Looking at Becker now, regardless of the fact he was married, I didn’t feel all that much. Sure, he was a prime specimen, and if I’d been a different girl, I might’ve felt like examining him closer. But the old spark wasn’t there. He’d settled into being just an old friend.
“So, how ’bout you two?” Becker asked, drawing my attention back to the conversation.
“How long’ve you been married?”
I spit my beer in a streaming fountain onto the table and gasped for air while Chris pounded me on the back, laughing.
“Margo’s allergic to the M-word. Probably shouldn’t mention it again or she might toss a lung.”
“So, what? You guys just shacking up then?”
“Geez, Becker.” I stared at him like he’d admitted to wearing women’s underpants.
“Chris is my best friend. You know that. Best friends don’t sleep together.”
“Well, we’re gonna sleep together tonight,” Chris reminded me with an intimate pat on the thigh, meant to egg me on.
I slapped his paw away. “That’s not the same.”
We explained to Beck about our vacation and my accident, which forced me to bring Chris along—much to my utter disappointment. “He’s such an Elvis hater.”
Becker stared around the room in mock horror, as if waiting for the Elvis police to burst through the door and bust us. “Don’t ever speak of such things outside this room.”
“I don’t hate Elv…uh, him,” Chris corrected with an eye roll. “I could just live without him.”
“Not if you live in Memphis, man.”
Becker refilled our beers and told us about his business. “The bar’s downstairs and upstairs is my studio.”
“Studio?” I asked, as I began my second beer, wondering if he’d taken up painting or something. Or maybe he meant dance studio, my slightly tipsy subconscious thought, and I snickered under my breath at my own wit.
“Tattoo studio.” He indicated the magazines spread out on the table. I’d stopped looking at them a short time ago. The images started swimming in front of my eyes like bad drug trip, so I’d been avoiding eye contact. Besides, the cover photo of a woman with a dragon curling up her side, resting its huge head on the upper part of her breast made my skin hurt just looking at it. Did people take entire bottles of Valium before subjecting themselves to a tattoo artist’s needle?
Chris and Becker discussed the trials and tribulations of business ownership, until I felt a bit left out. Crap, I didn’t even have a job I could discuss. I felt about ten years old.
Pretty soon, though, the conversation turned to our college years. Becker’s wife, Angel, joined us while on her break, bringing another couple of pitchers. We had a good time, talking about our lives now and our lives in college. We reminded Becker of the camping trip we’d all taken, sharing stories with his wife, who’d never heard them before. We laughed until our sides hurt, probably due as much to the excess of alcohol as to the laughter itself. When one pitcher was gone, another miraculously appeared.
After a while, the alcohol, having nowhere else to go, began replacing brain cells, and I don’t remember what happened the rest of the night. But, I’m sure we had a good time.
***
A taxi must have taken us back to the Heartbreak Hotel, and we must have staggered safely to our room because when I finally woke up, early morning sunlight flooded between the curtains we’d forgotten to close.
Chris was draped over the top of me.
My first thought was, Please, God, tell me I didn’t have sex with my best friend. Without moving a muscle, I took inventory of body parts—something I’d done on a couple of occasions in the past, after a night of too much imbibing and not enough memory of the company I’d kept. Chances were, since it had been so blasted long, I’d somehow know whether I had sex.
I hadn’t.
Thank God.
Not wanting to awaken Chris yet, I didn’t move. It was actually kind of nice, I decided. The weight of Chris’s arm across my chest, his chin against my shoulder. His soft breath blowing on my neck with each exhale.
I don’t like to be touched when I sleep. It’s always been an unwritten rule. Lance tried to get past my boundaries a few times, but the threat of me sleeping on the couch if he didn’t stay on his own side of the bed prevented him from trying to snuggle at night.
So why wasn’t I bothered by Chris touching me in my sleep? Thinking about it logically, I should have been more upset at having Chris, a “mere” friend, invading my space. Strange. Looking at Chris, his dark hair tousled, his cheeks needing a shave, his eyes fluttering in his dreams, I felt more intimate with him than I ever remember feeling before, with any of my boyfriends. Maybe with anyone at all.
Yesterday, I’d shared Elvis with Chris all day long. Not that he enjoyed it, but he’d gone. Kevin would never have gone with me. He’d have insisted on being the tour guide and taking me to cultural sites and museums only—not the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum either. And forget the Graceland tour planned for today. That wouldn’t even have been an option. He’d have orchestrated the entire trip, with no thought to what I wanted to do. Chris grumbled, but he went along with it. Because he understood me.
Chris and I had shared so much over the years. He’d been there for every break-up I’d been through, every maternal wedding I endured, every job disappointment, college illness and, as kids, every bit of other trouble you could imagine. He listened to my dreams of being a DJ and hadn’t judged me because I loved the music and celebrities. He saw me cry when I flunked my driver’s test the first time and didn’t get to drive home the new Honda I saved so long to buy. He’d seen me naked (with oatmeal) and hadn’t made me feel awkward or embarrassed.
There was more intimacy in our friendship than I think I had with all my boyfriends put together.
Which must have been why I didn’t move from under Chris’s weight and instead just closed my eyes and went back to sleep.
***
When next I woke up, Chris hadn’t moved, but I needed to. Nature, the demanding little bugger, was calling.
Trying to slip out from under a six-foot two-inch man is harder than it sounds. And, seeing as I had no prior experience, I did a lousy job of it. I shimmied to the right, toward the edge of the bed. Chris groaned in his sleep and tugged me closer with the arm thrown across my belly. I tried scooting up toward the head of the bed. Chris moved even closer and threw a leg into the mix, pinning my thighs to the bed. My bladder, sensing that it wouldn’t be relieved soon, protested louder.
I finally decided waking Chris was the only option. “Hey. Sleeping Beauty.” I gave his shoulder a shake. “I need to use the restroom.” No response. “Earth to Treem. Waste water must be jettisoned. Please respond.”
Nothing.
My bladder screamed and threatened mutiny.
I pulled out the big guns. “Chris!”
Even with shouting in his ear, he awakened slowly. One eye opened, then the other, as he focused on my face. For a brief moment, I watched as his brain registered who he was lying on. I wondered how he would react.
He didn’t react in the horror I half expected. “Hmm. You’re pretty comfortable for a girl with no boobs.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said wryly. “Don’t think I’ve heard sweeter words from a guy’s mouth before.”
“My pleasure.” Chris shifted lazily in bed, apparently not in any hurry to leave Dreamland.
Suddenly my brain registered something of its own. I stared down at Chris in surprise and, uh, shock. “Is that a gun in your boxers or are you happy to see me?”
Chris snorted and rolled away from me, though not in a self-conscious manner. “Nothing that doesn’t happen every morning.”
I sat up on the edge of the bed, my bladder much relieved now that it wasn’t crowded by a large male leg. “Really?” I tugged down the edge of the T-shirt I’d slept in. “I always thought that morning wood thing was a myth.”
“You mean that has never happened to you bef
ore? With any of your boyfriends?”
I shook my head and leaned back against the headboard where I could see Chris. My bladder could wait. “Nope.”
“Didn’t you and Kevin ever snuggle in the morning?” He looked so completely incredulous that I laughed.
“I’m not much of a cuddler. I like my space when I sleep.”
Chris made a sound in the back of his throat that sounded like doubt. “Then why didn’t you move when you woke up a few hours ago?”
I felt myself flush involuntarily. “I was comfortable. You were comfortable. I was too tired to move.”
“I think you liked it.” He grinned that thousand-watt smile meant to disarm his victims.
“No, I didn’t. I was just exhausted.”
“You keep telling yourself that.”
I smacked him on the chest and climbed out of bed. “Your ego is pretty swollen in the morning, too, isn’t it?”
I took two steps across the carpet and landed on my face. “Damn,” I said from my position on the floor.
“You okay?”
I rolled over on my back and stared one-eyed up at where Chris now hung over the edge of the bed, ready to give assistance to the dizzy broad on the floor. “Fine.” I groaned. “Obviously, alcohol was not a good idea.”
Chris laughed. “Maybe not.”
I slowly pushed myself to my feet, hanging on to my friend the wall. I truly looked forward to the day when I could walk with both hands free…all the time.
“Hey,” Chris called as I got to the bathroom door. “Didn’t you ever have morning sex? You know, that sleepy sex, where you both wake up and find yourself in the middle of making love and no one’s quite sure who started it? The kind that lasts for hours because neither of you wants to wake up from the really great dream you’re both sharing?”
I leaned against the wall and smiled a little. “Nope. Never. The only morning sex I ever had was a quickie in the shower.”
Chris shook his tousled head sadly. “You don’t know what you’ve been missing, babe.”
As I turned to enter the bathroom, I sighed. Chris’s brief description was just enough to tell me what I’d been missing. I had to wonder if I’d ever find out first-hand, seeing that I was through with men.
My bladder now a happy camper, I gave my face a good scrubbing. Despite the hangover, I really looked forward to today. Graceland. The culmination of my entire Elvis vacation fantasy.
I rubbed at a leftover bug bite on my hip. Most of the others had faded, but this one still bothered me. In fact, it really kind of hurt. Sliding down the shorts I’d worn to bed—obviously not being coherent enough to change out of them at whatever time we dragged our behinds into the hotel last night—I balanced against the counter and bent to the side to examine the bite. Or rather the thick gauze bandage covering what I thought was a bite. I peeled back the adhesive to see what was underneath.
“Ahhhhhh!!!” The scream I let out had Chris bursting through the bathroom door in five seconds flat.
“What the hell?! What’s wrong?” Chris latched on to my shoulders as if to keep me from falling over.
“What the fuck is that?” I screeched in horror.
“What? Where?” He twisted to look around the bathroom, obviously thinking I’d seen something that scared me.
I’d seen something that scared me all right, but it wasn’t loose in the Heartbreak Hotel bathroom. “This!” I snarled and pivoted to show him my hip. The one sporting a newly needled tattoo.
A tattoo that said CHRIS in giant black letters.
Surrounded by a red heart.
With white wings.
For a minute, Chris only stared, open-mouthed. Then he burst out laughing. He doubled over, gripping the counter while he howled. He laughed so hard I thought he’d bust a blood vessel.
I had no plans to call 911 if he did.
I finally kicked him in the shin to shut him up. “This is not funny!” I screeched. “I cannot go through life with your name tattooed on my ass.”
“Well, technically it’s not your ass. It’s your hip.” Chris panted heavily and rested his hands on his thighs trying to get a grip on himself. I was about to get a grip on him myself, and it wasn’t going to be pleasurable.
“It’s not funny! Stop laughing,” I demanded. “What did you and Case do? How the hell did I end up with a tattoo?”
“I swear, I don’t remember,” he assured me. Which wasn’t reassuring at all.
A shocking thought crossed my mind. What if I had more than one tattoo?
I began frantically searching my body for signs of other graffiti.
Arms: clear.
Legs and ankles: clear.
I pulled my shirt away from my chest, reached underneath and yanked my bra away from the breasts that really weren’t even large enough to need holding up. Breasts: clear.
“Check my shoulders.” I turned and lifted my shirt.
“No tattoos,” Chris said, through a snicker.
That only left…my butt. People got tattoos on their butts, didn’t they? Oh, God, if I’d bared my butt to Case Becker, I was going to put a bullet through my brain.
With a deep breath, I bent over and yanked my shorts down only as far as necessary. Chris snorted with renewed laughter, and I quickly pulled my shorts into place.
“This is serious. Do I or don’t I have someone else’s name on my ass?”
Chris literally couldn’t speak he was laughing so hard.
I finally gave up waiting for an answer and climbed up onto the toilet lid, bared my butt again and twisted around to look at it in the mirror.
Tattoo-free.
I yanked up my shorts and started to climb down, only to be swamped by a wave of dizziness. Chris stopped laughing for ten seconds to catch me, returning me to the floor.
“You are so dead.” I stomped past him out of the bathroom. “You and Case are going to rot in hell for this.”
“It’s just a tattoo.”
“It has your name on it!”
“Lots of women get tattoos with guys’ names on them. Doesn’t Angelina Jolie have a tattoo that says Billy Bob?”
“Angelina Jolie was married to Billy Bob at the time. Don’t you think it’s more than a little weird to have my best friend’s name tattooed on me?” I yanked a clean set of clothes out of my suitcase. “I mean, gee, it might turn out to be a little awkward the next time I have sex with a guy—every time I have sex with a guy for the rest of my life—when I have to stop and explain my tattoo.”
Chris just stood by the bed, scratching his bare—tattoo-free, I might add—chest, and trying not to laugh. Barely. Disgusted, I huffed past him, which sent him into further fits of laughter. Obviously my pain was amusing.
“You are so going to pay,” I said, turning back when I reached the bathroom door. “You have three more weeks of me—”
I stopped midsentence and gasped. Chris didn’t notice, because he was too busy being a man and thinking everything was a big joke. Well, I had a surefire way to put a stop to his mirth.
I dumped my clothes on the floor and walked up behind him, giving him a shove.
“Hey,” he protested, still chuckling. “No violence.”
“Remember that in about five seconds,” I snapped, giving him another push and lining him up with the bureau mirror. “Take a look at that, smart man.” I reached up and yanked off the bandage covering his right shoulder blade.
His sharp intake of breath told me his tattoo hurt much like mine.
He swiveled his head to peer in the mirror. I saw his eyes widen in his reflection. He backed up another foot until his thighs bumped on to the bureau and leaned close to the mirror.
“Does that say—”
“Margo.” I folded my hands across my chest and waited for it to sink in that he now sported my name in black—surrounded by a red heart, with lovely white wings. He wouldn’t find the situation nearly so funny now that he had his own damn explaining to do every time he had sex the re
st of his life.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
I grinned with satisfaction, glad to have proven my point.
Chris promptly burst into hysterics again. He laughed until he finally had to collapse on the bed to keep from falling.
“You are such a moron.”
“Ah, but I’m your moron,” he pointed out. “The tattoos say so.”
I closed my eyes and counted to ten to keep from bludgeoning him with a table lamp.
“Hey.” He finally sat up on the edge of the bed, turning to once again admire his tattoo in the mirror. “If you hate yours that much, you could always add a T to the end of my name to change it to Christ, and tell everybody you found religion.”
“And, you can change the R to another G and add a T to the end of my name and change it to maggot, because that is exactly what you are to have gotten me into this in the first place!”
The slamming of the bathroom door behind me probably reverberated throughout the entire hotel.
***
Crisp bacon crackled between my jaws as I took out my frustration on innocent pork. I could barely look at Chris, who sat across the table from me, all nonchalant, like I hadn’t been violated last night with ink and needles.
He bit into his buttered rye toast and blinked.
“Oh, you think this is so amusing, don’t you?” I finally snapped.
Chris snorted. “Am I laughing?”
His eyes were laughing. “Yes, you are. You and Becker probably both laughed last night, didn’t you? ‘Let’s take Margo upstairs and brand her!’ That was the deal, wasn’t it? A bet. Or…or payback.”
“Branding you would hardly be the case, now would it, considering I have a matching tattoo with your name on it? And, it definitely wasn’t payback.” He paused and then frowned.
“Payback for what?”
“For—” I clamped my jaw shut. Chris didn’t know what I might need to be paid back for.
I figured he’d guessed all those years ago. I figured he knew how I felt about Becker back then and would have put two and two together.
“For what?” he asked again, leaning across the table on his elbows, narrowing his eyes.
“What did you do?”
The Kiss Test Page 16