by Robin Leaf
And I need to be nicer to her. She’s giving up her day to help me.
Making sure my towel is securely wrapped around my waist, I open the door to my bathroom and peek out. I can’t see her, but the floor is can free and my bed is stripped. She’s washing my sheets? Holy shit.
I move toward the dresser for clothes only to realize that it’s been a while since I’ve done laundry. I have one questionably clean pair of underwear, the brand new pair of expensive jeans I bought for their pre-wedding festivities and ended up leaving at home, and two options for shirts: the ratty Van Halen concert t-shirt from two tours ago or the Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo shirt Kaelyn sent me from New Orleans because she said it reminded her of me. Van Halen t-shirt it is, despite the unraveling hem and the hole under the arm.
I exit my room to hear whispers coming from my kitchen. Upon investigation, I see I have yet another unwanted guest.
“Please don’t be mad,” Emily rushes out when she notices me, “but I called in reinforcements.”
Vanessa, Emily’s formerly pregnant best friend, is standing next to her, leaning up against the counter, with a cup of coffee pulled to her nose, just sniffing it. She looks a bit tired and kinda frazzled, but I imagine with two new babies, life is not exactly relaxing.
“Hello, Vanessa.” I point to her flattened stomach. “I guess congratulations are in order.”
She keeps the cup to her nose, inhaling deeply. “Hi, Doug. Yeah, I expelliarmused the angelic little spawn almost two months ago.” Leaning toward Emily, she lowers her voice. “When you called in code seven, I didn’t know it was going to be for Tater’s Turk.”
I glance at Emily before asking, “Who?”
Vanessa sniffs her coffee again. “Turk and JD? You’re Turk. Tater is JD.” My face still must show my confusion because she adds. “From Scrubs?”
I shake my head and shrug. “No clue.”
She rolls her eyes. “You know how you and Tater are bromantic life partners and all that shit? I was referring to characters from a former TV show you apparently didn’t watch. But whatever. You get the gist. Anyway, when Em called me, I thought she meant we were going to cheer up one of her female work besties after a bad break up with a couple of tubs of the good ice cream, a little boy bashing, and maybe a few eighties movies.”
“I don’t see why that won’t work in this situation, maybe minus the boy bashing,” Emily says, smiling at me.
“That sounds like a real treat,” I groan, rolling my eyes, “but flag on the play, ladies.” I fold my arms over my chest. I hate lying about this, but maybe if I do, they’ll go away. “I’m lactose intolerant.”
“Oh please,” Vanessa scoffs, “like that’ll stop us. We’ll just get you your own tub of that nasty ass, soy-dairy-free crap.”
Emily spits out a laugh and straightens quickly. “You know, they make ice cream with either almond or coconut milk now, which I imagine can’t be too terrible.”
Vanessa lights up. “Or I can teach him the finer points of eating cookie dough straight from the tube.” She sighs. “God, how I’ve missed you, Pillsbury.”
I smile, despite my cringe at the thought. “Thanks for the try, ladies, but I’ll pass. I think it’s gonna take more than a couple buckets of ice cream and some old movies to fix my mess.”
“We’re not trying to fix anything, Dugger,” Emily playfully whines. “We just want to give you a little bright spot.”
“Yeah. We’re here to pull you out of your funk,” Vanessa adds, yawning and setting her full mug down. “Offer you a little empowerment. Then maybe you will see that your mess isn’t quite as messy as you thought it was.”
I point to her mug. “Why did you pour a cup if you’re not gonna drink it?”
“I’m breastfeeding. There’s a strict ‘no caffeine’ policy by that fucking La Leche cult Riley makes me follow.”
Emily squints at her friend. “You don’t even drink coffee, Ness.”
“No, but Dr Pepper doesn’t have as satisfying of a smell, and if I had some of that delicious nectar of the gods, I wouldn’t resist drinking it. And this no-caffeine thing is a rule I will follow. Please don’t get me wrong, I love them more than I do anything in the world, but those demonic night-owled little leeches don’t need any stimulants to help them wake me up in the middle of the night any more than they already do.”
“C’mon, Ness. Stop referring to my adorable and perfect godchildren as demons, and I know Riley is willing to get up with those babies, too.”
“Yeah, but since I’m the grub hub, it’s not like we can exactly take turns feeding them. I mean what’s he gonna do? Hold my boobs in their mouths?”
Great, with mom-zilla here, I have a feeling this evening is going to be worse than I earlier imagined it would be.
Emily turns to me. “Okay, so since you’re not down with the code-seven night, what would you do if you needed to cheer up a buddy?”
I scratch my chin. “I don’t know, take him to a bar or a strip joint? Buy him a lap dance?”
Vanessa shakes off her tired expression and her eyes light up.
“Oooh, can we?” she asks, turning to Emily, clasping her hands in front of her, and bouncing on her toes.
“No,” Emily barks at her. “This night is about Dugger, and –”
“Okay, but remember you fucking denied me the opportunity to go for your bachelorette party,” Vanessa pouts. “You promised to take me after the babies were born.” She pats her stomach. “Guess what? Babies born. I have the night free.” She grabs Emily’s shirt and balls it in her fists. “Just fucking take me!”
“Jeez, crazy,” Emily chuckles, prying Vanessa’s hands away. “Are you sure you just don’t need a nap?”
“Please, Emily. I just want a night out like we used to have.”
“We rarely ever went out. And we’ve certainly never been to a strip club.”
“Ugh,” Vanessa grunts, pulling at the ends of her hair. “Look, I’ve spent the last seven weeks with two tiny humans attached to me like little hungry, hungry hippos. My nipples are sore. I’m tired, and I can’t even drink any caffeine. All I’m asking for is a few hours to say fuck this motherhood shit and go blow off some steam.” She pulls the hem of her shirt up to her waist. “This is the first time in almost a year that I’m able to wear regular jeans without one of those stupid panels in the front of them. I was able to button these bad boys, so I just want to celebrate my little victory and feel normal again.” She roughly pulls down her shirt. “Is that too much to fucking ask?”
Emily smooths her hand over Vanessa’s head. “Tonight’s not about you, Ness,” she soothes, jerking her head toward me.
Vanessa throws a glance my direction and has the decency to look ashamed. “You’re right. Sorry, Dugger.”
I watch her deflate in front of my eyes. It makes me feel for the girl. Damn, she looks so pathetic. I guess I can tap into the usual Dugger for one night, the Dugger who would do anything to help a friend, and give this girl what she needs. Who knows? Maybe helping her is exactly what I need.
Plus, if we go out, they’ll stay out of my business. Win-win.
“What the hell. Vanessa, let’s do it.”
She jumps, squealing and clapping, almost making me regret agreeing to this insane idea.
“Yay,” she says, walking to the counter and lifting a black bag. “But first, I gotta go pump.” She runs into my room, grabbing the door handle. “I’ll be like fifteen minutes. Then we can go make it rain on them bitches in the club.”
She slams the door closed, and I turn to Emily.
“She’s gotta what?”
She giggles. “She’s gonna use her breast pump.”
I bring my hands to my nipples. “That doesn’t sound too pleasant.”
“Yeah. I’ve watched her do it.” She shudders. “I can’t un-see that shit. But it’s better than her springing a leak while we’re out.” She chuckles. “Can’t un-see that, either.”
Two
> Dugger
“You’ve been in love with Kaelyn since she was seventeen?” Emily yells, almost louder than the music. The colored lights swirl over her face, causing me to shake off the fucked up, fuzzy memory of that one time I went to a rave. Yeah, the only time I ever did anything harder than alcohol was not pleasant.
“Jeez, Em, I don’t think they heard you at the next table,” I grumble, pulling a sip from my straw.
Vanessa lets out several whoops at the guys on stage. We’ve only seen the back of her head while she sits the opposite direction on her stool and watches the show.
“When do I get to shove money in their underwear?” Vanessa asks, turning to take a sip from her fruity drink.
Emily leans toward me, ignoring her friend’s question. “Man, Dugger, that’s gotta be hard.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?” Vanessa slurs before turning back around to see the on-stage firefighter drop his suspenders. She lets out a little screech.
I have to suppress my smile. Emily asked me to not tell Vanessa I ordered her a virgin piña colada. Vanessa wanted the full male-strip-club experience. She insisted that one drink wouldn’t hurt, touting some shit about a “pump and dump,” which probably has a way different connotation than how I interpreted it. Emily didn’t argue with Vanessa; she just quietly begged me to provide the safe option, telling me to please watch the bartender to make sure they didn’t accidentally add alcohol, because she didn’t want Vanessa to get her god babies drunk. I decided to take a break from the alcohol and ask for all virgin drinks.
I shrug, even though she doesn’t see it. “Because Tater would have flipped his shit. Hell, he flipped it when I admitted my feelings to him when she was twenty-two.”
“Yeah, but you still didn’t admit it to her,” Vanessa says over her shoulder. “Why did you tell Tater first?” She lets out another drawn out “woo” at the stage.
I roll my tongue in my mouth. This is getting a little uncomfortable for me. Either she doesn’t understand guy code, or she is on to something I haven’t ever admitted to anyone, not even to me.
“Because he’s like a brother to me. We’ve been best friends since I was seven years old.”
“Yeah! Take it off, baby!” Vanessa yells at the firefighter before leaning over her shoulder and lowering her voice. “But earlier, you called her the love of your life. If that’s true, why would Tater’s opinion matter?”
I look to Emily for help, but she is studying the contents of her glass rather intently.
The faux firefighter has finished his song, but he’s standing on stage, milking all the enthusiastic cheering for his performance. Vanessa stands from her stool, letting out a wolf whistle that would make a construction worker proud.
Once he exits the stage, she turns to our table and takes another sip, adding, “Knowing Tater like I do, he wouldn’t be mad at you for very long no matter the outcome in the scenario. He knows you’d never intentionally hurt KaeKae, so I question why you say he flipped. And why did you tell him first?”
“I don’t understand where you’re going with this, Vanessa.”
Another song with a driving bass beat begins, and she turns back to the stage, taking a long pull on her straw. “I’m trying to get to the root of your depression.”
Shaking my head, I roll my eyes. “I’m not depressed.”
“Dugger,” she sings, turning toward me, apparently unimpressed by the faux doctor on stage. “According to Emily, you’re calling in to work, blowing off your friends, given up several of the things you love to do, gained weight, sleep all the time, and are self-medicating with alcohol.”
The look I give Emily has her quickly looking away. If she could, she’d escape.
Instead of showing any of the anger I feel welling to the surface, I force a smile, like her suggestions are totally ridiculous. I’ve become really fucking good at forcing smiles and making them seem genuine. Comes from a lifetime of perfecting the skill.
“Nope. I just needed a vacation.”
“Then go to Fiji.” She waves her finger at me. “Vacationers don’t drink themselves into oblivion. I bet if we didn’t come by, you’d crawl so deep in your hole, you’d be unable to dig yourself out of it.”
I feel the a quick surge of anger blast through me, but I’m able to shake it off. Emily notices something’s wrong because she leans toward me.
“I’m sorry, Dugger,” she whispers. “Usually, she’s more subtle than this.”
I smile and wave her off like I’m totally fine.
Vanessa turns back to watch the stage. “Alright. You want subtle.” Stirring her drink, she adds, “I can do subtle.” She takes a sip. “It just seems that if Kaelyn really is the love of your life, which is a pretty fucking strongly worded statement, especially since you two never even dated, you’d be willing to risk your relationship with Tater and have the balls to admit your feelings to her. Instead, you waited.” She turns around with her drink in hand, raising her eyebrow at me. “I find that interesting.”
This is subtle?
Her focus returns to the stage.
Before I can stop it from flying out of my mouth, I stupidly ask, “Why?”
She glances at me over her shoulder. “Well, is it possible you were counting on him to say no?”
I push off the table and sit up straight, garnering her full attention, before I take a deep breath and relax back onto the table.
“I wasn’t asking his permission. I was informing my best friend of my feelings for his sister,” I say, trying to add some breeziness to my voice, “something any guy with a speck of decency would do. He told me it was shitty timing because it was right around the time of Kaelyn’s picture scandal,” I shrug, “so I shelved my feelings.”
She casually turns back to the stage, taking a long pull on her straw. “That was very noble of you.”
For some reason, this feels like a dismissal, and it kind of pisses me off that she doesn’t just come out and say what she’s really thinking. I get the feeling that she thinks she knows more than I’ve told her. I decide to needle her for more information.
“Yeah, but it was when Tater called me and asked me to take her to the wedding, I thought he was telling me the timing was right, like he was giving me permission to tell Kaelyn how I feel.”
“But you didn’t tell her how you feel, at least not right away. You let her use you to get back at another man. In fact, you waited to tell her until you knew for sure there was absolutely no hope for your relationship.”
I blink, absorbing what she says. Before I realize I’m doing it, I shake my head. “No, that’s not how it went down.”
“Bullshit, Dugger,” she hisses and turns on her stool to fully face me. “You waited until you knew she had fallen for Brody, and I bet you had a pretty strong confirmation that he had feelings for her, too. Plus, when she kissed you, which, by the way, you said you asked her not to do, instead of pushing her away, you kissed her back pretty passionately. I know. I saw it. It was like watching a soft-core train wreck.” She winks at me. “It was a really fucking hot kiss.” She stirs the remnants in the bottom of her glass. “But it makes me wonder… why did you make the choice to admit how you felt at that particular moment?”
I blink again. Dazed. It takes me a minute to get my heart started again. I make the conscious decision to… what do psychologists call it? Deflect, yeah that’s it.
“I mean,” she continues before I can say anything deflecting, “were you really in love with Kaelyn, or did you just want what you knew you couldn’t have because it was safer that way?”
Wait a minute. This feels familiar, like more than friendly banter. I decide to ask.
“Why does it feel like I’m getting my head shrinked?”
She turns to look at the stage over her shoulder. “Well, maybe because I am a psychologist. I mean, I broke all kinds of rules tonight because you’re not a patient, but… yeah.” She throws her hands out to the sides and shakes them. “Ta-da.”
/>
I look to Emily. “What the fuck, Em? You brought a psychologist to your code-seven girls’ night?”
“I didn’t know she was gonna do this,” Emily hisses.
I know for a fact Emily has the power to shut Vanessa down. She chooses not to, which means she thinks this is shit I need to hear. Fuck. Where’s the button for the ejector seats?
I can’t let them know how much this is affecting me.
Vanessa leans over the table toward me. “Here’s how I see it, Dugger. You can blame it on Kaelyn all you want, but I think there’s more to your blue-funk mood than one little rejection. I think Kaelyn is a good fall guy for whatever it is that’s really bugging you, but there’s definitely more beneath the surface. I’m sensing some serious repression, displacement, and denial going on, probably family related, rooted deep in your childhood. However, could it stem from a repressed sexual desire for your best friend? And since his recent marriage to my bestie, it forces you out of the equation.”
“Vanessa Lynn Taylor,” Emily scolds, slapping the table. “What in the actual fuck?”
Yeah, Emily picks now, when Vanessa is finally wrong, to say something. Nice.
I chuckle. “No. That’s not it.”
Vanessa reaches in her pocket and pulls out a bill. “Yeah, that might have been a stretch, but repressed sexuality is a pretty big thing a lot of the time.” Her brows furrow as she studies me. “For the record, I’m not actually sensing any repressed homosexual vibes from you, I just threw it out there seeing if it would stick.”
I smile. “I wasn’t worried that you were.”
“I mean, you did readily agree to bring your two married friends to a male strip club without balking about it like most men would, but that just says a lot about your character. You probably thought it was an excuse to avoid,” she jumps off her stool and moves her hand back and forth between us, “this. So, without much else to go on, I took a shot.”
She walks two tables to our right and casually tucks the dollar in the shiny silver underwear of the dude who’s performing a lap dance at the table of mostly rowdy women; one of the women looks like she feels as uncomfortably out of place as I do. I send her a mental high five.