by Jackie Lau
Well, there’s a sentence I never thought I’d say in my life.
“Come on,” she says. “I’m supposed to be teaching you how to have fun.”
“Owning a cactus is fun?”
“I think so. Especially a cactus that looks like this. It’ll be a great conversation starter, don’t you think?”
“First of all,” I say, “if I get a cactus, I’m putting it in my home office or bedroom, where I do not have any guests.”
“Really? You don’t have any guests in your bedroom?”
Not in a while, no. It would be a different story if Courtney had decided she wanted to have fun with me in the only way I know how to have fun.
Her face is turning a delightful shade of pink now, and oh, I want her to look like that because she’s underneath me and my fingers are slipping inside her.
The air in the store is suddenly very hot—the sort of environment a cactus would like.
I swallow. “Second of all, I won’t let you pay for anything this weekend. If anyone’s buying a phallic cactus, it’s me.”
She brightens. “So you’ll get the cactus?”
“If you insist.”
Dear God, I don’t know how I’m going to survive the next two weeks.
I walk to the cash register and the woman behind the counter tilts her head and studies me. “You look familiar. Wait... I know. You’re Julian Fong, aren’t you?”
Yeah, somebody recognized me while I was buying Joey the Phallic Cactus.
* * *
We’re in Leslieville now, walking down Queen Street, and I’m carrying a cactus.
“Let’s go to my favorite gelato place,” Courtney says.
“We can’t have gelato. We already had pineapple buns. That’s enough dessert for today.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having two treats a day every now and then. Do you always live by such rigid rules?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” I shake my head. “Which is why I need your help. So, sure, we can have gelato.” Even though it feels wrong, but then again, buying a phallic cactus also felt wrong, and I’ve already done that and the world hasn’t ended. Not quite.
“You’ll love this place. It’s the best.”
The sidewalk is suddenly crowded with people waiting in line for something. To my distress, Courtney leads us to the end of the long line.
“This is the gelateria?” I ask.
“Yep. The line-up’s a little better than I thought it would be.”
Is she serious?
“I’m not waiting in line for half an hour for gelato.” The idea makes my skin crawl. I hate line-ups. They’re such a waste of time.
“It’ll be less than half an hour, I promise. They’re quite efficient.”
“They better be,” I mutter.
“Are your arms tired from carrying Joey?”
“Mommy,” says the little boy standing in front of us, “why did that woman say my name? Should I talk to her? But you told me never to talk to strangers.”
Courtney doubles over with laughter, and I can’t help but be glad she’s laughing.
“I’m fine,” I say. “The cactus isn’t heavy.”
“I’m going to scope out the flavors. They rotate. I hope they have lemon cherry sour cream today.” She heads down the line and into the store.
When she disappears from view, I turn my attention to my new cactus and compare his dimensions to my own before realizing how pathetic this is.
Courtney returns. “You’re in luck! They have it. It’s the best thing in the whole world.”
Admittedly, I’m rather curious about the gelato, though it’s a pity I’ll have to wait in line with a bunch of kids before I can get some.
She pulls my phone out of her pocket.
“I’ll give it back to you in a moment,” she says, “after I take a picture of you and Joey.”
“Mommy, who’s taking a picture of me?” Joey the Kid asks.
“The lady’s talking about another person named Joey,” the mom says. “Don’t worry.”
I’m about to open my mouth to explain that Joey is actually a cactus, not a person, then quickly think better of it. I force a smile for Courtney as she holds up my phone and snaps a couple photos.
“Perfect.” She clicks a few things before finally returning my phone. A close-up of Joey is now the background picture, and she’s sent a picture of me and the cactus to Vince.
Vince replies a few minutes later. I love your new girlfriend. I’m sorry I questioned your judgment earlier.
She’s not my girlfriend, I reply, though when I type the words, it gives me a twinge of something I can’t quite put my finger on.
It’s not like I want Courtney to be my girlfriend. Dealing with her all the time would be more than I could handle, plus I don’t think she could handle me, not in my regular CEO life.
Though I still want to go to bed with her. She’s passionate. I bet she’d be great in bed.
Okay, I’ll admit it. Even though Courtney spends a lot of time trying to push my buttons, I’m enjoying myself. I’ve missed the companionship of being in a relationship. I always liked that part, but I decided I was finished with relationships after Olivia said she didn’t like dating someone who was married to his job and wasn’t “emotionally present.”
Some men might consider that to be touchy-feely mumbo jumbo, but I didn’t. I got what she was saying. It was similar to what many women had told me before. As I didn’t see my lifestyle changing, what was the point in trying to have a girlfriend? Any relationship was doomed.
“When was the last time you went out for gelato or ice cream on a hot summer’s day?” Courtney asks.
“Twenty years ago? Maybe more?”
She looks at me like I just kicked a puppy. “But you like it, don’t you?”
“Sure. I don’t see how you could hate ice cream. I’m not saying I haven’t eaten it in twenty years, though I don’t think I’ve had a cone in that long.”
“Well, that’ll change in ten minutes. I hope we aren’t waiting any longer than that.”
“Mommy,” says Joey the Kid, “you won’t make me go twenty years without an ice cream cone, will you? Even if I leave Lego all over the floor and you step on it in the middle of the night?”
* * *
The gelato is fantastic.
All the seats in the gelateria are full, but we snag a bench in the parkette at the corner. I’m enjoying my lemon cherry sour cream and pistachio, and I’m trying not to look at Courtney because watching her lick her gelato is more than I can bear. The cactus sits between us, a calculated move on my part so I wouldn’t be able to shift closer to her without getting poked.
“I can’t believe you ordered pistachio,” she says. “That’s such a boring flavor.” Courtney got quince white wine, in addition to the lemon cherry sour cream.
“I hadn’t had it in ages, and this one is very good.”
“Can I try?”
I hand over my waffle cone, and she takes a nibble of my gelato.
Courtney’s mouth. Phallic object. Yeah.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks.
“Like what?”
“Never mind.”
“I’m looking at you with fear because I’m afraid you’re not going to give that back once you discover the awesomeness of pistachio gelato.”
“Did you just saw ‘awesomeness’? That’s so unlike you.”
“You’ve known me less than twenty-four hours,” I point out, though she’s correct.
“True.” Thankfully, she hands back my gelato cone. “You’re right. It’s pretty great.”
She takes a photo of me with my gelato, and then we eat in silence. When I’m finished, I start to stand up, but she pulls me back down.
“We’re going to stay here for a while and people-watch.” She points to a man on the other side of the street, hurrying down the sidewalk. “What do you think his story is?”
“He’s hurrying because he has a very important m
eeting.”
“Come on. You can do better than that.”
“Fine.” I can be creative if that’s what she wants. “He’s divorced and has custody of his five-year-old daughter. He just dropped her off at his ex-wife’s for the weekend, then realized he forgot to pack Joey—who is not a phallic cactus, but a cute stuffed koala—in his daughter’s overnight bag, and she won’t go to sleep without him. He’s hurrying home to pick up Joey and bring him to his ex-wife’s before his daughter notices Joey isn’t there.”
Courtney cracks a smile. “That’s better.” She points at a young couple, maybe in their mid-twenties, who have just walked past the parkette. “What about them?”
Like the man on the other side of the street, they’re hurrying, not slowing down to eat gelato and enjoy the sunny day. Normally that would be me, too, and admittedly, it seems rather sad to spend your whole life like that.
“They’re rushing home,” I say, “because they just said ‘I love you’ for the first time, and he wants to fuck her brains out.”
Courtney’s eyes widen.
“Pardon my language. He wants to make sweet, sweet love to her.”
I need to stop saying such things around Courtney Kwan.
“Oh?” She looks rather intrigued, or is that just my imagination?
Perhaps she’ll change her mind about the casual fling I proposed. I picture her kneeling between my legs, her tongue on my cock, moaning the way she does when she eats ice cream and pineapple buns.
I need another train of thought. I look down and my gaze lands on Joey the Cactus, which doesn’t help matters, because Joey really does look like an erect penis. He even has balls.
I choke on my gelato.
“Are you okay?” she asks.
“Something went down funny, that’s all.”
“I didn’t know it was possible to choke on gelato, since it melts in your mouth.”
“Uh. There was a whole pistachio. Yes, that’s it. A whole pistachio.”
Real smooth, Julian.
I swear, I’m normally well-spoken and good at expressing myself, which I can do in several languages, but a part of me feels like an inexperienced teenager when I’m with Courtney. I’m so out of my depth, spending two weeks without work and eating gelato with a woman in the park.
We look at each other for a moment, a moment both awkward and wonderfully full of promise. I pick up the cactus and move it to the other side of me. I’m about to slide my hand onto her knee and see where that leads, but then her phone beeps.
She jumps up, and the moment is ruined.
Chapter 10
Courtney
When I left the lab yesterday evening, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to my weekend alone, but now I have Julian’s company, and I’ve enjoyed our day together thus far. I’ve enjoyed being a quirky, silly version of myself—it’s easy around him, somehow.
He’s been a surprisingly good sport, even as he rolls his eyes and shakes his head when I talk about scrapbooking classes and phallic cacti. I think he’s having fun, at least a little, and I’m certainly having fun.
We’re sitting in the backyard patio of a coffee shop in Leslieville now. It’s lovely here, with cute wooden furniture, trellises with flowers, and purple umbrellas. I dragged him into this place on a whim when I saw the “backyard patio open!” sign, and I’ll definitely come back.
I love where I live. It’s a short walk from Chinatown East and Greektown on the Danforth, and not too far from Leslieville. There are all sorts of great neighborhoods to explore, all sorts of hidden treasures, like that cactus and succulent shop on Gerrard.
I love Toronto.
And it’s nice having Julian with me as I explore the city.
The man is genuinely attracted to me. It’s still hard to wrap my head around that, but there have been moments when I swore the air would start sparking from the sexual tension.
Maybe I’m imagining it, but pineapple buns and gelato also taste better in his presence. I wonder what it would be like to lick gelato off his chest.
It’s been more than three years since I’ve had sex, and I miss it. Being skin against skin, holding each other afterward, waking up together. When I’m with Julian, I can’t help thinking about it and yearning for it, these things I told myself I’d never have again.
I have to remind myself that there are good reasons for my vow of celibacy, but damn, it’s tough when he’s sitting across from me, looking so hot in his jeans and polo shirt. He put on the polo shirt before we left, even though there was nothing wrong with the T-shirt he’d been wearing at breakfast. It’s like Julian thinks he cannot be seen without a collared shirt in public. But I saw him in that T-shirt. He’s let me into his private world...sort of. As much as I would allow him.
I have a sip of my pumpkin spice latte. Even though it’s only August, this coffee shop has started serving pumpkin spice lattes, or maybe they serve them all year round. It’s pretty good, though not quite as good as my regular gingerbread latte at Chris’s Coffee Shop.
Julian leans forward. “You don’t have to babysit me all day to make sure I don’t go into the office or start looking up stock prices. I know you have your own life.”
“I don’t mind.” I lose my train of thought for a moment, slightly distracted by his closeness. “It’s not like I have much else to do.”
Though it’s good to know he doesn’t expect me to be with him every hour of the day, because at some point, I’ll need some time alone to recharge.
“What do you want to do for dinner?” he asks.
My mind is completely blank, even though I’ve eaten at dozens and dozens of restaurants in Toronto. I hate when that happens.
I turn the question around. “Where do you want to eat? You’re the one who’s supposed to be having fun, and I’ve been dragging you around all day.”
“Um.” His mind seems to have emptied of all rational thought, just like mine, and now he’s stroking the back of my hand, which isn’t helping my poor brain.
When my brain finally latches onto a word, I blurt it out.
“Tapas!” I say, proud to have come up with something. “I love tapas. I don’t care if it’s Spanish, I just really like ordering a bunch of small plates and sharing them. It’s so much fun.”
It’s also very date-like.
Just like that fact that he’s still stroking my hand.
“Okay,” he says, as though my outburst was perfectly normal and did not draw the attention of the women chatting at the table next to ours. “We’ll go to Mosaic.”
Mosaic is a Middle Eastern small-plates restaurant in Yorkville. It’s supposed to be excellent, but I’ve never been because it’s also expensive.
“That’s not necessary,” I protest, and then I remember who I’m talking to. “Actually, I misspoke. It’s totally necessary and we should go there so you can spend your money on me. Although I suspect you need to make a reservation for Saturday dinner a few weeks in advance.”
He pulls out his phone. “Let me see what I can do.”
* * *
An hour later, we’re waiting to be shown to a table at Mosaic.
I don’t know how Julian did it. I imagine if you’re a real celebrity, restaurants would make special accommodations for you, hoping it would bring them attention. But Julian, though rich, isn’t a celebrity, and I’m not sure many people would know his name, outside of the Chinese community. And investment bankers, presumably.
“Sorry for keeping you waiting,” the hostess says, though we’ve only been waiting a minute. She flashes Julian a spectacular smile.
I have the urge to wrap my hand around his arm and yell, “Mine!” However, that would be weird, and it might get us kicked out.
And I very much want to eat here.
Plus, he doesn’t actually belong to me.
We’re led to a table on the rooftop patio. We’re not very high up, just on the third floor, so we don’t have an impressive view of the city, but it’s re
ally nice. There are potted shrubs and flowers and a few well-dressed couples having quiet conversations.
I feel underdressed, but there wasn’t time to go back to Julian’s to change. We still have Joey the Cactus with us, and Julian places him on the table beside the unlit candle.
“How did you manage this?” I ask as soon as the hostess walks away.
He shrugs. “I know someone. Plus, it’s only five fifteen, and I had to promise we’d be done by seven.”
I open my menu. Everything sounds so good. I try to ignore the prices—those don’t need to factor into my decision.
Of course, money doesn’t buy happiness. Well, it probably does if it brings you out of poverty, because living in poverty is stressful and exhausting, but if you have a reasonably comfortable life, like me, money isn’t going to buy you happiness. Even though I agreed to this arrangement to get money for the trip and for Naomi, I know this.
Though at the moment, I’m quite happy. I’m practically bouncing in my seat because I’m so excited.
Julian looks at me curiously, and I realize I’m literally bouncing in my seat like a child.
“Were you always like this?” he asks.
I stop bouncing, a little embarrassed. “No. Something happened when I was in undergrad, and for a long time, I couldn’t feel joy. At all. When I started to experience joy again, it felt miraculous.”
That’s the truth without the details.
There are moments when I think my depression is a good thing because it helps me appreciate my mental health when I have it, but mostly, I just wish it away.
Julian looks like he wants to ask me what happened in undergrad, but then he drops his gaze to his menu. “Would you like a bottle of wine?”
“No, that’s okay.” That’s my instinctive response, but then I remember I’m with Julian. “I mean...sure. Yes. We can have wine, but you have to choose because I don’t know anything about it.”
“Red or white?”
“Whatever you like. I’m not picky.”
Our waitress comes around and fills our water glasses. Julian gives her a charming smile. She beams back and he orders something.
“I’ve never ordered a bottle of wine at a restaurant before,” I say after she walks away.