Intoxicated

by Cynthia Dane

  I write down “Taken care of” in my list of things about Missy and what she wants from a potential partner. “Uh huh,” I say. “What do you plan to bring to your future partner’s table?” I make sure to enunciate the word partner. Missy needs to realize that relationships are not one-sided affairs. She doesn’t get to make a slew of demands and expect nothing in return.

  “Look at me,” she says with a snooty shrug. “I’ve got a rockin’ bod. What guy wouldn’t wanna spoil this?”

  Yes. Indeed. Ms. Missy has a rockin’ bod. Probably bought and paid for with college money she never spent for its intended use. Those breasts are definitely not real. Now, I don’t begrudge a woman for playing a loser’s game in this world, but those tits aren’t even done well! They’re so disproportioned to her body that I can’t stop staring at the plastic shine taking over my retinas. At least her skin is naturally tanned and not the fake stuff. Her hair, though… so fried that I want to dunk her in a bath full of shampoo.

  “While we undoubtedly have male clients who are looking for a partner who prefers not to work,” I lie, as if we have anyone like that yet, “I have to remind you that this is not a short-term dating or escort agency. We are a matchmaking service, which means our matches have the intention for marriage down the line.”

  She shrugs again. “I’m fine with getting married. As long as he’s rich.”

  God, is this what I used to sound like? No, no. I sounded nothing like this. I may have been after wallets above all else, but I didn’t act like that’s all I wanted. I’m an actress, damnit. I compose characters. I read minds. I know you better than you know yourself. Now, I’m not saying that’s what I want to teach our female clients. All it means is I can smell the same – or worse – shit from a mile away.

  Missy has professional sugar baby written all over her. There isn’t a part of her that’s authentic, and I don’t mean her body. I’m not sure she knows how to read.

  This isn’t what Drew and I had in mind when we put out feelers for women who fit a certain… criteria. You see, the women we keep on standby for dates and matchmaking with our male clients don’t have to pay a retainer. Not yet, anyway. They do, however, have to maintain a certain look and personality to be kept for consideration. Drew may not really get this yet, but our male clients have standards they don’t think they need to broadcast to us. Yet I bet when I meet Mr. Jeffrey Klein for the first time, I’ll know his ultimate type by the end of the meeting. It’s my job to make sure we have a roster of women who might be his forever.

  Missy ain’t gonna be it.

  “Siri, take a note,” I say into my phone after I bid farewell to the biggest dud I’ve met all week. “Adjust parameters to ensure candidates aren’t made of tits and ass and nothing else.”

  I’m not going to hold some young rube’s hand to make sure she doesn’t flip her shit when she sees her first diamond ring. Nor am I going to take time out of my day to teach them how to dress appropriately to their bodies and the men they want to marry. Ideally, our female clients will either be older and already sophisticated, or they’ll be the younger breed who have been doing this a while and want to find a husband who is serious about settling down. What that man will never tell us is that she must be conventionally attractive (and if plus-sized, have curves in “all the right places.”) And she’ll never tell us that he better have a big wallet to make up for his faults. Hot women in need of our help are either hard up for money or old enough that their biological clocks are ticking. Since Drew is a slobbering man, though, it’s up to me to cultivate the roster and coach the women who are almost there but not quite meeting perfect expectations.

  Help. I’ve somehow stumbled into a full-time job.

  You know I’m in love when I agree to go into business with someone. Let alone someone I’m fucking. You hear that, Drew? There isn’t a man I’ve dated before you who could convince me to do this with them, let alone after only a few months. Yet here I am, splitting my time between Portland and Seattle so I can both be with Drew and help him turn his business around. “From breaking to making,” he keeps saying, usually right before he climbs my Mt. Pusseverest. I swear, if he keeps up the corny shit, I’ll have to break up with him. Or at least withhold deep-throating privileges. Do you want me to choke from one of your stupid jokes, Drew? Do you?

  Fuck it. I’d probably like it.

  I wrap a sweater around me to combat the autumn breeze. It may be seventy degrees and sunny, but I’m not falling for it, Seattle. You’re going to get cold, quickly. It’s time to adjust to my favorite sweaters, even if Drew complains it means he can’t see my “awesome rack.”

  It’s a short walk to Occidental Square, but my bag full of work crap weighs me down. By the time I reach the bistro tables and food carts, my arm is falling asleep and my head hurts.

  Good thing my boyfriend already has food and bubble tea waiting for me.

  “There she is.” He leans back in his seat, that hat on his head the only thing telling me that it’s really, really him. I should know. I gave him that hat for his birthday. That and the most amazing hummer of his life, thank you very much. I intend to collect on my birthday. “The belle of the ball and the joy of my heart.”

  I don’t need my sunglasses to blot out the sun any longer. Not when I roll them so hard I might go blind. Yet the scent of my favorite food truck fare lures me to sit down at the bistro table with my dumbass beloved. He’s lucky he looks so good in that shirt and those jeans. Every time I feel like snapping at him, I simply remember the joys of riding that lap and I’m back to Placation Vacation.

  What? You think that’s not healthy? Honey, where have you been for the last 200 pages? Little Drew and I do is healthy. That’s why we’re in therapy together. Therapy! Together! Fuck me with a razor-sharp saw, I’m actually in couple’s counseling with a guy who intends to hang around for a good long while. I make no promises about forever. Things are set up that we can cleanly breakup. I’m not financially invested in his business, and I haven’t given up my cute Portland apartment. I may have clothes and toothbrushes at both of his apartments, but I value my independence, you know. Maybe there’s a night I’d rather be by myself, singing along to Nina Simone while cleaning out my closet. Maybe I need a break. Maybe he needs a break.

  Our therapist agrees that it’s good for us, so there.

  “Please tell me you got us some ladies.” Drew slides a drink in my direction. I don’t sniff it before having a generous sip. Good. There’s alcohol in it. Barely, but it’s enough to take the edge off my afternoon. “Because I just nabbed Klein as our first official client.”

  I suck some sauce off my thumb and tip my head back in my seat. “We need to adjust our PR. Everyone I interviewed today thinks we’re an escort agency.”

  Drew sighs. “To be fair, a lot of them call themselves matchmaking agencies these days.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  He flips back the lid of his lunch and stabs a pile of noodles with wooden chopsticks. I rest my chin on my hand and bask in the mundane reality we now occupy. Me. This man. Our humble business of hooking up rich people with the poors of their dreams. I’m in freakin’ Seattle instead of Portland. This time next week we’ll be in a different Pioneer Square.

  What if I told you this is a calm before a storm? Tonight we’re hobnobbing at a gala. Drew will dress in his little tux while I cram into a golden cocktail dress I bought two days ago. When I wasn’t bloating. I am definitely bloating now, so this will be fun.

  It’s been about two months since Drew officially pranced me around as his girlfriend. His father was stone-cold silent when I first came to visit, probably because he recognized me from the soiree where I was some other guy’s girl. And, you know, he’s heard about me from his buddies. Yet his mother merely looked me up and down and said, “At least it’s not the maid.”

  Drew and I had a nice, long chat after that. Especially when I found out the maid still worked for the Bentons.

  He
hasn’t met my family yet, but it won’t be long. We’re having Thanksgiving dinner with my parents, who still can’t quite believe I’m actually bringing someone home. Irene, the grandmother nobody in the Benton family wants to talk about, figured out how to text on her phone to send me daily reminders to “keep the boy in line.” Drew says that’s a sign she’ll ruin his life should we ever break up. It’s cute that Irene makes a million mistakes when she texts me. It’s like deciphering ancient code when she says, “if he talks back to u, tell him u know he used to pee his pants until he was 7.”

  Is this what love feels like? When we’re not being too passionate for our body parts’ own good, we’re sitting quietly at lunch, looking through our phones and occasionally laughing loudly enough to garner the other’s attention. We hold hands when we walk around town. We talk about trips we’re inevitably going to take, starting with a romp in Hawaii in two weeks. Trust me, we’re not planning a wedding anytime soon. I don’t think Drew is ready for that kind of talk yet. We’re still young in this relationship. Just because you’re pretty sure that this is the one, doesn’t mean you rush into things, right? We’re taking our time, making sure this is what we really want, and examining our long-term options. Maybe we’ll get married five years from now after a nice, long engagement. Maybe we’ll never get engaged and simply cohabitate for thirty years. Maybe we’ll never officially live together, but sleep together every night. Hell, maybe I’ll have five of his kids over the next decade.

  Haha! Kidding about that last one! He’ll be lucky if I agree to cat. Definitely no dogs.

  I will, however, most certainly agree to him taking my hand and giving me the kind of look that suggests he wouldn’t mind eating me alive right here. Drew Benton knows how to press my buttons in all the right ways.

  “So I hear the gala will be full of your exes,” he says with a gleam in his eyes. “I’m thinking you dress nice and sexy so I can parade you around with my hand up your ass all night.”

  “What am I? Your puppet?”

  “Nooo, you’re my girlfriend, and that’s what I need to make sure everyone at the gala knows. That I’m the lucky bastard who actually won your heart.”

  I look at him as if he’s lost his mind. Because he probably has. “Who said anything about my heart? This whole time I thought you were owning my pussy.”

  “Same diff.” He snaps two fingers before pointing them in my direction. “Because this is you we’re talking about.”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Come on now, babe, I save the fun words for the bedroom.”

  “You sure do.” Wooo boy, does he. Drew has nailed more than me in the past few weeks. He is now a master dirty-wordsmith who knows how to get me going in about two seconds flat. All he has to do is give me a virile look, call me one of the magic words, and I’m hopping in bed faster than a kid who found out it’s a snow day. Our therapist thinks we’re nuts, but hey, if it helps us bond or whatever, so be it. I’d much rather have a boyfriend who calls me a slut because he loves me and not because I’m breaking up with him.

  What? I don’t care how twisted that sounds! I’m happy! Fuck off!

  I’m happy…

  Who knew that this would be my life earlier this year? Drew Benton wasn’t on my radar. Yet there he was, sweeping into my lounge and seducing me like it was his job. (Turns out, it was.) If I had known we would go on the whirlwind of sex and emotions we’ve experienced this year, I may have turned around and invested in time traveling machinations. Go back to high school, when things were much simpler and I thought it possible to be happy the old-fashioned way. Whatever that meant.

  Embracing who I really am and not taking any shit from those who would deride me for it has made me such a happier, stronger person. I don’t how many times I’ve looked at myself in the mirror and thought, Yup, that’s confidence. Or how many times Drew’s reflection approached me in the mirror and said, “Yup, that’s my sexy woman.”

  One step at a time.

  Do I still have doubts? Absolutely. Do I wish I was a little different, or that he was a little different? I suppose that’s natural. But I’m a realist. I work with what I’ve got, and to do that, you have to admit what you have.

  We’ve got two toxic fuckwads who may be in love with each other. Hm. Sounds kinda messed up when I put it that way.

  “You know,” Drew says, with that tone that declares he’s got a hard-on happening in his pants, “we have a little time before the gala tonight. I’m thinking we’ll be really tired when we got home later, so maybe we should…”

  “At this rate,” I interrupt him, staring at my lunch full of grease and sodium. It’s the perfect PMS concoction. One I will soon regret when I’m too bloated to fit into my new dress tonight. “I’ll be spending all our time before we leave getting into my dress. I might have to hit the gym as soon as we get home.”

  “Whaaat?” He looks me up and down like he’s never seen my body before. “There’s no way you’ve gained a size since Tuesday.”

  “You say that, but I don’t think you understand the wrath of hormones.”

  “Tell you what.” Although his hand doesn’t touch me, his foot moves beneath this table. “How about I help you get into that hot dress you bought? Let’s say… every time you struggle a little, you struggle a… uh…” He cocks his head and ruefully grins at me. “A different way.”

  I look right into his perverted eyes as I eat my French fries. Ah, there it is. Images of me halfway into my dress and with a dick in my ass. I’m sure I’m grabbing the edge of the bed, the back of the couch, the kitchen counter… uh huh. Poor Cher. With her contorted O-face and little cries of pleasurable defiance as her big, bad boyfriend rams her for not fitting into her dress. Life is so hard.

  There are other hard things around here, too. That’s what’s setting this off.

  I take my time eating my food. Drew goes back to his phone like we haven’t said anything at all. We still need to go over work stuff, but I’m sure that will happen on the ride to the gala tonight.

  First, we have to get home.

  We hold hands while I punish myself with what I just ate. Already I feel my waistline expanding and my face bloating. Hell, I tell you. That dress will be my personal hell.

  “You know what everyone is going to be thinking when they see you in that dress tonight, right?” Drew whispers in my ear as we pass a nice old lady out walking her dog.

  “That I’ve really let myself go?”

  He chuckles. “That I must only see you for your body and nothing else. You’re probably sucking me dry, and I’m too stupid to realize it.”

  “Are you? Too stupid to realize it, that is.”

  “Oh, I’m well aware.” I’m pulled to his side, his arm stiff around me. Slowly, my arm encircles him as well. “Like you’re aware I’m only with you for your hot body.”

  “I want your money. You want my pussy. Sounds about right.”

  “Natural order of things, right?” He nips my ear. “By the way, I’ve got a really big dick.”

  I don’t know why, but that makes me throw my head back and cackle. That poor old lady nearly has a heart attack. Her little dog barks at me. Neither Drew nor I care as we walk toward his apartment and imagine all the ways we’re going to pass the time until we have to get ready for the gala tonight.

  Turns out, I really can’t fit into my fucking dress. Drew helps me feel better about it, though. Every time I get down on myself, I really get down. Right down on my knees.

  Always keep my guessing, Drew. That’s how you keep a trashy mess of a woman like me around and making your life excellent hell.

  Tell him I said that. You know, when you’re on your way outta here, and outta our lives.

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