Hot as Puck

by Lili Valente

  My phone dings again, but when I glance down, the text isn’t from Justin. It’s Bethany, whose first-grade classroom is right across the hall from mine. So sorry to hear you’re sick! Especially today. A bunch of us are going to the tapas place you like for happy hour after school. I was going to ask you to come!

  Happy hour. With Bethany, other teachers, and no one who knows about my current drama. It sounds like a little piece of heaven, so I text back, I’m actually feeling better already. I was just a little off when I woke up this morning.

  Oh good! Then you should come. We’re meeting at 4:30. And don’t worry, Principal Edwards won’t be there, so your miraculous recovery from your “sick” day can stay our secret *winking face emoji*

  I smile, though I’m not terribly worried about Principal Edwards. She knows I work harder than all three of the other kindergarten teachers put together. Unfortunately for the rest of the six-year-olds at Asher Elementary, Mr. Vickers, Mrs. Gray, and Miss Thompson are all various levels of exhausted and/or ready to move on to teaching kids with fewer potty emergencies. I am Edwards’ top performer for five- and six-year-olds, and I seriously doubt she would reprimand me for taking a personal day.

  I text Bethany again, telling her I’ll see her this afternoon, and then scroll through the movie listings, buying a ticket to a noon showing of an action flick. I’ll do some thinking this morning, let myself be distracted by things getting blown up on the big screen, do some more thinking, and then do my best to leave sex and romance worries behind and enjoy an evening with friends.

  It’s a good plan, and by the time I find a parking spot near the tapas place, I’ve decided what I’ll say to Justin when the time comes, marveled at how many explosions can be squished into a ninety-minute feature film, and managed to convince Laura via text to leave work early so there won’t be the slightest chance of her crossing paths with Justin again today.

  I’m feeling pretty good—nervous, but proud of myself for taking time to think at least semi-rationally about all the things I’m feeling—when I swing into El Toro and realize I’ve made a mistake assuming happy hour would be a safe space.

  It’s not. Bethany, Rebecca, and the rest of the south-wing crew aren’t here alone. They’ve brought a member of administration along.

  Roger sits at the head of the long table, in the only chair with an unobstructed view of the entrance. The moment I spy him, he spies me—lifting a friendly hand in hello, dashing all hopes of making a quick getaway.

  Silently cursing my luck, I force a smile, praying I’ll be able to make it through a happy hour beverage without falling flat on my face or doing something else clumsy, awkward, or embarrassing. I’m not sure what I feel for Roger at this point—it’s hard to think about anything but Justin—but if anyone could manage to make a fool of herself over someone she isn’t even interested in anymore, it’d be yours truly.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Libby

  Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  That’s what I feel when Bethany springs out of her seat next to Roger and deftly settles me into her place, making it clear at least one of my coworkers is aware that I have the hots for the VP.

  Or that I had the hots for him.

  Now that I know what it feels like to experience real passion and pleasure and an intimate, heart-stopping connection to another person, I realize that what I felt for Roger was never “the hots.” It wasn’t lust or love or anything close to what I feel for Jus. It was a crush, a fixation based on fantasy spawned by the fact that before Roger carried me to the nurse’s office, I’d never had anything remotely romantic happen to me.

  But now I’ve had poetry and stolen kisses in the woods and in an elevator and behind Edna’s bushes. I’ve had sexts and flirting that feels as natural as breathing and more orgasms then I can count on two hands.

  I’ve had Justin, who calls me beautiful and makes me believe I am, every time we touch. But when Roger says he’s glad I could make it to happy hour, I feel nothing except grateful that I’ll never have to be nervous around this poor man again.

  “Thank you.” I smile as I pluck a menu from the center of the table. “So are we ordering food to share? Or fending for ourselves? I had popcorn an hour ago, but I’m already starving.”

  An hour later, I’ve shared Octopus a la Plancha and Jamon Croquettes with Bethany, an order of Radicchio Toast with Rebecca, and a mini cheese board with Roger, all while carrying on easy, pleasant conversation about school, life, and Thanksgiving plans. There isn’t a single moment of awkwardness, not even when my fingers brush Roger’s as we’re both reaching for a slice of Manchego.

  I simply draw my hand away, waiting until he’s made his choice, and then dart back in for the kill. I’ve already eaten enough to fill me up on a normal day, but for some reason I’m still starving.

  Maybe it’s all the sex, I think, cheeks flushing as I wonder how many calories Justin and I burned in the past twenty-four hours and if it’s enough to justify an order of mandarin panna cotta.

  “You should take a personal day more often,” Roger says, tapping the table beside my plate lightly with two fingers. “Relaxed looks good on you.”

  “Thanks,” I say with a laugh. “Though Principal Edwards probably wouldn’t appreciate me playing hooky on a regular basis.”

  He smiles, and I silently acknowledge that he is still a very decent, clean, friendly-looking person. But he’s not Justin. His smile doesn’t make my belly flutter or my chest ache, and his compliment, while nice to receive, is just that—nice. The world hasn’t shifted on its axis, no secrets of the heart have been revealed, and when my leg brushes against his knee as I sneak out to head to the bathroom, I’m not flustered at all.

  It isn’t until I swing out of the last stall and step up to the row of sinks to wash my hands that I experience a moment of panic.

  There, right beside me, is none other than Sylvia.

  Justin’s Sylvia. Or the one who used to be Justin’s Sylvia…

  I duck my head, hoping she won’t notice me or recognize my face if she does—we only met a few times, and I’ve found truly stunning people like Sylvia tend to forget the names of less stunning people like me—but once again I’m out of luck. She squeaks in surprise as she shuts off the water and reaches for a towel from the dispenser between us.

  “Hey, there! Libby, right? Justin’s friend?”

  I nod, grinning with my lips closed because I probably have something in my teeth. I was going to check as soon as I washed my hands, but now I can’t because I have to try to have a normal conversation while standing next to a woman who used to have sex with the only man I’ve ever had sex with. The man who this very morning was inside me, but was probably inside her only a week or two previously.

  And though I realize this is something that the average nearly-twenty-five-year-old wouldn’t stress about, it strikes me as profoundly, disturbingly strange. So strange, it takes me several awkward moments to convince my mouth to form the words, “Yes. That’s me. How are you, Sylvia?”

  “Oh, as well as can be expected,” she says with a sigh, leaning her slim hip against the sink as she dries her hands. She’s wearing a clingy red dress that perfectly showcases her model tall, model thin body, and her olive skin seems to gleam like a beautiful piece of freshly polished furniture. “Breakups are the worst, but it will all work out for the best in the end.”

  I nod with a little too much enthusiasm in an attempt to look like an innocent person who isn’t sleeping with her ex. “Right. Totally. Well—”

  “It’s the living situation that’s the hardest,” she pushes on before I can excuse myself and dash for the door. “I mean, we’d just moved in together, but I’d already given up my apartment.”

  I wince. “That was jerky of him. To kick you out like that.”

  They’re traitorous words, but they’re true. Justin can be a jerk sometimes, especially when it comes time to say good-bye. He doesn’t think, he just takes action and
worries about the fallout when pieces of debris start pelting his head. I know this about him, and it’s one of the things I thought about today when I was doing my best to remember that he isn’t a beautiful, perfect, sweet, thoughtful sex god all the time.

  Sylvia huffs and rolls her eyes again. “Tell me about it. I mean, I know he’s been your friend forever, and I don’t want to put you in the middle of anything, but it was a pain in the ass finding a place to crash. I ended up on my friend Casey’s couch.” She waves an elegant hand breezily through the air. “But it’s fine. She doesn’t care if my boxes are stacked against her wall for a few weeks while Justin works through his issues and realizes he’s made a mistake.”

  My mouth goes dry and I can’t think of a single thing to say aside from things I absolutely can’t say, like he’s never going to realize he made a mistake, Sylvia, because he’s with me now, and he’s mine, and I licked him and peed on him—in the metaphorical sense, not the literal sense, because that would be disgusting. I’m saying that I’ve marked Justin as my territory and that’s it’s over, super model girl, no sharing, no take backs. Mine, mine, and also, mine.

  But it’s okay that I’m tongue-tied because Sylvia has plenty to say.

  “He’s called me twice already,” she says with a silly, secret smile, one that is innocently happy, not vicious, because she clearly has no idea that Justin and I are more than friends. “Today he said he was calling to make sure I didn’t need my bike from the storage unit in his building before Sunday because he was going to be busy this weekend, but we ended up talking for almost an hour. It was nice. We cut through a lot of the bullshit. Got real, you know?”

  I swallow hard and manage to convince my head to bob up and down a couple of times.

  Justin talked to her today. Today, after he left my bed and texted me, wanting to get together and talk, he called and chatted with Sylvia instead. For an hour. And they “got real,” whatever that means.

  It could mean anything. Or nothing.

  He has her bike and they just broke up and they have normal, just-broken-up things to talk about.

  “It was so nice to hear him say that he realizes that he wasn’t giving as much to our relationship as he should have been. As much as I deserved.” Her gaze is soft, unfocused, as if she’s reliving the moment Justin made it clear that he’s on his way back to her, sooner or later.

  He’s on his way back to her. He really is.

  Why else would he have called her and said all of those things?

  Why else except that sleeping with someone he wasn’t in love with showed him that he wants something more, something meaningful and romantic with a beautiful, confident, successful woman? It’s just like Laura said. The rebound girl is just a phase, a step in the process, a tissue used to mop up the emotions until Justin realizes that he really wants the girl he had before.

  But this time, the girl he had before wants him back, too.

  “Anyway,” Sylvia says with a laugh, oblivious to my inner meltdown. “Sorry to talk your ear off. It’s just nice to see a familiar face. I don’t know anyone on this side of town. We should get together sometime. Jus said you were the one who taught him how to crochet. I’ve been dying to learn, but every time I ask him to teach me he ends up using the yarn to tie me to the headboard.”

  She laughs again and something in my forehead swells, bigger and bigger, until my head starts to pound and my vision begins to swim.

  “But if you have time to teach me, I can pay you back with brunch and Bloody Mary’s or something. I make a killer Bloody Mary.”

  “I have to go,” I mumble, patting the counter near the sink blindly for a moment before I realize that I left my purse on my chair in the restaurant. “Sorry, I just remembered I have an appointment.”

  “Oh, okay,” Sylvia says. “All right. Nice talking to you, Libby. See you around.”

  “See you,” I echo as I head for the door on numb legs. I stumble through the increasingly crowded restaurant, going more and more numb, until I feel like a zombie, something alien and only half human shambling through the throngs of happy people.

  Had I seriously imagined that Justin might want to be with me? Had I actually thought that what we’d started was something special, and that I would be able to make this work because I know Jus in a way no other woman ever has? Because I know about his inner goofball and his secret, tender heart and that most of the time when he fails at something it isn’t because he doesn’t have what it takes to succeed, but because he lets his fear of letting people down get the better of him.

  He hates to let people down. He wants to make everyone happy all the time.

  And maybe that’s all this was between us. The sweet words and passionate kisses and the way Justin swore that I made him as crazy in bed as he made me were all part of not letting down a friend who desperately needed his help. Maybe all this time, he’s secretly been feeling sorry for me, pitying poor Libby, the socially inept virgin who needs step-by-step instructions to give a blow job, and making plans to go back to Sylvia as soon as possible.

  Sylvia, who no doubt learned about sex and love the old-fashioned way, not by googling articles on average penis size, and who has never once doubted that her vagina is a stunning enchanted seashell destined to delight the men lucky enough to kneel before her and swear fealty to her love tulip.

  Love tulip? God, Libby, what are you twelve?

  “Sorry, I have to run, guys,” I squeak out back at the table, fumbling sixty dollars from my purse and placing it near my water glass, hoping that will cover my part of the check since it’s all I have in my wallet and I can’t fathom the idea of staying here a second longer. “I’ve got volunteer work early in the morning.”

  “Libby volunteers at the animal shelter near the school,” Bethany informs Roger, clearly still doing her best to smooth the path for romance. “She’s always making the rest of us normal humans look lazy.”

  “What do you do there?” Roger asks, his dark eyes lighting up. “I love dogs. I’ve got three, and every time I see a stray I’m tempted to bring home another.”

  “I mostly socialize the cats,” I say, hooking my purse over my shoulder.

  Because one day I’ll die alone and leave only my cats behind to mourn me. But it could be so much worse. At least my destiny is cuddly and furry.

  Simple pleasures—tea, cats, yarn.

  There is nothing wrong with simple pleasures.

  But sometimes you want pleasures that aren’t simple. Sometimes you want to be kissed like you’re the only woman in the world, touched like you’re irreplaceable, and made love to with a passion that makes it clear you are the answer to every question, the balm for every wound, the dream that will still be beautiful and true when all the other dreams have gone yellow and faded with time.

  “See you all on Monday.” I wave at the table at large, blow Bethany a kiss because she really is so sweet and thoughtful, even if her efforts to help me on the path to true love are coming a little too late.

  If only this happy hour had happened a week ago. But it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Sooner or later I would have realized that Roger wasn’t the man for me.

  As I curl up in bed, in the sheets that still smell a little like Justin, I can’t imagine loving, or making love, to anyone but him. I can’t imagine feeling beautiful and free, unashamed and sexy, powerful and perfect with another man, which means it’s time.

  It’s time to stop fooling myself and do what I should have done a long time ago.

  The next morning, I write my landlord a check for the pet deposit, and at the end of my volunteer shift, I come home with a fluffy orange tabby named Ivan the Terrible. Terrible is five years old, blind in one eye, and fat enough to nearly dislocate my shoulder while I’m hauling him upstairs in the carrier. He likes to lick and sniff exposed toes in an affectionate but borderline creepily way that has kept him from being adopted thus far. He’s a little weird, like me, and I’m sure we’re going to grow old toget
her beautifully.

  Or older, anyway. I know the chances that Terrible will be one of the tribe tasked with witnessing my sad and lonely end are slim. He’s no spring kitten, so odds are we’ll only have ten or twelve years together, at most.

  For some reason, the thought makes me cry as I’m setting up his food and water bowl and fluffing up his new cat bed. I cry and cry, until eventually Terrible stops licking my toes through my socks and starts licking my face, purring as he does because apparently my tears are delicious.

  “Sicko.” I smile as I hug him closer and pet his soft fur. “But I’m glad you’re here.”

  Terrible will be here when it’s all over and Justin has been set free to return to his life of dating women who are in his league and I am free to snuggle up with my new cat and be Libby with no romantic complications.

  Just the way I like it.

  Liar, the inner voice whispers, but it’s already quieter than it was last night.

  Give me another month or two and maybe I won’t remember that I fell in love with the wrong person, or how he made me feel magical, sexy, transcendent things I never imagined I could feel. Maybe I’ll be able to forget that for a few days Justin felt like home, and that I never got the chance to tell him how much he means to me.

  Though, maybe I should let someone other than my new cat help me forget…

  On impulse, I pick up my phone and shoot a quick answer to the text I received this morning while I was knee-deep in semi-feral cats—Dinner sounds great. Meet you at the Fox Brass at seven.

  I don’t have to be at the game, as long as I’m there to talk to Justin after. And it will be easier to talk if I don’t have to spend a few hours watching him skate. Because he is really, really sexy when he skates. Even before we were more than friends, there were times when watching him on the ice was enough to send a humming, buzzing, aware feeling dumping into my bloodstream.

  This will be better. I’ll have dinner, keep my mind on other things, and then get it over with as quickly and painlessly as possible. I’m going to make it easy for him. It isn’t his fault that this went off the rails. He never lied to me or led me on. He was honest from the beginning.