by Alex Lucian
“No shit,” Liza said thoughtfully. “Thanks for sparing me the sciencey parts of that.”
“You’re welcome. Anyway,” I waved a hand at the kitchen, “that’s why it reeks of eggs.”
I waited a beat, then two, then watched as Liza’s eyes widened and she leaned forward, placing her hand on my arm. “You were hungover?” she whisper-yelled.
“Present tense.” After closing my eyes, I placed a hand to my head and rubbed my temple. “And yes.” I opened my eyes, leveled her with a look. “There’s more.”
Liza sat up straighter, unable to contain her excitement. “I love more.”
“I know you do,” I said with a laugh.
“You little hussy,” Liza proclaimed, her voice accusing. “You did the dirty, didn’t you?”
Was I that obvious? I pushed my glasses up my nose and avoided her eyes. “Maybe.”
“Oh my God. You did! You couldn’t have told me in your text?”
I’d sent her a very brief, Come over right now please, text an hour earlier. I still hadn’t wrapped my head over the night before and how I felt about it.
“Okay, fine. Yes. I had sex.” I reached for the wine glass and took a sip against my better judgement and then wisely handed it back to her. “A one-night stand.”
“Scarlet!” Liza pushed at me with her hand. “Two bucket list items in one night? What’s gotten into you?”
Leo. Leo had gotten into me. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“Wait,” Liza said, holding up a hand. “Was the drinking before the sex or after the sex. This is important.”
“How is that important?”
“Were you drinking because,” she raised her eyebrows and nodded solemnly, “it was bad sex?”
“No. I got drunk before the sex. It was drunk sex.”
“Oh.” Liza deflated, sitting against the cushions as she held the wine glass in her hands.
“What?” I asked, wondering at her sudden disappointment.
“I thought you had sober sex for once.”
“Okay, first of all—I’ve had sex an entire two times in my life. ‘For once’ is a little bit dramatic, don’t you think? And second—just because I was drunk doesn’t mean I don’t remember it.” I looked down at my hands, which I had twisted in my lap. “Or that it wasn’t great sex. I mean, not that I know what great sex is when I’ve had it twice.”
“Okay, hold up. Great sex is great sex. It’s like eating cheesecake from The Shoppe versus cheesecake from the grocery store. You just know it’s fucking delicious because it tastes fucking delicious. So if it was great, if you felt great, it was great. The end.”
“I like the cheesecake from the grocery store,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, well you haven’t had cheesecake from The Shoppe.”
“But if I think grocery store cheesecake is good, then maybe I’m wrong about what great sex is.”
“But you’re not, because you knew that the dipshit you first let up in your business was bad sex. This is good,” she said encouragingly. “So, spill. What was it like?”
I leaned against the cushions. “Well, I do remember most of it. And the parts I remember…” my cheeks warmed and I tried to brush it off by shrugging. I was embarrassed by my inexperience, even around Liza. “Let’s just say he has a very talented mouth.” My cheeks burst into flames and I had to keep my hands locked together in my lap to keep from pressing my palms against my face.
“Who is he? I mean, I get it—one night stand and all. But did he have a name you remember?”
This was the part I was dreading—telling Liza who my mysterious lothario was, because she knew Leo to be a real-life asshole, someone whose mere presence in high school had made me feel so very small. As I racked my brain for an explanation or a way to break it to her easily, Liza’s own silence became very apparent. I chanced a glance at her, seeing her eyes narrowed on me.
“Who?” she asked, her voice lower than before.
“Leo.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, standing up with her wine glass as if her favorite team had just made a bad play. The metaphor wasn’t entirely off-base though. “You fucked Leeeo?” she screeched, pointing her finger out the window. “Leo, the dickwad?”
I didn’t bother nodding, confirming her question. Liza was getting a bachelors in show production, which was perfect for her because she frequently displayed a large range of emotion, but bad for me at the moment because she was staring at me like I’d just told her I’d drop kicked a baby.
When I opened my mouth to explain, she pointed a finger at me. “Oh, I knew this was going to happen. I just knew it!” She stalked back over to the couch, but didn’t sit. “I knew as soon as you told me you were giving him rides. I thought to myself, ‘Scarlet is going to combust from all that hate and yank him into her backseat and let him punt it right between your uprights.”
“My uprights?”
“Yeah,” she huffed. “Your legs. Up in the air. Field goal.” She said it so seriously, with such rage coloring her voice that I couldn’t help but laugh, much to her irritation.
“We didn’t do it in my backseat. Chill.” Liza liked that even less.
“It doesn’t matter. Scarlet. Ugh!” She set her glass on the coffee table. “I thought you didn’t even like him. He was a dick to you in high school.”
But he hadn’t been, not really. I’d misunderstood—our childhood friendship was bound to change once we were launched into two separate cliques and I let myself be hurt by assuming otherwise. My own admission of guilt didn’t stop me from still hating him.
“Well it’s not like we’re dating. We had sex. Big deal.”
“It is a big deal,” Liza said, trying to make me see why this was such a problem. Years had passed since high school, and even if I wasn’t completely sure how I felt about the stellar sex, I wasn’t going to disparage him for what had happened years earlier.
“It’s not. Liza, we had sex one night. And this morning was awkward enough that it’ll never happen again.”
Liza seemed to cool down, already interested in our next discussion. “Awkward?” she asked as she lowered herself back to the couch.
“He was in a hurry to get out of bed and hid in the bathroom for a solid twenty minutes. And then I pretended like I didn’t remember what happened—which is partly true as I don’t remember all of it—and then I kind of kicked him out.”
“Wow. That’s a lot to take in.” Liza relaxed into the couch as she thought. “Why did you pretend to forget?”
“I wanted to spare him the obligatory, ‘hey, I’m not looking for anything serious’ talk because we both know he’s not looking for that. And, well, I might’ve begged him for sex in the first place.” I desperately needed a pillow to cover my face.
“Oh, well then.” Liza stared into her glass.
“Exactly.”
“Well, console yourself with the fact that he probably wanted it too. How couldn’t he? Leo isn’t going to dip his dick in every girl who begs for it.”
“Just probably most of them,” I lamented.
“Gross.” Liza stuck out her tongue in disgust. “The good news is that you used protection, so you’re not going to catch the warts.”
A thought crossed my mind and I rewound my memory, trying to remember at what point Leo put a condom on. But nothing came through, which terrified me down to my bones. “Oh, God.”
“What?”
I turned to her with what I knew must have been pure terror in my eyes. “I don’t remember him putting on a condom.”
Her eyes widened too, which didn’t make me feel better as my blood raced.
“Oh, fuck.” I didn’t say it often, but when it was warranted—like right fucking now—it was practically the only word I could articulate. “Oh fuck, oh fuck.”
“Shh,” she hushed me. “It’s fine. Come on. Leo might be a dick, but for one, he knows your dad. And we both know your dad would unleash some serious ass-whooping if Leo had given you a souven
ir of your night.”
The thought calmed me, but only slightly.
“And two,” she continued, “we’re talking Leo Madsen here. If his list of sex partners is as lengthy as we assume it be, everyone in this city would have warts and we’d know about it. Think about Tony Saccarino from high school. Everybody knew that dude was carrying the herpes.”
“Ugh,” I said, cradling my head. I was unconvinced.
“Maybe they have to test for sports or something?” she added, reaching for straws. “Come on, it’s going to be okay. You’re on the pill and I’m sure he’s clean. He’s not going to swing an infected peen around town without someone knowing about it.”
“You’re sure? Really, Liza? You were sure your vagina was dying the first time you got your period. So sure. And now you’re sure Leo is clean.”
“Hey, don’t be a dick. I was twelve and my dad hadn’t exactly told me what to expect.”
“Sorry,” I said, pushing my bangs from my face. It would be okay. Liza made some very valid points. “I guess I have to talk to him about that.” Which would mean admitting to him that I had remembered at least some of it.
“Dude. We need to cross these off of your bucket list,” Liza chirped, bringing me out of my inner thoughts. “You still have it, don’t you?”
“No,” I said quickly.
“First you’re a hussy and now you’re a liar? C’mon, Scarlet. You think I don’t know what those shifty eyes mean? Get it.”
Against my better judgement, I grabbed the list from my room where I’d kept it tucked inside an old microbiology textbook. If my mom snooped, the last place she’d look would be in between the pages of anything sciencey. When I returned to the living room, I held it in my fingers, thumbnail running along the crease. As I turned to sit beside her again, Liza ripped it from my hands.
“I knew you still had this!”
“Do you have yours?” We’d made these stupid bucket lists right after high school and added to them as we realized all that we were missing out on. And as the years had passed, Liza had scratched off all nearly-sixty of hers while mine, still in the teens, were left mostly unmarred.
“Probably not,” Liza said as she chewed on her lip, studying the sheet. “Fake ID? You should’ve crossed that one off by now.”
I shrugged. “I didn’t think about it.”
“I can’t believe you crossed off ‘Have sex’ from this list.”
“Well, I did have sex.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Did he even hang out long enough to break your hymen?”
I gave her a look, an are-you-serious expression. “You can’t tell me I was still a virgin until last night.”
“Practically.”
“I don’t think, scientifically-speaking, you can be practically a virgin.”
“Well, what do you know anyway?”
“True,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Let me see the list.”
Liza handed it over and I took in my chicken scratch handwriting and the half-hearted line through ‘Have sex.’ I must have crossed that off with a lot of disappointment in my hand, based on the incomplete line.
Liza produced a bright purple pen from her bag and grabbed the list back from me. She pressed the paper against her lap and bent over as she made revisions to the list. Her hair hung in front of her face, obstructing my view. When she giggled, I pushed her backward, so I could see the list.
She’d added a carrot between ‘Have’ and ‘sex’ and put ‘GREAT’ in all caps with a bunch of miniature purple hearts around it. And on the side of the page, she’d doodled a heart with Leo’s name in it, in that same purple color.
“Come on, Liza. You’re such a third grader sometimes.”
“Well, you kinda deserve it. You let him sully you with his possibly crab-infested junk. It’s not often the princess of control makes an ill-advised decision, so,” she nodded, her hair bobbing back and forth, “I’m going to relish this moment.” She stood and picked up the empty wine glass off the table before retreating to the kitchen.
“Thanks,” I mumbled ungratefully as I took in the lines though ‘one-night stand’ and ‘get drunk’ before folding it up and following Liza.
“I have to go to work in a few hours, so I need a siesta.” She walked around the island and gave me a squeeze. “And you need to see a boy about his dick.”
Chapter Eleven
My phone had been dinging at me for the last hour while I threw a ball in the backyard. I never checked it. Because every single text was probably Scarlet rubbing it the hell in that she didn’t remember.
She didn’t fucking remember. How was that even possible? I get it, I was pretty drunk too, but there was no way that any moment of that mind-blowing, earth-shattering, body-numbing sex would ever be erased from my mind. All the cliché phrases in the world didn’t seem like enough when I tried to think of ways to describe it.
Which pissed me off even more. Because that? That thing that I’d felt in her bed and when I touched her and tasted her? I’d never felt that before, which was scary as fuck by itself. But factor in that Scarlet had a blank slate, and I was pretty much vibrating with tension.
Another chime from my phone, where it sat on the edge of the deck behind me, and I hurled the ball toward the throwing net that I used in the summer, throwing a little harder than necessary.
“Too much spiral,” a voice said from behind me, and I turned to find my best friend Adele slouched in a patio chair, shading her eyes from the sun. “Or was it not enough?”
I shook my head and walked toward her. “What are you doing here?”
“Well, I had to come home today for some bullshit with my sister, and since you haven’t answered a single text from me, I figured I should make sure you’re alive.”
I started dragging another chair to face her when she stood up and motioned for me to follow her. “It’s too damn hot in the sun back here, let’s go in the front.”
Ugh. Great. Then I could face Scarlet’s house and think about her a little more. Fucking perfect. But Adele was already off the deck and walking around the side of the house.
“Pick up the pace, Madsen. I don’t have all day.” She snapped her fingers up by her face and smiled at me, but I knew that smile was bullshit. She meant it. So, of course, I followed her.
“Maybe the sun wouldn’t feel so hot if you wore something other than black.”
“I wear other colors.”
I glanced at her while we crossed the driveway and climbed the couple steps onto our front porch. “Uh-huh.”
“I have on pink underwear, thank you very much.” She pulled at the waist of her black jeans and pulled up a thin band of lace that was hot pink. I rolled my eyes when she snapped it back against her skin and pulled her shirt back down.
“Thanks for that,” I drawled and sat in one of the Adirondack chairs.
Adele laughed, leaning back into the other chair and stretching her arms above her head, her light blonde hair looking unfamiliar to me after seeing Scarlet’s thick red locks all week.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever,” she said after we’d been quiet for a few minutes, me glaring across the street, and her watching me with a curious expression on her face.
“That’s because you haven’t.” I rubbed at a spot of dirt on the arm of my chair, not meeting her eyes right away. When I did, she was giving me a narrow-eyed look like she couldn’t figure out what language I was speaking. It made me fidget in my seat. “What?”
“Are you on your period?”
I rolled my eyes. “Nice, Adele. And you wonder why I haven’t seen you in weeks.”
“See, right there,” she said and pointed a finger at me. “Nothing. No smile, no joke, no teasing. What’s wrong with you?”
I knew that my friendship with Adele wasn’t typical. We’d never slept together, which most people didn’t believe, and even though we’d had one awkward kiss that felt like sucking on a rock for how little we both enjoyed it, I’d
never looked at her as someone I’d wanted. Again, probably something that most people didn’t believe, because Adele was fucking hot.
Like scary hot, in the way that you weren’t sure if she’d fuck you or kill you if you said the wrong thing to her. But you’d probably give it a shot either way because of how she looked.
She had sharp facial features and green eyes that could slice through you if she wanted them to. And moments like this, when she just straight up wasn’t taking my bullshit, immediately zeroing in on the fact that I wanted to punch something, made me remember why I needed her in my life.
Which is why it was pointless for me to lie to her. I dropped my head back onto the chair. “I think I’ve lost my mojo.”
When she cackled a little, I lifted my hand to flip her off and she just laughed harder.
“Leo, remind me when you regained your mojo? I’m assuming you mean your inability to attract normal, sane chicks?”
Instead of putting up a lame attempt to argue with her, because she was fucking right, I just nodded, lifting my head and squinting across the street at Scarlet’s car.
“There’s this girl,” I started and Adele leaned forward in her seat to listen. “I never thought it would happen with her. I mean, ever.”
“Why not?”
I worked my jaw back and forth, trying to decide how to answer. Adele knew Scarlet from high school too, and I really didn’t want her name coming up.
“She doesn’t like me very much.” An understatement, of course, but it made Adele smile all the same. “Thinks athletes are meatheads.”
“Ahh, that kind of girl.”
“Seriously, Adele, I’ve said meaner shit to her than any woman I know. And she dishes it right back. And the whole time, it felt like this fucked-up foreplay, at least in my mind.” I ran my hands down the tops of my thighs, shaking my head a little. “And last night …”
“Oooooh, finally,” Adele rubbed her hands together. I smiled, for what felt like the first time all day and Adele smiled back.
“We were both pretty drunk, and I was going to be good, I swear. But then she was begging me. And kissing me. And it’s not like my decision making skills were as sharp as possible.” For the first time since I started talking, Adele’s face tightened with concern. Not sure if it was for me, though. “So we did it. And this morning, she didn’t remember what happened.”