The Comeback Route

by Jamie Bennett

  “Tatum. Open up!” And there he was, pounding on my door.

  “Go away. Fuck you!” I hopped off the bed and stamped my foot. “Or go fuck one of the women in your bed, Nico Williams.”

  “Don’t yell. Come talk to me, please.”

  I stomped over and whipped open the door. He had pulled on some pants over his underwear and now I was more naked then he was. “You know, I thought of myself as open-minded. Open-minded in a sexual way, I mean, and not towards pet clothing. I’m totally opposed to dressing up dogs and cats!”

  “Tatum—”

  “But now I realize that I’m just as opposed to sexual escapades as I am to putting costumes on our furry friends. There are people screwing on the stove top in our kitchen! There was a man standing on his head on my bed with a woman attached to him! And I don’t even want to get into what was happening in my bathroom. I think it defied the laws of physics.”

  “I—”

  “And you, with your three women!” I continued furiously. “Three, and they were really something, weren’t they? At least now, all your questions about what fake boobs feel like should be answered.”

  “I didn’t know that those women were in there. I didn’t,” he said loudly, when I opened my mouth to interrupt again. “I was as surprised as you were to find them like that.”

  “You just happened to be walking around in your underwear in your bedroom, holding an open bottle of champagne, not expecting naked women?”

  He hesitated. “I expected just one woman,” he finally explained.

  My eyes rolled so hard I almost lost them into the back of my head. And I felt a little pang, a jab of hurt that made my lips turn down.

  “This is what I was afraid of!” Nico exclaimed. “You and I, we’re friends, Tatum, and you can’t have a jealous fit when I’m with another woman. Or women, as the case may be.” He actually grinned.

  “Jealous fit?” I asked politely. Or, maybe I screamed it, maybe at the top of my lungs. “Jealous fit? You think that’s why I’m upset? I don’t care if you’re with another woman, you horny idiot! I don’t care if you’re with fifty women at once. A hundred! Go ahead and go at it like a walrus!”

  “What? A walrus?”

  “Everyone knows about walruses and their giant baculums!” I hollered. “Don’t change the subject. I’m mad because one of those women was taking pictures of all four of you! She was holding her phone in her hand and they were posing when I walked in. And now that will go viral like all the other dumb shit you’ve pulled lately, and I can’t be an effective life coach if you keep acting like a stupid,” I shoved his chest and he stepped back, “moronic,” shove, “obtuse,” shove, “jackass!”

  Nico caught my wrists. “Enough, Tatum! I get it. I won’t take pictures with my foursome! Calm the fuck down!”

  I had moved us out into the hallway as I pushed him. “Great!” I announced. “Perfect! Go screw three women at once and don’t record any of it!”

  “I’m letting you stay with me as a favor. I don’t need to take anything from you about what I do. Cut out this shit, Tatum, and if you don’t like it, leave!”

  I realized it was pretty quiet and I looked around us. To our left, the women from Planet Boobs had quit their naked wrestling in Nico’s sheets to peer out of the doorway of his bedroom, their cell phone cameras held high. To our right, Galen and a mass of party people were also watching, and also snapping keepsake photos and videos of their own. Nico had followed my eyes. “You’re practically naked,” he hissed furiously. He snatched me off my feet and planted me back in my bedroom, shutting the door hard and right in my face. “Show’s over,” I heard him call to our spectators, and in a moment, the music started back up.

  I stood panting, my hands pressed against the wood door. I was furious, and now, probably, also internet famous. Again! Coming on the heels of the topless shimmying video of last summer, I’d go viral again, this time in my bra and not very cute undies, and yelling at Nico Williams at the top of my voice. Just what the world needed to see.

  Damn that man! I took another moment to focus and regain my calm and purpose before I took a dress out of my closet and threw it on. Then I went into the bathroom and troweled on makeup, too, and made my hair a lot bigger. Nico. Damn him! Maybe he would choke on one of the cookies I had brought for him. No, I was going to eat those myself! Stupid Nico and his stupid naked women. Standing on my tiptoes, I pulled my breasts up higher in my bra and I nodded at the mirror. I was ready for a night out of my own and I went into the party to find Galen.

  “I’m ready!” I trilled when I finally came upon him, cozy with a very sexy redhead who was taller than I was, and she had on flats.

  “Great,” Galen said, stepping back from the beautiful woman. She sniffed down at me, but I was wearing my extremely high heels, so she didn’t look too far down. Luckily Nico had been able to retrieve my right shoe after I’d had the unfortunate accident after dinner at the restaurant the other night. He had yanked it out of the palm tree where the heel had embedded after it flung off my foot. And now I looked as awesome as ever with the six extra inches of height.

  “No,” I heard Nico’s voice say, and of course, he was saying it to me, shaking his head as he moved aside a couple grinding it out to the music to get over to where we were standing. “No, Tatum, you can’t wear those. You’ll break your neck.” He had put on a shirt and apparently abandoned the harem for a beer, which he shook at me threateningly.

  “If you’re referring to my shoes, I’ll have you know that I can wear whatever I want,” I informed him. Loudly. “My shoes, my feet. My luck, to be so gorgeous and tall in them!”

  “Your luck to have a broken ankle at the bottom of a flight of stairs, is more like it,” he shot back. Even more loudly.

  We couldn’t get into this again, in front of another audience with all new phones to record us, so I brought the conversation to an end. “Galen?” I smiled pleasantly at him. “Let’s be on our way.”

  Galen looked at Nico, as if he was waiting for permission. “Uh…”

  “Have a great night,” Nico told both of us, and drained his bottle. He smiled at me and Galen like something was funny, but the emotions churning around in me were anything but light and amused. I felt like I might slap someone, maybe Nico, and then maybe cry. My fists were clenched in frustration.

  “Let’s go, Tatum,” Galen said, and I let him steer me out of the penthouse and down in the elevator to his car. Mostly he was not steering, but holding me up. Maybe Nico was a tiny bit right about me breaking an ankle in my shoes.

  “One thing I can’t get used to is the cars you guys drive,” I groused, as I had to use all the handrails to vault myself into Galen’s passenger seat. “Nico’s car is so high, my ears pop when I ride in it.”

  “Big guys, big cars,” Galen said easily. “How much have you seen of Miami?”

  “Not too much. I know Little Havana pretty well because I’ve done two shifts of work at a bakery there.”

  He laughed and I looked up in surprise. Was that funny? I had literally walked every street handing out samples for El Asturiano.

  “Also, Nico and I went out to dinner at La Marcha in South Beach, so I’ve been there,” I continued. “Besides that, Nico and I have done some runs around the neighborhood. I moved here permanently on Wednesday and it may take me a few more days to really know my way around everywhere.” And Galen laughed again, as if I had made another joke. I looked at him curiously. I did plan to learn about this new place as soon as I could, because it was my home now, for keeps.

  “I’ll show you around a little,” he said. “Tonight we can go to Coconut Grove.”

  “Oh, I think Nico mentioned that to me. It’s close, right? Is that where you live? He had looked at an apartment there.”

  “I live downtown.”

  We talked a little on the way, about Michigan and the Woodsmen football team, and the Cottonmouths, too. I tried to pump him for information about the head coach,
Cattaneo, and about the other wide receivers who would be in competition with Nico.

  Galen looked over at me as we pulled up in front of a valet. “I thought I knew where things were, but guess I didn’t.”

  I looked around. “Are we lost? Don’t worry, I’ve learned a little Spanish and I definitely speak enough English to ask for directions. Mostly my Spanish vocabulary is about pastries and articles of clothing but that could get us somewhere.”

  “No, I know where I am, directionally. We’re in the Grove and this is the restaurant I wanted to take you to. What I meant was, every other sentence out of your mouth has had the word ‘Nico’ in it. That makes me wonder about where things are between you and him. If I’m going to be playing with him, I don’t want him pissed off at me over some girl.”

  “Oh, things between Nico and me are currently strictly professional. That episode tonight with me yelling at him in the hallway while only wearing my underwear, well, that was a lapse in judgement. I’m his life coach.”

  “His life coach,” Galen repeated. “He’s living with his life coach.”

  “We’re not living together. Of course, we’re living together, but not living together,” I said with emphasis. “Are you looking for a life coach, by any chance? I wouldn’t yell like that at any of my other clients.”

  “I’m good. I’m looking for some fun, if you’re interested.” He glanced over at me and smiled. I thought of Nico with the three naked women. “Sure,” I told Galen, and forced myself to smile back. “I’m definitely up for some fun.”

  “Great.” He watched as I struggled to get down from the car and wobbled in the shoes that I was now a little sick of. Ok, Nico had been entirely right that it was a bad idea to wear them. “Let’s go, Tatum.”

  I closed my eyes briefly and visualized Nico and the naked ladies leaping right into the deep end of the pool at the apartment building. They sunk to the bottom. There, that was where I was going to keep them for the night. No more thinking about that unhappy tableaux in his bedroom or talking about him to Galen.

  Galen put his hand on my back and slid it kind of low as we walked up toward the restaurant. Lower, then lower, until it was on my ass. Fun, I reminded myself, but I took a quick step forward anyway and away from his grasp and I almost fell. Close one. Nico had caught me when I had fallen before…no, don’t think about Nico, I scolded myself. No Nico. “Galen, do you have any family near here?” I asked. Good, that question had been Nico-free.

  “No. I’m from Washington, the Seattle area. They’re all three thousand miles away, thank God. You?”

  “I’m from Georgia originally. But I’ve moved around some, to college in Texas, then up to northern Michigan to work. I have a bunch of brothers and sisters.”

  “Huh.” He didn’t seem that interested in my life story and was actually three steps ahead of me as we went into the restaurant.

  “I’m one of seven kids,” I continued. “Can you believe it? I support them, I mean, I pay for them to go to college and I do the down payments on their houses when they graduate. More, if they need it. One of my sisters is in dental school and I pay for that also.”

  “Great,” he said vaguely, but then he paused and stared at me. “Did you just say that you have six siblings, and you’re from Georgia? It feels like I heard that before.”

  “You’re probably experiencing déjà vu. Like once, I had the strangest notion that I had gone downstairs in my house and eaten all my father’s birthday cake the night before his party, but then that did turn out to be true when I tried to eat it for real the next morning.”

  “Uh huh.” Galen’s eyes swept the restaurant. “What about that booth there in front, facing the door?” he asked the hostess.

  “That’s where I was taking you,” she told him. “It’s where we put all our celebrity guests.”

  He winked at her. “What’s your name?”

  I took a step and stumbled again, but Galen was whispering something into the hostess’s ear and didn’t notice. They had already walked off to the table and it was going to take me a lot longer to make it over there. When I did, I took a menu out of her hands and seated myself, ready to start the fun. Immediately.

  Nico wanted to tomcat around? Fine. But when the cat was away, the mice would raise some real hell. I counted myself as a mouse who would do just that tonight in Miami.

  Chapter 6

  Forgiveness is the wind beneath our wings and anger and resentment are the weights that tie us to Mother Earth. Let forgiveness fill your heart today. You’ll soar up into the heavens for all eternity (not to die, just to be light and airy.)

  Yours in corporeal transcendence, Mysti

  “Tatum, are you up?”

  I wasn’t, so I kept my eyes closed.

  “I made coffee. Want some?”

  I wiggled myself awake enough to crack open one eye. Nico stood next to my bed with a large, steaming mug in his hand. I cleared my throat. “I hope you didn’t make it on the stove. I never want to touch that appliance again after what happened on top of it. And I think it happened in the oven, too.”

  He grimaced. “No, this isn’t from the stove. I saw what was going on there too, and what also happened with the hot water heater. It’s in a little utility closet next to the hall bathroom but somehow five naked people managed to fit in with it.”

  I tried to picture that but got nowhere. “How do you have sex on a hot water heater?” I asked as I sat up.

  “Very acrobatically.” He shrugged. “It got a little crazy here yesterday.”

  Sure had. When I had returned after the evening out with Galen, things had been in full-on rager mode. I’d had to burrow through the crowd to make my way to my bedroom, which someone—I guessed Nico—had managed to cordon off, so it was thankfully empty of lewd activities. I had dragged a blanket out of the closet and curled up in that because the sheets were still where I had balled them up on the floor after I had gotten an eyeful of what had happened in them. Which had also been very acrobatic.

  Remembering all the things that had gone on at the party made me remember Nico’s escapade with the three women in his bed, and also him telling me that if I didn’t like it, I should leave. I lay back down and pulled the blanket over myself. “I don’t like coffee. I’m going back to sleep.”

  “It’s ten o’clock, you should get up. And I’ve seen you drink coffee like it’s the oxygen you need to live.”

  Maybe he was right about that, but I was not pleased with him so I wasn’t going to admit to anything. I yawned and reached for the mug. It had been hard to sleep with the yelling and talking and music of the party, even with my pillow clamped over my head. “Thank you,” I told Nico coldly, and took a sip. I was going to have to learn how Lucy made hers in the back at the bakery, because once I had tasted it out of her special little pot, it was hard to return to what Nico had just handed me. “Did you enjoy yourself last night?”

  “I didn’t enjoy that fight we had, not at all.” He appeared to be waiting for something. “Here’s where you apologize for barging into my room and for yelling at me.”

  I stared at him. “I was waiting for you to apologize for barging into my room and for yelling at me! And furthermore, for insulting my shoes.”

  We looked at each other; it was a standoff. “On the count of three?” he asked, and I nodded. “One, two, three…”

  “I’m sorry,” we both said, then looked at each other in uneasy silence.

  “Do you have to go to the bakery?” Nico asked finally. He sat down on the edge of my bare mattress.

  “It isn’t open today. Everyone deserves a day off after two days of working. Two days right in a row,” I clarified.

  “I was thinking about going to the beach. Want to come? I’ll tie us together with a rope if you feel the need to get in the ocean.”

  I nodded slowly. “Sure. Yes, that would be fun. I was just saying to Galen last night that it was funny I hadn’t been on the beach yet, now that I’m a Floridian.” />
  Nico stood and walked to the door. “Let’s go, then.” But I sat for a while on the bed until he came back in to get me into gear and even then, he ended up pulling me along to the garage. What I had said to Lucy about me being a morning person had been a little bit of a stretch.

  “How much of Miami have you seen?” I asked him as we got into the car a little later, just like Galen had asked me the night before.

  “I’ve seen a lot of the nightlife, not too much of the beaches. One of the guys at the gym the other day was talking about the place we’re heading now. He goes with his family all the time.” He loaded my heavy bag into the back of the car. “Do you really need all this?”

  “Yes,” I told him. “You never know what will happen at the beach.” Nico opened the bag and picked up my chisel and hammer in one hand and bottle of rum from his bar in the other. He raised an eyebrow at me in question, but things happened, and it was good to be prepared. I took my stuff and put it back into the beach bag. “Galen mentioned that everyone else had gone mini golfing yesterday, and that was why he was the only one from the Cottonmouths at your party,” I said. “He told me that he was the only single guy you had met from the team.”

  “Yeah. It was kind of strange. They were all constantly talking about their families. It seems like the entire offense is married with kids.”

  “You’re kind of at the age,” I told him. “Not me, though. I’m much younger than you.”

  “You’re three years younger than I am, not a lifetime. Here.” He reached out a hand to help pull me into the car. “I need to get a stool for you.”