But oh my God, that sound. I drive a late-model Bronco with a very serious issue with its brakes. I’m no stranger to worrying noises. This one, though? This one takes the cake.
“What on earth?” I mutter, and slide from the driver’s seat.
It sounds like nothing I’ve ever heard before in my life. It sounds like a scratched CD of the Cookie Monster Sings Death Metal. On full volume.
And it’s coming from my best friend’s house, right next door to mine.
Bracing myself for literally anything, from seagulls stuck in her bathroom to the end result of her absolute unwillingness to understand that you cannot flush cotton balls from manicures down the toilet, I walk down the path between our houses. Her place is the mirror image of mine, but whereas mine is white, hers is a shade of pink that makes Pepto-Bismol look faded. The noise gets louder as I make my way down the path and I have to plug my ears as I get closer to the source of whatever it is. I unplug one of them briefly, to open the back gate, and it’s enough to make me feel like my equilibrium has gone right out of whack. I step through the gate and onto what Maisie calls “the lanai,” in the grand tradition of the Golden Girls, but what everybody else in the world would call “the patio.”
She’s standing on one foot in a very wobbly tree pose. On her yoga mat is a jar with her usual 4:30 rum and Coke—so heavy on the rum it looks like half the ice has melted already—with a piece of red licorice instead of a straw.
I grab her phone, plugged into her speakers, and hit pause. The noise, mercifully, dies away, and on the screen, I see the album cover of Joys of Tibetan Throat Singing, Volume 1.
“Jesus,” she says, toppling out of tree pose, “Namaste to you, too. Have a little respect for happy hour yoga, won’t you?”
“‘Welcome home, Penny! Oh, thanks! How was your trip? How’s your grandpa? He’s just great, but on the way home I had to sit next to a lady who smelled like mushroom soup and kept asking me to help her with her Sudoku puzzles. Oh, I’m so sorry. I know that Sudoku makes your eyeballs cross. Other than that, perfect!’”
Maisie glares at me. “Never mind, never mind. How’s the diet?”
I had to try. “Day twenty-seven and the wagon is still rolling.”
She leans in and sniffs. The woman has supernatural man-sense. “Do I smell cologne?”
“Not unless you spiked my cucumber spray.” From the floor I collect a defaced stuffed armadillo and a mostly unstuffed turkey, along with a tennis ball missing half its felt. I gather them all up in the dog bed and pin it between my arm and my hip, like a giant foam taco.
“Oh,” Maisie says, raising her arms up to moon pose. “By the way, that guy—what’s his name…”
In that instant, my heart makes an irrational gallop through my chest. I clutch the dog bed to me even tighter, sending a spray of tiny dog hairs into the rays from the setting sun. “Russ?”
It’s the first time I’ve said his name aloud. It’s one of those incredibly manly names, like Jack or Nick, but even better, because it’s kind of growly sounding. Rrrrrussss. Like wrestle or rustle, like wrestling in the rustling sheets.
Lord. I might be in real trouble here.
Maisie takes a very respectable swig of her Cuba Libre, the sort of move Hemingway would’ve offered to take her shooting after. “No, Tom, or Dan, you know. The guy who works for State Farm? Who we saw line dancing…” Her fingers shoot up in air quotes. “…with his sister.” Every word gets a dramatic wiggle. All hail the queen of the scare quotes.
To my credit, there’s only one guy she could be talking about, but I’d rather not. “I have no idea who you mean.”
“He stopped by,” she says, folding herself into a downward dog. “Steve, or Chad. Dickwad. Whatever. Whatever the last one was called.”
Like I said, the No Man Diet is a necessary evil. “Please don’t tell me you tried the sugar-in-the-gas-tank routine again. Did you not look at the YouTube video I sent you? It’s dangerous, Maisie. Dangerous.”
She shakes her head, like I’m so, so cute. “I told him to take his comprehensive umbrella policy and shove it, and that if I ever saw his clean-shaven, two-timing face around here ever again I was going to…”
There is such a thing as too much information, so I hit play and the house fills with bone-rattling chants again. “Where’s Guppy?” I holler.
“Bedroom!” she screams back, and then lunges into a totally haphazard triangle, balancing her elbow on her knee so she can keep on sipping her drink through her Twizzler straw. But as I turn to go she screams, “Penny, darling. I really do think there’s a man a-coming. I can feel it in the air.”
It’s like having a schooner captain for a best friend, on the high seas of the World’s Worst Dating Pool. I’m almost certain that there is no man coming. And even if there is, I will resist him like the last cookie in the jar.
Anyway, a man a-coming. Pfffft. “Probably just Norm from UPS,” I scream back, and then head down the hall to get Guppy.
3
Russ
Port Flamingo might be home to the first air conditioner, but it is also, apparently, the only place in the contiguous 48 states where Google Maps doesn’t work for shit. So, after a pretty lengthy and very complicated detour to what ended up being an abandoned mannequin factory—I now understand exactly what people mean when they say “I’ll never be able to unsee that”—I finally turn onto East Beach Point Drive and follow the mailboxes from 101 upwards.
I’m used to gray walls and even grayer skies, modern lofts with awkwardly small balconies, and people who avoid small talk with strangers like the plague. This place couldn’t be more different. In one yard, two kids are spraying each other with squirt guns. A dog pounces on a sprinkler, trying to stop it with his mouth. One yard over, an old couple sits together on a swing hanging from their porch. The old man waves to me as his wife clutches his arm and presses her cheek to the plaid sleeve of his shirt. It’s like a different universe. The light is different. The pace is different. The colors are different. The people are different.
And so, holy shit, are the mailboxes.
It’s not the mailboxes themselves that catch my attention, but the flamingos attached to damn near every one of them. Some of them are staked to the ground but some of them are bolted to the posts, with big deck screws right through their plastic throats.
I roll past 121, 123, and slow to a stop in front of 125. It’s a small, neat, white ranch house set back from the street. Next to it is one painted a fucking seizure-inducing pink, so I don’t focus on that. I keep my attention on Penny’s place, where there’s not a fake flamingo to be seen. Or a dude’s SUV with a kayak strapped to the top. Bonus.
In the sandy driveway, I pull up next to an old baby-blue Bronco, maybe late eighties, early nineties. I double-check that I don’t have any parsley in my teeth and open my door. As I do, I take a look inside her Bronco. There’s a plastic Hawaiian lei dangling from the rearview, and a hula dancer on the dash. The car is messy, but not dirty. Just total chaos. But there, in the middle of it, in the cup holder, is my earbud holder, with one of the pairs we unwound tied up neatly, with the cover on.
I open up the back of my rental. I don’t know what the fuck that noise is—a gravel factory?—but I ignore it. I've got a mission, and not even that horrendous fucking sound is going to distract me from getting what I want. I stick the plastic telescoping handle in my pocket and pull the bag from the seat, using the fabric handle on the side. As I round the corner and head down her walkway, I do my damnedest not to let my body language scream Holy fuck this bag is so heavy, and walk as suavely as I can to the front step. The gravel-grinding sounds from next door suddenly stop; the neighbor’s horizontal blinds part in the middle, and a curious eye appears. I give the nosy neighbor a friendly smile, and the gap in the blinds snaps shut. I step behind the hedges onto Penny’s porch. There in the shade, I put the bag wheels down next to the door. Then I straighten my collar and press on the doorbell.
It rings back at me, lighting up under my finger. There’s a galloping sound, followed by a snort and a snuffle from under the door. Definitely a dog. It inhales long and slow, and then blows out a big grunt, so strong that it makes a puff of dust shoot up from the threshold. Penny whistles from somewhere in the house, and the dog thunders off toward her. And then I hear her footsteps. Coming for me.
I clear my throat. I try to get my game on semi-strong. Not too strong. Not cocky bastard strong, but strong enough that she’ll know exactly what I want.
Which is her. Definitely her.
But then she opens the door, and my strong-to-very-strong game crumbles. I’m fucking speechless. She’s not only in the bikini top now, but the whole shebang. Bright pink on top, bright pink on the bottom, tanned and naked everywhere else. Beautiful curves, soft stomach, gorgeous cleavage. No tattoos that I can see.
Yet.
“Oh my God,” she says when she sees me, and claps her palm and forearm across her breasts. She steps back behind the door to hide her bare skin. “What are you doing here?”
“I tried to call. And text.”
She looks utterly confused. I can almost see the thoughts streaming through her head. How in the ever-loving…
“This is yours.” I glance at her bag. “Got your address from the insert.”
Her eyes lock onto the pom-pom. “Oh, my God. Not again.”
“Repeat offender?”
“Why did I buy that bag?” She presses her fingers to her temples, but she’s smiling, like she’s pissed off but also tickled. “Tomorrow I’m going to take myself to T.J. Maxx and get one of those horrible pink ones with the hard sides. I’m so sorry.”
“Number one bestseller on Amazon. You, me, and the rest of America had the same idea.”
She snorts. “I seem to remember some pretty scathing reviews too though…”
“Speaking of which, we had a casualty.” I give her the handle. Her fingers brush against mine as she takes it.
She turns it over her palm and then gives me the old up-and-down, as she shakes her head and makes a tsk-tsk noise. “Broke my bag and followed me home. I don’t know about you.”
But her eyes, they say she knows exactly. Fuck, yes.
“On the upside, I got your number.” I run my eyes over the curve of her bellybutton. “I didn’t tell you this earlier, but I always get what I want. One way or another.”
“Always?” The tone of her voice, it says it’s a challenge.
“Fucking always.”
She taps her lips with two fingers, sizing me up. And then she inches out from behind the door, the curve of her body catching the sunset from behind.
Always.
“I'll get your bag. Come on in.” Her short pink fingernails grip the door as she opens it wider so I can see even more of her. Fucking A, that body. I need to get my hands on that body.
“I don’t want to put you out.”
“It’s the least I can do for stealing your stuff.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Steal is a pretty strong word.”
She puts her hand on her hip. “The pom-pom? The heavy tags? What else would you call it?”
“Don’t know. Maybe you were…” I drag my gaze up and down her body one more time. “Distracted.”
She smiles and laughs, and zips her necklace again, like she did at the baggage claim. “Maybe. Can’t imagine why.”
“Exactly. So how about dinner?”
The starfish stops, and she presses its small silver arms into her fingertips. “Tonight?”
“Unless you’ve got plans, or some other guy hanging around to untangle your earbuds.”
She looks away and blows out a breath. Then she regroups and looks at me again. “Actually, I don’t have plans. And no, nobody else is here to untangle my earbuds...”
Hell, yeah.
“…Or me.”
Christ.
Except then she waves me off, like she just remembered something important. “No, no, no. I really can’t. I’m on the No Man Diet. Sorry.”
“I don’t care what you’re on,” I say, because there’s a sparkle in her expression. Her words are pushing me away, but everything else is pulling me closer—her body language, her cleavage, everything. So I decide to go straight for it. “I’m not leaving without a yes.” I roll the bag back closer to me. “Have dinner with me, get your stuff back.”
Her eyebrow shoots up, and she opens the door even wider, pushing her shoulders back and looking indignant. As a bonus, I get the full view. The bows on the bikini bottoms match the one at her neck.
Man, oh man, oh man.
“Sorry, are you holding my stuff hostage?”
I rest my forearm on the door frame and move in closer. I turn my gum over between my front teeth. The closer I get to her, the closer she gets to me, until we’re squared up with hardly a hand’s width between us. “All I’m doing is negotiating. You’ve got something I want, and I plan to get it…Penny Darling.” But I don’t say it like a name. I say it like I mean it. Penny, darling.
She leans away and turns her cheek to me. “God, you know, I’ve never heard that before. Never in my life.”
Man, I love that sass…and that ass, which is now highlighted by the sunset even more. Sexy, soft, curvy thighs. “Figured that’d be a first. But what do you have to lose? I’m paying, and I won’t bite. Unless you want me to.”
Her mouth drops open. “Well, you don’t waste any time.”
“Never.”
We stay like that, in an unblinking game of chicken. Fucking intense, fucking fantastic. Finally, she folds, cutting the tension with a slow, sexy blink. “All right, fine. You like seafood?”
I’d prefer a burger, but fuck it. “Add some margaritas and you’re on.”
She opens the door wider, not quite so sassy now. “Come on in. I’ll get changed.” She turns and walks away from me, the material of her bikini bunching up in the most amazing fucking way along the line of her ass. Then she looks back at me over her shoulder and adds, “You should probably have a seat.”
“I’m good.” I come inside and pretend to be more interested in her kitchen than her body. The kitchen is, like her, bright and cute. There are multi-colored dishes stacked in the cabinets behind frosted glass. Messy, sure, but like a real home. Well loved, well cared for. There are pictures stuck with magnets on every inch of the fridge, showing off a happy, full life—so fucking different from mine.
“No, you really should sit,” she says as she moves to open a closed door, “because I’m going to let the dog out.”
* * *
When the dog trots into the room, the only thing I can think is, Holy shit, that’s a polar bear. She gives him a couple of big pats on the back. The way people do with, you know, horses. “This is Guppy.”
“Hey, man.” I extend my hand so he can take a sniff.
His haunches are even with her waist and his bobbed tail is as thick as a baseball bat. His eyes are droopy, red underneath. I think back to that mention of the No Man Diet, and her giving me the third degree about if I was married, separated, or in some complicated clusterfuck of a relationship. Guppy blinks, like he’s had about enough of this meeting-undateable-men shit.
He takes a few steps toward me, and a stream of drool swings from his left jowl like candle wax.
She tosses something through the air, and it lands on my leg. As I pick it up, I realize it’s a dishtowel. “What’s this for?”
“You’ll need it for your pants because he drools. A lot. Be right back.” And then she hustles off down the hallway, her feet pitter-pattering away, as Guppy chases after her, making the house shake like it’s about to get flattened in a stampede. A door creaks and then closes. Then I think I hear a window opening, and I’m almost positive I hear her say, “I know it’s a man! Shhhh!”
I look around the room. She’s got Christmas lights decorating the top of a bookshelf, and I see the wires under her cable box are an absolute disaster, which makes
me smile. The books, though, are neatly arranged. There are lots of cookbooks and different paperbacks with busted spines, but on the top shelf I see a row of matching leather-bound volumes. I lean in and squint. I'll be goddamned. It’s a full set of Dickens.
I stand up from the sofa and take a look, sliding the green volumes out one at a time. Bleak House is dog-eared. The Pickwick Papers is marked with Post-it flags. There’s a heart in the margin of Little Dorrit, next to the passage about circumlocution.
A body like that and she likes Dickens. Fuck, yes.
I take a seat back on the sofa again, slinging one of my arms over the cushion next to me. I let my head fall back and watch the ceiling fan spinning above, with its chain making a soft snap, snap, snap.
But then I hear the noise of huge, prehistoric claws clacking along the wooden floor. Guppy comes around the corner. And then he stares.
And stares. And stares. And stares.
It’s the deadpan stare I’ve seen from mob bosses on crime shows. Like a Tony Soprano, slow-eyed, give-me-the-fucking-money-or-else type stare.
“Hey…man,” I say, holding out my hand to him.
He blinks, very, very slowly and then takes a few steps toward me, until his enormous head is right above my knee, and his eyes are damn near level with my own. Around his neck is a big leather collar, as thick as my belt, studded with six silver stars, like Wild West sheriff’s badges. A glop of drool falls from his right cheek, and it lands with a slap on my pants.
I ball up the dishtowel and start to dab at his mouth, like managers do with boxers.
He answers this with a growl that emanates from deep in his hulking body. It sounds almost like a garbage truck approaching from down the street. I stop cold with the dishtowel just about to touch his cheek.
Just Like That Page 2