“Like a rela—”
“SHUSH!” She snapped. “Do NOT say that word. No more talking about it. One more word and I’ll shove these potatoes down your throat.”
An effective threat, since I hated potatoes. “Fine, but when you can speak coherently about it, I expect details.”
“Agreed.” She crossed her wrists and stuck out her pinky fingers; I crossed my wrists and hooked my pinkies into hers, and we shook. Stupid and childish, but a promise-making tradition we’d had since boot camp. “Now. Zane, he of the epic penis. I need all the gory details.”
I sighed. “He took me to a scenic overlook and I gave him the most epic blow job of the century…” dramatic pause, “…and maybe possibly kind of decided to practice date while I’m in Ketchikan for the week.”
Claire clapped her hands over her heart, tilted her head to one side, and made an awwww face. “My little girl is all grown up, now.”
“Oh, shut up.” I threw a sugar packet at her. “I wouldn’t go that far. But I’m giving it a try.”
“For realsies, I’m happy for you, pumpkin.”
I blinked at her. “Pumpkin?”
Claire laughed. “I’m experimenting with cute terms of endearment. I want to find one to use semi-ironically with this guy I’m maybe sort of not really but kind of almost seeing.”
“Yeah, don’t call me pumpkin. That’s weird.”
“Honeybuckets?”
“Uh, no.”
She tapped her chin. “Diddly-dinkums?”
I threw another sugar packet at her. “You need to be stopped.” I dipped my fingers in the glass of melting ice water and flicked it at her, repeatedly chanting, “The power of Christ compels you.”
She put her hands in front of her face, shrieking. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop!” When I stopped, she threw the sugar packets back at me. “And besides, you don’t say ‘the power of Christ compels you’ for an exorcism.”
“How would you know?”
She frowned at me. “Um, because I grew up Catholic? As in, I went to a private Catholic academy from pre-K through high school, attended mass every week, and was in the church choir?”
I sat in stunned silence. “Shut the hell up.” I pointed at her. “Yet another thing I didn’t know about you. What other secrets are you keeping from me?”
“It wasn’t a secret, it just never came up. Once I graduated high school, I stopped going.”
“Wow. So…what else hasn’t come up that I should know about my best friend?”
She paused, obviously thinking about how to reply to my question. “Um…I got my wisdom teeth out? I had an appendectomy my junior year because my appendix exploded and I almost died?” She looked at me in the eyes and then threw out one more, casually. “I had a D-and-C when I was twenty.”
I gasped in shock at the last one “A D-and-C? Like the thing they do after a miscarriage?”
She nodded. “Yep. I got pregnant and had a miscarriage. On my twentieth birthday, actually.”
“Damn, Claire. You’ve never talked about this before.” I sat in stunned silence for a long time. “Like, how did I not even know you grew up Catholic, much less that you had a fucking D-and-C?”
She shrugged. “I just don’t talk about myself, that’s all.”
“Understandable,” I said, although I was surprised she had not shared this, given our close friendship. “I just…I feel like I don’t even know you, in a way.”
“You’re still my best friend, Mara, that’ll never change. She sighed. “But yeah, the miscarriage itself was brutal. I hadn’t even really had time to process that I was pregnant, and then it was over. It was messy, too. Like in the movies where it looks like a Quentin Tarantino movie happened between the girl’s legs? That’s not an exaggeration.” She stirred her coffee again. “I, um, don’t talk about it because of the other effects the whole thing had on my life…and not just because of the emotional trauma of the miscarriage itself.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“My dad disowned me. My mom is super traditional and she refuses to openly disobey Dad, so the only way I can see Mom or my sisters is if they sneak out while Dad is working.”
“Damn, honey.”
She nodded. “Yeah, it sucks. Six years have passed, and I still have to be all sneaky and secretive if I want to see them.”
“He hasn’t relented?”
She shook her head. “Nope, and he never will. He forced the rest of them to have new family photos taken so I wouldn’t be in them.”
“Because you had a miscarriage?”
“Because I got pregnant out of wedlock.”
“That’s archaic.”
“That’s Dad.” She paused, and then stuck a finger in the air. “Also, Dad is a church deacon.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“Sort of like a priest, but they can be married if they were married before becoming ordained.” A shrug. “It just means he’s, like, a super church man and very strict when it comes to religious dogma. He works for the church in a permanent, paid capacity.”
“Oh. Does that mean he won’t ever forgive you?”
Another sigh. “That’s so unlikely as to be impossible.” She waved a hand, dismissing it. “Or, if he did, it’d be conditional. I’d have to confess my sins and be absolved and say, like, forty million Hail Mary’s and do a bunch of penance and other stupid bullshit. He’s a stubborn asshole, and I’m just as stubborn as he is, only I’m going to be more stubborn than he is about this because I’ll be damned if I’m going to apologize, and certainly not for him disowning me.”
“God, I’m so sorry, Claire. I had no idea.”
“It is what it is. I’m used to it, now.” She shrugged, then poked the back of my hand with her fork. “That was a very nicely done deflection, by the way.”
“It wasn’t a deflection, it was an honest question…a rabbit trail in the conversation, but I’m glad you told me about it.”
“Well, thanks, but let’s get back to the topic at hand, namely, you and Zane.”
“Me and Zane? There’s not much to say. We’re going to keep having excessive amounts of super crazy hot sex, and also, we’re going to hang out and do stuff that isn’t sex. Just to see how we both like it.”
“And you’re calling this a practice relationship.”
“Correct. Because he lives here and I live in San Francisco, and neither of us are ready for a real relationship, but we feel pretty compatible, so we’re gonna see how it feels to pretend we’re in one, in case we decide we want to try it for real later on.”
“So, like me and Brian at work, only with sex?”
“Exactly. If we hadn’t already had sex, I might actually try and see how a no-sex dating thing would go, but since we’ve already done it, there’s no point in stopping now.”
“I guess that makes sense,” Claire said, pushing her now-empty plate away. “Now, can you go back to the most epic blow job of the century? I wanna hear more about that.”
I shrugged. “I mean, I wasn’t planning on doing it. I had been planning on talking to him about my idea regarding the whole practice dating thing, and then the conversation just sort of got dirty—”
“Understandable when you’re talking to a hot guy with a massive dong,” Claire put in.
“Right,” I agreed. “And then he was like, so how about a blow job, and I was, like...sure.”
“And?”
“And I sucked him off so good he actually collapsed to the ground afterward and couldn’t walk for several minutes.”
Claire blinked at me. “Well good goddamn, girl. You must have some sort of secrets you haven’t shared.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I grinned. “I mean, it was helpful that I just…I dunno…I really, really wanted to give the best blow job he’d ever had. I mean, if we only have a week together, I want it to be the best damn week of our entire lives, right? And obviously I’ve given plenty of BJs before, but this was different somehow.�
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The waitress came over right then, and had to hold back a snort of laughter as she refilled our coffee.
“Different how?” Claire asked.
I sighed. “I don’t know. I wish I did. I’ve been trying to figure that out myself. It’s not just that he’s gorgeous, which he is, and it’s not just that he has a massive, gorgeous dong, which he does, and it’s also not just that he’s an incredible sexual partner, which he is, nor is it just that he’s a god among men when it comes to cunnilingus…it’s all of those things at once, and…something more. I don’t know. It’s frustrating.”
“It’s chemistry, babe,” Claire said. “It’s ineffable.”
“Ineffable?”
She nodded. “Something so incredible, so amazing, so perfect that you just can’t put it into words.”
I threw another sugar packet at her head. “I know what ineffable means, whore-face.”
She threw the same packet back at me. “Well, then don’t say it like you’ve never heard the word before.”
“I just…I’m trying to apply it to Zane, and the whole thing between us.” I lapsed into silence for a moment, thinking. “It’s just…if you’d asked me last week if I thought the word ‘ineffable’ could be applied to a man in any capacity, much less this weird quasi-relationship we’ve got, I would have laughed in your face. But…it’s not so stupid now, somehow.”
She nodded seriously. “Believe me, poopsie, I understand more than you know.”
“Poopsie? Really? That sounds like something a minivan-driving soccer mom who shops exclusively at Whole Foods might call her potty training kid’s turd.”
Claire snorted in laughter, trying to keep in a mouthful of coffee. “Goddammit, I just scalded my sinuses,” she said, wiping coffee from her nose and chin. “Then what do you think I should call this guy in the heat of the moment?”
“What’s wrong with the classics like honey, baby, sweetie—things like that?”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “He deserves something original. He’s like no one I’ve ever met.”
“Now that I understand,” I said.
“I just thought of something weird,” Claire said. “What are the chances of us both meeting hot, incredible guys who challenge the status quo of the way we live our lives and view relationships…in the same week, in the same city, both local guys, but at different times and in different places, without actually being together when we met them?”
I stared at her. “Now that you put it that way, it is kind of…”
“Statistically so improbable as to be laughable?”
I nodded. “Exactly. But then, we are the Gruesome Twosome.” My phone chimed in my purse, and I lifted it out to check it.
My boss had sent me an urgent email; I was on vacation, but my boss knew I checked my email religiously, so he was prone to sending me emails even when he knew I was home or gone, because he knew I’d check it and likely reply. Which I did, even though I hated that my boss used my cell phone addiction against me. When I finished the email, I looked up to see Claire typing on her own phone, but judging by the soft, amused, yet slightly horny expression on her face, she was texting her guy and not her boss.
I set my phone on the table and slid out of the booth. “I have to pee. Don’t pay the check without me.”
Claire snorted. “As if,” she muttered, not looking up.
I used the bathroom and returned to the booth…and found Claire with my phone in one hand, her other hand clapped to her mouth in shock, her eyes wide. Claire knew my passcode and I knew hers, and we’d always been open enough that we felt comfortable going through each other’s phones; this was the first time I felt weird about it in the years I’d known her.
“Holy mother of fucks, you weren’t kidding about an epic penis, Mara. Jesus. That thing is a monster.” She swiped a finger, touched the screen, and I heard a familiar sound, a low male groan of pleasure—“I wish it was you right now—”
“Oh…my…god.” She touched the screen and moved the slider back to start the video over, checking around her and then hunching over the screen, fending off my attempts to get my phone back. “That has got to be the hottest minute and a half of video in existence. Can you forward that to me?”
“No I can’t forward it to you!” I snatched the phone back, more angry with my best friend than I’d ever been. “God, Claire, I know we’ve always shared pretty much everything, but this is…” I wasn’t even sure what to say.
I was bubbling with anger I didn’t understand, and that itself was freaking me out. I’d shown her my dick pics before, and she’d shown me hers. Any other time in our friendship, if Claire had snooped through my phone and found a dick pic or whatever, I’d have laughed with her. I wouldn’t have gotten angry. It would have been totally fine. But this time….
Claire was eyeing me intently. “But this is different, isn’t it?” I nodded and she grabbed my hand, meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mare. I really am. I wasn’t snooping for anything like that—I was just…messing with your phone. I was gonna change your lock screen or something, just to be funny, and I happened to see the dick pic he sent you, and I couldn’t stop looking. That thing is gorgeous. Not just because of the size, though, like you said. It’s just…pretty.”
“Claire—”
She held up a hand. “I didn’t mean to see it, for real. But now that I have, we might as well talk about it, right?”
I sighed. “I guess. I’m sorry I overreacted; I’m just being weird about this. What’s funny is that I sent him a few photos and a video, too, and he was like ‘Obviously I’m not going to share this with anyone, just so you know,’ and I jokingly said I’d only ever show you, because that’s how we’ve always been, but then I thought about it later, and realized I wasn’t sure I wanted to share him with you in that sense. I mean, I’ve shown you photos before, but—”
“But that’s more because ninety-nine percent of the time when a guy sends a dick pic, it’s comical rather than hot.”
“But that’s a hot dick pick, though.”
“I’ll say,” Claire sighed. “Seriously hot. I think I’ll send my guy a few nudes and see what he does.”
“Tell him if he jerks off to the photos he should video it and send it to you.”
“I think I’ll do just that.” She grinned at me. “And I’ll send it to you when he does, because Mara, babe, my guy’s dick? Equally as epic, I must say.”
“Maybe we should agree to keep all dick pics and jerking-off videos to ourselves for the time being?”
She nodded. “I’ll agree to that. I can see how I might be a bit possessive if I had that video on my phone.”
“If I get any other unsolicited dick picks, though, I’ll totally send them to you so we can laugh together.”
“You better. Laughing at unsolicited dick pics is one of life’s greatest pleasures.”
“I know, right? Like, what are they thinking when they send those? Do they honestly think we sit around looking longingly at pictures of average-guy penis?”
“I never can quite fathom their thought processes. Like, objectively speaking, penises are kind of…weird, and not something I like to just sit around staring at. Like, show me a sexy set of abs or a nice chest, and I’ll be impressed. Your dick? Not as much. Even if it’s above average, if I’m not interested in you, I’m not gonna want a photograph of your penis. I’m just not. Hell, until I saw that, I honestly never thought there’d ever be a situation in which I’d willingly want a dick pic. But that shit right there, that convinced me.”
“Exactly how I’ve always felt. I mean, it’s not like we’d ever go, ‘Hmmm, I wonder how I can get this random guy on Tinder to like me? Ooh, I know, I’ll take a close up of my va-jay-jay. That’ll turn him on!’”
Claire bobbed her head to one side. “I dunno, I think most guys would actually respond to that pretty well. Vaginas are more inherently and objectively sexy than penises are.”
“True. But guys aren’t hard
to turn on. Show ‘em some titties, and…boing, they’ve got a chubby.”
Claire reached across the table to poke one of my boobs. “Especially those puppies. Show a guy those, and he’s yours, right, Boobs McGee?”
“Shut up. Future lower back problems is a real thing. And do you have any idea how many times I’ve been asked if they’re real?”
Now Claire threw a sugar packet at me. “Oh, cry me a river. You know how many guys ask me if I’ve ever thought about getting implants? That’s got to be just as insulting, if not more so. Like, no, jackass, not all of us are interested in having giant water balloons attached to our chests for you ogle. Some of us are content to helm the good ship Itty Bitty Titty. I own one bra, and I only wear it when I don’t want my nippies showing. I don’t have to wear a bra when I workout, because I’ve got nothing to bounce around, and I’ve never had to deal with the horror of an underwire poking me in the tits.”
“True, but you also don’t know the sheer, unadulterated pleasure of taking off your bra at the end of a long day, or how nice it is just sit watching TV with your hands under your boobs. Or how convenient it is to put something in your bra when you don’t have pockets.”
“Plus, you could have a face like a bag of moldy potatoes and the personality of Cruella De Vil and you could still get any guy on the planet to sleep with you at least once just based on the perfection of your boobs.” She cupped her breasts over her shirt and jiggled them. “These pathetic little A-cups? Good luck finding a guy who’s a hot, sexy alpha male who doesn’t mind a complete lack of breasticles.”
“You have them, they’re just small.”
“Even with the most bombshell push up bra Victoria’s Secret has ever made, I still only look like a small B.”
“So?”
“So…I’ve mostly come to terms with it, I guess. I’d never get surgery because overall I love myself and I love my body, but there are still times, even now, at twenty-six, that I sometimes wish I was more well-endowed.”
“What about this guy?” I asked. “What’s he think about them?”
She sighed, staring out the window. “He worships them like they’re the most amazing things he’s ever laid eyes or lips on. That’s part of why I’m so enamored with him, because he doesn’t give off a vibe like he’s being disingenuous about it. It seems like he honestly feels that way. He says they may be small, but they’re a perfect handful each, and perfectly shaped. I’m still not entirely sure I believe him, but it’s nice to hear, and it’s a good part of the reason he got so much sex out of me last night. I just can’t resist well-crafted flattery, and goddamn, the guy is seriously silver-tongued.”
Badd Ass (Badd Brothers Book 2) Page 9