by Sara Ney
“That cat is Satan,” Nan murmurs, interrupting me, and I’m not sure if I’m hearing her quite right.
“Sorry?”
“I said—that cat is a menace. I can’t believe the little terror let me pick it up.” Nana searches the room, locates the cat on the dais, and glares. “I bought her that creature, and look how the little son of a bitch repays me.”
Holy shit.
Whoa—I’ve never heard a grandma cursing this way, let alone one who looks like Grandma Margolis. Nana? Nan? Whatever her name is, she’s one classy broad, and I can’t believe she just called the damn cat a son of a bitch.
I laugh. “That’s putting it mildly. I thought it was going to scratch my balls off the first time I was here.”
“Oh? And when was this?” She’s casual, nonchalant in a way that screams, Give me all the details and don’t leave anything out.
“Last weekend, we bumped into each other for the first time in the hallway, and she had all this food so I weaseled my way into an invitation to eat most of it.” I give Nan the side-eye.
Abbott’s grandma nods and hums, not taking her eyes off the floral arrangement. “Then what?”
“Then…um…” I rack my brain for some details. “Then this morning she texted me to ask if I could come check on the, uh—Pussy of Terror, and I wasn’t busy so here I am.”
There. I said it. I threw down the P word to get a reaction from Nan, and now I wait to see how she responds.
A smile tips the corners of her maroon-lined mouth, and another chuckle escapes her lips. “I like that. Very clever.”
Clever? More like vulgar, but whatever—I’m not going to argue with the matriarch of a powerful American family. I’m a moron sometimes, but I’m not a complete idiot.
“So, you’re here delivering flowers…?”
Nan places the last one, stepping back to survey her work. “I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d stop by.”
“And you have a key.”
“That little detail can stay between you and me, can’t it?”
“Nan! You sneak! Are you telling me Abbott doesn’t know you sneak in here?”
Nan shrugs. “She must know—how do you think she supposes flowers just appear?” She fluffs the arrangement. “Elves? Please, don’t be foolish.”
“How often do you pop in like this?”
Now she turns to face me. Narrows a set of brilliantly blue eyes. “Are you suggesting I pop in unannounced when I’m not welcome?”
“What? No!” I mean, kind of, yeah. “What if she’s—you know…getting busy and you walk in?”
Nan scoffs, hefting the full vase off the hutch. “My granddaughter does not get busy.”
“How do you know?”
“Please—I would know.” Her tone is offended as she pads across the room in heels, setting the flowers in the center of the small dining room table. “Besides, if she were getting busy, she wouldn’t need all those toys in her bedside table, would she?”
Did she just say Abbott has toys in her bedside table?
Like—as in, sex toys? Vibrators and dildos and shit? There is no way her grandmother would just let that fun fact slip, and she should definitely stop using terminology like ‘getting busy’ before my brain explodes from this entire conversation. It’s too much to hear the words coming from this woman’s mouth. But then…the rest of what she just divulged clicks in my brain. I stare, mouth gaping.
“Who do you think bought them?” She fluffs her coiffure, plopping down on one end of the sofa and crossing her legs. “I’m not just a regular nan. I’m a cool nan.”
Okay, now my jaw is dropping. She bought her granddaughter sex toys? What the hell kind of grandma is this?
Eyes stray down the hall, toward the bedroom… I want to know what’s in that bedside table.
“Sit,” she demands, pointing to the opposite end of the couch. “Let’s talk.”
Let’s not. Nan isn’t the boss of me. I do what I want.
“Sit,” she repeats.
I sit.
“So. Brooks.” Her fingers entwine, resting on her knees. “You live across the hall?”
“Yup, directly across—Abbott has the better view.” Ha ha.
Nan’s smile is slow. “Indeed.”
Um…
“What is it you do?” Her features are sharp and directed straight at me. “Please don’t tell me you’re a travel blogger, or in finance.”
My posture straightens. “I’m an architect.”
“Ah!” She’s delighted. “Residential or industrial or…”
“Mostly hotels, resorts. High-rise apartments. Some neighborhoods.” Why do I feel like I’m being interviewed?
“Any pets?”
“No.”
“How do you feel about cats?”
We both look at Desi. “They’re tolerable.” At best.
“Are you seeing anyone?”
This makes me laugh, and before I can stop it, a loud one bursts out of me. “Uh—no.”
“What’s so funny about that?”
“Um…nothing?”
Nan sinks lower into the cushions of Abbott’s couch, taking me in. “Ah, I see. You’re one of those confirmed bachelors who has no intention of settling down.” She plucks an imaginary piece of lint from her expensive suit jacket. “Well.” She waves her manicured hand around dismissively, diamond ring sparkling, bracelets jingling. “No matter.”
No matter? What does that even mean?
Nan is a piece of work.
“I don’t want a girlfriend.” Been there, done that.
“No one really does, darling.” Nan smiles, but she’s patronizing me. “You young people and your ambitions. So admirable.”
Don’t get your hopes up, lady. I’m not a piece of meat dropped onto a plate for your precious granddaughter.
“I don’t want a girlfriend.” I cannot stress it enough. And, technically, I can’t have one. So even if I met someone right now, I couldn’t do it—I’d lose my inheritance. Er, Jags seats.
I change the subject. “What does Nan stand for?”
She stares at me like I have half a brain. “Nana. Grandma. Granny.” She’s listing off all the synonyms for grandmother, and a slow heat creeps up my neck, to my cheeks, because I should have known better than to ask. Now she must think I’m a fucking idiot. “Gram-Gram. Nanna Banana.”
Alright, alright. I get the point.
“When Abbott and her twin brother—did you know she’s a twin? Anyway, when they were toddlers, Abbott refused to call me Grandma. For whatever reason, she couldn’t say it. Glamma was also a big no, no matter how hard I tried to make that happen. So we came up with Nan.”
Nan is definitely a badass Glamma, that’s for damn sure.
The loud knock on my apartment door has me listening for another, the water from the sink in my bathroom almost drowning the sound out.
I cut the water and strain.
Another knock.
Wiping the toothpaste off my face with the back of my sleeve, I weave through the apartment and yank the door open without looking through the peephole to see who’s on the other side.
Abbott stands there, wearing the same pink yoga pants she had on this weekend, bottle of wine in one hand, glass in the other.
Whoa. I didn’t realize she was a lush.
I move so she can scoot through.
“So, this is where you live?” She strolls inside like the Queen of Sheba, head craning this way and that, giving all my dumb shit a once-over.
I bow with a dramatic flair. “Do come in.”
She ignores my over-the-top gesture, still glancing around. “What are you up to?”
“Watching the game.” Brushing my teeth, getting ready for bed, snacking, scratching my balls—the usual.
“We should go to one.” Her comment is offhanded as she fingers a vintage baseball, signed by the championship-winning ’82 Jags.
“We should?”
“Yeah. I love watchi
ng baseball, especially at the ballpark. Don’t you?”
“Sign me up. I love the Jags stadium.”
I fail to reveal I have season tickets. I fail to mention the Bastard Bachelor Society bet, in which my season tickets are bounty, up for grabs. I fail to mention that my tickets are pretty decent seats, considering my humble roots.
“My company has a box suite I can probably get permission to use.”
Never in my life have I been invited to watch a baseball game from one of those fancy, company-owned suites you always see on TV when the games are being televised, and I’m not stupid enough to pooh-pooh Abbott’s offer to sit in one despite owning my own seats. Just once in my life, I want to know what it’s like to be in one of those sky boxes, from the vantage point where I can see everything inside the stadium. All the action. Each and every play.
“The kind of suite with food?”
“Yes, there’s always food.”
“Is it free?” What can I say? I’m cheap and love a handout.
“Yes.” She laughs. “I mean, the company has to pay for it, but yes, it’s free.” She makes air quotes around the word free and pads to my kitchen with bare feet. Sets her bottle of wine on the counter and pops open the fridge, digging around, finally settling on a container of cottage cheese (so random) that’s probably expired and a half-eaten jar of peaches—also probably expired. “You don’t have shit for food in here.”
“I know. That’s why I need your free food. Also, be careful—you’ll most likely get salmonella from what you’re about to eat. This is your fair warning in case you get it in your head to sue me for food poisoning.”
“Har har.” Abbott moves to the living room, makes herself at home on the couch, even going as far as covering herself with one of the few throw blankets I have lying around.
“Make yourself at home.”
“Aw, thanks.” My remote control is in her hand and she’s pointing it at the television, about to change the station. What the hell!
“When I said make yourself at home, I didn’t say change the damn station.” In three strides, I’m taking the remote back, burying it beneath a couch cushion like a squirrel stashing a nut; I’ll probably regret the move later when I have no fucking idea where it disappeared to, but for now, it works. “How was dinner?”
“Long and boring.” She yawns and stretches, the motion pulling the fabric of her top taut across her breasts. “You know how those things go—everyone older talks over you, and everyone else just pretends to know what the hell they’re talking about. That whole fake it till you make it bullshit the company is filled with.” She stretches again, arms lifted above her head.
Avert your eyes, asshole.
“So I’m stuck in between these blowhards—one called me Kid four times—and the other…” She shrugs, peeling back the foil top of the cottage cheese, then licks her fingers. “The other one kept elbowing me in the boob.”
I eye up her boobs.
“Stop looking!” The blanket gets pulled up further, a shield against my suddenly perverted eyes. Guess nothing is safe when you haven’t had sex in ages. “Jesus, this is my safe place.”
Her safe place? I don’t even know what that means. “What the heck does that mean?”
“It means I came over here because I wanted company and I know I don’t have to worry about you hitting on me because we’re just friends.”
Well fuck.
Friend-zoned?
I already decided to friend-zone her—where does she get the audacity to friend-zone me? Doesn’t she realize the pecking order here? It starts with me. Me, at the top, hen-pecking away and deciding who gets what.
I do the zoning in my relationships. Me.
Not her.
I open my mouth to argue but am immediately silenced because a spoon is jammed into my mouth, laden with cottage cheese and peaches, and I sputter, caught off guard.
“Taste this—isn’t it good?” I have no choice but to chew and swallow, choking down the combination of mealy and fruity with a grimace on my face.
“What the fuck, Abbott? Warn a guy before you jam something down his throat.”
“Why? Guys never warn you before they try jamming their business all the way down your throat during a blow job.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa—holy fuck now. What?
Abbott doesn’t see my shocked expression because her gaze is fixated on the game that’s playing on television. First she friend-zones me, and now she’s casually bringing up blowies after ramming food into my gullet?
Who is this chick?
Her cute little feet go up on my coffee table, the fuzzy slippers she just slid on winking at me.
She wiggles her toes.
“So what about you—why are you still home?” Her question is half-assed, arbitrary, just making conversation. “Don’t you ever go out?”
When I don’t respond, she glances at me across the silence.
“Of course I do. Don’t you?”
“I went out tonight.”
“Yeah, with work people. I bet the average age was 35 to 40, and don’t lie and say it wasn’t.”
“Fine. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t. Besides, I already told you everyone there was way older. But it still counts because I went out and I didn’t want to.”
“So that doesn’t count.”
“How does that not count as going out? It was a bar! We had drinks! I am half-baked!” She holds up the cottage cheese, giving the container a little shake, as if her bad choice in snacks has anything to do with her sobriety. She lowers it. “Why is it such a big deal that I like staying home? I have all my crap here.” She spreads her arms wide to emphasize her point.
“This is my apartment,” I remind her.
“Mi casa es su casa.”
“My house is not your house.”
“Mi stuff es su stuff.”
“Knock it off—my stuff isn’t your stuff, either.”
“Eh.” She readjusts her feet. “We’re franz now. This is how we roll.”
“This is not how we roll. Leave my shit alone.” Now I’m irritated. “Take your feet off the coffee table, and stop saying we’re friends.”
“I’m wearing slippers. Stop being weird.”
“You can’t take my shit, and you can get your feet off my table. Have some manners.”
She pulls her feet off the furniture. “Why are you being such a baby all of a sudden?” Her food gets set on the table and she turns to face me on the couch with a pouty huff. “You don’t have any shit I want anyway. It’s all boring guy junk.”
“Good.” Jeez, if this chick makes me roll my eyes any more than I already have, my eyes are going to get stuck upside down in their sockets.
Abbott folds herself up on the couch like a pretzel, holding her knees, snuggling under the blanket. “So, what about you?”
“What about me, what?”
“Don’t you, I don’t know, date and stuff?”
The way she says and stuff… “Yes, I date and stuff.”
“Oh.” She fidgets with the ends of the blanket, pulling at the strings one by one, rubbing the soft fleece between her forefinger and thumb. “When’s the last date you were on?”
“I don’t remember.”
“If Brooks Benny was going on a date, where would he take her?” She shortens my last name from Bennett to Benny and it’s kind of cute. Kind of.
“Just for drinks. Nothing fancy.”
“Why?”
“Because if it doesn’t work out, I haven’t blown a wad of cash on dinner. That’s guy code.”
“That’s…terrible. If I’m going out with someone, I want them to make an effort.”
“Yeah, well—we’re probably not running with the same caliber of people.”
She pulls back, confused. “What does that mean?”
“We pull from a different pool of people.” I reword the sentence, as if the point I was trying to make was obvious.
“I still don’t get it.”
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I sigh, hating that I have to be blunt. “Abbott, I googled you—I know who you are and where you come from, and I know you don’t just hop on a dating app to find a date. You probably date trust fund babies and hedge fund managers, not someone you’ve swiped right on.”
Her pretty face contorts. “First of all, stop judging me. I hate when people do that—you know nothing about me. Second of all, those are the furthest thing from my type. Gross.”
“So what is your type?”
“I don’t really have one. All I can say is I usually meet people the old-fashioned way, at a coffee shop or whatever.”
“When’s the last time someone took you out for dinner and not just for drinks?”
She studies her fingernails. Tonight, they’re a metallic gold. Flashy and so unlike her. One delicate shoulder lifts and falls. “Three months ago?”
“Say that louder. I thought you just said three months ago.”
“I did.” Her eyes are glittery daggers. “So what if it’s been a while? I’ve been busy.” She graces me with a quick once-over. “What makes you the damn expert on dating? You’re not even seeing anyone.”
“Let’s just say I haven’t had any complaints, even if I’ve only had one- or two-night stands in the past few months.” To take the edge off. Meaningless sex with women who meant nothing to me. Women I slept with hoping I’d feel something.
“Um…”
“I know what women want,” I pronounce arrogantly, because let’s face it—I know what women want.
Abbott laughs, falling back against my couch, the loud cackling sound coming from her throat an insult to my ego. God she’s being such an asshole.
“What’s so damn funny?”
“You. Did you just say I know what women want?” Her voice lowers as she mimics my masculine voice. “Like, did those words actually come out of your mouth?”
“Stop making fun of me. I have a proven track record.”
“Oh, you have a proven track record!” She finds this so amusing she has not stopped laughing at my expense. “Is that a fact? How so?”
“The last two women I had drinks with wanted to marry me, so…yeahhh.”
Abbott reaches behind her and lobs a pillow in my direction. It misses my head, but only by a fraction of an inch.