She was like a tiny, clean, non-blue Braveheart as she threw back a shot of vodka and wiped her mouth with her arm.
I offer a sad smile at the memory. Where’s that person now?
I realize I’m pouting into my empty pint glass, and they’re chattering away like happy little monkeys, all giggly because they’ve already chosen a few people for me and they’re so excited.
When they pick the last of the five, Valerie motions to Alex for our checks. “We aren’t trying to set you up for failure, Rae-Rae. We took your ‘rules’ into consideration.”
“Yeah, you just happen to have a better eye for them than we do!”
Maybe Quinn hasn’t forgotten. Maybe she remembers all too well.
But why try to pretend it all away? Is she that insecure with Phil that she has to dismiss my single life away? She was down here in the trenches with me not so long ago.
I know nothing about Phil. And I don’t think he’d cheat. But Quinn knows as well as I how sleazy guys can be.
Married, engaged, attached.
Just because she’s found the love of her life now, my cynicism is wrong? Unwarranted?
I hatch a silent plan to teach the two of them a lesson about men. Not only am I fairly certain I’m going to clean up with this reverse-Spark plan, but I’m also going to show them I’m not crazy. I’m not just being cynical. A good man is hard to find, and I’m not being too careful. Or too judgmental.
And then I think, What the hell do I know about planning anything—I can’t even plot my own book…and I decide maybe I should drink more.
* * *
Chapter 7
The night air ghosts across my hot cheeks, my forehead, and Alex’s mouth tastes just how I thought it would that first night I saw him, when I was with Ty. Like Altoids almost covering up the cigarette he probably had during a break. But good. Smoky and dangerous. Like making out with James Dean.
“How’d we even get here?” I ask, breathless, in between crushing kisses, but the truth is, I don’t care.
He’s suctioned to my lips as if the last time he’s screwed someone from the bar Bruce Jenner was still Bruce Jenner and he’ll be damned if he lets me go for one second. His hands mess through my hair. His grip, tight on my waist.
I’m only slightly concerned as his tongue searches my neck, my ear.
Godddd.
But what’s a(nother) hickey? That’s what they make infinity scarves for, right? Hooray, fashion!
My pulse rushes in time with whatever’s coming from the EDM club down the street, and my back aches against the brick wall in the alley as he pushes me against it.
“You wanna get out of here?” It’s a low growl. A purr.
That hint of an accent tickles deep in my ear, and the sensation waves right through me. All the way down to my feet. My toes curl in my kitten heels.
I answer by pulling him closer, and my breath catches. I’m helpless to escape his grasp. Desperate for him to hold me even tighter. I want more of him. Want him closer. It’s too late. There’s no other way.
Somehow, we get back to my place and I’m fumbling with the lock like a goddamn custodian, the echo of keys jangling all through the hallway. It’s not that easy to open the door with a bartender attached to your face—but we finally make it in. Barely.
Once we do, shirt be damned, he’s all abs and shoulders and pecs. One knot of muscle after another in delicious-looking black boxer briefs.
“Hold, please.” I stumble into the kitchen and hurl some treats in Billie’s general direction. “Here, girl.”
I catch her disapproving stare and toss another biscuit onto the fire. “Don’t say I never gave you anything. And when’s the last time you got laid, huh?”
“What?” Alex calls, and it sounds like he’s already in my room.
I kick off my heels, fling my purse somewhere in the vicinity of the couch, and pad across my place until I reach the open door.
“Gee—make yourself at home.” I slide on half a grin.
“Get over here,” he says, and he lassos me with that dark stare that drew me in from across the bar a few nights ago.
I knew as soon as Quinn and Valerie said their good-byes and we locked gazes—it’s starting to come back to me now—that he and I would be here, or some variation of here, before long.
Moonlight spills in through the sheers and highlights all his gorgeous definition, every ripple, as he swims in an ocean of Egyptian cotton.
The moment I get there, he yanks my blouse overhead, and there’s a little rip as it comes off in one swift motion.
We both laugh.
“Hope it wasn’t expensive…”
But I shut him up and shove him down to the mattress.
I can feel the buzz in the mere inches between our bodies as I linger over him. How much he wants me. His eyes, a shade of wild as he drinks me in. He clamps both his hands over my ass and pulls me to him. He holds me there and I let him do it because he’s so hard. Distractingly hard.
But I only let myself be distracted for a minute.
I’ve completely sobered of alcohol now, but I’m drunk with power and I want to torture this poor Alex in the best of ways, just because I can. I’ll fulfill his little bartender dreams, but when I say “say so.” My way.
My bed, after all.
I slide down his body, and when he realizes where I’m going, he gives one soft whimper, which he seems to silence as quickly as it came on.
I finally smooth my hand over his body, and the anticipation has all but throttled him. He grips the sheets on either side of him. Breath labored. And I’m so pleased with myself I can barely stand it. I bite my lip to keep from self-congratulatory laughter.
When I’m face-to-face with my destination, I slide my hand down it—give it a glide—
and it does this weird jerk to the side thing. Like a spasm, whenever I pull down. It twitches and yanks back like he’s having a dick seizure, and upon further inspection, I see that something’s not right.
OH THE HUMANITY.
Either some doctor botched his circumcision—
or he was born like this or—
something.
I don’t know.
But before I can examine further, my grip is released, and the offensive appendage springs like a doorstopper.
Is this why he’s bartending? To pay for dick plastic surgery?
And then—
The acrid taste of the sliders I shoveled in earlier climbs its way into the back of my throat, tangy and chunky. I wax on, wax off my arms like the Karate Kid on E and thrash out of the prison of my sheets. Spike them to the floor.
“Are you—”
But I’m flailing my way into the bathroom and then I’m bent over the porcelain savior and puking up everything I’ve ever eaten in my entire life. Purging everything—except the image of…that.
Some things you can’t get rid of.
Now his fingertips are like eels at my shoulders, and I’m cringing at his every touch.
“Too much to drink?” He kind of…chuckles, and I’m hot with anger, sick with my body turning itself inside out.
It couldn’t possibly be him or his Frankenstein penis. It’s got to be me. Something I did.
I push myself up and wipe my lips, dab at the sweat from my forehead with a length of toilet paper.
I’m too tired to argue. “That must be it,” I croak. “You’d better go.”
After a few moments of dumbstruck silence, when I realize he hasn’t budged, I turn my watery eyes on him, and he’s standing there in the doorway, all wounded looking.
But at least he’s got his boxer briefs back on.
*shudder*
“I’m really sorry,” I say.
And I am. I’m really sorry he’s going to make a lot of girls vomit with that thing, because the rest of him is really kinda spectacular.
But a warning would’ve been nice?
“You don’t want to just wait it out?” I can hear the Oh fuc
k in his voice.
I consider that for 1.3 seconds, and I’m about to speak—but I get another flash in my mind of how that thing Night-at-the-Roxburied. Right in my face.
I retch again and again.
Puking for all the times in my life I should have puked and didn’t. For all the times anyone ever needed to. I’m the Jesus Christ of puking. Purging for everyone’s sins.
I press my eyes closed at the fucked-uppedness that I just thought that and bask in the embrace of cool ceramic—
until I hear the front door click shut.
* * *
Chapter 8
The kids are at their special classes, and it’s the first time all day I’ve had a moment to just…think. I inhale and take in a lungful of eau de my room: sharpened pencils and Expo marker. Planning’s done for the week, parent e-mails are answered, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this hour slip by without working on my manuscript.
I open the file. Skim through the last ten pages.
YASSSS.
I can do this, this time. I’m a warrior.
I drain the cold remnants of my fourth cup of coffee, and I’m ready to go.
Before I realize it, I’ve been tap, tap, tapping at the keys for a solid forty minutes when the buzz of my phone breaks my concentration.
A small yellow lightning bolt icon has appeared in the top left corner of the home screen.
Looks like I’ve got a Spark match. Or Google is somehow telling me there’s an incoming storm?
Maybe both.
I breathe in deep as I click it—Which one of Quinn and Valerie’s white knights will this be?—and then his face pops up.
Anthony, 36
He has dimples. Deep ridges on either side of his face.
Not bad at all.
And he’s one of the few who’s written something in the profile area.
Likes: Fitness, craft beer, baseball, and traveling. Dislikes: Moody people, prison tattoos, political correctness, and poor grammar.
I tap an index finger to my lips at the last two dislikes.
Hmm. I could be onboard with this. But I flip through his pics, just the same. No reason to get too excited yet.
Dark hair. Buzz cut.
Good shoulders.
I wonder who that hot blonde with him in this wedding picture is, but that’s okay. I’ll allow it.
Things are looking pretty decent, so I alert my fairy godmothers.
Me: Just got my first Spark match. Huzzah.
Valerie: YEEEEEEEEE
Me: What do I do?
Valerie: Now you can message each other! You’ve both swiped Right!
Me: Shouldn’t I wait for him to—
Quinn: *headdesk* MAKE LIKE NIKE AND JUST DO IT.
I snarl at my phone, then go back to the app.
Really, Anthony, 36?
My thumb hovers over the keyboard a minute. I really wish he’d write first. I don’t want to seem desperate.
Me: Fine.
I chew at my bottom lip as I type out three renditions of Hi but ultimately settle on:
You had me at good grammar.
My stomach tightens as I hit SEND.
When he doesn’t answer right away and I can’t get back into the writing, I check out more man options.
Seven of pretty much literally the same guy in different packaging. Plunging V-neck tees. Into the outdoors.
NOPE. NOPE. NOPE.
I shake my head at the screen, and then a gleaming smile stops me cold.
A Taye Diggs look-alike I’d know anywhere.
I check behind me. Like he’s there and somehow knows I’m looking at him.
He has written simply I’m down for whatever, and the whole time I flip through his pics, my hands tremble. Like some assassin is about to take me out for stumbling upon his deepest, darkest secret.
His are a bit like modeling pictures, and I’m not sure how I feel about that. Ordinarily I’d be turned off by this—I’m no model and I certainly don’t need some guy who’s prettier than I am, or someone who’s going to judge me by my lack of thigh gap—but I can’t peel away my focus.
A staged candid of him laughing, his big back against a tall fence, one hand gripping the metal, the other running through his close-cropped hair.
A belly laugh captured at juuuuust the right moment.
A shot of him on a motorcycle. Taken from a low angle. He’s glancing at something to his right this time. Hint of a smirk. It’s sexy as hell, and I feel more like I’m paging through GQ than looking at a dating app.
These pics are what other guys are trying to achieve but aren’t because these are obviously professional shots.
It’s douchey, yes. But they’re so well done and he’s got such an Isaiah-Mustafa-in-those-Old-Spice-commercials swagger, I don’t care.
He looks amazing.
Biceps better than the girls and I imagined through the dress shirts he wears to school.
My heart hammers.
Ugh. Stop it.
I should just go back to writing. Channel this heat creeping up my neck into my manuscript.
But I can’t focus. Can’t look away.
And I can’t keep this to myself, obviously.
I burst from my chair and trip my way to Quinn’s classroom. I stick my head through the doorway and hang on the threshold.
“Valerie’s room. Now.”
When we clomp our way in there, Val jerks her attention toward us and the assignment she was writing on the white-board goes from crooked and messy scrawl to squiggly limp-dick-of-a-line once I spill the news.
“Are you serious? Hot Sub Guy?” Quinn sits on the top of a student desk and rests her elbows on her knees, her copper eyes wide.
We huddle around her, and I bring my phone back to life.
Nick, 35
Collective gasp.
“But I thought he had a girlfriend—”
“Shh!” I race to the door and peek into the hall.
Not suspicious at all.
I shut it and then press my back against it like we’re in a lockdown drill and I’m saving all our lives.
“Maybe it’s old.” Val does a slow pace in front of her desk. Her eyes glaze a bit as she reasons it out. This blows her blissfully-ignorant-about-ugly-things little mind, apparently.
“Maybe.” I humor her but can’t stop the arc of an eyebrow.
“It could be,” she snaps, and I cut my stare to Quinn, who remains silent.
“Of course anything is possible…but come on, you guys. Do you see?”
They’re both stricken with such looks of despair, I feel bad. But only slightly.
The panic? excitement? fear? of discovering those pics vanishes and is replaced by a different type of burn beneath my chest.
“You can’t possibly admit I’m right about guys?” I don’t bother to control the edge to my voice. I just stand there, expectant of an answer—a validation—that doesn’t come. Quinn turns away, and I toss up my hands.
“Unbelievable,” I mutter.
And storm out.
When I get back to my room, I slump into my desk chair and just sit there. Swiveling. Staring at his profile.
I’m down for whatever, he says.
Yeah, I bet you are.
Hot for his girlfriend my ass.
I swipe Right.
Not a second later, my phone buzzes, and my blood turns to arctic winter. I didn’t think he’d swipe Right on me. Particularly since I’m sure he’d have recognized me.
But when I check the notification—one eye open—it’s Anthony, 36, responding to my message:
You had *me* at you’re hot.
* * *
I’m fumbling with my phone and giggling like a moron when I take Billie for her nightly jaunt around the complex. I’m also thoroughly enjoying being That Girl walking and texting. Usually I want to plow down That Girl with my Camry, but I’m seeing things in a whole new light.
Growth!
Anthony, 36, and I sp
ent the better part of the afternoon messaging, and he picked it back up again this evening. Talking everything from which recent box office flops were the floppiest to which presidential candidates, if elected, would have us hopping the next plane to Timbuktu. It’s been fun.
Not that I admitted that to Quinn when she asked about him earlier and not that it means a goddamn thing.
I’ve also learned this Anthony has never been married, he hasn’t fathered a fleet of children, and his longest relationship (which ended over a year ago) was just shy of the three-year mark.
All good signs to me.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on my friends and their dude choices. Maybe I have been too picky.
Him: So what are you doing now?
Me: Lounging around in trashy lingerie, obvi.
I snort.
And then a pang of anxiety, because of course.
I flutter my thumbs across the keyboard.
Me: *looks down* Oh, wait. Nope! Walking my dog and wearing sweats. #mistaken
Him: I could get onboard with that.
“Dammit,” I say, and the little boy whizzing by on a scooter does a double take.
I wave. “Oh no—not you. Sorry! Carry on…”
Awkward laughter.
Him: Do you have a kik account?
I pause and blink at the elephant ear caladiums dotting the perimeter of the buildings like a line of deep purple pom-poms.
Me: No, and I don’t Snapchat either.
Him: Haha, why not?
I’m getting winded as I drag Billie up the last hill.
Me: Because I’m not in high school? Listen, I’m sorry if I sent you the wrong vibe with that lingerie joke, but I’m not gonna sext you, or whatever they’re calling it these days.
My pulse quickens.
Guess this is it?
I hold my breath.
Him: No, no—I just meant it might be nice to move this off Spark. It’s a little annoying logging in to the app every time, no?
Mr. Right-Swipe Page 7