by Cara McKenna
She jumped when his text buzzed in her hand. There they were—the name and digits of his coworker. She highly doubted Mica would’ve replied so promptly if asked, or indeed remembered at all.
It was dinnertime now, too late to chase the lead, but she’d try the number tomorrow.
Speaking of dinner . . . Christ, just the thought of throwing some chicken in with a box of pilaf mix sounded exhaust—
Her phone buzzed again with a call and she snatched it up, registering what she now recognized as Vaughn’s number. “Hello?”
“What’s your address?”
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry—it’s Vaughn. What’s your address?”
“I figured it was you, but why do you need my address?”
“Because you’re having a shitty night, and I’m bringing you a pizza.”
“You don’t need to—”
“Have you eaten?”
“Well, no, but—”
“You eat meat?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Pepperoni and mushrooms?”
She laughed. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Are we friends or not?”
“Yeah. Of course we are.”
“Well, I had fuck-all plans of my own aside from going to the gym, and now I know a friend of mine is having a lousy day. What do you expect me to do?”
“I dunno.”
“So where do you live? I’ll order the pizza and head over in time to tip the delivery guy.”
Why was she resisting, really?
Because he’s not the one who was supposed to try to cheer me up. She’d wanted a lover’s distraction tonight, not a friend’s.
He’s my lover, too. But she knew it was different. They both knew it. When it was the three of them, Vaughn was her lover as much as Mica was. But take Mica out of the equation . . .
Who cares? He’s offering pizza and a shoulder to cry on, no strings attached. “Okay, fine. That’d be great—but no mushrooms, please.”
“Green peppers?”
“Lovely. Just know I’m going to be really bad company. The whole thing’s got me all stressed out and weepy.”
“Just text me your address, okay? You have my number now.”
“Okay, fine. See you in a bit, I guess.”
“See you, Clare.”
They hung up and she sent him her address, feeling a little dumb. A little sloppy and helpless and pathetic, but undeniably relieved to know she wasn’t going to be stuck on her own, dealing with money stress and romantic disappointment in the same night.
It really is time you give up on that boy. He really was a boy, in too many ways to keep overlooking. A man in bed, but no more use to her than a teenager when it came to the things that really mattered.
The buzzer rang not even twenty minutes later. She pressed the SPEAKER button. “Vaughn?”
“Yeah.”
“Come on up. Second floor.” She buzzed him in and left the door ajar.
He was a sight for sore eyes as he entered the kitchen—calm as always, kind smile at the ready, and dressed in a hoodie and workout pants, looking strong and cuddly at once. Clare, on the other hand, was a wreck. Her eyes felt puffy and her makeup was no doubt a scene, her blouse wrinkled from more than one fetal-position crying jag.
“Hey,” she said, and shut the door at his back. “Thanks again. I feel like a moron, but thanks. Is it raining?” She took his damp jacket when he shed it.
“Just drizzle.”
“That about puts the rotten cherry on this day, then. Did you walk?”
“Yeah. Driving felt silly, plus, my gym’s about halfway between my place and yours. I’ll swing by there on my walk home.”
That answered a question Clare hadn’t even articulated to herself, yet—Vaughn hadn’t come looking to sleep over, it seemed. Not a surprise, in retrospect. He was the consummate gentleman, their filthy shared sexual adventures aside. Not the type who’d ever see a vulnerable, rattled woman as a target in need of so-called comforting.
“Make yourself at home.” She waved an arm toward the open living area. “I was about to top myself off, if you’d like a drink. Wine’s all we’ve got, though.”
“I’m fine. Booze and weight machines don’t mix, in my experience.” He seemed content to sit at the kitchen table, pulling out a chair and then his wallet, counting bills. “You look nice, by the way. In glasses, I mean.”
“Oh, thank you.” She nearly told him she’d had to take her contacts out because she’d ruined her current pair with all the crying, then thought better of it. There was pathetic, and then there was pathetic.
“Want to talk about your day?” he asked. “Bitch it out?”
“Ugh, no. Thanks, but no. Tell me about your day, please.”
He did. He’d worked an overnight and gotten done at ten that morning, and it sounded like a pretty grisly shift, for a Tuesday night.
“I wasn’t even supposed to be working. I swapped with somebody at the last minute.”
“Well, crummy as I feel, at least I didn’t have to deal with gunshot wounds. Jesus.”
He smiled, humble. Handsome. “Just part of the job.”
“What are the worst parts of it? The hardest stuff, short of people dying, I mean.”
“Probably just trying to reason with the drunks and the addicts and the crazies. It’s tough to muster patience and compassion at four a.m.”
“I’ll bet. But I’ll also bet it’ll be great training for if you ever have a baby.”
He laughed. “Let’s hope so.”
She was about to ask him more about that, about if he wanted a family, but the door buzzed.
“Pizza time,” she announced, hopping up to address the intercom. “Be right there.”
Vaughn brushed past her to head downstairs, returning shortly with a big white box and an aroma that buoyed her sunken spirits in an instant.
“Fuck, that smells good.”
She followed him to the counter and got them plates and paper towels.
“So,” Vaughn said, and jabbed the point of a slice of pizza in her direction. “Tell me everything you hated about your job.”
She sighed but mustered a weary smile, resigned to this therapy. “Hoo, okay . . . Well, the guy who shared my double cube ate the stinkiest tuna sandwiches you ever smelled. Every. Fucking. Day. And my manager got wasted at the Christmas party two years ago and tried to grab my tit.”
“Yikes. Go on.”
“Um, the callers are horrible. Not all of them. Not even half, but the shitty ones take five times longer to deal with.”
“But of course. What else?”
She considered it, giggled.
“What?”
“There was . . .” She dissolved into laughter, tears brimming once more, but from amusement, for a change. “There was this one stall in the ladies’ room, and I swear to you the toilet seat always had a pube on it.”
He snorted, and through a bite of pizza offered a muffled “What?”
“For real. And, like, an epic pube. Always. And I’m not the only one who noticed it. I guess that mystery’s never getting solved now.”
They swapped workplace misadventures for a half hour or more, until all that remained of the pizza were two slices and a greasy square of parchment paper. Clare picked up the little white plastic thing that kept the lid from smooshing the pie.
“Barbie end table,” she said, turning it around.
Vaughn shook his head. “That’s a Ninja Turtle stool. Trust me.”
“Well, thematically,” she said, raising the slice she was finishing, “that’s a better use. It’s not like Barbie ever ate pizza, to judge by her measurements.”
Vaughn didn’t reply, busy chewing.
“I called Mica,” she blurted. Wh
ere the thought came from, she couldn’t say, nor why she’d shared it. “Not long before you called me. I was hoping he’d hear my tale of woe and invite me over, distract me, but he was finishing up at work.”
Vaughn swallowed. Opened his mouth, closed it.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
She cupped her glass in both hands and leaned forward. “No, really. Tell me. It’s about Mica—what? How has everything been since . . . you know. Are you two okay?”
He sighed, rolling not his eyes but his entire head, looking weary. “It’s nothing to do with that. We’re fine. It’s just that it’s not a surprise that he wouldn’t make that offer, if you called him upset.”
“I wasn’t crying or anything.”
“Doesn’t matter. Only matters that he’d know you needed him to be something to you other than a booty call or whatever. That you’d need him to be something as real as an actual friend. Mica doesn’t do real.”
“So I’m beginning to realize.” She looked down at the pale yellow wine in her glass, feeling like a dumb-ass. “But how have you two been, since last time?”
“About the same. A little tense, maybe even some measure of relief, but going through the motions of normalness. I always thought if we took things there, something would be changed forever.”
“But?”
“But it feels kind of like how it always has, when I let him fuck with my boundaries. A little weird, but I think we’ll find our way with it, like always. It’s not happening again, not in the apartment, at any rate. With you there . . . That made it possible. But I can’t go there with just him. It’s hard to explain why, but it’s just something I know.”
“Sure.”
“Clare?”
“Mm?”
“There’s something I feel like I ought to tell you.”
His tone was different than she’d heard it before, heavier. Grave, even. She turned to meet his eyes, a little bundle of nerves gathering in her stomach. “Oh?”
“I can’t figure out if it’s your right to know, if I owe it to you, or if saying’s actually more cruel than kind . . . But it seems right that you should hear.”
She laughed, nervous. “That I should know what?” A hundred conclusions begged to be jumped to. “Just tell me. I’m a big girl.”
He sighed heavily and his gaze dropped to her hands. “Mica’s . . . He’s with someone, tonight. He told me his plans this morning.”
Her gut dropped. It should have been among her list of guesses—it sounded so obvious in hindsight, but that was denial for you. “Oh.”
“And he’s been with other women pretty much this whole time—since you guys started hooking up, I mean. Maybe that’s total non-news to you, but I wasn’t sure. I know you like him.”
Clare rolled her eyes, feeling transparent. “I do. I mean, we never said anything to each other about this being more than . . . you know. And last time made everything even more ambiguous.”
“But?”
Her disappointment had to show on her face. She sighed, shoulders slumping. “I won’t lie—that doesn’t exactly feel good. Especially not on top of an already crummy day.”
“No, I bet it wouldn’t. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I shouldn’t be surprised anyway. I started caring too much, and I knew it.”
“Yeah?”
“The way we are . . . The way he makes me feel, anyway, it’s not like, abusive. But it hurts. It shouldn’t, but it does. It’s all just casual, he’s not my boyfriend, yet it really fucking stings every time he lets me down. I don’t have much practice at this stuff. Some naive part of me clearly expected that whoever I’m sharing my body with would have the courtesy to rush over and cheer me up when I’m feeling this shitty.”
“I hear you. I suck at casual stuff, too. I talked to my dad about it once, a couple of years ago. He said there’s no heart to the modern dating culture, and that there’s no shame in feeling like you’re not cut out for it.”
She nodded. “Still, I wish I was cut out for it. I wish I could have had all those adventures with him and with you, and at the end just, like, shrug and move on.”
“Easier said than done,” Vaughn offered. “I bet that’s true for most folks, but some can just stomach it easier than others. And the rest are just good at faking it.”
“Well, I don’t seem to be one of them. I got well and truly hung up on him, and maybe I should have distanced myself the second I realized it was happening. Especially since I could tell he was in it for the sex. Like, why walk down the ice-cream aisle when you’re on a diet? It’s just asking for trouble.”
“Amen, sister.”
She sighed, catching herself. “Listen to me—I didn’t mean to turn you into my therapist.”
“After the day you’ve had, why not? And I’ve got nothing else going on, so I may as well try to make you feel better.”
“I dunno . . . He’s your best friend.”
“And he’s one of the most messed-up people I know, Clare. Trust me, there’s nothing you can say about him that’ll upset me. And none of it goes beyond your lips and my ears, okay?”
“What about bros before hos?” she teased.
“Anybody who uses that phrase seriously is either fourteen or an asshole.”
She laughed. “True enough.”
He looked to the dominoes. “After my mom passed, my dad told me, treat every woman like my mom was watching me. You know, act respectful, make her proud.”
“As far as I can tell, you do. You’re one of the last gentlemen,” she told him. “And I’m sorry to hear about your mom. How old were you when she died?”
“Thirteen.” He answered Clare’s next question, one she wasn’t sure she was comfortable asking. “She had non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She was young; they caught it late.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with it. I feel bad for my dad, though. He’s still not ready to move on. He might never be. I’ve never seen somebody love someone like he did my mom. He used to look at her like they’d just met yesterday. Like she was made of gold, you know?”
“That sounds wonderful.” And not much like her own folks. “How sad that he had to go through that.”
Vaughn nodded.
“Did you guys have a good relationship? You and your mom?”
“Yeah, it was great.”
“What was she like?”
“Um, kind of a dork.”
Clare laughed. “Really?”
“Yeah, like a mom dork. Like, she was the worst person to go to a movie with. She spent the entire time nudging you and asking, Who’s that white lady? Are we supposed to know who that is? Is she the other lady’s sister? Who’s that actor? Do I know him from something?”
“Ah, one of those.”
“What about you? You close with your mom?”
“Yeah, I’d say so. She’s not a dork, though—she’s intense.”
“How so?”
“She’s a VP at her company, super ambitious, total workaholic. She makes Michelle Obama look like a layabout. She’s great—don’t get me wrong. Really driven, strong, take-no-bullshit. A great role model . . . but that just makes me feel all the more like a loser sometimes.”
He frowned. “Why would you feel like a loser?”
“For starters, I have a bachelor’s and the student loans to prove it, yet I just got laid off from my job at a call center.”
“You also have a big show coming up in a gallery,” he countered.
“I wouldn’t call it big . . .”
“Why not? Doesn’t it feel like a big deal?”
“To me, sure, but—”
“Shut your mouth,” he said, smiling that big, white, perfect smile. “It’s a big show, if it’s a big show to you. And a bi
g deal.”
“I broke up with a guy my mom thought was, like, the best future husband ever, earlier this year.”
“Let her marry the guy, then, if she thinks he’s so great.”
Clare laughed.
“You’re too hard on yourself.”
“Not always,” she said. “I promise. I’m just having a tough time looking on the bright side right now, what with my job, and my twisted excuse for a romantic life . . . I’m giving up on him. On Mica.”
“Sounds like maybe that’d be smart.”
“I thought he was the answer to how I’d been feeling when I ended my last relationship. My ex looked at me with all the passion of a roommate.”
“Ah.”
“It felt so fucking good with Mica. Being with someone unpredictable after three years with somebody so rigid and routine. And just being treated like a sex object once in a while, as unevolved as that sounds.”
“Everyone deserves to feel like a piece of meat now and then.”
“Exactly. I guess I just thought Mica must have been right, if my ex was so wrong, and they’re so different.”
“But no?”
She shook her head. “Obviously not. I don’t regret it, not at all. But I’m not cut out for what he can offer. I guess I need more. The sex was bonkers, and I’ll never forget it, but I also feel like my heart’s aged about forty years in the past two weeks.”
“Yikes.”
“Or like I’ve got the crush version of cirrhosis. I’m not cut out for this. I need to lay off him before something inside me’s ruined beyond repair.”
Vaughn smiled, looking sad. “I can understand that. I’ll miss hanging out, though. For real. Just like this.”
She nodded. “Me, too. Maybe we could grab a coffee now and then, once he’s gone back to LA.”
“I’d like that. My schedule changes a lot, but any time you want to meet up—coffee, drinks, whatever—just text me.”