This can’t be happening to me. I could pretend I never showed up tonight. I could swear in front of everyone it wasn’t me in there. I could say someone stole the costume, or I traded it with someone and I made a pact with the person I would never tell who they were. I just had sex with the Neanderthal, Dex. I’m thinking what I really should do is get home, knot up some rope, and kick a chair out from under me.
And oh, God. All I keep seeing in my head is the look on Nate’s face. Panic bubbles up in my throat, and I start to cry. I’m not just crying, either, I’m emoting loud harsh sobs and hyperventilating into a plastic potted plant in the lobby.
Somewhere behind me the doors to the party room open and the noise of music and laughter spill out. I need to get out of here before anyone catches me out here. I need about twenty years away from the people in my office to forget this night, and I doubt that would even be a long enough time.
I run out into the courtyard and through the garden to where the parking attendants stand waiting. There are three men standing there, two are in valet outfits, but I wave them away since I didn’t drive here. The third man is dressed head to toe in deep red, with horns at the top of his head that curl up to the ink-black sky.
The topaz flash of Dex’s eyes catch mine, and my heart thunders wildly. Both of us stand rigid, still, full of humiliation and thick smothering embarrassment. I have never felt so ashamed.
I’m utterly mortified and I can’t see any way this will ever turn out okay. I can almost smell his panic and horror from here.
I lower my eyes, unable to look at him, and then I run. I bolt across the parking lot and out into the street in a mad dash to put as much distance as I can between us.
He doesn’t chase after me. I mean, I get it, why would he? He thought I was Julia. That’s who he wanted. He must feel awful finding out it was just me.
Dex wants Julia. Nate wants Julia. I bet Heath wants her too.
Nobody seems to want Plain Jane.
I walk the twenty-eight blocks it takes to get to my apartment. I’m still wearing this stupid outrageous outfit, but I’ve peeled and clawed the mask off. I don’t even get any strange looks. It’s like they expect someone like me to be dressed the way I am walking down the streets of New York City.
Once inside, I rip off my dress and wash the Dex off me. The shower can’t get hot enough, and I basically use every ounce of soap in my arsenal. I emerge from my shower a raisin.
A sated raisin.
I thump my forehead against the mirror that hangs on the bathroom door. That arrogant dickhead, motherfucker gave me two of the most intense orgasms of my life, and I’m never going to be able to say that out loud. Ever.
I wrap myself in a towel and run another one over my hair. Soon I’m going to have to face reality; I suspect there are a ton of calls on my cell phone about the whole Devil Dicking Debacle. They’re probably mostly from Julia, worried sick over me.
I’m worried about me. While I was under the spray in the shower, I fantasized about moving to Alaska, or Canada even. Somewhere cold, where no one knows who I am or what a screw-up I seem to be.
I dump out my purse to find my phone, but when I do, I just stare blankly at it. There aren’t any messages. No texts. No notifications. Nothing. I’m stunned.
A sudden, loud slam echoes through my apartment.
I wrap the towel tighter around my body and leap quickly into the kitchen. Cold drips fall from my damp hair running shivers down my spine. The noise could be from anywhere. There are ten apartments on this floor and the same amount on the floors above and below, but this slam sounded like it was inside mine. I grab the biggest knife I can. It’s a regular steak knife, but at least it’s something.
Quietly, I pad through all my rooms, looking around every corner, but I’m still alone. I tear back through each room, thinking something fell or something, and then I hear it. An, “Oh, God, yes.”
Then another loud thump.
“Oh God, yes. Yes!”
And a harder thump, thump, thump.
I stand in the middle of my living room and star at the wall. The knife slips from my fingers. So does my phone.
“Yeah, baby. Harder, fuck me harder.”
The framed prints of vintage magazine covers that hang on my wall vibrate with the sounds and thumps of Nate and Julia who must be screwing on her couch no more than ten feet away from me.
I stare at the wall some more.
Thump. Thump. Thump-thump-thump-thump.
“Just like that, yeah. Yeah.” In between, there’s some inaudible mumbles. “This way. Here. Yeah, like that. Oh, God-oh-god-oh-god-oh-god.”
Underneath Julia’s porn soundtrack, Nate’s low rumbling moans gut me. They send fire across my chest and make my stomach flip over each time they rumble through the room.
I kneel on my couch and touch one palm flat on the wall and then the other. The pounding reverberates through my hand and up my arms as he slams into Julia on the other side of the wall.
“Oh fuck. You feel so fucking good,” he says. His face must be so close to the wall, my wall, for me to hear it all so clearly.
I can hear his breathing, the heavy pants and grunts. I cover my mouth so I don’t scream.
I wonder if Julia told him I live right next door. I wonder if he knows he’s fucking Julia up against my wall too. I’ve never heard Julia hooking up with anyone in there before.
The banging gets faster. Nate’s grunts get deeper.
Not wanting to listen to this anymore, I slap my hands over my ears. I even put the television on. Then the radio. But nothing helps, they seem to scream louder than any sound I could make in here.
I can’t be in here for the duration of this nightmare.
Sick with grief, I stuff an overnight bag with a bunch of clothes. I almost get sick in the bathroom when they moan out their love for one another.
It’s repeated a few times. So I dry heave, a few times. I can’t stay here and listen to them. One of them has to know I can hear everything. And what’s worse than that is Julia not calling or knocking on my door to see if I was okay. She knows how much I hate Dex.
I take the eleven o’clock train to my parents’ house in Riverhead. An hour ride full of misery and ugly, raw emotion. I try to stop thinking about Nate, I really do, but I can’t help wanting him for myself. I don’t want to date Tinder idiots who are into horse heads or hook up with strange men from work. I want what Julia has. I want the man who took my face in his hands in front of a stadium full of people and kissed me like I was someone who could matter to him.
Even though he’s Julia’s, I always look forward to seeing him at work. Fireworks of anticipation explode in me when I hear his voice in the hallway walking toward our cubicles, and I pretend it’s me he’s going to see, not Julia. I make up excuses to go to his department and talk with the design team just to wave at him and smile. He started bringing me an extra cup of coffee every morning, exactly how I like it, because he’s getting used to watching me spill mine all over myself whenever he’s near.
I’m in love with my best friend’s boyfriend, the one that kissed me first, the one that should be dating me. And I hate myself for feeling like this. For having this emotional affair—even though it’s one-sided—how horrible of a friend am I to Julia? I’m the worst.
I’m disgusting. I’m the kind of horrible, disgusting person who has to talk herself out of putting her vibrator away and not come to the sounds of Nate banging Julia up against our shared wall. I’m that kind of horrible.
And then there’s Dex. Ew. But wow. I’m going to develop PTSD from my love life.
My dad picks me up at the train station in his pajama pants at midnight.
“You okay, Mouse?” I hate my dad’s nickname for me, but I was a quiet kid, always off reading and writing stories, and it stuck. I guess I’m still the same girl. Plain Jane, the Mouse. I should write a children’s book. Plain Jane Mouse Eats her Cheese Alone. Or, Plain Jane Mouse and all the Wron
g Cocks.
“Yeah, Dad. I’m okay. I just needed a little break from the city.” I’m becoming a pathological liar.
He takes a deep inhale and watches me, nodding like fathers do. Then he shifts the car out of park and drives us home, where I crawl into my childhood bed and cry myself to sleep, just like I did back in high school.
Chapter 12
Rock bottom looks a lot like my childhood bedroom.
Oh right, it is my childhood bedroom.
My parents call it the guest room, but there are never any guests and the same exact stack of fashion magazines piled on my desk is the one that was there the day I moved out. There are even clothes still hanging in the closet. My young skinny clothes from that one week I was a size six for a few days.
I rip them off the hangers and fling them into the dark corners of the closet. I feel like they are taunting me.
Being here feels like I’ve hit the rewind button.
I hate the fact that if I really wanted to, I could move back into this house and continue living right where I left off at age twenty-four. Nothing has changed for me in the last eight years, nothing.
I work for the same magazine now as I did then. I’ve worked under three different editor-in-chiefs, but my job, my writing has stayed constant. Every once in a while, it gets wild, like the one-night-stand article, but beyond that one and maybe a handful of others, I’m just the book and make-up reviewer, and sometimes serious-article-knowledge geek.
I’m still single. As a matter of fact, the only serious long-term boyfriend I had was when I lived here. Adam Meyers. His family lives across the street and back then he lived with his parents as well. We bonded over late-night drunken promises to get as far away from the suburbs as possible and his love of oral sex. It’s what we spent most of our time doing. A time long past, where the fair maiden Jane, once believed in true love and orgasms received and not only given.
Dex’s voice echoes in the back of my head. “I want you to come on my cock again. That felt incredible.”
Nope, no way. I refuse to think of that mistake ever again. I can still picture his face when he found out it was me instead of Julia. No girl wants to be on that side of a disgusted look. It makes me feel sick to my stomach.
My phone beeps with a text message. I swipe it quickly off the top of the comforter and hoping it’s Julia, or maybe Nate, or both of them worrying over me.
Birth Giver: Get your lazy bottom up. I’m making pancakes.
Grumbling, I wrap myself in my comforter and make my way downstairs to the kitchen. The clock on the microwave says it’s only a quarter past seven. Why did she get me up this early?
I slump back in one of the kitchen chairs and doze off.
Somehow, I snap back awake with a warm mug of coffee in my hands. The microwave tells me it’s seven twenty-five as I try to blink the sleep from my eyes.
I sip at my coffee and stare down into a stack of smiley-faced pancakes my mother slides on the table in front of me. The mouth made of bacon and eyes of milk chocolate stare right back at me. I check my cellphone for the date; afraid I somehow traveled back in time.
I didn’t. Unfortunately, it’s still the same year. The year my life was ruined.
“What’s all this?” I ask my mother whose back is now facing me as she flips another pancake on the stovetop.
She looks over her shoulder and smiles, “Oh, you know. Just want you to feel at home and stuff, that’s all. How did you sleep last night?”
Like a harlot, in love with a taken man, my loins hungry for his, yet quite satiated from the animalistic coitus with the person I loathe the most in life. I shake the thought out of my head, making a mental note to take a break from reading any more historical romances. Maybe a good thriller would be in order. Or better yet, a good non-fiction self-help book.
Are there any books that can help you unfuck your life?
I definitely need to go back to therapy after this.
“You look like you’re having a whole conversation in your head that’s really interesting. What’s going on, Janie, talk to me.” Mom turns the dial on the stovetop then pulls out a chair to sit at the table alongside me. “Come on, what happened? Is it your job? A man?”
I shake my head and stab Mr. Pancake in the face with my fork. Then I slice across his forehead and stuff him in my mouth.
My mother gasps.
It’s loud and dramatic, and my first thought is that something awful has happened I’m not aware of yet. “What? What happened?” I croak through a mouthful of food.
She has her hand against her breasts and her face is flush with excitement. “Are you pregnant? Am I going to be a grandmother?”
“What? No!” I say, clanking my fork against my dish. I wrap the comforter around myself tighter, wishing I could disappear into it.
“Why?” Her face reddens as she grips my arm. “Would that be such an awful thing? Giving me a grandchild?”
Not now, please not now. Not this conversation again.
I grit my teeth, shut my eyes, and shake my head. “Okay, stop. Just stop.”
“Go on, then. Tell me what’s going on.”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know what’s going on.”
“Of course I do, silly. I’m your mother. I want to know about everything that goes on in your life.”
Not this time you don’t. “I’m fine, Mom. Really.”
“Is it that you think you can’t talk to me? That I wouldn’t understand? Maybe you think I’m too old, maybe I don’t remember what’s it like to be young and single.” She’s relentless.
“Fine.” What’s one more stab of humiliation in my chest? “You really want to know? Okay. I met the man of my dreams about two months ago. At a baseball game. A gorgeous, perfect total stranger and we got paired together on the Kiss Cam.” My mother’s expression softens, her eyes water with joy. And now I’m about to cut that shit dead. “Oh yeah, it was literal love at first sight. For me, anyway.”
Her expression pales. “What happened?”
“I couldn’t find him after the crowd went wild.”
“Did you ever get to see him again after that? This story is like a Hallmark Channel movie.” Her hand is at her chest again, fisting the top of her apron.
“Yes! I did!” I say, jumping up and pounding my fists in the air. “Unfortunately, though, the next time I saw him, he’s working in the art department at my magazine and he’s DATING MY BEST FRIEND!” The neighbor’s dog starts barking next door.
“Neither of us says anything to Julia, because Nate, that’s his name, Nate and I decided it’s better not to say anything.” I lower my voice and the dog stops yapping at me.
“Nate? What the hell kind of a name is that?”
“Mom, please. It’s short for Nathaniel.”
“Oh, that’s a very old-fashioned name,” she says. “I think it’s Hebrew.”
“Ooookay,” I say impatiently. “Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?”
“Yes, yes. I’ll stay quiet.” She’s precisely where I get my compulsive lying gene from.
“So, we all work together and I see them together every day.”
“Oh, honey that’s so hard,” she cuts in, proving my whole compulsive lying theory to be correct. “Did you—”
I wave my hands in the air to get her to stop. “Listen, just listen because this is my life and it gets even more twisted.” I rub my hands down my face, and now somehow there’s sticky syrup in my hair. “They’re together, right? But he sometimes says and does these things that are very flirty with me. Like he has feelings for me but just doesn’t want to hurt Julia with them.”
My mother sits with her lips sucked into her mouth and expectant eyes.
“I’ve been trying to get over him and I can’t shake it, Mom. Last night I went to the magazine’s masquerade party and I got tipsy and ended up fooling around with someone who I thought was someone else and Nate saw it.” I sigh loudly and tuck my hair behind my ears.
“Everyone saw it, actually, and then I ran home and waited for Julia or Nate to call or come over worried about me, but all that happened was a ton of noisy sex from the both of them on the other side of our shared wall.” I look up at her and I feel the hot stab of tears welling at the corner of my eyes. I blink them away. “It felt like they wanted me to hear them.”
“Oh, Janie. Something like that happened to me as well.” Her tone was soft and proper, but hinted of secrets and layers of unknown tales.
“What?” I don’t believe her for a second, but…
“Oh yes, Janie.” She nods her head, gravely. “Before I met your father, I had the biggest crush on my own sister’s boyfriend.” Her hand is over the top of her apron again, patting what I could only guess is her broken heart. “It was heartbreaking, Janie. I couldn’t get over him. We once made love in a drunken frenzy the night of my twenty-first birthday celebration. Oh God, I was infatuated with him.”
I sit back down and slide to the edge of the seat. “So, what happened? Did you tell Aunt Lauren and she broke up with him? Did you have a fight?”
“Oh no, nothing like that,” she chuckles.
“So what happened?”
“Well…Aunt Lauren married him two months later, you know they had to because Aunt Lauren was pregnant with Sofia, and then I met your father.”
“Ew, Uncle Mike?”
“Umm,” she murmurs, smiling down at the floor. “And just like your Nate, Uncle Mike caught me and your dad too, in a movie theater.”
“What do you mean? Did Uncle Mike look jealous that you and dad were on a date at the movies? Did he say anything? Does Aunt Lauren know any of this?”
Her cheeks flame. “No, he caught me on your father’s lap with my pants down.”
“EW! Why would you tell me that?”
She laughs.
“That’s not funny. How did you finally get over Uncle Mike? And does Aunt Lauren know any of this?”
“Aunt Lauren never found out. God, she’d kill me.” She covers her mouth and her face blushes redder than it was before. “And I got over Mike with time, but it helped a lot that your father was, well…more well-endowed than Uncle Mike ever wishes he was.”
Are You There, Karma? It’s Me, Jane.: A laugh out loud romantic comedy Page 7