A Slippery Slope

by Tanya Gallagher

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay.” Abigail digs a pen from her backpack and slides a notepad out of her stack of books. “So why don’t you do the standard porn name setup? Make it legit? First name is the name of your first pet, last name is the name of the first street you lived on.”

  My mom brought home a tabby named Delilah the year before the divorce, a little terror of fluff and teeth who would bite my ankles for no good reason. Maybe that cat was some sort of balm for my mom—a way to fill the distance that already stretched between her and my dad—but I just thought the cat was a jerk. Either way, the cat and my mom both live in Florida now. During my visit last Christmas, the cat sunk her teeth into my hand as a greeting. At least my mom was happy for my company. And at least that cat wasn’t named Muffin or something.

  Delilah …Overbridge? No, that’s not right. It was Overbrook Drive.

  I glance over Abby’s shoulder. “Jess can’t hear us, right?”

  Abby turns to look. “I don’t think so.”

  I break out in a smile. “I’m Delilah Overbrook.”

  Abby writes it in her notebook and underlines it twice. A burst of adrenaline warms my chest when I see the name, real, in writing.

  “Not bad.” Abby reaches out to shake my hand. “Nice to meet you, Delilah Overbrook. How soon until you can lube me up?”

  Chapter 8

  There. I click on a link for a studio in Mission Hill and let myself drool for a minute. The apartment is gorgeous—full of old brick and high ceilings, towering windows letting buttery light pour through—and it’s close to the T. It’s also way more than I can hope to afford on a barista salary.

  I sigh, a trickle of sweat charting a course between my breasts. As much as I’d love that studio, it would take a miracle or a loan for me to make rent each month. Even though my dad might be able to lend me some cash, I can’t stomach the idea of asking him for money. I can imagine the conversation—Gayle standing behind him, saying what did I expect if I was going to be a dropout. It’s not a cheerful thought and it’s all the more reason I need my own business. If I can actually pull it off.

  A FedEx truck rumbles to a stop in front of me with a squeal of brakes and a huff of exhaust. Across the street a dog barks at the intrusion, frantic, as if the truck’s arrival portends doomsday rather than being an everyday occurrence.

  The driver emerges from the bowels of the truck with a box in his hands. “Natalie Bloom?”

  “That’s me.” The package feels so much lighter than it should, given that it’s got my whole future wrapped up inside it. I accept it with eager hands, barely waiting for the driver to pull away before I slice open the tape with the edge of my car keys.

  The box holds a treasure of lube bottles—silicone and water-based, organic and hybrids. All the better to figure out what kind I want to sell. I look like I’m about to host a gang bang, and the irony that I’m single for the first time in four years isn’t lost on me. But here I am anyway.

  “What’s that?”

  I whirl around to find a breathless and shirtless—very, very shirtless—Jackson Wirth standing over my shoulder. He’s wearing running shorts that expose strong, tanned calves and, once again for the record, no shirt. That particular garment is tucked into the waistband of those low-slung shorts.

  Holy shit. I slam the lid closed on the box.

  Every sign—from his running shoes and his distractingly sweaty body to the water bottle clutched in his hands—points to the fact that Jackson ran here. I consider the impossibility of it. Jackson had once told me, “I’m not lazy, I move on purpose,” which was another way of him agreeing that he was lazy. Yet here he is, having apparently…jogged.

  “Did you run here?” It’s hard to reconcile the two Jacksons in my mind. Should I be annoyed or pleased that he’s here? It’s his town, really. He has more right to be here than I do. But he’s standing on my front porch like a slobbery, proud puppy. What the hell do I do about it?

  Jackson takes a long swallow of his water before answering. “I mean, I didn’t run to your house specifically. You were just on my route.” Jackson has a route. Okay. “So what’d you get?”

  “Nothing.” I shift the box away from him but I’m sure he’s gotten an eyeful. He makes an annoying grin.

  “It’s not what it looks like.” I glance down at the package. A box of silicone lube with bold red letters peeks out from under the cardboard flap, along with a shiny strip of condoms that the brand must have thrown in for free. Damn.

  I feel my face heat. How can I still get so stupid around him? “It’s just a business delivery.” I stand to push past him.

  “Business or pleasure?” Shit. He knows exactly what’s in the box.

  “This isn’t for me,” I protest. “I mean, it is. But it’s not like that.” I shove the box under my arm and go to march past him.

  God, why is he in my face all of a sudden? Why is his chest so broad? It’s like trying to push past a goddamn ox. An ox who smells like salt and sweat and the gym in a way that’s surprisingly good.

  I edge around him and make it to the gate that leads to my guesthouse.

  “I want to hear about this secret business,” Jackson says.

  “No.” He doesn’t get to know any of my secrets. Not anymore.

  I’m about to say more when my dad’s neighbor, Mrs. Keaton, walks by with a balding rat terrier trotting at her feet.

  “Come now, Porkchop, what do we have today?”

  I’m not even sure if she’s talking about the contents of the dog’s bowels or the fact that a half-naked Jackson and I are standing nose to nose on the sidewalk. It could go either way. The woman has a blatant disregard for all the Bible verses in Holy Grounds about keeping your tongue from evil, or whatever, and she runs on tales of heartbreak and traffic tickets the way I run on coffee and books. She’s just as happy to hear a good rumor as she is to spread one, which is precisely why we cannot have this conversation in front of her.

  Jackson leans his elbows on the gate, opening his mouth to say something else to me. The last thing I need is the entire town knowing my business, and whatever Jackson’s going to say next could ruin me. If a rumor’s going to spread, I’d rather it be about me and Jackson than me and an indecently huge pile of lube. I need this business to have a fighting chance.

  My heart kicks up with anxiety. “Just. Ugh. Come in,” I say, cutting Jackson off at the pass.

  I give one last glance at Mrs. Keaton’s gossip-deprived face before sweeping open the gate. Jackson, warm and sweaty and shirtless, follows me as I plunge into the guesthouse and slam the door shut behind me.

  Chapter 9

  What did I just do? I lean against the front door, the box of lube clutched to my chest, and try to breathe. Jackson is inside my house, or the closest thing to it, and he smells like heat and, vaguely, of sex. This is a terrible idea. There’s a bra on the back of the couch and stacks of paper filled with spreadsheets and brand ideas scattered across my dining room table. A pot on the stove that was mac and cheese two days ago.

  I push past him to open a window and the sound of someone’s piano lesson drifts in with the breeze.

  So, now. He’s here.

  I turn back to find Jackson swiping a finger across a stack of papers. “I’m guessing these analytics are tied into your mysterious package delivery?”

  “God, between you and Mrs. Keaton, I’m not sure who’s worse. Maybe I should have had her in here for wine instead.”

  “You’re offering wine?” He looks at me with such hope.

  I tell myself to settle down, to not let Jackson and his smile affect me, but he’s at once attractive and irritating. He doesn’t get to look at me like we’re best friends again. There’s a whole life with Jackson Wirth that I already lived, and another life that I’ve lived on my own. Time does this funny, constricting thing, speeding up and circling so we’re trapped in this tightening loop, like no time at all has passed. But it has. And I’m a different person.


  “No, I’m not offering wine.”

  “Pretty sure Mrs. Keaton’s going to be out there awhile.” Jackson smiles. “From what I saw, Porkchop had some intestinal trouble.”

  I roll my eyes. “Beer,” I tell him. “I have beer.”

  “Then yes,” Jackson says. “I think I’ll have one.”

  I drop the box on my couch, stuffing the bra between the cushions while Jackson bends over a paper. Why am I even letting him look at my things?

  Because you want him here, the voice in my head whispers. Because you missed him.

  I need an internal voice that’s not a lying bitch.

  I grab two beers from the fridge and pass him one, scooping the paperwork out of his free hand. He doesn’t comment that the papers are gone, just settles himself in at the table.

  “I don’t know, Nat. I pegged you as more of a wine girl,” he says.

  “Is that your professional analysis?”

  “I mean, yes. Nine times out of ten I know what someone’s going to drink just by the way they walk through the door. And you come across as a wine girl.”

  Not anymore. I roll my eyes. “Beverage ESP. One of the perks of the job.”

  Jackson runs his hands over his abs—his tight, toned abs. I have the sudden urge to touch him, to feel him hot and hard under my hands. My face flames and Jackson smirks at me. “Oh, there are plenty of perks.”

  He’s probably thinking about the girls lined up to hand over their dignity and their panties for a chance to talk to him, but I don’t dare say it. Jackson looked damn good at the bar the first night I saw him, and that was without being shirtless.

  “You’re gross,” I shoot back.

  “I meant I get to hear a lot of stories,” he protests. “People tell me some crazy shit.”

  “Right.” In high school Jackson always told anecdotes from his time in California, and while the crowd might get the condensed version of how he saw Robert Downey Jr. when he was thirteen, I was the one who got the details—the way they’d met in the bathroom at Shake Shack after Jackson lost a toe-to-toe fight with a ShackBurger and a malted chocolate shake, and how, upon exiting the stall, Jackson stumbled across the star. Robert Downey Jr. looked up from washing his hands and said, “Good one, kid.” Jackson told the story skillfully, too, pausing in just the right places, nailing the punchline.

  I doubt anyone else from school knew about the Iron Man poster tucked in the back of Jackson’s closet, though, or about the hundreds of other details he’d tell me and no one else. “Tell me a story,” I’d ask, then listen shamelessly, always eager for a glimpse into someone else’s world. More often than not his characters and predicaments made it into whatever story I was writing at the time. I bet Jackson has a million new stories to tell—from college, from his time at Hooligans—and my curiosity is piqued. But not enough to let him know it.

  “I’m sure you get all the juicy gossip,” I tell him now. I pitch my voice in mock surprise. “Don’t tell me you and Mrs. Keaton are in cahoots?”

  Jackson gestures up and down his body—god, his body—and shrugs. “Can I help it if I have a face people want to talk to?”

  “Is that called bartender syndrome?”

  “Exactly.” He breaks into a mischievous grin. “So, now, tell Bartender Jackson about your secret business. Or are you going to make me guess?”

  He’s smart, Jackson Wirth, and a stubborn jackass when he wants to be. If he wants to know, he’s going to find out anyway.

  “Just, ugh.” I huff, glancing at his body. “Will you put a damn shirt on? You’re going to get sweat on my kitchen chairs.”

  He smiles good-naturedly and reaches for the shirt tucked into the waistband of his shorts. In the seconds that his head is trapped by fabric I sneak a last glance at his body—the flat planes of his stomach, his broad, strong chest. It’s like the boy I used to know was carved away, leaving this sculpture of a man behind.

  Jackson’s head emerges and he grins at me like he knows I was staring. It’s not fair, really, for someone to be so good-looking and to know it, too.

  “Out with it, Bloom.”

  I hesitate for another minute, worrying the edge of the beer label with my thumb. Tiny flakes of paper fall off in my hands, blue and white and gold.

  Maybe this is a test. Maybe this is just the start of a long line of people asking me about the business, trying to see if I’m worthy, if I’m able to pull it off.

  It’s a test I very much want to pass.

  “I’m going to start my own e-commerce business,” I tell Jackson.

  “Selling…” He nods at the box on my couch.

  “Yes, selling lube. If I can make it work. It’s a billion-dollar industry, and all I need is a piece to be doing okay. I don’t want to be a barista for the rest of my life.”

  He leans back and weighs his response before speaking. “It’s not that I don’t think you can do it. I just didn’t know this is what you wanted to do. Didn’t you want to be a writer?”

  Ack, my book. You would think I would have the time to write now that I’m here, but my problem is my heart. Right now it’s pulverized; it’s ash on my tongue. I’m hollowed out and empty and my mouth tastes like dust. Except when I’m with Jackson, and the whole world somehow sparks alive. Even if it’s only because he’s pissing me off.

  “I want to do both,” I tell him. “In theory, once I get my business to a certain point I’ll be able to have more time to write.”

  He nods like this is a fair and true thing. There are a hundred years between the girl who left Swan’s Hollow and the one in front of him now, but Jackson remembers the person I was. Maybe it’s a default response—I gave him nothing else to remember me by but an old dream and a lost kiss. But I like that he remembered, even if it embarrasses me too.

  Jackson’s face breaks into a smile. “I’m pretty impressed, Nat.” I let out my breath. I didn’t realize how much I’d wanted his approval until he gave it. “Natalie Bloom, lube mogul.”

  I twist my mouth. “Jackson, you can’t tell anyone. Not yet. I will seriously have your balls.”

  “Did anyone ever tell you how nice you are?”

  “I’m not trying to be nice. I’m trying to get out of here.”

  “So this is a temporary stay then?” Here we go, moving off to another subject. I guess I passed the test.

  I take a swig of my beer. “That’s the plan.”

  “Tell me a story,” he says, our old catchphrase. Pins and needs tingle in my fingers. “What brings you home in the first place?”

  The way he says it—home, his voice honey slow and rumbling—makes me feel like I might sink into the floor and cry.

  Home. I haven’t thought of Swan’s Hollow as home in years. I spent so much time trying to leave this place, believing that an escape was the only true way forward. To me being a writer always meant moving past the small-town mentality, the way the same person who sold me underage tickets to the R-rated movies could turn around the next day and tell my parents I’d sneaked out of the house. I wanted fresh ideas and Swan’s Hollow felt stagnant, complacent.

  When the time came, I didn’t even apply to the community college as a backup. I wanted to get as far away as my money or my scholarships would take me. Turned out that meant Boston, and while Emerson wasn’t the right place for me, it had held so much promise the day I’d shown up.

  But Jackson’s words make me reconsider. In some ways Swan’s Hollow is still home. Maybe even more than Boston. In the city I always held tight to my purse when I slipped into the crowded cars of the T. I always walked quickly down the sidewalks on the blackest nights. Here I watch my back so no one talks about me, but I don’t have to watch my back for actual safety.

  I shake my head. “That’s enough story time for today.”

  The air goes out of the room and I feel kind of bad about it, but not bad enough to admit that the reason I’m home is because I was cheated on. He doesn’t need to know every way I’ve failed. A
s much as I don’t care what Jackson Wirth thinks about me, I do.

  So much of my life with Jackson has been like this, equal parts push and pull. In high school he’d do something stupid, break some girl’s heart by not showing up or calling or whatever, and I’d know to stay away in case it could happen to me too. But then he’d invite me to the coast for the day, just the two of us, driving with the windows down to eat clams or walk barefoot on the beach at Gooseberry Island. I don’t know if I’ve ever truly nailed the balance of it all, and even now it makes my head spin.

  We sit in silence while Jackson finishes his beer and the memories tumble through me.

  “I have to say, Natalie, that this has greatly improved my day.” I don’t know if he means our conversation or the beer. The beer.

  “Oh shit.” How I could have been so stupid? He’s run at least a few miles to get here and he still needs to make it back to wherever he came from. “Do you need a ride or something?” I’m well aware that my face doesn’t look like I want to give him a ride. I need space from this story. I feel stretched out and thin. I’ve given Jackson a secret and just like everything else in my life with him, it hasn’t been an even trade.

  “I can make it home okay,” he assures me.

  I look up at his face, trying to decide if he’s telling the truth. Not my problem, I remind myself. Surely he knew when he took the beer that it would cost him his return run. But he accepted it anyway. He wanted to drink a beer with me and somehow that thought makes me feel sort of sideways. We are not who we used to be, but he wanted to spend time with me anyway. He thought I was worth it.

  Jackson pushes back from the table and I walk him the eight steps to the front door.

  “Let’s do it again soon,” he says, a request and a promise. His breath is hot on my ear. And then he takes his shirt off—of course he does—and steps out my door into the sunny, sticky afternoon.

  I watch Jackson’s back as he walks down my path and for the strangest reason it feels like he’s leaving me all over again.