by Amelia Betts
“Yes. For God’s sake, get me twenty,” she groaned.
I smiled and popped up from the bed, my heart speeding up as I changed out of my pajamas in the bathroom and threw on a little sundress that showed just enough cleavage to make me second-guess it. I brushed my teeth in record time and threw my hair back in a ponytail and waved at Gracie as I sped out the door.
“Knock, knock,” I called out as I opened the back door to the kitchen. When no one answered, I wandered inside and found it empty—no Cecile, no Julien, no dishes in the sink to suggest that they had been there at all that morning. I thought it odd, particularly because Cecile usually left her cereal bowl for someone else to clean, but today there was no trace of them.
I filled a couple of glasses with water from the refrigerator dispenser and poked my head into the hallway. “Hello?” I called upstairs, to no response. They must have gone out for breakfast, I decided, a little let down. In the guest bathroom, I grabbed a couple of aspirin from the medicine cabinet before making my way back to my pale, exhausted friend.
“Tell me everything,” I said, delivering the water and pills, which she gulped down immediately. With a big sigh, Gracie deposited her glass on the nightstand and fell back on the bed. I did the same so that we were lying face-to-face.
“Okay, so you know how I told you we had sex in a public bathroom and it wasn’t great?”
“Yeah?”
“So after that things were obviously weird. He was texting me kind of impersonal, jokey things and I wasn’t responding because I didn’t know what to say and I didn’t want to be all chummy.”
“Good for you,” I said in solidarity, reminded of my similar resolve with Liam. It was always easy for me to relate to Grace’s stories about guys. I had a long history of going after the bad ones just like she did, so I felt her pain as if it were my own. The only difference between us had always been that Gracie consummated her affairs and I didn’t. Until this summer, that is.
“And then,” she continued, “about a week after, we ran into each other at a fund-raiser.”
“You guys go to a lot of fund-raisers.”
“That’s all D.C. is. Fund-raisers.”
“Sounds good to me,” I said.
“It’s great for free appetizers and booze, I’m not gonna lie. Anyway, so he makes this big deal about me ignoring him, and I was like ‘I haven’t been ignoring you. I’ve just been incredibly overworked.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, well you should come to the lake with me this weekend,’ and I was like, ‘Wha?’ But I did it! I went to his family’s lake house in Virginia and the first night we got there, it was like this glorious sex fest, like nothing I’ve ever experienced before.” Getting fired up by her own story, Gracie propped up on one elbow. “Mischa, I’m not kidding you, we did it eight times in one night.”
“That’s impossible!” I poked her side, teasing.
“I’m not lying. Every available surface: kitchen, bathroom, two bedrooms, living room in front of the fire.”
“Wait, why did you have a fire going in July? In Virginia?”
“Oh shut up, it was romantic.”
“I’m just saying. Hot! Like hot hot.”
“Exactly. So anyway, cut to his parents and brother arriving unexpectedly the next day. And it’s super awkward, because he thought they were going to New York, so obviously unannounced change of plans, boom, suddenly it’s a family affair. And this is not your typical family scene. He has a super old, rich dad, and way younger stepmother. And the half brother’s like fifteen years younger than him, still in college. So anyway, we’ve got about seven generations represented.”
“What did you do?”
“Well first of all, Richard introduced me as his ‘work friend.’ Which was pretty offensive to me after the sex we’d had. Honestly, I would have been flattered if he had just said friend, but somehow ‘work friend’ sounded like he was making a point… drawing a line, so to speak.”
“Well, it was an awkward run-in. I mean, people say things off the top of their heads.”
“No, it gets worse. So we all sort of do our own things that day. I read a book and laid out on the dock. The men went fishing. Richard’s mother did God knows what in the house all day. I’m pretty sure she’s a pill popper. But everybody came together for dinner that night, and it was surprisingly fine. A little awkward, but fine. However, I was drinking… a lot… because I felt uncomfortable and that’s what I do.”
“Right.” I immediately pictured drunk Gracie with her red, red cheeks and felt a sense of dread about what was coming next.
“So later, after the parents go to bed, it’s just me and Richard and the half brother, Bryan, who’s twenty-one maybe but looks twelve—he’s like a skinny, mop-headed, bizarro Justin Bieber—and Richard suggests we go in the hot tub on the deck. And I kind of rolled my eyes, but I’m like, ‘Fine.’ What I really want is to have sex in front of the fireplace again, but I figured there was no way for that to happen with his parents around, even if moms is catatonic after nine p.m. But then we go into the hot tub, and we’re passing around a bottle of champagne, and Bryan starts talking about how he can’t get laid at his school because all the girls are fucking older guys these days. And then… oh my God, Mischa…” Gracie’s voice filled with dread. She flopped onto her back and stared at the ceiling. “Richard suggests that Bryan sleep with me!”
“No. No, no, no.” My stomach sank. “Oh, Gracie,” I said, reaching out and touching the side of her arm, not sure what else to say. Bringing her hands to her face again, she started to cry.
“He highly recommended me. He said I was a very good lay, and they both just laughed like it was the funniest thing ever.”
“What did you say?”
She shook her head, wiping at her tears and turning back toward me as she regained her composure. “I said nothing. I stormed out of the fucking hot tub, and I got dressed and got my stuff and called a cab to the nearest train station. And then I waited for five insanely long hours to get a train home.”
“Did he try to apologize?”
“That’s the worst part. He didn’t follow me inside, so he didn’t even know I’d left the house. Then he was texting me all these stupid fake apologies, telling me he was just kidding and all that.”
“Did you respond?”
“No!”
“Good.” I held my hand up for a high five and she slapped it with gusto. “What a jerk. I can’t believe it.”
“I know, right?”
I felt so bad for her and wanted to do something to cheer her up. I searched my brain, trying to come up with inexpensive alternatives since I’d already spent last week’s paycheck on expensive organic groceries. And then it dawned on me. “Hey—guess what? I’m taking you to the spa!”
Her eyes widened with excitement, but at the same time, she shook her head. “No. You can’t afford it.”
“No, really, it’s free! Listen! When I left back in the fall, Sasha gave me a couples’ massage as a parting gift. She probably knew I would never use it because I’m perpetually single.”
Gracie beamed. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”
“Because I thought it might be a little weird, getting a couples massage with a friend.”
“Oh forget weird, we’re doing it!” Gracie flipped onto her back and sat up, suddenly alert. Something I’d known about my friend ever since I had started the receptionist job at Sasha’s spa was that she loved a good massage. In fact, she had regularly booked appointments under my name so she could get the employee discount. “You know what, Mischa? You’re all right.” She winked at me from her perch on the bed. “That guy doesn’t know what he’s missing,” she said, referring to Liam.
For a split second, as I picked up the phone to call the spa, I thought about telling Gracie what had happened between me and Julien, but it didn’t seem right. She once had a major crush on him, after all, and she was now nursing a broken heart. Even though I desperately wanted to talk abou
t it with someone, I’d have to wait to spill the news to Isabella.
Chapter Sixteen
“So what’s the deal with your perma-grin?” Gracie’s voice wobbled along with the movements of the large Russian woman who was kneading her back with hot stones.
“My what?” I turned to look at her quizzically before returning my face to the towel-covered hole below it.
“Your perma-grin—the shit-eating Joker smile that spreads across your face whenever you’re not pretending to feel sorry for me.”
“Gracie! I’m not pretending. I feel very sorry for you!”
“Of course you do, now spill the beans.”
Gracie made a clicking noise with her tongue, urging me to obey. I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t realized how much I had been smiling. I’d have to tone it down and think of another reason for my good mood, other than “Droolian Poundwell told me he wanted me last night.” “Hey, Gracie,” I said, “let’s have our couples massage in peace, okay?”
“If we don’t talk through the entire thing, then what’s the point?”
“It’s free! That’s ‘what’s the point.’”
“Here, hold my hand. Let’s embrace the moment here.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope.” She was clearly amused with herself as she reached over from her massage table five feet away. Humoring her, I looked over and took her hand as my masseuse pressed my head not so gently back into its towel hole.
After we’d been rubbed down, we sat in the steam room together in delirious silence. I had stayed up late, going over and over the kiss with Julien in my head, and who knows when Gracie’s last full night of sleep had been, so we were both on the verge of collapse. Still, my head wasn’t devoid of thoughts. As we wandered into our separate shower stalls to rinse off, I found it impossible not to think of Liam—the girl’s shower room being practically identical to the men’s. However, now that I had kissed Julien, the memory was less painful than wistful—I could look back on it fondly and not beat myself up for falling under Liam’s spell. A good thing, as more flashbacks awaited me on the sundeck, where Gracie and I tottered in our bathrobes after the showers. Luckily, I wasn’t so overwhelmed by them that I couldn’t nap on one of the deck chairs.
In fact, we both felt quite refreshed after an hour of drifting up there, our hair naturally air-dried, our rumbling stomachs telling us it was time for lunch. Downstairs, at the checkout counter, we saw Sasha, who hadn’t been around when we checked in.
“Mischa, darling! You look fabulous. What have you done?” My old boss—a mess of blond frizzy hair and too much bronzer—placed her hands on her hips, rocked them side to side, and shook her shoulders in some sort of congratulatory hula dance. She was wearing a sequined beach cover-up that looked cheap but probably cost five hundred dollars.
I smiled, flattered. If she only knew that I’d broken into this place for a sex romp, she might not be singing my praises.
Gracie piped in to answer Sasha. “I don’t know what it is, but she’s high on something.”
“Well! Let’s hope it’s not coke! Or if it is, tell me where you’re getting the good stuff.” She winked at me, then Gracie, closing one eye and then the other.
* * *
“Wow, that is one crazy broad,” Gracie said as we walked outside with the gift bags Sasha had personally prepared for us. “Sweet, but crazy.”
“I know. Hey, you want some tacos?”
“Funny you should ask. I want my weight’s worth in tacos.”
Ravenously hungry, Gracie and I practically sprinted to my sweltering car, where we both burned our fingertips trying to buckle our seat belts.
“Where are we going? Taco Hell?” she asked.
“No. I’m gonna take you to this food truck run by these two Mexican women. Their tacos are out of this world. Julien showed it to me.”
“Oooooh, Julien,” Gracie cooed.
I smiled but didn’t take the bait. However, minutes later, tacos in hand and sitting on the bench by the beach where Julien and I had sat before, Gracie pressed the issue once again. “Listen, you’ve been holding back on telling me whatever good news you have and that’s very sweet. But seriously, I wanna know. It will be life affirming to hear about my friend having something fabulous happen to her for once. Guys are not all debauched rich assholes from Rhode Island with four names and sociopathic tendencies. I need to remember that… So, is something happening with you and Julien because I’m seriously getting a vibe.”
“All right, all right,” I said, another perma-grin creasing my cheeks. “We kissed.”
“Omigod!” Gracie shot off the bench and walked in a quick circle before sitting back down. “What? When? Where? How?”
“It was last night—”
“Omigod!” Gracie’s squeals made the taco ladies crane their heads out of the truck, perhaps concerned she’d found a palmetto bug in her carnitas.
“It was”—I shook my head, searching for words to describe the experience—“surprising. I hadn’t even thought of him that way. I know that must sound implausible to you—”
“Right, because he’s a god.”
I laughed. “I know you think that, but until last night, I had viewed him as untouchable. I never imagined he would go for someone like me anyway. And then we ran into each other in the driveway in the middle of the night, and it was different. When we kissed, it was strange but exciting. Now I have this weird feeling, like maybe he should have been the one I was obsessing over all along. He’s so smart and inspiring…”
“What’s Cecile going to say? Ooh, she’s gonna hate you!” Gracie hissed, diabolically amused.
“Oh God, I didn’t even think about that. And we were just starting to get along.”
“You know you’re closer to her age than his.”
“Barely. I’m like exactly in between.”
“He’s thirty-five, right?”
“Something like that.”
“And she’s fourteen?”
I nodded.
“So you’re about two times closer to her age.” She smiled with her mouth closed. “I’m a wizard at basic math.”
“Gracie! Why are you making me feel bad now? You’re the one who encouraged this in the first place!”
“Hey, I’m just teasing you. Age ain’t nothing but a number. So tell me what happened. How did you leave it?”
I shook my head and took a bite of my taco. “That’s the thing. He kind of ran away.”
“Okay, start from the beginning,” she said, and crumpled one of her taco wrappers into a ball.
Gracie listened attentively as I gave her the play-by-play. When I got to the kissing part, she demanded every detail—where had he put his hands? How long was his tongue? Were his kisses hard or soft?—and nodded enthusiastically enough to give herself whiplash. I was embarrassed talking about the specifics, but I obliged her because she was like a sister, and spilling the details allowed me to relive everything in my mind. After I’d told all there was to tell, Gracie dropped into a brief melancholy, apparently remembering the heartache she’d briefly escaped while listening to my story.
“Listen, I know I’m in a happy mood today, but who knows what’s going through Julien’s mind. If I’ve learned anything these past few weeks, it’s that the only person I should count on for my own happiness is myself.”
“Preach,” said Gracie with a solemn nod.
“Easier said than done. But I’ve been trying to make some positive changes lately, and I think it’s working. I started actually participating in OA instead of just lurking in the back and not saying anything, and I’ve been eating healthy, and started praying—”
“Wait—you found Jesus?” She slapped a hand down on my knee, her eyes as big as saucers, and not in a good way.
“No, nothing like that. I just started praying to some unspecified god.”
“Well, I’ll try anything once.” She rolled her eyes up to the sky and pretended to whisper something
rapidly, then clicked her tongue and winked. “Got it, God?”
“Got it,” I answered in my best all-knowing God voice, then hopped up from the bench and held a hand out for my friend.
* * *
On our way back home, we formulated the following grand plan: Greek yogurt face masks and a movie marathon on my temperamental laptop. The first stop, however, would be at the main house—Gracie was hell bent on reuniting me and Julien after last night. “I want to see the sparks!” she insisted.
But despite her purported enthusiasm, I could tell Gracie was struggling. She had put this Richard person on a pedestal only to find out he was a world-class jerk like so many of the other guys she had fallen for. It was a feeling I knew too well, but there was nothing I could say to make it any easier, so I focused on driving us home. Meanwhile, Gracie stared out the window, occasionally pointing to her old Oceanside haunts and proclaiming how little she missed them.
As we pulled up to the house, I saw Julien’s car in the driveway and felt my body tense. At least I would have Gracie with me to break the tension with her witty one-liners. At the front door, I knocked gently before letting us in. Just like this morning, the house seemed empty. I led Gracie on a “tour” of the downstairs in hopes of running into Julien, to no avail.
“So here’s where I keep all my food and make my meals, et cetera,” I said as we entered the kitchen, noticing Cecile out of the corner of my eye as she came bopping in behind us.
“Hi. Who are you again?” she demanded, giving Gracie a once-over.
“Cecile! I believe you met Gracie this morning,” I said politely, hoping to encourage some hospitality on her part. “Gracie, Cecile. Cecile, Gracie.”
“Hi again!” Gracie extended her hand, but Cecile only grasped the tips of her fingers, purposely making the handshake as awkward as possible.
“Please be kind, Cecile.” I was pulling vegetables out of the refrigerator, buying more time in the kitchen by making a salad that neither Gracie nor I were hungry for.