Strip for Me

by Coffman, Georgia

  The girl on the phone just now didn’t even sound like my Kendall, my feisty, confident Kendall. The girl I knew who fought passionately.

  She sounded off. Defeated. Like a lightbulb that gives out, no more electricity running through it. I could hear it in her voice, the way it whispered with fear.

  How badly I want to take away her fear and give her light once again.

  “It was only good sex.”

  Her words rip me apart, and I have a hard time believing them. She always seemed to have fun even when we weren’t in bed, with our laughs and conversations.

  I refuse to believe she meant it. That it’s over.

  I refuse to believe I misjudged the situation once again.

  I’m going to keep my promise and call her tomorrow. The wounds are too fresh right now from the hectic weekend. A good night’s sleep for both of us will provide the clarity for her to see this isn’t over.

  It can’t be.

  Chapter 47

  Kendall

  My phone buzzing on the nightstand wakes me out of my stupor. I lift my head from where my face is planted in the pillow. At first, all I can think about is my headache from drinking and not going to sleep until after five o’clock.

  The ache reaches every part of my body.

  The buzzing persists, like Lauren’s screeching when she gets her Mary Kay products in the mail.

  Lauren.

  Emma.

  Sebastian.

  All the people I’ve disappointed in my life, not to mention my parents. The worst of the worst disappointments. Is there a Guinness World Record for the number of disappointments you can achieve? I need that award. It’d be the only award I’m capable of.

  Emma’s words attacking my immaturity surround me like my comforter. It’s a hundred degrees in here, and this blanket is suffocating me.

  I kick it off just in time for my phone to ring again. I snap it off the nightstand and sit up. “What?” I growl with more rage than I did when Dr. Shepherd was killed off Grey’s Anatomy, my reaction to that about as bad as when I purposely cracked my ex’s windshield.

  “I was engaged before.”

  I rub my eyes at the familiar low voice on the other end of the line. The one I still imagine humming against my inner thighs. The sound and subsequent feelings haunted me all night. “I got that, Sebastian.”

  “I was engaged before, and she left me because I was a stripper, so I overreacted when I thought you were embarrassed by it. Well, that’s not technically the main reason she left—”

  My patience wears thin with every word. “I don’t care why you overreacted, okay? I need you to leave me alone.” I breathe in and out the way I learned in yoga, the whole reason I started it in the first place—to calm my temper.

  He exhales in frustration on the other end. “I wish I was there. I need to explain.”

  “Don’t you get it? There’s nothing to explain or to work out. We were never meant to have more than that one night in Vegas. Never should’ve tried to make it more than that. It’s all been fucked up since then.” I fall back onto my bed with my legs dangling off the edge.

  “Don’t say that. I don’t believe it.”

  “God, Sebastian.” I cover my face with one hand, my anger turning into despair. Despair that he’s trying so hard. I can hear the sincerity in his voice. He believes in us, but we were doomed from the beginning, from the first night we shared.

  I rummage through the drawers of my nightstand, sure that I have half a pack of cigarettes in here somewhere. “I’m a small-town girl, you know? I know I try to tell others differently, but I am,” I say, defeated, embracing my past as my fate with every word. “I’m a small-town girl. I don’t date Vegas strippers. Guys who make a living out of undressing and teasing women. Who live this crazy fucking lifestyle touring the country, appearing in women’s calendars, in their fucking wet dreams. This is all on another level for me, and I can’t do it.”

  “You might be from a small town, but you’re not the small-minded person you think you are, the one you believe your sister to be. You moved to LA. You wouldn’t have done it if you were okay with living the small-town, average life. Don’t give me that bullshit. Tell me what’s really bothering you, why you’re pushing me away.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut, a single tear running down my cheek. I picture him holding my hands as if he were here, pleading with big eyes.

  I find the pack of cigarettes and lighter as he says, “You’re scared. You’re scared of something real in your life, of someone accepting and loving the real you. You haven’t had that, and you’re fucking scared because I’m offering all of that to you.” He exhales and softly speaks. “I know what that’s like. I’ve lived my whole life that way. Give us a chance. Accept us.”

  He had me there—all of it. Everything he’s saying is true. I am scared. Scared of my strong feelings for him, of letting someone really see me because I’ve never felt that I could before. I’m scared he won’t want the real me, the one who got into fights, dropped out of college, and now has no future.

  I’m exactly what everyone says: a failure.

  “You’re right, I am scared,” I say, lighting my cigarette with trembling fingers, then sit at the desk by the window. Emma hates when I smoke in here, and I don’t need to give her another reason to yell at me. “I have a lot to figure out for myself, and that doesn’t involve you. Not right now, and I don’t know if it ever will.”

  Instead of getting defensive per usual, I give up.

  I just give up.

  Then I hang up and wonder if that was the first sign of growth.

  But the ache in my chest suggests it’s still a sign of my immaturity, of being unable to face my insecurities and be honest with him about them. All of them. He’s been nothing but welcoming when I open up to him. He even encourages it.

  Yet I push him away. I find any excuse, real or fake, to push him away.

  Instead of calling him back and apologizing, begging him to take me back like I really want to, I put out my cigarette and curl into a ball on my bed.

  I close my eyes, closing myself off to him and the rest of the world.

  Chapter 48

  Sebastian

  I send my mom’s call to voice mail. It’s the first time she’s called since the wedding, but I don’t have it in me to talk to her.

  Pacing the living room, I eye the hole in the wall and recall punching it after Joelle came to pick up her things.

  I want to punch it again now.

  I tried for almost two weeks to get over losing Kendall. Her smell. Her taste.

  I’ve gone almost a whole month without feeling her skin against mine. Without making love to her. That’s what it always was, even when it was raw and hungry.

  But I convinced myself that she was right—I wasn’t supposed to have her in the first place.

  We weren’t supposed to see each other after we met in Vegas. It was only supposed to be a one-night stand.

  But I pursued her.

  I found and added her on Facebook.

  I’m the one who pushed her to make us an us.

  I did it again. Made myself believe a woman was into me for me, when all the signs suggested otherwise.

  She didn’t even tell her best friend about me other than I was the best she’d ever had.

  That’s it. That’s what she said to her.

  Then she said it to me too, as a reason not to be with me.

  And it fucking broke me.

  I open and close my fists by my sides. The urge to insert a matching hole next to the one already on the wall overwhelms me the more I think about her. Grinding my jaw, I continue pacing, watching the hole as it mocks me, needing to make another one so all the Pinterest fanatics out there will be happy I have a matching set.

  Instead, I clasp my fingers together across the back of my neck while another familiar urge creeps to the surface.

  The urge to drink. A lot.

  Enough to block the image of Kenda
ll’s bare ass sticking out as she bent over for me.

  I’m going to need a shit ton of Jack Daniels.

  Picking up my phone, I call the one person I know will be up for a drinking contest on a Wednesday night.

  “What’s up, bro?” Ty answers on the second ring.

  “Meet me at Pete’s in five.” I hang up and grab my keys off the counter, but my trembling hands drop them. I pick them up, but my phone slips out of my pocket and falls to the floor. Instead of picking it up, I squeeze my eyes closed, jaw clenched, and stomp on it.

  The screen cracks like the pieces of my life.

  The smell of stale leather assaults me as soon as I walk into Pete’s. The step at the door has caused me to stumble a time or two, but it doesn’t fool me this time. No, I step over it with caution, taking extra care to make sure I don’t fall on my face.

  I scan the bar, its familiarity surrounding me. Like Hakaasan and other clubs on the Strip, I haven’t been here in a while.

  Tonight, though… tonight I drink.

  I laugh.

  I forget.

  I relish in the old country music, welcoming me. This is the only time I’m okay with country music. Right now, with this country-style bar that reminds me nothing of Kendall, I’m okay with it.

  I even welcome the small group of sweaty bikers whose whiskey breath I can smell from seven yards away.

  Ty is already sitting at the bar when I enter, not surprising. What is surprising is that he brought Leo too. Not that he doesn’t go out with us sometimes, but he usually needs more than a thirty-second notice. His whole getting ready routine is worse than a college sorority chick’s.

  Leo takes note of my surprise and lifts his beer. “I couldn’t resist.”

  “We were just playing poker and drinking, anyway.” Ty takes a big gulp of his own beer as well.

  I raise an eyebrow at him while I ask the bartender for a Jack and Coke, then take a seat at the barstool, leaving one foot planted on the floor as though I’ll need a quick escape. From the look of the empty bar tonight, I only need to worry about getting drunk and trying to fight the grizzly bikers.

  That and Leo’s furrowed brow. That can’t be good.

  But he doesn’t say anything, simply smiles as Ty shrugs innocently and says, “What? I play poker.”

  I make eye contact with Leo, who smiles down at the counter, obviously knowing what I’m thinking. “Strip poker, maybe, with a group of women while you sit in the middle with a crown on your head.”

  Leo laughs and wipes at the spilled beer on his cheeks. His bright smile is a direct contrast to his black hair. Which is usually slicked back, always straight and slicked back, but tonight, his hair is curly at the ends and hangs down on both sides, no gel or other hair products. Perhaps this is why he needs more notice to hang out in public—because otherwise, he ends up looking like a country lumberjack. Especially with his cutoff plaid shirt.

  Ty nods with a tight-lipped smile before flipping us both off, swiveling in a semicircle on his stool.

  I chuckle down at the counter before taking a large sip. The liquid burns the back of my throat but doesn’t bother me. At this point, it’s medicine. Might as well be Tylenol, Extra Strength.

  But I need several doses to rid myself of these aches.

  My chest is tight, and my head is pounding with images of thrusting into Kendall before holding her tightly through the night.

  But the more I drink, the more numb I become.

  Being here with the guys makes me feel better too. I’m not alone like I was in my apartment.

  I have the boys and whiskey. Whiskey is my buddy too, my cure-all that helps me forget.

  On my fifth drink, I forget about Leo’s concern—I forget about any concerns at all—and start to believe whiskey was actually made for me. That it should’ve been called “Sebskey.”

  “Sebskey?” Ty throws his head back in laughter, and Leo joins him, slapping the bar.

  I turn my lazy gaze toward them, joining in on the fun, not having realized I said that out loud.

  What else did I say?

  We’ve avoided any talk of Kendall, which I appreciate. They know we ended whatever we had, that she pushed me away, even though I technically started it. I started the argument that led to our downfall.

  But right now, I don’t care who started it. I don’t care if her crazy sister started it.

  Now there’s a theory. It was Lauren. Maybe I was talking to Lauren that whole time. It sounds more like something she’d do. She’d definitely only be with me for the sex, because she’s probably never had good sex.

  I laugh into my dwindling drink at the thought.

  “Okay, ‘Sebskey’ wasn’t that funny, dude,” Leo says. I think it’s Leo, anyway. He talks over me while I order another drink, so I don’t quite catch who’s speaking.

  The guys order as well, but there’s no way they’re keeping up with me. Leo even ordered a water—when did he switch to water? Weak.

  I’m the only fucking man around, giving girls the best they’ve ever had.

  With gulp after gulp of whiskey, the thought consumes me.

  The best fuck around.

  Gulp.

  If I have to only be one thing, I’ll take that title.

  Gulp.

  I’m almost to the point of standing on the bar and beating my chest, although I’d probably hit my head first. The ceiling seems low, unless that’s my drunkenness closing in on me, the walls tightening around me like the walls in my chest.

  My head sways, my foot still on the floor, or so I think it is.

  Ty waves his hand in front of my face. “Remember the first time you had whiskey? When you turned nineteen? Fuckwad over here gave it to you.”

  He points at Leo, who flashes another one of his perfect smiles. “I knew he could handle it.”

  “He threw up after two sips.”

  “Now look how far he’s come.”

  I hold my empty glass up. “Look how far I’ve come, indeed. I’m Sebskey, otherwise known as the best fuck around.” I clink my glass to Ty’s beer bottle and hold it up to Leo before taking a sip.

  But the glass is empty, only a few ice cubes refusing to melt. I have the urge to hurl it at the wall. Instead, I clench my jaw, tamping down the anger, and calmly—at least I think it’s calm—ask for another.

  If Ty and Leo are worried about me, they’re not showing it. Instead, Ty snaps his fingers in remembrance. “Speaking of fucking, Leo, when was the last time you, you know”—he wiggles his eyebrows and says sarcastically—“spent a sensual night with a woman?”

  I nudge him and look over at Leo, who’s still smiling but not looking at us. At least one of the Leos in my line of vision isn’t looking—I see two.

  Then Leo smiles mischievously like he stole the cookies out of the cookie jar before dinner.

  Mmm… cookies sound good.

  “Dude!” Ty covers his mouth in shock. “Who is she? And most importantly”—he cups his hands close to his chest in a crude gesture—“does she have big tits?”

  Now Leo drops the smile and cuts his eyes toward Ty the way he does when Ty misses his cue on stage, throwing everyone off. I swear Ty does it on purpose because he likes to see the new guys scramble. He never does it when I’m on stage.

  “Kendall had great tits.” My head bobs back and forth as I speak to no one in particular.

  There’s silence to my right, but the bikers in the corner erupt in laughter, slamming their beers down.

  The sound seems to be in response to what I said since they’re looking right at me. “Hey, mind your own fucking business,” I slur, attempting to get out of my seat and stumbling into Ty.

  He mumbles something to Leo before he grabs me. “Okay, man, I think it’s time to go home.” He waves at the bikers. “Guys, enjoy your evening. Just going to get my friend here into a toilet to throw up now.”

  “I’m not fucking drunk. Don’t treat me like a baby.” I turn my attention back to the
bikers as Ty pulls me over the godforsaken step at the door. This time I trip. If Ty wasn’t holding me, I would’ve chipped several teeth.

  Instead of moving forward, I step back in and point my finger at the small group. “I can kick your ass, you know. May not want to mess with me!”

  The biggest one stands up, spilling his beer on the other one, who gets up with his hands out and yells, “What the fuck!”

  While they clean up their mess, I make my way toward them—the perfect time to jump. But instead of jumping, I’m jerked backward and almost fall on my ass, unable to stand on my own two feet. “Fuck!”

  “We’re getting you home,” Ty says, not looking at me.

  “I’m not going with you. You probably drank more than me.”

  If I weren’t drunk, I’d think Ty’s smile is sad, more like a frown. But that’s not Ty. He doesn’t get sad in front of others. Only twice has he been sad in front of me, both of which were on the anniversary of his sister’s death. I’m functional enough to know it’s not February.

  I brush the thought away, which is easy to do since my head feels so heavy on my shoulders. I focus instead on not letting my head come loose, then laugh at the image of a head rolling across the street as Ty and Leo carry a headless guy to their car. All I’d need is a horse.

  I laugh more at the thought of being a Headless Horseman.

  A couple passes us on their way to the car, and I immediately get angry at the way they’re snuggled together. How it was only a few weeks ago that Kendall was nuzzled next to me, tracing the tattoo on my chest.

  Now my chest cracks, my heart shriveling inside it. “Assholes!” I yell at the couple just as we reach Leo’s Jeep. Ty shoves me in the back seat before I can yell at them some more.

  Without turning toward Ty as he settles in next to me, I say, “I wasn’t done in there.”

  “You had plenty.” Leo starts the engine and stays silent the whole way to my apartment.

  “You’re not the fucking boss of me. I wanted more whiskey.”

  “Don’t you mean Sebskey?”

  I squint at Ty, searching for any trace of humor, but my head is too fuzzy to differentiate his tone. Running my hands down my face, I look up at the night sky since the Jeep has no roof.