Mr. Wrong Number
Lynn Painter
For Kevin I love you more today than when you swept me off my feet by photocopying your finger and talking in a stupid voice. More than when you stepped on my feet so I couldn’t run away from you. Even more, I think, than that time you said I had Axl Rose hair.
Five kids and hundreds of meatballs later, you still make me cackle and I adore you.
1
Olivia
It started the night after I burned down my building.
I was sitting on top of the fancy granite island in my brother’s kitchen, inhaling a bag of his pretzels while systematically knocking back the bottles of Stella that’d been in his fridge. And no, I didn’t have a drinking problem. I had a life problem. As in, my life sucked and I needed to fall into a coma variety of sleep if I were going to have any shot at formulating a plan for my future when I woke up.
Jack had agreed (after much begging) to let me stay with him for a month—enough time to get a job and find my own place—as long as I agreed to be on my best behavior and stay out of his roommate’s way. He seemed a little too old to have a roommate, if you asked me, but who was I to judge?
Big brother had given me a hug and a key and left me for fifty-cent wing night at Billy’s Bar, so I was home alone and bawling to Adele on his Alexa. It was already woe-is-me music, but when she started crooning about a fire starting in her heart, it made me think about the fire that started on my deck, and I totally lost it.
I was full-on ugly crying when my phone buzzed and halted the meltdown. A number I didn’t know texted:
So tell me exactly what you’re wearing.
A pervy wrong number? I wiped my nose and typed: Your mom’s wedding dress and her favorite thong.
No more than five seconds went by before Mr. Wrong Number texted: Um, what?
I texted: Seriously, babe, I thought you’d think it’s hot.
Mr. Wrong Number: “Babe”? Wtf?
That actually made me snort out a tiny laugh, the thought of some dude getting cold-showered via text. It was super weird that babe was where he was getting tripped up, as opposed to the monstrosity of an oedipal-lingerie suggestion, but he’d also used the tired what are you wearing line, so who could really say about a guy like that?
I texted: Would you prefer something less mommish?
Mr. Wrong Number: Oh, no—it sounds totally hot. You cool with me rocking cargo shorts, socks with sandals, and your dad’s jockstrap?
That made me smile in the midst of my full-on life collapse and resultant crying binge.
Me: I’m so turned on right now. Please tell me you’ll whisper dad jokes in my ear while we bonk.
Mr. Wrong Number: Yeah, baby jokes and weather anecdotes come fully loaded. And bonk is the sexiest word in the English language, btw.
Me: Agreed.
Mr. Wrong Number: I texted the wrong number, didn’t I?
Me: Yeah, you did.
I hiccuped—the beer was finally kicking in—and decided to give the guy a break. I texted: But go get after it, bud. Land that bonk.
Mr. Wrong Number: This is the weirdest text exchange I’ve ever had.
Me: Same. Good luck and good night.
Mr. Wrong Number: Thanks for the support, and good night to you, as well.
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ONCE THE STELLA started making me tired, I decided to shower—bye-bye, smoky hair—and go to bed. I dug through my duffel for clothes, but then I remembered—duh—the fire. All I had were the clothes that’d been in the bottom of my gym locker and some rando mismatched separates that’d fallen onto the floorboards of my back seat on multiple laundry days. I found a Cookie Monster pajama top, but discovered I didn’t actually own a single bottom; no pajama bottoms, no jeans, no shorts—the only pants I owned now were the stinky gym shorts currently covering my ass.
Was not owning pants my rock bottom?
Thank God I had clean underwear. I had one pair of neon-yellow boy shorts that said Eat the Rich across the back, and their presence in my life kept me dangling from the balcony that hovered just above Bottom.
I took a thirty-minute shower, tipsily smitten with the pouring-rain showerhead and Jack’s roommate’s expensive conditioner. I accidentally dropped the slippery plastic bottle, which made the pump top break off and sent the majority of the luxurious crème slathering out all over the slick floor of the shower. I knelt down and scooped as much as I could back into the bottle, setting it carefully on the shower shelf and hoping no one would notice.
Spoiler: They always noticed.
But two hours later I was still wide-awake, lying on the floor of my brother’s office on his squeaky old air mattress, staring at the ceiling through puffy eyes and replaying over and over again all of the terrible things that’d happened before I fled Chicago.
The layoff. The cheating. The breakup. The fire.
And then I said, “Screw. This.”
I got up, went into that shiny kitchen, cracked the seal on a bottle of tequila that had a smiley mustachioed sun on the bottle, and I made myself the world’s biggest night-night toddy. I might have a headache in the morning, but at least I’d get some sleep.
* * *
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