Shimmy Bang Sparkle(21)
Like a shot, I was in my bathroom. I flipped on the lights, and there it was. Her number, written in light-pink lipstick across the mirror. The digits had to be ten inches high at least, surrounded in hearts of all different sizes. I planted my hands on the sink and let my head hang down, laughing to myself. Fuck. In five seconds, I felt like I’d lost the lottery and won it all over again.
From the bedroom, I grabbed my phone and typed in her number. For a second, I thought about some clever shit I could say. But really, there was only one thing I wanted her to know. There was only one thing that needed to be said. To hell with playing it cool. To hell with being a badass. I’d told myself I was going to be honest, and that’s exactly what I was going to do.
I already know what we’re having for dinner tonight.
Ooh!
Indian again? Or maybe . . .
Chinese? I also really love Chinese.
I’ll buy you all the eggrolls you can eat.
But I’m having you.
We’ll have to see about that. ;-)
Fuck. I knew I shouldn’t want her so badly—not this fast, and not in light of what I’d seen yesterday. But I knew that was exactly why I wanted her so much. The thing I shouldn’t want was all I wanted. I’d never met a risk I didn’t want to take. And I definitely wanted to take Stella. Again and again and again.
I set my phone on the bathroom counter and turned on the shower. Stripping out of my boxers, I was just about to get in when my phone buzzed. I fully expected it to be Stella. But it wasn’t. Instead, it was a text that said:
Norton. I want my fucking money.
I didn’t recognize the number, but I knew exactly who it was from. I sure-as-shit did. Goddamn it.
11
STELLA
Having sex-shaky thighs and writing on a mirror in lipstick had never been my life . . . until now! I tried to keep my giggle to myself as I unlocked the deadbolt to my apartment, where I was met with the usual Saturday morning routine in apartment 3A. I tried to tame the perma-smile that was on my face, just so it wasn’t blatantly obviously where I’d been. I’d never been much for kissing and telling. And also, I was dying to see how long it would take Roxie to figure me out.
She was on the couch with her legs dangling off the side like Lady Godiva on a fainting sofa. She was wrapped in a skimpy terry cloth robe, her face caked in some very strange mud. Her hair was up in a pineapple, tied with a bright-pink scrunchie. Definite hints of Blondie. Definitely. She was watching house-flipping shows on mute and drinking hard lemonade from the bottle with a pink straw that looped around in the shape of a heart. When she saw me, the straw dropped from her lips and the lemonade zoomed back down the straw. “Well hello, sexface!”
It had taken her all of two seconds. Among her many talents, including making every single man with a pulse forget what he’d been about to say, she could sniff out what she called “man musk” like a bloodhound on a trail. She made a circle with her hand in my general direction and smiled, which made her mask crackle. “Ravaged is a cute look on you,” she said, then hooked her heart-straw with her tongue and took a few long slurps.
Across from her on the floor was Ruth, sitting cross-legged with a steaming cup of tea next to her. Her hair was in its seemingly unalterable straight dark bob; didn’t matter how hot it got or how windy, the bob was unchanged. Next to her on the carpet sat her ever-present green tea; Ruth being Ruth, though, she didn’t drink tea out of a regular mug. It was some type of rare Japanese tea bowl, with special “balance.” I didn’t really know the specifics; what I knew for sure was that it didn’t go in the dishwasher and it most definitely wasn’t to be used for cereal. In her lap was a silver briefcase with a three-digit combination lock built in. It was called a Zero Halliburton. It was what she’d wanted for her birthday, and Roxie and I had pitched in to get it for her. She wore a doctor’s stethoscope dangling from one ear. As she rotated the numeric wheels, she listened to the lock with her eyes closed. And then she smiled, just a little.
The hinges sprang open, and Roxie tapped the stopwatch on her phone, reading out Ruth’s time. “Two minutes thirty-two seconds.”
“Hit me again,” Ruth said, and slid it over to Roxie, who zeroed out the numbers. She pulled a ballpoint pen from her bun, pushed the tip into the reset hole, and clenched her eyes shut as she tried to think up a new combination.
“I got worried about you,” Ruth added as she blew on her tea. “Sidenote, filing a missing person report isn’t really that complicated.”
Oh Lord, not this again. This was the problem with staying out all night only once in, literally, a blue moon. The odds of something truly dreadful happening to me were actually higher than spending the night with a man. Especially a man like Nick. “Please don’t tell me . . .”
She blew the steam away and shook her head, saying to the tea, “Close, though. Called the nonemergency number and everything.”
Ruth and Roxie were the salt and pepper on my chicken breast of life. In some ways, we really were as American as second mortgages and Dunkin’ Donuts. But in other ways . . .
Roxie stuck the ballpoint pen in her bun, scrambled the digits on the combination, and slid the briefcase across the carpet to Ruth. Then she lay back down on the sofa and recommenced her love affair with her lemonade. “I told her not to worry. I said you were probably getting some much-deserved nookie and the last thing you wanted was the cops showing up.” She shuddered with the thought, flaring her nostrils and sighing as she pressed her thighs together and curled her cotton ball–parted toes. “That fantasy isn’t for everybody . . . I guess,” Roxie said with a gasp as Ruth set to breaking into the briefcase again.