Grown Woman

by Jen Luerssen

  When I get back to the front with the water, it’s deserted. No Javi or Angel, nothing. I feel a vibration from my beaded purse at my hip and take out my phone. There are two texts, one from Paul and the other from Javier. I read Javi’s first.

  Javi: Hey, sorry to bail but I had to get the kid in a cab and home. Dean was nice enough to call one for us. Hope the rest of your night is less eventful. ;)

  Crap, cock blocked by 18-year-old vomit. Who knows, maybe I misread his intentions all night and he was just being regular, fun Javier, not, hot as fuck, touchy-feely, flirty Javier. I can’t be angry he got his cousin out of here as fast as he could, but I do feel a tiny bit abandoned. I plop myself down on the front stoop of Dean’s house and read the second text.

  P-diddums: Cher, we saw hottie forearms and his baby bear get in a cab, let me know if you want me to come back for you.

  Lia: Aw thanks, Sonny, but I’m sure you’ve found out through personal inspection if your friend is indeed a eunuch by now. Don’t worry about lil ole me. See you tomorrow, booski.

  P’-diddums: You know me well, my Cherokee princess. See you in the morn.

  I put my phone away and head back to the party. Fuck it, I’m out, a little drunk, the night is young-ish. The dance floor is in full swing and although drunk hook ups at Halloween are the riskiest of all hook ups, I enter the fray and start grinding.

  Great Balls of Fire

  Sigh, this is where I’d love to tell you that instead of hooking up with some random, I went home, jacked it and passed out, but no. So here I am, in my own bed, with a flame. Ha, right? No, not really funny, especially since there’s red hairspray and yellow make-up all over my bedding. After I went back to the party, I had a few more of those purple shots, and damn, those suckers sneak up on a lady. I danced my ass off and eventually found myself sucking face with a guy dressed up as a fucking flame. He was in all red, orange, and yellow, his hair was sticking straight up and his face was covered in make-up. In my defense, I’ve met him before. He’s a friend of Dean’s and I know he’s cute, so yeah.

  Somehow, we ended up back here and he tried to light my fire. The sex was decent but I can’t lie and say I wasn’t thinking about another person while this guy was throwing me his heat. I feel a tiny pang of guilt for that. Not for the sex, I never feel bad about that, but I do feel bad for thinking of someone else.

  I get out of bed and head to the bathroom. I look in the mirror and all I can do is laugh. My face is smudged all over with yellow, orange, and red. I look like I made out with a condiment station. My hair is not faring much better, although no sex hair rat nest in the back since we went doggie and cowboy position wise-TMI? Nah, you pervs all want the details. I wash my face, brush my teeth and pull a comb through my hair before heading to the kitchen to make coffee.

  “Look what the cat . . .” Paul starts in on me then stops short when he sees me. Guess I didn’t get all the make-up off. “Oh shit, baby girl, who’s next, Smokey the Bear?”

  “Ha, ha, Khaleesi, how’s your eunuch this morning?”

  “I might have fucked his dick right off but he’s definitely not unsullied anymore.”

  “Oh my god, you’ve been dying out here waiting just so you could say that to me, haven’t you?”

  “Just a little. I cracked your door earlier to see if I could wake you but you were covered in fire. We have some bleach to get all that mess out, just so you know.”

  I roll my eyes, “You’d think I’d know better, almost 30 and bringing strange men home on Halloween, pure novice behavior.” I head to the coffee maker and see that Paul already made a pot for me and my guest. “How long have you been waiting out here?” I chuckle at him.

  “Feels like an eternity,” he mocks. “So, how are you feeling about how the evening shook out? I’m only guessing you were expecting less fire and more bat boy?”

  I sigh. Paul knows me well and I can’t hide shit from him so I don’t even try. “Yeah, maybe. I’m just so unsure about it all. I already fucked it all up with Mike. I don’t want to make the same mistakes with Javi. I really don’t want to lose him as a friend.”

  “I hear ya, Elmo.” I flip him off but then look down at my formerly white tee shirt. “It must be hard to be so desirable to so many. It’s like Spider-Man, with great power . . . you make sure they come all over your-“

  I cut him off with my hand to his face. It’s way too early for this nonsense and I need to deal with the fire in my bed. “Just let me sit here for a minute and drink this.”

  “Okay, Raggedy Ann, you sober up and then we are going to walk around the Haight and look for some new shoes for me and definitely some sangria and tapas later.”

  I nod and yawn in his direction and slump down onto the table and think about last night before Javier left. How his hands were all over me dancing, I wasn’t imagining that. Did it mean anything? I have no clue. In fact, I may be more confused about him. Javi is an old soul, but maybe he sees me as unreachable, out of his age range. Am I like an older sister or does he think of me as more? Maybe he’s just as confused as I am. All I know is I need to tread carefully with him, we could burn each other badly. Burning makes me think of the hot mess express in my bed right now. Ugh, the puns are endless and I know I’m going to hear it from Paul all day. I chug the rest of my coffee and go to face the fire.

  “You still have a little yellow on your neck,” Paul teases and I rub under my ear. “Lower, hot stuff.”

  “Cool it, Danerys,” I warn him playfully. We are sitting in our favorite restaurant, Cha Cha Cha, eating chips and salsa, already a little tipsy on sangria waiting for our little plates of food.

  “I can’t believe you did that, Li-Li, I’m so impressed.” Paul grins to himself thinking about how I got Sheldon out of my bed. That’s right, Sheldon the wonder schlong. He was super nice about me dropping a few ice cubes on him and got the joke. He was mortified at what his make up did to my sheets and was an all around decent guy. We had coffee together and he told me about how he’s only been here a few months and is loving his job working at the San Francisco Zoo as a veterinarian. He had hooked me the night before with his hilarious animal stories. Then, he hooked me with his enormous, ahem, sense of humor (King Kong dick). He asked me out and I agreed to go out as friends. He understood and said he was kind of still getting over someone anyway. After an awkward hug, he left for his walk of shame and I went to soak my sheets in bleach.

  “I’ve got jokes, Mother of Dragons. Sheldon and his giant dick thought I was funny,”

  “Oh my god, I’m so jealous you slept with a guy named Sheldon, and he was hung?” Paul looks dreamily off into space, then takes a sip of sangria. “The closest I’ve gotten to that nerdy of a name was a George.”

  “I want to hear about Dante. How is the hot dominating boss?” Paul has been going on a ton of trips lately and has been requested by Dante specifically on several occasions.

  Paul rolls his eyes and makes a drama noise. “He’s frustrating as usual. Every time I think we are making progress at at least having some camaraderie, he shuts it down. I don’t want to be besties but it would be nice to chat or have dinner together. He’s so shut off.”

  “He requests you though and he knows you aren’t a wallflower, right?” There’s no squelching Paul’s personality, he’s magnetic and friendly and the best.

  “Oh, I turn the charm on, don’t you worry, Firestarter. I’m not afraid of him though and I think he appreciates it.” He takes a sip of his drink and leans in and lowers his voice. “I’ve heard things about him from other people. He has certain, ‘needs’ he likes to be addressed. Except, I haven’t seen him do anything but have one drink and head to his hotel room.”

  “Needs? Sounds dirty,” I say and Paul nods and gives me a smirk. “Ah, so they are those kind of needs, so how do you know what’s going on in his hotel room?”

  “Here’s where it gets a tiny stalker-ish on my part,” Paul says pinching his finger and thumb together. “Once I heard a
bout his ‘needs,’ I made sure to stand at my peephole watching people go by whenever I heard a noise. Not one person went in or out of his room.”

  “Wow that is stalker-ish, Dany, was his room across from yours?”

  He flips me off. “Yeah, on our Hong Kong trip, I also made several trips to get ice, just to be sure. His behavior has been the same for every trip. We share a car from our meeting, he tells me goodnight, we eat dinner separately, sometimes in the same restaurant, and then he has one drink and goes to bed. Sandra, his assistant, tells me this is not normal. He usually goes straight to his room, gets room service and then gets his ‘needs’ met. She said he only eats out when I’m with him but he never eats with me.”

  “So when we say ‘needs,’ can we be more specific?” I ask, genuinely curious about Paul’s strange boss.

  “Hm, well she said he usually has a man or a woman, very attractive and clean, come to his room for one hour. She said she thought initially it was a massage or something more innocent but one time she walked by his room and there were moans that were not his and she swore she heard a whip.” He shrugs like that would be no big deal. “I mean I guess it could be anything, but it’s fun to speculate.”

  “Totally, I’d speculate about him any day. Why do you think he doesn’t do it when you’re there?”

  He shrugs again and his adorable floppy hair falls over his eyes. “Maybe he doesn’t want me to think poorly of him, or maybe he’s waiting for me to knock on his door instead?”

  “Duh, he’s probably pining over you, and maybe he’s the stalker, watching you go get ice, imagining you rubbing it all over yourself, because you’re so hot for him. Wishing he could eat you for dinner.” I wiggle my eyebrows and make a lewd gesture with my tongue in my cheek.

  “Probs.” He agrees and we both take giant gulps of sangria.

  My phone chirps while we’re stuffing our faces and it’s a text from Javier.

  Javi: I’m so sorry about last night.

  Lia: No worries, I understand. How’s Angel feeling today?

  Javi: Better than he should but we are laying low.

  Lia: Oh, to be 18 again.

  Javi: What are you up to today?

  Lia: Hanging on Haight with Paul, having some sangria right now.

  Javi: Sounds fun, are we still on for tomorrow?

  Javier asked me last week to go to a Day of the Dead celebration at the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. He loves the holiday, even though it’s more of a religious tradition in Colombia. I’m all about learning about new cultural experiences and know a bit about Day of the Dead since we always did some sort of celebration at the library.

  Lia: Totally, I can’t wait to get my dead on.

  Lia: Wait, that came out wrong.

  Javi: Yes it did, but it was adorable anyway, Diva girl.

  Lia: That’s me, cute as a puppy! See you tomorrow, slugger.

  Ugh, I hate being called adorable. I’m no baby or kitten. I know he was trying to be nice so that’s why I called him slugger instead of asshole.

  “That’s a lot of fingering you’re doing over there, Heat miser. Who ya texting?” Paul snaps me out of the Javi vortex I was in.

  “Javier. Sorry I was texting in the restaurant, can you forgive me?” I give him my best pout. “Fucker called me adorable, can you believe that shit?”

  Paul scoffs and puts his hand over his chest, “He didn’t! How dare he?”

  “Oh, bite me, Unburnt one, I hate that.”

  “I have the perfect spot where I’d like to bite you, but I don’t like the taste of grease make-up, Burnt one.” I throw my napkin at him and we burst into laughter.

  Muertos

  I wait while my computer makes funny ringing noises. I’m praying that Jane will answer. I just got home from my night with Javier and I need my bestie to deconstruct it with me. It’s a little after midnight here so eight in the morning in Dublin. Jane is most likely up with my girl Tenderoni, who I can’t wait to see. She’s a little over five months old and the cutest baby in the universe.

  The computer stops ringing and my best friend’s beautiful face appears, looking tired but happy. “Oh, Lia, I’m so glad you called. Your little Roni just rolled over for the first time and she’s dying to show you.” Jane angles her phone so I can watch this achievement.

  I clap and squeal while I watch little Tyrone roll from her tummy to her back. We act like she’s just made valedictorian and gotten early admission into Stanford, but hell, I’m so proud of the little nugget.

  I wipe at my eyes, “Oh, Jane-face, she’s so big and smart. I miss you guys like you can’t believe.”

  Her eyes are glassy too as she picks up Roni and holds her on her lap so I can get a full view of her chubby butt. “I know, Li, we miss you too. How’s school and everything? I want to hear it all. Even things you’re burning to tell me.”

  Fucking Paul, I knew he’d send Jane an email about my Sheldon shenanigans. “Har, har you whore. Do I need to bring up your Halloween with It?” She gives me a shocked look and covers Roni’s ears.

  I hear Niall in the background laughing. “Mornin’ Lia, I’m all ears if you want to share about Pixie here with a scary clown.”

  “Hey Niall, you know you can come to me anytime you need incriminating stories about your wife. Ask her about having to throw out her favorite black hoodie because she couldn’t get the white make-up out.” Jane gives me a look. If she was here, I’d be scared. That woman can hit hard.

  Jane winks at Niall. “Oh, Dimples, remember our first Thanksgiving?”

  “Jaysus, Janey, yer never letting’ that one go, are ya?” Niall gets more Irish the more riled he gets. He doesn’t know that I already know that story about him peeing the bed. We all do. Jane told us after they had broken up and she was drunk and angry. She told the whole bar we were drinking in. Lucky for Niall, he believes that none of us know this story, unlucky for him that Jane keeps holding it over his head.

  She and I giggle a little over our memories and just stare at each other for a bit.

  “So, it’s a little late there Li, what’s going on?” Jane asks while maneuvering her kid onto her boob. She has no shame in her breastfeeding game. Just whips out her boobs anytime, anywhere. I don’t mind, they’re nice tatas.

  “Well, I just got home from my evening with Javier. We went to a Day of the Dead party and then went out for food after. It was all fun and felt like a date, but in the end, it was not.”

  “Ooh, hottie forearms? I thought you were wanting to go out with him or are you afraid of being the Biology slut?”

  “Ha! Yes, he is the bearer of the hot forearms. Seriously, they are so perfect. He wore this baseball uniform at Dean’s and when he held the bat it was all I could do to keep myself from licking him, not to mention keeping Paul off the poor guy.”

  “Oh, I know, Paul has sent me a few pictures of Javier’s arms, dude is packing. Still not seeing the problem.”

  “Well, I’m not worried about the bio-slut thing, I own that but I don’t want to hurt Mike’s feelings either. It’s really that there’s nothing to feel bad about, just confusion.” I drop my head into my hands. “He seems interested and then backs off, or does something that feels more, ‘friendsy.’”

  “What is ‘friendsy’ about your interactions. Give me a summary here so I can review all the information and make my decision. .”

  “Alright, Judge Judy, I’ll give you the highlights. He and I get along really well, we love hanging out, have similar interests, and sometimes I think he may be attracted to me, but then something happens and I feel like I misread the whole deal.” She gestures for me to elaborate. “I’ve been on his motorcycle. We drove down to Pacifica and ate barbecue on the beach. At Dean’s party, we danced and he touched me like I was his special lady friend and stared at my chest half the night. Tonight, he and I sat through a documentary and he held my hand through part of it. We drank some margaritas at the Makeout and we danced again, touching like we were
n’t just friends. Then, we went to get food and it was all great until I went to the bathroom.”

  Jane is sitting with her chin on her fist, her baby eating and her husband Niall is standing behind them listening as well.

  “Why’d you stop, Lia?” Niall asks. “Tell us what happened in the bathroom.”

  I laugh and feel a twinge of sadness looking at this beautiful family I love so much. “It didn’t happen in the bathroom, Niall, it was when I came back to my seat. He was watching me walk back to the table, smiling and man, his smile, it’s distracting. Like looking at Jane in the winter when the sun is out.” I get flipped the bird by the very pale nursing mother and stick my tongue out at her.

  Niall is impatient. “Then what happened? I have to go to work soon. Don’t leave me hangin’.”

  “I go to slip into my seat across from him and then, fall, on my ass,” I say extending my arms out. “The fucker pushed my chair out from under me, the complete opposite of something you’d do to a romantic interest.” I try to sound annoyed, and I’m not at the actual prank, I love a classic, but it really brought the whole evening back to the friends only arena.

  Jane gives me a knowing look, “Oh, Lia, I’m sorry.”

  “What? I thought women liked pranks and especially you two. You both are a live version of slapstick,” Niall pipes in.

  “Oh sweetie, but Lia and I don’t want to bang each other. Not all the time,” she says saucily and winks at Roni.

  “Yeah, Niall, it’s not really a good sign. Especially when after he left me at the bus stop and got in a cab.” That probably stung more than the chair. “He waited until he saw a bus coming and then hailed a cab and got in. No hug, just a wave and a see you tomorrow.”

  “Wow, maybe he was embarrassed about the chair pull?” Niall asks.

  “I guess, but things weren’t weird after, we were just as chatty and in tune as we were before he did it.”