She celebrates, wiggling to her own music. “You know I’m getting better at it.” She winks.
“Anyway, I’m keeping all my options open, I might still moonlight…”
She holds her hands up, like a marque as she announces, “Plus, there’s always Favors for friends.” She says it like it’s already sweeping the nation.
She drops her hands and shrugs. “One of the many irons I’ve got smoldering.”
I return a shoulder bump.
“Don’t you worry about this kitty cat. I always land on my paws.” She scratches her ear, squishes her nose in her best Sam face, and says, “Meow.” I don’t have the heart to tell her she looks like...the cowardly lion.
“What other irons?” I ask with a grin.
I love her so much. She’s been through it all with me, never gave up on me. Even when I wanted to. “I’m glad I got to keep you in the divorce.”
She smiles, a real showstopper. “Me too.”
Then Business Sasha comes out in full force. “I’ve invented a new app; the wheels are already in motion.”
“You…typed…with these?” I ask, grabbing her hand, holding exhibit A—her razor sharps—in front of her face.
Smug, Missus Too Cool for School just nods. “Carl my submissive I told you about?” She stares me down till I nod. “In the office, with the secretary who ties her boss in knots?”
I nod…again. And start reeling my hand, “Aha, Aha.” It’s like pulling teeth with this one.
“Well, it turns out he’s some big-shot server guy….” She raises her eyebrows and speaks like English is my third language. “Computers?”
I laugh and just enjoy her for what she is, the Queen of Sasha-isms.
Rolling my eyes, I nod. “Yep, I’ve heard of the new-fangled invention of which you speak, oh Jedi Master. So what…did he teach you to type or something?”
Another wink. “Or something.”
My eyes are sprained from all the eye-rolling I’m doing just to make it through this conversation. It’s never a straight line, no simple point A to point B. With Sash, there’re always bends, and turns, hills, uphill climbs, and once in a great while, one of those orange bendy Hot Wheels track thingies that makes loop de loops.
“Anyway, he owed me one. So he’s creating an app. Go something. Turns out he works for the search engine that created a cool new game. Google that shit if you don’t believe me.” She cracks her gum.
“Irk! Wait a minute.” I pump the brakes. “We’re talking about Carl, right? The guy you left strapped to his office chair? In the clutches of fetish Esmie? Who made the poor SOB put a plastic bag over his head and count to two hundred?” It’s so boss, I can’t even.
“Respect,” I say, pumping my fist against my chest two times, then holding it up in honor of Esmie.
“Right?” she laughs, but even she pauses for a moment of silence. “Dedicated to Esmie.” I bow my head next to her. “She’s a friggin’ legend.” Signals the end of the tribute.
Then it hits me. Favor? “Wait, this is some kind of cockamamie snake oil voodoo shit. I am utterly speechless.” I hold my hand over my mouth, imitating Say No Evil. Then I ask the question, I’m dying to know.
“Pray tell, Swami, how in the world does he owe you a favor?” I cross my legs, leaning forward with my best listening ears on.
She shakes her hands like she’s got the Holy Spirit. “Oh, and by the way, just so you know, the only reason Esmie came up with that boss command was because she was sooo put out that I asked her to step in for me! And she almost killed Carl.” She takes a breath, dramatically—as she does everything—and clucks her tongue. “Making poor Carl put a plastic bag over his head and count that high. Just giving him the smother command and dematerializing back to her pit. She’s lucky he didn’t sue us, right?”
I nod. So right.
And then Esmie’s words pop into my head. I giggle it out, because Sasha needs to hear this one. “She said…count…one potato, two potato-style!” We’re howling all over each other at that image.
I can’t stop giggling. I love girl-talk. Sorry, Doc, but Sasha-speak is the best therapy, hands down.
“Potato! What was that anyway?” She pushes her red locks back off of her face. “So... are you guys going to stay for dinner?”
I blink, almost missing the subject change. Chuckling, I realize we got… “C’mon, Sidetrackula, what’s the app?”
She holds up her own stop sign, the Highness will not be rushed it seems. “Don’t you even wanna know why he’s building the app for me in the first place?”
“Okay, please tell me before I bust my gut.”
She leans in, hands on my shoulders, and says, rapid-fire, “Because Esmie made him cry.”
It takes me a minute to process, and she fills the silence with, “And since no ‘DommyNaTricks,’—his words, not mine—has ever in his whole Vida Loca even gotten him close to a sniffle…” Dramatic pause. “…He worships the ground I walk on for introducing them.”
She leans into an extravagant courtly bow.
I chuckle, but then it sinks in. “W-what?” I gotta hear this.
“We bartered services. He’s making me an app…and he gets a carte blanche Favor button to watch himself suffocating over and over and over, Duracell bunny-style.”
I make my sour lemon face and say, “Oh, really! Oh, Sash! That’s so nice. Did you? Did you really barter?” I wait till she’s done laughing before I command. “On with it already! Jeez, what’s the friggin’ app about?”
She circles the air before holding up her index finger, a disclaimer. “Very high-tech-y, it might be too much for your little country mouse mind to understand, so I’ll make it very simple. A map with beautiful chubby cakes—those are the girls—and ‘forks,’—air quotes— “which are the feeders. These forks run around all over town, chasing cake.” She dusts one shoulder off. “It’s the next big thing.”
I just stare. It’s amazing how thrilled she is with herself right now. She takes my bewilderment as a sign to continue. “Two cakes mean she’s a dayum girl. It’s a dating app.”
“I’m stunned, Sash. It sounds like it just might work.”
She nods and elbows me again. “And if things don’t work out with Frankie.” At that I clutch my heart, where my new tattoo heals. Frankie with a little paw print at the bottom. Courtesy of Pint.
She nods her head. “I know, I know. But you get a lifetime membership… two cakes!” She smacks both of my butt cheeks.
I can’t stop laughing. What can I say? She hits my funny bone dead center.
I grab her head and mime a microphone in her ear. In a yell-whisper, I say, “A lifetime membership to what?”
“A feeder’s heaven. Already have preorders.”
We both turn at the same time to face each other and sing-song in unison, “Tony.” Her weak smile confirms what I already know. Gretchen still won’t take her calls. I hug her around the waist and give a squeeze.
“He did put a suggestion in, now that you mention it. He requested fish cakes for Gretchen’s icon.”
I giggle with her. “Your damn cake is gonna have barbed wire on it, you whipping vixen, you.”
The twinkle returns to her eye as she shrugs and nods, closing her eyes to look, like, meh.
Bored with looking at the engine on their bikes for the umpteenth time, the guys pass by—now talking engines—and drop off fresh drinks.
There’s talk of getting a fire going in the fire pit, and poof! just like that, we lose them again. “They’re probably planning on rubbing two sticks together. C’mon.” I haul Sasha up and we walk down the flagstone path to the koi pond. ’Cause that’s where the fire is. Right on top of the waterfall. Seriously, fire pit on steroids. Riley would give Yard Crashers a run for their money. The whole feel is Maui hotel chic over here. I cross the wooden hand-built bridge, admiring the lights reflecting on the very Zen pond beneath us.
Riley’s definitely doing our landscaping. Our, I thin
k, definitely turning the corner, moving towards the address marked couple. Then it hits me…are the girls chubb-chu’s? But I can’t even get it out. I’m snorting some drink out of my nose just as Sash comes up on my side. Eye’s twinkling, she asks, “Did it just come to you?” Every breath I take has carbonation, my nose is burning, but I’m still snorting. “CHUB-CHUS!”
She bends over and pats my back, pretending like she’s helping me, nodding at the guys, like yeah, I got this, before bending down and whispering in my ear, avoiding the drink dripping out of my nose onto her fuck-me boots and says, ever so coyly. “You think that’s funny Bluebelle, you’re gonna need the Heimlich after you hear the name of the app.”
It’s so hard to talk when soda’s bubbling out of my nose. “What?” I gasp, crying now.
“#Chubcakestogo.”
……
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Please enjoy a deleted scene from…dots……
All your weight, it falls on me. It brings me down. Truer words have never been spoken.
My family and their feelings, that’s the weight of my world on my shoulders right now. How am I supposed to tell my overprotective mother, who freaks out over a sniffle, that I’m…dying?
My brother, Ronny, out doing his job, protecting us, battling on the front lines. Is it fair to distract him from his job? Maybe he gets killed, or one of his buddies does?
What about Dad?
Thoughts of the man who stuffs a pink can of mace and a rape whistle in my stocking every year, and my burden just got heavier.
And last but not least, my best friend, Lola. We’ve been the odd couple since the tampon video in fourth grade. Neat as a pin, she never has loose ends, never commits to anything, no tangles no mess.
That’s where I come in. I’m a friggin’ mess. Everything I touch gets smudged. Or at least, I’ve been told that since as far back as I can even remember leaving a mess.
Possibly, Lola’s bored with her muted tones life. Maybe that’s why she steps into my sunshine and rainbows. Cluttered with dust motes, dancing on sunrays like spritely fairies.
Could be. So what happens when I tell her I’m taking the sun with me?
Somedays I can’t get off this sagging futon. Between the pain, the isolation, the guilt, the secret…
I just can’t.
I look at the website again. The F#ck It List. A place to put your never have I ever… and you’ll be matched with the right person for you. I’m not interested in the sexual stuff. I’m so over that, and besides, my boyfriend—well, not boyfriend—stops by twice a week and we’re compatible enough as it is.
But it’s the other thing I’m interested in.
My chemo nurse, Courtney, whispered to me, “You need someone to talk to, get things off your chest. I know you don’t want to burden your family, Chloe, but who takes your burden?”
I shrugged, not really caring one way or the other. “I’ll be dead soon, so who cares? They can bury it with me.”
She smacked my hand, the one without the IV. She was the one who had to poke around for an hour to find it, so she was protecting it like gold. But her words were kind. “Just like that. Who do you get to say those things to? You’re too worried about acting normal for your chemo buddy over there.”
Em’s on her phone. She hates needles. I do, too.
“You need someone to hear you and not your cancer, you got me?” Her eyes look so compassionate, so loving, I nod.
She rests her hand on top of mine.
I didn’t realize I was crying. “It’s my first time. I’m still a rookie,” I blubber out.
She produces a tissue box from thin air and rubs my hand. “I have a friend; her grandson has a website.” She lowers her voice. “It’s like a sex something or other.” Then she’s back to full volume. “But that’s just to raise money for charity. I know she said he’s always looking for people with illnesses to help. “
I guess my face must look funny, because she feels the need to add, “Not like murder or anything like that.”
I laugh. “Honestly, I was just wondering when this nausea would start to go away.”
She nods and squeezes my hand. “It doesn’t.”
Later, when I’m pumped full of poison, she presents me with a gift bag. It’s got pictures of Band-Aids and syringes all over it.
“Wow, Courtney, how’d you know it was my birthday?”
She laughs. “Well it kind of is. It’s your chemo day. Your very first. Congratulations, kiddo, you made it through. Enjoy.
Inside is the softest, most luxurious cashmere blanket. Pink with raised dots.
“Very chic, Courtney. I love it!”
She hugs me and wraps it around my shoulders. “For the chills,” she whispers in my ear, and I nod.
She reaches in the bag and takes out a box of masks. “Remember your nadir.”
There are hard candies to suck on for when my mouth’s dry. And an oral bag! With a rainbow toothbrush. “Thanks so much. I would’ve never thought of any of this.”
As I leave in search of my chemo buddy, who I haven’t seen in the last thirty minutes, Courtney calls out to me.
“Chloe, did you want me to check on that thing? Mason’s website?”
I think about it. I’ve got nothing better to do. “Sure.”
And just like that, two dots floating in a sea of sorrow were connected…by Courtney.
Stay FABULOUS beta readers. Lana, Desiree. You ladies are my touchstone. You read everything I write, no matter how crazy. You never flinch. Smooches.
A luscious shout out to Regina, my friggin’ reader and friend. I’m chubby, I write books about chubby girls, and I bring my friggin’ baker to my signings! —Me…at every signing, fully lit, saying this over and over till she probably wants to stick a hard roll in my mouth.
Amanda, my official proofer. Your kickass critiques and notes are what I need. I’d rather hear it from you, girl.
Jessica, my new book cover aficionado. Thanks for making me shine bright.
Eagle at Aquila Editing, as always, all my gratitude. I value and respect your guidance. You’ll never know what your glowing praise and red marks mean to me. I’m an author, baby! Got an editor and everything!
Supafan Charlene!!!! I love you and I’m coming to visit you, eh. Thank you for taking a chance on an unknown writer. I love that you love my books! Shelley, I’m so glad your reading for me, and that you’re my new friend.
Jimmy, Nina and Anth, Sandy, Chewy, and Bruschi. You have my heart. Always.
Whether it’s with whip or waffles…it’s abuse. I just prefer to write about syrup laden carbs than flying fists.
Black and Blue (Chubby Chasers, Inc. Series Book 3) Page 21
