Strip for Me

by Coffman, Georgia

  Blank.

  The sky is blank, the city lights and pollution covering up the stars.

  Empty.

  With all the whiskey I drank, I still feel empty. Only an empty apartment to rush home to. No hopes of filling it with blond hair and laughter.

  Empty.

  An empty soul resides inside me, but I won’t let it give up. Part of me can’t. It holds on to her, begging the universe to bring her back to me.

  “I know, man,” Ty says as we pull into a parking spot. “And maybe she will.”

  I look at him, confused, as we come to a stop. I walk slowly up to my empty apartment with the hole in the wall resembling the hole in my chest.

  But the hole in my chest clings to the possibility that she’s not lost to the stars, that I can still find her someday.

  Chapter 49

  Kendall

  A knock on the door wakes me.

  I don’t move, my face still planted in the pillow with my covers thrown off the bed. I don’t know what time it is or how long I’ve lain here like this in my solitude. My heartbreak. How long it’s been since I’ve taken a peaceful breath.

  I squeeze my eyes shut again, hoping the knocking will go away. It’s Emma—who else would it be—and I’m not ready to face her, not yet.

  We rarely fight, and when we do, it’s mostly over me being late or forgetting to pay my half of the rent. Because, of course, I’m irresponsible, as she pointed out many times before.

  But we’ve never fought like we did two weeks ago. She’s never fully gone Hulk on me like she did that night.

  Now we’re on speaking terms, but there’s still tension. And she avoids me, even in our small apartment where we’re bound to run into each other.

  The coffee maker sounds from the kitchen, and plates are moved around. I put my other pillow on the back of my head to block out the sounds.

  To block out the world.

  My pillow cocoon around my head works to block out the sounds, but I can’t sleep. I couldn’t sleep to begin with, mostly tossed and turned all night. Nightmares haunted me of my mom calling me, disappointed that I ruined my sister’s wedding, how she didn’t raise me to be a monster.

  Lauren won’t speak to me. I tried calling several times to apologize, but all I got was a text from her saying she was on her honeymoon. She’d get back to me when she was home.

  She’s been home for over a week now, but I still haven’t heard from her.

  Another knock sounds, but this time it sounds more like a bat being swung at my door. There’s more banging until my door finally swings open.

  But I still don’t move.

  Emma sets something on the desk and raises my blinds before she opens a window. I can’t see anything, but I can hear the rustling. I can also hear her frustration and feel the tension. She doesn’t say anything through more shuffling and spraying of what I assume to be Febreze.

  A spring scent fills the room.

  I refrain from groaning, not wanting to make the first sound. She’s the one intruding, so she can be the first to explain what she’s doing.

  I squeeze my eyes shut, thinking those are the kinds of things that make me sound less than grown up—why I’m so annoying to all those around me.

  “Get up,” she finally says like a teacher disciplining a third grader. I half expect her to spank some sense into me with that tone.

  Now I let out my groan but stay put.

  “Kendall, get up,” she says more softly.

  I turn with the pillow still on my head, but I can see her through a small sliver under it. She’s got her hands on her hips and her ponytail intact, like she hasn’t been upset at all about our fight.

  “I’m sorry, that I’m so immature that I barged into your room while you’re asleep and started demanding shit. Oh, wait…”

  “God, you’re impossible sometimes.”

  “Feel free to see yourself out.” I turn my face into the pillow again.

  After a heavy pause, she pulls on my feet and drags me off the bed until my ass lands on the floor with an oomph.

  “You bitch!”

  Before I can get up, she climbs on top of me with a comb and hairspray. “You have to be at work in thirty minutes, and you are not calling in sick again.” Straddling me, she starts pulling at my hair.

  “What the fuck, Emma. Get off me!”

  “No,” she persists. “You’re pulling yourself together and going to work. With my help.”

  “I don’t want your stupid help,” I protest, but can’t stop the laughter bubbling deep in my throat at this ridiculous scene. “I definitely don’t want a stupid ponytail, which is all you can seem to do.”

  “Oh, you’re getting a ponytail.”

  “Ow!”

  “Not my fault you slept all day and now have a major rat tail. Dear God, this is tangled! Like worse than that night you fell asleep in the bathtub because you were drunk and thought there was a tornado.”

  “It was the worst thunderstorm LA had ever seen!”

  “It barely rained, but you were too drunk to know the difference,” she says absentmindedly as she works on my messy hair.

  We’re silent for a moment as she lifts my head to get the rest of my hair up for a ponytail.

  When she secures it, her hands fall to her sides, but she still doesn’t move from on top of me. “I’m sorry about our fight.”

  Her features are as perfect as they were on the day of our high school junior pictures, except for the dark circles under her eyes that makeup couldn’t quite cover. I’m hesitant to answer, surprised she apologized first.

  “I overreacted, okay?” She slides off me and lies beside me so we’re both staring at the ceiling. “I saw Brant that night. I just wasn’t ready to talk about it.”

  “Are you ready now?”

  She glares at me and then returns her gaze to the ceiling. “He showed up with his fucking fiancée. And it wasn’t even the girl he cheated on me with.”

  “Brant is engaged?”

  “Yeah, I had no idea, either. Until that night when he paraded her and her ring around like he had two dates. That rock was the size of my head and more expensive than both our cars put together.”

  “Fucking Brant.”

  “Fucking Brant,” she repeats, and I’m reminded of when they first broke up, of when she called me sobbing harder than ever. Even harder than when she fractured her ankle and couldn’t dance for months. Dance was something she’d discovered during her parents’ divorce. It gave her an outlet for all her anxiety of that time.

  But when Brant cheated on her—that broke her. Broke her worse than anything her parents put her through.

  In dealing with it, I tried joking about Brant’s big nose. What would their kids look like with his tree trunk of a nose? And his pretentious khakis and polos like he spent all his time on a golf course when in reality he couldn’t shoot better than a hundred even on his best days.

  So “fucking Brant” was born. Every time we’d see him doing something on social media that upset her, I’d say “fucking Brant,” and we’d talk about his outfit of the day. Until we both finally blocked him on all sites and from our memories.

  Until two weeks ago, anyway.

  “I’m sorry too,” I say, still staring at the white ceiling. Nothing to trace or keep me occupied on the smooth paint, but I keep my gaze there, nonetheless. “I was a dickhead. I’ve been a dickhead since I moved here. You’ve done nothing but try to help me, and I push you away.”

  “Maybe I try too hard.”

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t want you to think you’re not strong enough to do things for yourself because you are. I’m just used to taking care of people. My mom, she lost her mind after the divorce and started drinking. I was the only one there to take care of her. With my dad, I actually thought he’d pay more attention to me if I ironed his clothes or cleaned the house any time I stayed there. And especially Brant.
God, he didn’t even know how to put Netflix on the TV without me, that jackass.”

  “Fucking Brant.”

  “Fucking Brant.” She sighs. “I’m better off without him.”

  “Amen, sister.” We both cup our hands around imaginary glasses and clink them together between us. “I appreciate everything you’ve done for me. It’s not your fault I’m a fucking loser.”

  She exhales and gets up, pulling me with her. “My best friend is not a loser. She’s strong and smart and very fucking capable. I haven’t seen her in a long time, though. Would she care to join us?” She watches me, searching my eyes for this best friend of hers.

  “I thought I was your best friend.” I crack a slight smile at my obvious sarcasm. Of course, she’s talking about me, and of course, she’s right. I haven’t been myself in a long time.

  Because I don’t know myself anymore.

  She smiles at me, and as though she reads my thoughts, she says, “I know you feel lost. We’ve all been there. When I started the yoga studio, my God, I was a wreck. I was so nervous and doubted myself every step of the way, through the setup, getting the loan, and during the opening. I dreaded every day, thinking it would be my last. That I wouldn’t have enough clientele to stay open. I still get nervous even now.”

  I’m shocked to hear her say this. I don’t remember any panic from her—distracted, maybe, but never panicked. She always seemed collected, unfazed, very unlike me.

  And always with a plan. Once she took over the studio, she added Pilates and Zumba. I still see her scribbling notes for other things she can do to bring people in. She’s never without ideas or the drive.

  I hesitate with my response. “But you never showed that. You always seem so confident with the studio and basically everything. Like you have life figured out.”

  She scoffs. “Are you kidding?”

  “No.” I look around, searching for the joke. “You seem about as put together as your slick ponytail and clean sneakers—which, by the way, is weird. Sneakers should be torn apart and dirty, so stop cleaning them after every time you go running.”

  “Anyway…” She glares at me. “You now have eleven minutes to get to work, but I want you to know that I don’t. I don’t have everything figured out. There’s still so much I want to do and goals I have, and I don’t know if I’ll ever achieve them. But at least I have them.” She takes my hands in hers. “Think about your goals while you’re at work tonight, and write them down when you get back. Then we can go from there.”

  She shrugs like it’s that simple, but inside, I’m panicking. What fucking goals?

  She looks down almost shyly. “I’ll help, if you want, but I won’t cross boundaries anymore. I’ll let you take the reins.”

  I pull her in for a tight hug, thankful that she cares enough to help me. “I don’t deserve you.”

  She’s stiff for the whole hug, which has never stopped me before and doesn’t now, either, until she rigidly moves backward out of my embrace. She’s a lot stronger than me, this wizard yogi. “You definitely don’t, but I’m here to stay. With breakfast and all, even at four fifty-one p.m.”

  “I do not deserve you, you beautiful soul,” I repeat as I run to the desk where she has yogurt and an egg sandwich for me. I go for the steaming cup of coffee first, but she slaps my hand before I get to it. “Okay, what was that for?”

  She looks down again. “Sorry, that was unnecessary.” When she meets my gaze, she says in a stiff attitude, much like Angela from The Office, “But you need to take that to go. You’re late.”

  I nod and turn toward the closet, then turn back to take a quick bite of the sandwich. I end up doing a small circle, trailing my indecision between needing to get to work and needing that heavenly sandwich.

  She pushes me toward the closet and takes the food while I get ready. “I’ll drop you off so you don’t waste time trying to find parking. And you can do your makeup on the way.”

  I smile as I pull a clean shirt over my head, glad we’re back to normal.

  Better than normal. Like this is a new beginning for us.

  And me.

  I smile all the way out the door, filled with a hope I haven’t had in a long time.

  I had a glimmer of it with Sebastian, but there was always a sense of gloom stemmed from a void deep within me. Setting goals for myself might be a way to fill it.

  And with that, maybe I can find my way back to him—if he’ll take me.

  Chapter 50

  Sebastian

  Buzzing around my head makes me jerk awake, and I realize I’m in my bed. Wiping at the drool on my chin and waving off a damn fly, I lie back down and groan.

  Why did I have to drink so much last night?

  Oh right, because Kendall ripped my fucking heart out.

  The first girl I date seriously since Joelle, and all she has to say is that I’m the best sex she’s ever had.

  Fuck that shit.

  Any thought of her coming back was stupid. I was out of my mind last night, but sleep gave me the clarity I needed.

  Reaching for my phone to check the time and coming up empty, I vaguely remember smashing it to pieces last night.

  I exhale and swing my legs over the side of the bed, but when I try to stand up, I fall face-first onto the floor like my legs suddenly forgot how to work. Like the way they got shaky once I landed on solid ground after skydiving for the first time.

  I groan again, loudly, as though anyone is here to help.

  Alone.

  I’m alone.

  With fucking blue balls.

  “Hey, sunshine. You get your beauty sleep?” Ty slumps against the doorframe with arms crossed and a smirk the size of his ego. Okay, so maybe I’m not super alone. “Not enough, I guess. You look like shit.”

  From my spot on the ground, I do a push-up and stand on trembling legs. My head screams at me like a teenage girl yells at her phone or The Bachelor. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “What? You didn’t think I’d miss the aftermath of a sad white boy’s whiskey marathon, did you?” He places his hand on his chest and sarcastically asks, “Don’t you know me but at all?”

  Once I make it through a much-needed hot shower, I’m ready to begin the day. To try and stop wallowing. Especially after I walk into the kitchen and Leo has a plate of bacon waiting for me.

  Which reminds me of the time I cooked bacon for Kendall, then had her bent over the desk before we could take a bite.

  Fuck, I’m pathetic.

  I scold myself as I sit with my plateful of eggs at the table where Leo and Ty stare at me. They’re silent, the only sound coming from forks scraping the ceramic dishes, and they exchange glances here and there, avoiding me. If they think I can’t see them, they’d make terrible spies.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say, relieving them of their games.

  “But you can, if you want,” Leo says as he crosses his arms on the table in front of him. “We can talk about anything to take your mind off of her like we did last night, or you can talk about her. We’re here for you for whatever you need.”

  I nod, my way of thanking them, but I don’t say anything. We continue eating in silence, even when Ty gets up for seconds and stumbles on a stray sneaker.

  Ty finally breaks the silence. “So, you remember that time we were in Seattle and that Uber guy fell asleep at a red light?”

  Leo and I look up and smile, thankful for Ty’s change of subject, even if I don’t remember what the hell he’s talking about.

  He continues with the story, and I’m surprised it doesn’t involve drinking or a naked chick—two of his go-tos when he starts a conversation.

  I watch them around my kitchen table. They stuff their faces with eggs and bacon, small speckles getting stuck on the sides of their mouths and some falling off their forks. They slurp their black coffee like Neanderthals and all but slam their mugs back down.

  They may be messy guys, but they’re my family, my brothers.
I look at them and listen to them tease each other and me, and I realize I was never alone, not since I joined Naked Heat. They’re the ones who have always had my back. The ones here to cook me breakfast and make sure I don’t put my head through a wall.

  Kendall may have left, and it still hurts like all hell, but I’m not alone.

  And for now, this is enough.

  Chapter 51

  Kendall

  Taking deep breaths as the sweat drips down my nose and onto the floor, I stand up after my set of bent-over dumbbell rows and wipe at my face with a towel.

  I have the Mamma Mia! soundtrack blaring in my headphones, courtesy of Emma. She claimed last night that this should instantly put me in a good mood. I laughed like I always do because I don’t understand how she listens to this while working out.

  ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” isn’t exactly a song to get me pumped up. Or so I thought. This is actually working for me. I even do the disco fingers as I walk to the cables for lat pulldowns.

  No one’s paying attention to me, so I angle my body to the side and snap a selfie in the mirror. Then I add it to the collection of gym selfies on my phone. A small hint of my hamstring shows, and I silently pat myself on the back that my clean diet is finally giving me the results I’ve been looking for.

  The diet has been torture, but the abs and hamstrings are nice rewards.

  But the longer I stare at the picture, the more I acknowledge that it’s more than that. More than the physical benefits. I enjoy working out because it makes me feel good. My energy has increased, and I’m feeling stronger now than I ever have.

  Last night, Emma asked me to write down my goals when I got home from work, but I didn’t have any.

  I felt like I was asked to declare a major again. It didn’t go well the first time, and it certainly didn’t go any better last night.

  Emma helped me brainstorm. Teaching classes at her studio, going to get my associate’s degree, getting an exercise science degree. It all had to do with fitness, and she kept circling back around to becoming a fitness influencer on social media. To get paid to help others work out and model workout apparel to make them feel good while doing so. I could get sponsors and even compete in bodybuilding down the road, if I wanted.