by Steph Nuss
“How are you doing?” Vail asked, plopping down in the chair next to the couch.
“I’ve been better,” I said, lifting the ice pack and cloth off my leg.
“Gross!” she exclaimed, wrinkling her nose. “It looks like you have a cankle!”
Fletcher laughed from the kitchen. “Do I even want to know what a cankle is?”
Vail kicked off her shoes and pulled her knees up under her. “When you can’t distinguish the calf from the ankle, that’s a cankle,” she explained. She looked back at me, smiling. “So, how long do you have to be off of it?”
“Just until the swelling goes down,” I replied. “I have to ice it, wrap it in a compression brace, and keep it elevated until then.” Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Fletcher unpacking the groceries. “Fletcher, did you remember to get the compression wrap at the store?”
“Yep.” He tossed the light brown medical wrap my way.
I caught it in one hand. “Thank you!”
“Anytime.”
“What else did you guys get? I only had a few things on the list,” I said, trying my best to see what he had in the kitchen. There were bags everywhere, and he was opening and closing doors left and right, placing things in their designated areas.
“He bought stuff for dinner too,” Vail said.
“I thought Rook and I could come over later and cook you both dinner,” Fletcher said, peeking his head into the living room. “Does that sound like a plan?”
“Depends on what you boys are cooking?” I teased.
“It’s a surprise,” Fletcher replied, narrowing those baby blues at me.
Vail laughed out loud as she flipped through the television channels. “No, it’s not. We’re having hamburgers and hot dogs.”
“Hey!” Fletcher said, pointing a package of buns at her. “I also got you a tub of that weird ice cream you like.”
“Sherbet is not weird ice cream!” she proclaimed, looking at me for support. “Everyone loves rainbow sherbet.”
I patted her hand, compassionately. “Not everyone, sweetie.”
“What?” she asked, the smile falling from her face. “You don’t like rainbow sherbet?!”
Shaking my head, I tried my best to suppress my laughter. “I actually don’t like sherbet at all.”
“I can’t believe this,” she confessed, as if my distaste for sherbet was a crime. “I feel like I don’t even know who you are.”
Fletcher joined us in the living room and sat on the arm of the couch. “Vail, rainbow sherbet is the wanna-be Neapolitan of sherbet land. No ice cream will ever top the greatness that is Neapolitan. You have three of America’s favorite flavors—vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry—all mixed into one. I think what you meant to say was, ‘Everyone loves Neapolitan.’”
Gazing up at him, I linked my hands together and pleaded, “Please tell me you got Neapolitan, too!”
“Yes, I got us,” Fletcher stated, eying Vail cautiously, “the normal ice cream eaters of America, a case of our beloved ice cream.”
“Oh, shut up, Fletcher!” Vail said, rolling her eyes at me.
“I think that’s my cue to leave,” Fletcher said, smiling down at me. He ran his hand over my ponytail and tugged. “I’ll be back later with Rook. Text me if you need anything, okay?”
“Okay,” I answered, nodding. “Thank you for getting everything.”
“No problem.” He stood to leave, pointing his thumb at Vail. “Have fun with this weirdo today.”
“I’m not weird!” Vail laughed, jumping out of her chair. She shoved him toward the door playfully. “Go! Nobody wants you here.”
She opened the door and shut it behind him, and then hopped back into her chair with a delirious smile plastered on her face. Kicking her feet over the armrest, her big blue eyes never strayed from me.
I eyed her suspiciously and went about wrapping my ankle in the compression bandage. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
Her smile grew as she said in a sing-songy voice, “I think Fletcher likes you!”
“What?” I asked, completely dumbstruck. I wasn’t expecting that sentence to come out of her mouth. “He and I are just friends.”
“Yeah, I know, but I think he wants to be more than friends with you.”
If she only knew what kind of friends we really were . . . But I’d play along with her teenage girl antics. “Why do you think that?”
“You should’ve seen him in the store with your list,” she giggled. “He was all worried about getting the right brand of everything. I thought all hell was going to break loose if we didn’t find the right conditioner you use, which wasn’t written down, I might add. I don’t really know how he knew what kind to get. Did you tell him?”
“Yes,” I lied, answering quickly, my heart beating fast. “I told him what kind to get when I gave him the list.”
Fletcher and I had showered enough times together that he knew what kind of hair products I used. In fact, last night when he helped me with my bath, he was the one who noticed my conditioner was low.
“Oh,” she said, shrugging her shoulders. “Well, he scoured the place to find the right one.”
“That doesn’t mean he wants to be more than friends,” I related, thankful for her ignorance.
“It’s not just that though,” she continued, falling back into her daydreamy state. “It’s the way he looks at you like you’re the only thing that matters to him.”
He looks at me a certain way?
“And how he took care of your grocery shopping and offered to make dinner for you.”
“Correction: he and Rook are making dinner for us.”
“Bayler,” she said, piercing me with her eyes. “Would you quit ruining this for me? My dad never would’ve done anything like that for my mom. It’s nice to see a guy, besides Rook, actually care about a girl.”
Did Fletcher care about me? Yes, he did. I knew he did, but I was almost sure it was because we were having sex on a regular basis. Not because his feelings went beyond fucking. We were friends—nothing more, nothing less.
She got up from the chair, grabbed the latest season of Pretty Little Liars we were watching, and slipped the disc into the DVD player.
When she sat back down, I reached over and put my hand on her arm. “I’m sorry about your dad.”
“Eh,” she said, shrugging her shoulders again. “It’s his loss.”
“You’re absolutely right.”
***
Later that afternoon, I was in the kitchen headed for the ice cream, with music blaring from the living room television. We’d moved on to watching music videos now that I was all caught up on Vail’s favorite show. I was just reaching for the freezer handle when I heard Vail shout my name from the bathroom. She’d been in there a while, but I hadn’t really noticed until now.
Crutching my way into the hall, I stopped next to the door. “Everything okay in there?”
“Um . . . do you have a tampon I could borrow?” she asked, in a shaky voice. “I mean, not borrow, but . . .”
“Just a sec.” I hobbled over to one of the hall cabinets and opened the door. Her mom’s words from our first meeting rang out in my head, about how worried Vail had been about not starting her period. Since neither she nor her mom had said anything about it and Vail didn’t have any feminine products with her, I assumed this was her first time getting it. The thought caused anxiety to tighten in my chest. I didn’t know how to handle this situation. With the box of tampons and another box of pads staring back at me, I tried to remember exactly what Harper said to me when I first got mine.
Reaching into the cabinet, I grabbed a pad, shut the door, and prayed I didn’t royally fuck this up. I crutched back over to the bathroom and leaned against the wall. “Vail?”
“Yeah?” she asked, her voice sounding uneasy than before.
“I’m going to slip a pad under the door,” I said, as I bent over and did just that. “I think you’ll feel more comfortable using a pad r
ight now instead of a tampon.”
“Okay.”
When I heard the pad wrapper rustling on the other side, I hobbled back into the kitchen and gave her privacy.
We definitely needed ice cream now.
Opening the freezer, I leaned against my right crutch, reached my left hand in and grabbed the tub of Neapolitan. I set it on the counter and then fetched the rainbow sherbet tub.
“My mom told you, didn’t she?” Vail asked.
She was leaning against the wall with her arms crossed over her chest.
I shut the freezer door and gave her a sympathetic smile. “Yeah, but I’m glad she did. You don’t know anything about your cycle yet, and until you do, pads are the best way to go. I know it kind of feels like you’re wearing a diaper, but trust me, for now, it’s less uncomfortable than a tampon.”
She sighed, covering her face with her hands. “This is so embarrassing!”
“I know,” I said, smiling weakly. “We’ve all been there.”
Her hands dropped from her face and she gave me a serious look. “Don’t you dare say I’m finally a woman!”
“Never, but I do have ice cream,” I offered, handing her a spoon. “Ice cream makes everything better.”
“I need a pick-me-up.” We carried our tubs of ice cream into the living room as Katy Perry’s “Roar” blared from the speakers, and I had to suppress my amusement at how fitting the song felt at the moment. Vail stabbed the rainbow sherbet with her spoon, but when she took a bite, she cringed, shaking her head. “Ugh, no. I can’t even do rainbow sherbet right now.”
“Here,” I said, offering her the tub of Neapolitan. “Try this.”
This time, when she took a bite, satisfaction washed over her face as she moaned against her spoon. “Dear God, this is delicious. But don’t tell Fletcher I said that.”
Laughing, I scooped out a bite for myself. She hadn’t run from the apartment in tears, so I was proud of myself for handling the issue with finesse. “Your secret is safe with me.”
***
That night, as I lay in bed with my foot propped up on a pillow, I watched Fletcher brush his teeth and get ready for bed. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Vail had said earlier. She’d buried this seed inside my head, and now I was drowning it with thoughts of whether or not he had feelings for me. For the past few months, we’d spent almost every night together, and some of those nights didn’t even include sex. So, did I really want to know how he felt about me? I could ask him and ruin this whole arrangement we had set up, or I could just stop listening to love-smitten teenagers.
I decided to go with the latter.
“Did you girls have a good day?” Fletcher asked, climbing into bed next to me.
“Yeah, we did,” I replied, shutting off my bedside light. I snuggled against my pillow and turned to face him. These moments where we would lay in bed chatting were starting to become one of my favorite things. He’d tell me about his day, and I’d tell him about mine. As I replayed my day, I thought about Vail and how worried I’d been about helping her. It was one of the reasons I usually mentored younger kids in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program; the younger ones usually didn’t have such hormonal issues. “You know how I’d been worried about being a Big to a teen, mainly because I hadn’t mentored one before?”
“Yeah,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist.
Swimming my fingers through his hair, I smiled at the memory. “Well, something happened today with Vail, and I handled it really well. Like, I finally thought, ‘I can do this.’”
“Of course, you can,” he encouraged, covering my lips with his. “You can do anything.”
And for a split second, as he deepened the kiss, I thought about what anything encompassed. From a real relationship with him to marriage and kids, it all played out in my mind. I pictured us with two blond kids, one a little bit more like me and the other one definitely just as witty as him.
Where the hell did that come from? I mentally shook away the thoughts and silently cursed Vail for putting them there in the first place.
“Thank you for dinner,” I said against his lips, fingering the hairs at the back of his neck. I wanted to thank him for everything else he’d done for me today, but I had to stop thinking about him as if we were more than fuck buddies.
“You’re welcome.” He gave me one more kiss and then laid his head back down on the pillow. “I’ve scheduled a meeting with Beth tomorrow morning. Would you like to grab lunch somewhere after?”
“Sure,” I said, smiling. “I need to get out of the apartment. Should I meet you at the club?”
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
“Perfect.” I turned onto my side slowly, making sure my ankle stayed elevated on the pillow. “G’night.”
He tightened his arms around me and kissed my neck. “Night, Bay.”
Chapter Eighteen
I walked into my office the next morning, wishing my meeting with Beth was over already. She was a handful: a weight on my shoulders I wanted gone. I’d called Gina earlier this morning, letting her know what was going to happen during our meeting today. She understood, but was sad to hear that her niece would be jobless again. I wasn’t just upset about what had happened during the roller derby bout; the bad sportsmanship wasn’t my main concern. I was angry about the fact that I had an employee talking shit about me to other people. She was disrespectful, and I had no tolerance for people who didn’t respect others, especially when I was paying their salary.
When the clock struck eleven thirty, I leaned against my desk and waited for Beth to arrive. She’d always been a little late to her shifts, so I wasn’t surprised when she didn’t show up on time for our meeting. I didn’t intend on having a long chat with her. I’d never had any anxiety over firing employees, mostly because they deserved it or else they wouldn’t be getting fired in the first place.
Ten minutes later, she walked in wearing her usual smile. “Hey, boss man. Sorry I’m late.”
“Have a seat,” I said, gesturing to one of the two chairs before her.
“That’s okay,” she said, sauntering over to my desk. She threw her bag on top of my desk and leaned against it. “So, what’d you want to talk about?”
Defiance was her middle name. “I wanted to discuss your employment here.”
“Okay . . .”
Pushing away from my desk, I stood and crossed my arms over my chest. “I’ve been hearing a lot of things about you lately, specifically that you’ve been badmouthing me to other people.”
“Did that jammer from the Rosie team say something to you?” she asked, furrowing her brows. “Because I didn’t mean what I said. I was just trying to throw her off her game.”
“By telling her lies about me?” I asked curtly, shaking my head. When I’d finally extracted from Bayler everything that Beth had said to her, I wanted to hunt this bitch down and strangle her. “I’m your employer, which means even outside of this club, you represent me. I cannot have my employees disrespecting me in such a way. It’s bad for business. You are bad for my business. None of the other employees like working with you, and I’ve had good employees quit because of you. Gina’s had to talk to you about your work ethic on more than one occasion.”
“What are you saying?” she asked, worry evident in her voice now.
“You’re fired.”
She started to say something, probably a protest of some sort, but then she shut her mouth and nodded.
I’d expected a full, flowing stream of excuses to fall from her pathetic mouth, but thankfully, I didn’t have to listen to them today.
Grabbing her bag, she smiled at me. “I’m sorry about everything I said, and I really do appreciate you giving me this job.”
I nodded. “Yeah, well, I wouldn’t put me down as a reference.”
Tossing her hair over one shoulder, she smirked and took a step closer to me. “I enjoyed working for you.”
“Please,” I stated apathetically, motioning towa
rd the open door. “If you left any items in the employee break room, be sure to grab them before you—”
She grabbed my face and smothered me with a kiss, desperately pressing her body up against mine. The minute her mouth touched mine, I felt repulsed. I wanted a new pair of lips, feeling more disgusted than ever before as my hatred for her rose to an ungodly level.
Shoving her away, I brushed a hand over my mouth and glared back at her. “What the hell are you doing?! You’re fired! Get your shit and get out of here!”
“Okay, okay,” she smirked, walking out the door. “Bye-bye, Bayler.”
Bayler? Just hearing her name had my stomach churning. Turning my head, I saw her leaning against the doorway with her crutches under her arms. Her eyes glistened like a pair of dark emerald jewels. That angry wrinkle presented on her forehead, and she had her lips pursed together, looking completely disappointed.
“Bayler.”
She shook her head, reached for her crutches and started hobbling in the opposite direction.
Rounding my desk, I hit the lights and ran after her. She’d mastered the crutches pretty well by now, so by the time I caught up with her, she was already on the sidewalk, attempting to hail a cab.
“Bayler, please let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” she replied, waving her hand in the air. “I saw her kiss you. I know you didn’t kiss her. I saw the whole thing from the hallway.”
“Then why are you so mad right now?” I asked, as a taxi pulled to the curb. A mixture of confusion and anxiety crept up into my throat as traffic passed by us on the street. “Why are you leaving? I thought we were going to have lunch together.”
Bayler crutched over to the back passenger door, opened it and then turned to look at me. “I’m not really that hungry anymore.”
Fuck me.
Throwing her crutches in the backseat, she lowered herself into the cab and slammed the door, and I felt as if she’d just backhanded me across the face. The car slowly started to enter traffic when Bayler glanced back at me through the window with tears in her eyes.