The Regulars

by Georgia Clark

  “Who?”

  “He’s a totally famous stand-up. He’s one of the chefs on that Comedy Central show Too Many Chefs. He was on Fallon last week. He’s hilarious, I love him,” Krista said, watching the three guys take a table.

  One of the guys glanced up at the girls and nudged Ravi.

  Krista swung her eyes in front of her. “Shit, did he see me?”

  “Um, yeah.” Willow smiled. “You were staring at him.”

  “It’s just, he’s fucking famous, like legit famous,” Krista stage-whispered. “He has a million followers on Instagram. I follow him, and last week he put up a photo of him with Bill Murray, who by the way is seriously old now, but I think I’m still attracted to him—”

  “Hi,” a masculine voice said.

  Ravi was standing behind them. “Hi,” Willow replied.

  Krista didn’t say anything. Willow nudged her with her foot. “Hey,” Krista managed, flitting her eyes to him nervously.

  Ravi gestured to his table. “Would you like to join us?”

  Krista practically threw him aside. “Sure!” She could not get off her stool fast enough.

  Moments later, Krista and Willow were sitting with Ravi, Colin (glasses), and Dan (tall), who Ravi introduced as friends from LA.

  Willow fingered the stem of her wineglass and said her name was Caroline. The guys all smiled at her encouragingly, then shifted their gaze to Krista.

  “And you are?” asked Colin.

  “What?” She was quivering with excitement. Her eyes were glued on Ravi. “I’m sorry, but I am such a big fan. You are so funny.”

  “Thank you.”

  “That episode of Too Many Chefs where the customer sent the food back and you ended up getting him to cook for you.” Krista shook her head, giggling. “Hilarious.”

  “Yeah, that was fun.” Ravi nodded. “Dan actually cowrote that episode.”

  “Amazing,” Krista said. Her eyes didn’t leave Ravi’s. “Amazing. This is so cool,” Krista announced to the whole table. “This is awesome.”

  Even though Krista was acting in a way Willow thought was flat-out crazy, the guys all looked thrilled, even starstruck, as if Krista were the famous one, gracing them with her presence.

  “Are you an actor?” Ravi asked.

  “Me? Oh, kind of. I mean, yes, I guess.”

  “That’s how I feel.” Ravi dropped his voice. “Don’t tell anyone, but I’m faking my way through all this. When I first got started, my ‘agent’ was just me doing a different voice.”

  Dan and Colin both laughed in a way Willow took to mean this was actually true. Krista caught Willow’s eye and grinned. Willow smiled back, feeling papery.

  Ravi addressed Krista. “So, what’s next in the pipeline for you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What are you working on right now?”

  Krista’s smile became unsure. “I’m trying to get an agent.”

  Ravi cocked his head. “Get an agent?”

  “Change agents. My last guy wasn’t getting me jack.” Krista took a nervous sip of wine.

  “Who were you with?” Ravi looked interested.

  Krista flicked her eyes to Willow, panicky. Willow stared back at her. Krista could say anything—CAA, William Morris; these guys wouldn’t know. Or would they? Who were their agents? They should have gotten more of their stories straight before they left.

  “Cheeseburger?” A chubby-cheeked waitress set a towering plate of food in front of Krista. The burger was the size of her head. The smell of fresh-cooked meat instantly made Willow’s mouth water.

  “Fucking awesome, I am starving.” Krista maneuvered both hands under the burger and took the biggest bite she could muster. Her eyes rolled back in her head. “Uh. So good.” It was only after she’d mown through half the burger that she realized the entire table was silently watching her.

  “You want some?” she offered Ravi.

  “No. Thanks.” He regarded her as if she were an exotic animal that’d wandered into his room. “I’ve just never seen anyone eat like that.”

  Krista jammed a fistful of tater tots into her mouth. “Like what?”

  Willow excused herself and went in search of the bathroom.

  It turned out to be small and sort of grubby. She papered the toilet seat lid with the entire box of toilet seat covers, sat down gingerly, took out her phone. Two missed calls. One from her dad and one from Mark. Mark had also sent a text. Are you home? I’d like to see you. She typed back. can’t . . . with krista cat . . . soon. He immediately messaged back. I’d like to. At Lenny’s if you feel like coming by.

  Willow switched her phone off. Lenny’s was Mark’s favorite neighborhood bar, down the block from his apartment in the East Village. She pictured him eating peanuts and watching baseball. Her stomach squeezed.

  Their spots of tension would usually be resolved by Mark wooing her back, his attention comfortingly consistent. She secretly enjoyed this part of a squabble: making herself invisible for a day or two, then tiptoeing back in his direction, cautious and shy. But right now, she wanted to see him and avoid him in exactly equal measure. Which probably wasn’t how you were supposed to feel about a boyfriend. Not that Willow had anything to go off. None of her past—what would you call them? Situations?—were ever official. Because if you weren’t ever official, you could never get officially hurt. Or officially hurt someone else. There was something very unsettling about the fact you could commit to someone, commit a crime, and be committed. Commitment, that hard, bladed phrase, seemed to draw blood, even as she felt it wasn’t in hers.

  She twisted some toilet paper around her little finger, stalling on rejoining Krista, who was surely well into a boisterous flirt session.

  The sex-in-front-of-the-mirror freak-out hovered at the edge of her thoughts like a tipsy frat boy: insisting on attention despite blatant get lost signals. Willow definitely wasn’t the instigator when it came to sex. Sometimes she even kept a tally, relieved when they’d already done it the night before. That sort of freak-out hadn’t happened before. But maybe it had been inevitable. Maybe this was part of why commitment tasted so bad to her: the unavoidable intimacy, the private, humiliating showing of scars. Or was it just that Willow knew what so many others tried to deny, that everyone loses their appeal, their special shine, after a certain amount of time . . .

  The bathroom door banged open. Two girls came in. Willow was only half listening as they chatted about an audition they’d both been at, whether or not to get another drink. She only tuned back in when one of the girls said, “Did you see how fast she went to his table?”

  “I know, so gross,” the other one groaned. “Chuckle fuckers give us all a bad name.”

  Were they talking about her and Krista?

  “And what about that blond one? It really shits me that that’s what guys find attractive. She looked like she had the personality of a pencil.”

  “I know! But at least a pencil can write.” A stall door banged open, and Willow jumped. Her phone slid off her lap, clattering to the floor.

  “Was that mine?” The girl’s sneakers outside her stall swiveled. Willow drew her heels up off the floor, heart pounding. Whispers, too low to make out. One girl murmured, “Oh shit.” For a horrible moment, she was afraid they were going to attempt to apologize. But instead the bathroom door whined back open and the girls scurried out.

  She knew she couldn’t take their comments personally—this wasn’t her skin, this was a mask. A costume. A stranger she was inhabiting, borrowing for . . . why? Somewhere, in the deep recesses of her mind, she was sure there was a drive, a reason hiding, but she couldn’t catch it. It kept slipping from her fingers, sliding through the cracks of what was knowable.

  She waited for a few long, silent minutes before pushing the toilet door open. Strangely, she was almost afraid to lift her eyes to the girl in the mirror. Something dark was crawling in her belly, up, inside her throat. She looked at herself.

  There wa
s someone behind her.

  She whirled around, too scared to cry out.

  But there was no one there. What she thought was a face was a poster, an advertisement for a stand-up comic. She was alone in the bathroom.

  She switched on the faucet and bent to splash water on her face. I’m drunk, she thought. I’m seeing things that aren’t there.

  She could hear Krista before she could see her. Her friend was holding court like a queen. The guys were all leaning toward her. Willow imagined invisible leashes curled around Krista’s fingers. There was a fresh round of drinks on the table—they’d switched to what looked like whiskey.

  Willow slid onto an empty barstool. She didn’t want to move any farther into the bar in case she saw the two girls from the bathroom. She ordered a white wine and pondered her next move. Home, probably. Evie would be worried.

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  Dan, the tall one, the writer, was standing next to her, smiling amiably.

  “I just ordered one.”

  “Mind if I join you?” Willow shrugged, and Dan signaled the bartender. “What she’s having.” He took the stool next to her. “Caroline, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded.

  “Dan,” he said, touching his chest.

  She nodded again. “I remember.”

  He seemed pleased. “So, can I ask you the world’s worst question?”

  “What’s that?”

  “What do you do?”

  She exhaled a little laughter. “That is the world’s worst question.”

  The bartender placed two glasses of pale yellow wine in front of them. Dan reached into his wallet and withdrew a twenty-dollar bill. “Allow me.” She could feel his interest as palpably as if he were covering her in plaster.

  She swung to face him on the stool. “I’m a model,” she said. “That’s what I do.”

  He smiled boyishly. “I thought you must be.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, his smile turning skittish. “Because you’re so beautiful.”

  Willow played the words again in her head. “Because you’re so beautiful.” Mark said things like that to her, but they were dating. No man had ever said something like that, not in a way that felt genuine, like it was an observation, not a pickup line. Interest in something, not him, but something about the situation, woke up inside her. “You think I’m beautiful?”

  “C’mon,” he said with a small laugh. “You know you are.”

  She let her eyes amble around his face. He was turning red. “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  He blinked, once, twice. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I must be hallucinating, because it sounded like—”

  Willow spoke over him. “Do you want to go somewhere and take our clothes off and put our mouths on each other’s bodies and make each other come?” Her insides were mercury: liquid, dangerous. “Do you want to have sex with me?”

  He looked down at his hands, wrapped around his wineglass, then up at her. His voice was soft. “Of course I want to have sex with you, Caroline.”

  Willow was not going to sleep with this terrified young writer. She’d never do that to Mark. But this game was fun. She was playing a character, someone from the past, someone inevitable, and lustful, and in her in a way she couldn’t define but couldn’t deny. As dangerously thrilling as the whole situation was, there was also something oddly comforting about it, something known. Something familiar. “Where?”

  “I, ah . . .” He swallowed. As if it were the most important revelation in the history of time, he said, “I have a hotel room.”

  Her pulse was racing. “You don’t have a girlfriend?” she asked playfully.

  He stared at her. A spray of sweat coated his forehead. “Fuck.”

  It was her turn to blink. She’d been kidding. “You . . . have a girlfriend?”

  He exhaled more air, looking pained. “I have a fiancée.”

  Anger surged inside Willow, hot and unexpected. Her voice slashed like a knife. “Well, that’s really fucked.”

  “What?”

  “You fucking jerk! You’d fuck me? You’d cheat on your future wife?” She had the urge to throw the wine in his face. Glass and all. “Fuck you.”

  “Caroline, wait.”

  She snatched her purse. “Oh, fuck off.”

  Outside, the city was roiling. Willow stumbled into a clump of drunk boys. They laughed and grabbed her arms, breath stinking of hot dogs and beer. A boy with a face like a cinder block slurred, “Hey, sexy. You wanna party?”

  She elbowed him in the stomach. He swore and called her a bitch. His friends laughed. The street was a mess of cars, crawling over the concrete skin of the city; everything was crawling, everything was abject. She hailed a cab, and when the driver asked her where to, she replied, “East Village.”

  12.

  “Of course they should have a movie made about them!” Krista slammed her fist onto the table, not feeling it. “Ben and Jerry are American heroes.”

  “A piobic.” Ravi hiccuped. “Bio. Pic.”

  Krista tipped a glass to her lips, surprised to find it already empty. “So. Who should be in it? I’m really fucking good at this: Ben . . . Stiller obviously.”

  “Obviously.” Ravi’s head drooped into a nod.

  “Yeah, he’s a safe bet, he’s usually—Ben Stiller and . . . Ugh, what’s his dad’s name, he’s so fucking funny—”

  At the exact same time, Krista and Ravi widened their eyes at each other. Their hands slapped the table in excitement, jittering the glasses.

  “Jerry!”

  “Ben and Jerry!”

  “Whoa!” Krista couldn’t handle this. “Whoa!”

  “Did he, like, name his kid that on purpose?”

  “Whoa! Ben and Jerry! Ben and Jerry!”

  They stared at each other, slack-jawed with wonder.

  A second later, Krista launched herself at Ravi Harlow.

  The storeroom was musty and smelled like ketchup, but Krista didn’t notice that because her tongue was in Ravi’s mouth. “Jesus.” His voice was muffled. “You are . . . excitable.”

  “Uh-huh.” Krista hooked one leg around the back of his thigh, propelling herself forward.

  He stumbled, almost losing his balance.

  “Whoops.” Krista paused, midmaul, and wiped her mouth. “I’m not used to being so big.”

  “What?”

  She pushed him back, grinning. “Doesn’t matter.”

  Tongues, arms, legs entwined, the couple teetered past boxes of napkins and pallets of beer. Opening her eyes, Krista caught movement. There was another couple in here. And the guy looked just like . . .

  “Shit, it’s a mirror.” In it, her hair was wild and loose, legs long, butt perfect . . . “I’m so fucking hot,” she moaned, turning a quarter inch to leer at herself.

  Ravi’s mouth found her neck. “And a rock-solid ego to boot.”

  Krista didn’t hear him. Her head was swirling. Her skin was itching. Sex needed to happen. Now.

  She dragged Ravi toward a low freezer in the corner. Hopping up onto it, she could still see herself in the cracked mirror. Perfect.

  She pulled Ravi’s mouth to hers. He reeked of whiskey. “Do you wanna eat my pussy?”

  “That’s not . . . that’s not a question, is it?” His eyes were a little glassy. “More like . . . more like a demand.”

  She ran her tongue around the outside of his ear. In the mirror, an Axe commercial reflected back at her. “You want to.”

  He nodded, swaying. “I do.” He pressed his fingertips between her legs, sending a jolt throughout her body.

  She groaned, and then laughed. “Fucking hell.” This was going to be memorable.

  Underwear was removed, already sticky. Fingers grasped the inside of her thighs. Every nerve ending was poised to jump out of a plane; eager, boiling with adrenaline. And then . . . bliss. Hot, sharp, intense bliss. Pleasure rocketed from her clit up her spine. She gasped, then groaned noisily. This
was insane. Between the dude between her legs and the hottie in the mirror, it was almost like she was having a threesome. Or watching porn. Or being in porn, but, like, really good porn, the kind you pay for. “Yeah, baby,” she half moaned, half grunted. “That’s right. Eat my pussy.” Her words were gasps. “You sexy little bitch, yes.”

  Usually, Krista didn’t talk either. But as it turned out, the girl in the mirror was . . . chatty. “You sexy little man. You sexy little man eating my pussy, my wet, wet pussy—”

  Ravi paused. Krista glanced down to see two eyebrows furrowed. “Dude. I didn’t say stop.”

  Ravi resumed his rhythm, and she responded by rocking faster against his mouth. “That’s right. That’s right. Yeah, you’re hungry. You haven’t eaten in days, have you, you sexy, hungry little man.”

  This body, this boy, it was better than the fantasy.

  The mouth between her thighs started pumping, and a wave was coming, a tsunami, she could feel it. “Eat it! Go for seconds! Go for thirds! Yes! Yes!”

  Taking the Pretty was the best decision she’d ever made.

  “Fuck. Fuck, I’m gonna come . . .”

  And then . . . the free fall. The moment where orgasm is inevitable, the point where you’re sailing, sliding, skiing down the mountain, into the abyss, the void, the great beyond.

  “Don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t stop . . .” Eyes now shut, legs out straight.

  Bingo. Blammo. Bull’s-eye. Her orgasm jerked through her with all the subtlety of a marching band. Ravi, still working like a champ, eased up on the pressure but kept his tongue moving. Whip-sharp flashes of heat ricocheted around her body, making her muscles twitch like a puppet on a string. “Yes! Fuck! Yes! Fuck!”

  Eventually, sensation began to subside. Ravi stood up, bowlegged, hair mussed. “Damn, girl. You got a mouth on you.”

  Krista let her head fall back, and she laughed. Everything was good with the world. Everything was right.

  Everything was going to work out perfectly.

  13.

  Watching Mark felt illegal. Everything about the situation was counterintuitive. Wrong, like a convicted felon loitering outside a police station. But she couldn’t move. And she hadn’t moved for the last twenty minutes. Instead, Willow sat at the other end of the bar from her boyfriend, watching him watch the Red Sox.