Screwmates(26)

“What about today? You still have six hours until you have to be at work.” She had me there, though. Could I? Could I demand some satisfaction? Maybe not, but I knew I needed to give it a shot.

“Well, Marc was gone when I woke up, but I think I just heard him come in.” That was true. Surely he was feeling just as frustrated as me.

“Party time! Go get some, girl. Then tell me all about it. But not the parts that I don’t want to hear. Just the other parts.”

“Will do.” I didn’t bother to ask how I was supposed to guess which parts she wanted to hear and which she didn’t because, frankly, it wasn’t any of her business. I was tempted to tell her that, actually, but it went against the unwritten understanding that best friends have rights to full disclosure, even if that friend was the town crier, and anyways I wasn’t in the mood to debate my privacy boundaries.

Besides, I really would tell her everything. Except about his cucumber. There just wasn’t anything to tell, and that fact had admittedly made me a bit cranky.

“Now let me go so I can get something done.”

“You mean get someone done.” She giggled at her own joke.

“Shut up, or I’ll send pics. Goodbye, Ava.”

“Bye!”

I clicked my cell off and used two fingers on each hand to massage my temples. Despite what Ava had suggested, I wasn’t planning to literally jump Marc right now. I wanted to—I really, really wanted to—but with our stupid seduction plan, I’d just get shot down. But she was right about one thing, which was that I had not been very vocal about getting laid since the last aborted attempt.

Today that ended. There was an errand I’d been putting off, and I planned to tackle that next.

I grabbed my purse, slipped on my flippy-floppies, and was on my way. As I walked out, I bumped into Marc carrying an armload of books to the dining room.

“What on earth?” I exclaimed when I saw the table. It was filled with more books. Stacks and stacks of them. “Did you rob a library?”

I desperately wanted him to say yes, because that would be a pretty badass move.

He put down the pile in his arms and greeted me with a grin. “No, I just picked up a few resources on wine. It’ll help us get better at tastings.” He proudly displayed what looked like a hundred scholarly tomes on grape varietals.

“Uh.” I scanned a few of the titles. The Grape Grower. A Beginner’s Guide to Vitaculture. The Organic Backyard Vineyard. The Weekend Vintner. The Vintner’s Compendium of Grapes. Not quite as badass. But very, very Marc.

It must have taken him several trips to get them in the house. I couldn’t imagine how he’d gotten them to his car from the library.

And, as far as I was concerned, all of them could go.

Which was maybe not fair.

So, in an attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt, I picked one up and flipped through it. “Soil notes?” The doubt was gone. “No. Just no.”

“Soil is important! Nitrate levels affect the flavor of the end product,” Marc protested.

“Says the farmer.” I took a deep breath and squinted, trying to figure out the best way to explain alternative forms of learning to someone who was married to the traditional methods. “Look. Marc. Nothing you read is going to help you get better at taste. How did you not understand that getting better at wine meant we just drink a shit-ton of it?”

“Reading—”

I cut him off. “—is not experience. The words on those pages has nothing to do with the buds on your tongue.” His amazingly talented tongue. On my bud. Aw, yes.

Now I was distracted.

I shook my head and forced myself to focus. “The only way to learn a taste is to taste it. It’s like—I’m on my way out to buy seduction-worthy lingerie. I imagine you think that could be done online, too, huh?”

Marc’s eyebrows perked. “You’re going lingerie shopping?”

“Yes. And, since the point of lingerie is to highlight the body, it’s a task best done in the flesh and not ordered over the Internet.” It wasn’t a perfect analogy, but I figured it would do the trick.

It did do the trick. Marc had forgotten all about the books, and was now focused solely on lingerie. “You’re planning to go try on lingerie?”

“Yeah. To make sure I have the perfect fit and all.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“Why do you need to come? I am more than capable of choosing my own underpants.”

“The fact that you call them underpants says that you have no business choosing seduction-garments for yourself.”

“Whatever.”

“Have you even looked at yourself in the mirror lately?”

“No. What? Why?” I ran to look in the hall mirror and found my nose and forehead were covered with ink. A glance down at my fingers showed ink all over them too. I slipped into the bathroom and washed up before returning to the dining room.

“You really think you’re capable of managing your own appearance?” he asked a bit smugly for my taste.

“I’m an artist. Ink stains come with the territory.” I suddenly worried my last, um, drawing session had left ink in other incriminating places on my body.

“You need me.”

“I don’t—”