand with her. Now he’s father of the year because he’s working from home like he does plenty of days a year, and she’s napping.

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll give you a call if anything changes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hannahbannana, cheer up. It’s just the flu.” His singsong voice drives through me like nails on a chalkboard, forcing me to hang up on him.

  Logan is placing a tray down on our table as the conversation abruptly ends. “He’s one of those guys huh?”

  “What type is that you’re referring to?” I’m curious as to what he took from whatever he heard.

  “The schmoozer, smooth operator, who thinks he can win anyone over with a smile and a few nice words.”

  “Impressive,” I tell him. “You hit the nail right on the head.”

  “How is Miss Cora?” he asks.

  “Still pretty sick.”

  He juts out his bottom lip, releasing a soft sigh. “Poor kid.” I want to ask about the child he mentioned in the truck, but it doesn’t feel right bringing it up without him initiating it.

  I dig into my sandwich, starved from the stress I’ve caused myself today, but for some reason, I’m unable to get through even half of the sandwich before my stomach churns in a way that tells me to get up and run to the bathroom as quickly as I can. “I’ll be—”

  Yup, I’m not making it to the bathroom.

  Oh no.

  I gag and expel the rest of my sentence out in chunks of roast beef.

  7

  And this just became the worst, mondayist Wednesday ever …

  Please tell me I made it to the restroom. I’m not on the laminate wooden floor with dozens of people staring at me, including Logan, a man I’ve probably made up in my head, which would just add to my insanity.

  With another round of impending bile rising through my esophagus, I grapple the leg of a nearby chair as the sounds of a dog with a hairball buck through my throat. My hair is pulled away from my face, which is pointless since it already has chunks dangling from the ends. Then, a hand touches my back—a warm hand. “Let me help you up.”

  “I don’t think I can move,” I try to say, though it comes out sounding as if I swallowed a porcupine.

  Logan squats down beside me and hands me a wad of napkins. My hands are soaked in a puddle of coffee-laced puke, but I reach up to take the napkins, unsure where to clean first. Everything feels like it’s in slow motion as I clean my face.

  “Ma’am, we’re going to need to ask you to move so we can mop. It’s a health code violation.”

  “Hey man, give her a minute. She’s clearly having a rough time getting up,” Logan says.

  “I’m losing customers,” the man continues.

  As the wave of nausea passes, anger fills the empty pit in my stomach. Who the hell says stuff like that while someone is obviously sick to her stomach?

  A man.

  I push myself up off the ground, saturating my hands in my vomit as I come to my knees, and Logan loops a hand around my elbow to help me up the rest of the way. I try to carry myself respectably to the restroom, attempting to maintain a sense of acting like a lady after that display.

  After retreating from the restroom, Logan guides me outside. The fresh air feels good on my skin, but I can still smell the horrid scent of bile, and I’m afraid to look down at my clothes.

  “I think you caught whatever Cora has,” Logan says.

  “Yeah, I think that’s a good assumption.” The words feel like rusty nails in my throat, and my head just became a twenty-pound weight I don’t want to hold up for much longer.

  “I’ll get you home,” he says.

  “No, I have to get back to work. I have to plan for the event.”

  Logan snickers and runs his fingers through his short, dark hair. “No offense, but you’re covered in vomit.”

  “I’ll shower and change, but I have to be at work today.”

  “Okay, then.” He looks at me like I have two heads but doesn’t argue, which is nice. Most of the men I associate with are insistent and on the controlling side of the spectrum. “Let me take you to your house, at least, so you don’t have to drive.”

  “It’s just down the road a few miles.” I try to offer a faint smile, but the tingling in my throat pauses all facial expressions and bodily movements. Please, no. Just pass. I don’t know who told me this old wives’ tale, but I’m staring up into the clouds, pulling in deep breaths as if it will wash the nausea away. Whoever came up with this shit is pr
obably the same person who said to chew ginger gum for morning sickness. Gum causes saliva and saliva goes down and then comes back up. Bastards.

  By some luck, the wave of sickness passes by like a putrid breeze, and I continue walking toward Logan’s truck with his escorting assistance. I’m waiting for the lecture on trying not to puke on the luxurious interior of his truck, but it never comes.

  “I’ll tell you to pull over if I feel sick.”

  “We’ll be okay,” he says, placing his hand softly on my back. With a flick of his wrist, the passenger door opens, and he gently helps me up and inside. I lean my head back and close my eyes, wishing for the unsettling sensation in my gut to go away. The ride will not make it better. That much, I know.

  My memories of feeling like death while pregnant with Cora play through my mind like an old movie. I would tell Rick I didn’t feel well, and he’d tell me not to yak in his car because he didn’t want it to smell like vomit for the next month. He had it pretty rough during my pregnancy, working from six in the morning until eight at night. I was asleep when he left and asleep by time he got home, and worked in between all that too.

  “Are you hanging in there?” Logan asks.

  “Mmm,” I groan, scared to open my mouth. Then it dawns on me, though. He has no clue where I live, so we’re driving aimlessly but in the right direction at least. Rather than popping the cork, I point in the directions he needs to turn, which works out fine up until we hit my street. The deep breaths, the tight jaw, the clenched eyes—none of it’s working. Just a few more seconds until we make it to the driveway. I point a second too late, and he pulls into the wrong driveway. He pulls into Rick’s driveway, but I don’t care now as I push open the door, falling on the way. The moment my knees touch the pavement, an explosion of bile pours from my throat in old-fashioned, exorcist style. What the hell? I’m starting to wonder if I have food poisoning, but one would have to eat something for that to happen, and coffee doesn’t count. I don’t think.

  The retching sound I make is basically a call for the neighbors to poke their heads out of their doors, looking for the source of the horrendous noises. Tiana is one of those neighbors, except I’m on her driveway, so she has more of an excuse to look.

  “Rick!” she yells. “There’s a truck in our driveway, and some woman is puking her guts out. Can you please get rid of them?”

  It truly amazes me—even as I sit here with vomit dripping from my lips—what Rick saw in this woman beside her double D’s, perky ass, and Botox-infused lips. Oh, she probably gives him head more than once a week. That must be where I went wrong all those years. Silly, Hannah.

  “What the hell?” Rick says, stepping outside of his house, all manly and stuff. I also find this funny because Rick couldn’t figure out how to fix a leaky faucet or plunge shit out of a toilet. He couldn’t jump a car because he might get shocked, and changing the batteries in our smoke alarms was traumatizing to his ears, so I did all of that. Real manly, he was. Now he’s coming out here like a tough guy, ready to kick some puking chick off his driveway.

  A little rain, and it will be like this never happened. Relax, macho man.

  “Sorry, man, I thought this was her house,” Logan says to Rick. What a nice introduction.

  “Hannah?” Rick questions while leaning down to confirm it’s me, his ex-wife, the woman he was unfortunately married to for ten years.

  “I take it you’re neighbors,” Logan says. “If you just point me to her house, I’ll help her over there.”

  Rick laughs. Of course, he laughs. Why wouldn’t he laugh right now? All the while, I’m wondering where Cora is if Rick is out here. If Cora ever hears one of us outside, she’s through the door in a matter of seconds, which tells me she’s no better than she was this morning.

  “Yeah, we’re neighbors all right,” Rick continues. “Her house, my old house, whichever you want to call it, is right over there.”

  I’m using every bit of strength I have to look up at Logan and Rick, assuming the confusion Logan must be experiencing at the moment, though he did hear my outburst on the conference call yesterday, and I believe I blurted out something about living next door to my ex.

  “Whatever the case, I just want to get her home,” Logan continues, without missing a beat. Either he doesn’t care to figure out the drama, he’s already figured it out, or he wants to dump me at my house and get the hell away from me as fast as he can. I’d go with option three if I were him.

  Rick steps in front of Logan to help me up. “Hannah, babe, come on. Let’s get you home.”

  Babe? Home? No. No. No. No. He’s helping me up, and I pull my arms out of his grip. “Don’t call me babe, and don’t refer to that house as home,” I manage to grumble. “Logan, this is my dumbass ex-husband who had an affair and then moved in next door to continue destroying my life for as long as humanly possible.” Now that I got that out, I would like to collapse back down to the ground and be left here on this soothingly cool driveway to die. It’s all that’s nice about this property.

  Rick steps away, but Logan takes his turn trying to peel me up. Preferring his arms over Rick’s, I comply like a limp rag, then cross the small patch of lawn in between our driveways.

  “Hannah, are the keys in your purse?” Logan asks.

  I nod once, hoping it’s noticeable enough that he saw. In any case, he’s back across the lawns, fishing my purse out of his truck. I hope there’s nothing mortifying in there. He digs around for a minute before retrieving the keys. Since I have at least ten on my keychain, eight of which belong to doors I wouldn’t be able to decipher, I point to the house key.

  Logan opens the door and turns back around to help me up and inside the house. “Where is your shower?” he asks.

  “No, no, you can’t see me naked, Logan. That’s against company policy,” I say. My words sort of sound like I’ve had about five cocktails, and my stomach feels about the same.

  “I won’t look,” he says. “You need to get cleaned up though.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Then, I have to get back to the office before anyone notices I’m gone.”

  “There’s no way,” he argues. “You’re seriously sick. You need to take it easy.”

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “You have to.”

  “You’re not my boss. I’m yours,” I argue.

  He gives up the battle and helps me up the stairs, where I point off to the right toward my bedroom. Normally, I would have spit-shined my house if I knew a man was coming over, never mind lightly straightening up the place. It looks like a tornado whipped through here at some point in the last week.

  I always laugh when I watch the TV shows where a woman unexpectedly finds herself in a sexy predicament and spontaneously brings some hot guy home to her super clean, spotless house, as if she always lives that way. There needs to be some real reality TV shows, like this is what a house of a single, working mom looks like. Yes, it needs to be cleaned. Yes, the dishes are still in the sink from two days ago. No, the laundry has not been done in a week and a half, and no, my sheets have not been changed in at least five weeks. I’m gross, but surviving and keeping a child alive, so I’m thinking that’s all that matters.

  Just as I remember leaving it, my sheets are hanging off the bed, my comforter is crumbled in a ball on the floor, I have two bras hanging from the top of my hamper, oh, and a pair of panties just sitting there in the middle of the floor for no reason. My room might actually smell, but maybe that’s just me.

  “Sorry about the mess.”

  “Eh, we all have our days,” he says.

  I have mine every day. I like to be clean and organized, but I suck at it. I even Pinterest that shit just so I can be inspired to clean and organize, but still, no luck.

  He sits me down on the edge of my bed, and another wave of thuds rolls through my head like thunder. Holy crap. What the hell is this?

  Over the pounding of my head, I hear water squeal through the pipes before splashing onto t
he tiled floor of my shower.

  “Okay, the water temperature is good, and you’re all set. Are you going to be okay in there?” Logan asks. I lift my head, looking up at him and the concerned gaze in his caring eyes. The sunlight pouring into the room reflects off his face, making the blue in his eyes almost transparent. There isn’t a flaw on his face, not even a chicken pox scar. How is that possible if he’s older than I am? Shouldn’t he have more than just two little crow’s feet on either side of his eyes? And those only end up making him look sexier. God knows I have enough lines and age spots for the both of us, but still.

  “I think so,” I tell him. I push myself up and sluggishly drag my feet into the bathroom, closing the door behind me.

  “I’ll wait here for you,” he says.

  I should probably tell him to go back to the office or something, but I do want to get back to work, assuming this shower is like the magic healing solution I hope it is.

  The hot water does seem to settle my stomach a bit, so I soap up and move through my routine quickly.

  Crap.

  There’s a man waiting in my bedroom, and I have no clean clothes in here. Could this day get any worse? Why, yes, yes it can.

  I step out onto my plush bath mat and reach for the linen closet to grab a towel—a towel that isn’t where it should be. Shit!

  I know I had at least one clean towel left. I don’t even have a hand towel to dab myself up with, or clothes.

  My hamper—I don’t care if it’s dirty. I need a towel.

  I open the door a crack, peeking into my bedroom for Logan, but I don’t see him.

  “Logan?” I call out. After a second without hearing a response, I open the door a little wider. “Logan, are you still there?” If he’s anywhere in the house, he would have heard that shout. Maybe he left. The house is so quiet, I’d be hard-pressed to think he’s still here. For all I can imagine, Rick came in to find him.

  I open the door and tiptoe out and over to where my hamper should be, but either I’m losing my mind, or there’s a laundry fairy, which I’m certain there isn’t. I circle around my room, looking for where the hell my laundry could be. You must be kidding me. I’m freezing, soaking wet, and there is no towel in this room.