Starlight (Peaches Monroe) (Volume 2) Paperback – September 2, 2013

by Mimi Strong

  His eyebrows bounced suggestively. “For an extra fifty, you can touch my inner thighs.”

  I laughed. And then I looked down and thought about how much I wanted to touch his inner thighs, now that we were in public and I couldn’t. I wore a pair of black shorts—black because I don’t like showing off my crack-sweat on my annual gym workout, and clothing companies have yet to invent a color other than black that doesn’t show crack-sweat.

  The three absolute worst colors of gym shorts to wear, in reverse order from bad to worst, are:

  #3. Salmon pink, or whatever shade matches your particular skin tone. Paired with a longer T-shirt, people do double-takes, thinking you forgot to put on shorts and are parading around your bare ass.

  #2. Gray. Why the default color of athletic wear is gray astounds me. That flecked pattern does nothing to disguise damp regions.

  #1. White. Perfectly fine for shirts, but a recipe for horror when worn on the lower half of the body—not just because of the magnifying effect of a light color, but because moisture increases transparency, and everyone’s going to see your underwear, or, if you chose not to wear underwear, your lady shrubbery. I owe my least favorite day of tenth grade to a pair of white gym shorts, not to mention the three weeks of Oscar Dwyer calling me Triangle Bush.

  “You’re doing great,” Keith said. “I’m already having more fun at a workout than ever before.”

  I winked at him. “Save a little energy for later.”

  His cheeks reddened. Noticing this caused my entire body to flush pink to match.

  The gym was clean, but the air was moist from the adjoining steam room, and had the tangy scent of sweat. Spreading my legs even wider for the next stretch, I pondered how sexy a workout could be, given the right partner.

  I felt the tingle at the back of my skull that someone was looking my way. I turned around, and a guy doing bicep curls quickly looked away, a smile on his face. He was cute. Actually, there were a few cute guys around. And no women, except for the girl we’d seen at the check-in desk.

  “Where are all the girls?” I hissed at Keith. “Is this a gay gym?”

  Keith stretched his neck and shoulders. “There’s a ladies-only floor above here, if you wanna go up there.”

  “And miss all the eye candy? I think not.”

  He gave me a sidelong look. “Just remember who you came with.”

  I reached out and rubbed my index finger across his chest in a pretend-creepy way. “My personal trainer. Who I pay very handsomely. He knows how to work all my muscle groups.”

  “That’s right.” He clapped his hands. “Chop, chop. Ten minute warm-up on the stationery bike. Move it, move it.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  We got on the bikes, side by side, and pretended to race.

  Next, we did some work with free weights, and he showed me how to do these different reps with five-pound weights in my hands, all while lying on a bench.

  “Exercising while lying down isn’t so bad,” I said. “And who knew there were so many positions.”

  “Five more, and keep your form. They’re worthless if you don’t have proper form.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Oh, how I craved his approval. And for something as ridiculous as lifting a five-pound weight up and down, over and over. Every time he said, “Very nice,” it felt as good as one of his kisses.

  Once I was set up with a simple rotation, he picked up the heavier weights and got to work himself. All around us, men were panting on treadmills and grunting as they lifted weights. They were being respectful toward me, but there was something about the amount of testosterone in the air that made me feel funny. Alert. Alive.

  Keith was right about the workout snapping me out of the hangover. A little sweating, mopped up quickly with the much-appreciated complimentary towels, plus many refills of my water bottle, and I was feeling downright heroic. I even did some reps with the ten-pound weights.

  To my chagrin, I tried to do a bench press, but Keith had to remove all the weights and have me lift the bar only. I was embarrassed at first, but then I realized that if anyone was looking my way, it was at my peaches, and not my puny muscles.

  We switched, and I spotted Keith while he lifted an impressive amount of weight. I worried that I was the wrong choice for a spotting partner, but he assured me that even if he came close to failure, he could still lift a portion of the weight, and just two fingers’ worth of help from me was the right amount of help.

  He was right, and when he finished the reps, with a little help from me at the end, I felt so proud of him. He’d been born blessed with great genes, but he’d taken his gifts and worked really hard to turn himself into the gorgeous, sweaty beast I was going to take home and shower with.

  He stood up and leaned over to whisper in my ear, “Amazing what two fingers can do.”

  I giggled, remembering his homecoming surprise from Thursday.

  Just then, a guy doing squats near us let out an audible fart. The smell drifted over. I’m just telling you this detail to be completely honest. I don’t want you to think gyms are Paradise on Earth, with nothing but hot guys and sexy, sweaty muscles. There’s a dark side to gyms. A farty dark side. Also, I did accidentally see a few cracks I would rather not have seen. But, overall, the gym wasn’t the worst thing, and I contemplated making my next New Year’s resolution about going twice annually.

  CHAPTER 20

  We got our juice smoothies to go, and went straight back to Keith’s place. After a quick shower, we returned to the bedroom for a little Afternoon Delight.

  Keith dropped his towel on the bed as he did a standing stretch.

  “Towel on the bed.” I shook my head and made a tsk-tsk noise.

  With a groan, he tossed his towel toward the hook on the back of his bedroom door. The towel missed and fell on the floor. He let himself drop backward onto his bed with another groan.

  “You didn’t save any energy for me,” I said. “Naughty gym rat.”

  “You go on top. Do all the stuff. It’ll be hot.”

  “Roll over on your stomach,” I said.

  “Kinky.” He rolled over, revealing that cute little ass of his that looked like two perfect dinner rolls.

  I hung up my towel as well as his, then crawled onto the bed alongside him.

  I started kneading his muscles, gingerly at first. Working the thick ropes on the tops of the shoulders, I asked, “What muscles are these?”

  “Mine.” He chuckled. “Trapezius,” he added. “They go all the way from the base of my skull to my shoulders, and then quite a ways down my back.”

  I kneaded my fingertips into his muscles, fascinated by the change in firmness that happened just with a bit of work. He seemed to be melting, softening under my hands.

  “They’re beautiful muscles. I normally objectify men by staring at their abs, but these are nice. Also, I totally know they’re called trapezius muscles. I was just checking to see that you knew.”

  He moaned in response.

  I moved over to his upper arms on the outside. “Deltoids? Or are they Altoids? No, Altoids are the curiously strong mints.”

  Keith’s body shook as he laughed.

  “Don’t laugh at your masseuse. She’s doing the best she can.”

  “You have good hands,” he said.

  “Thank you for taking me to the gym today.” I paused. Wow, that was a string of words I never expected to hear come out of my mouth. “And thank you for not weighing me or talking about calories or trying to make me sweat on the treadmill for an hour.” I kept kneading his muscles. “Thank you for being patient.”

  “I just try to put myself in your shoes,” he said.

  I paused.

  I just try to put myself in your shoes.

  He’d said it as if this was the simplest concept in the world, and everybody did it.

  My eyes welled up with tears. He was facing mostly down, his eyes closed as he enjoyed the massage.

  I fought to keep
going at the same pace, even as my vision blurred and I surreptitiously wiped my tears on my shoulder.

  “This really is a good massage,” he said.

  I kept working, kneading his back muscles. My own body was already feeling slightly tender in some areas, so I could only imagine how Keith was feeling, considering all the much-heavier weights he’d been lifting.

  I zoned out during the massage, and Keith drifted off. He started talking in his sleep, and I thought for a minute he was talking to me.

  “My order.”

  “What?” I asked, surprised.

  “Dijon mustard. And ham.”

  I prompted him for more. “What’s that? Is that your pizza order, Mr. Raven?”

  Sounding indignant, he said, “We weren’t cutting across your lawn.”

  I crawled off the bed and stood for a minute watching him sleep. I’ve seen my mother do this with Kyle, and when I still lived at home, she’d sometimes call me over to join in watching him sleep. How did Keith’s mother feel about him leaving for Italy, and being so far away from her?

  I’d been away from home for a week, and whenever I thought of my son, I’d feel like I was being pitched from side to side on a boat in a storm.

  It was strange to think of him as my son. In my thoughts, he was simply Kyle, or my mother’s youngest.

  I’d wanted nothing to do with him after he was born, and I will probably see my dying day before I forgive myself for refusing to hold him, let alone breastfeed him. The nurses at the hospital tried to sell me on the health benefits, one of them even telling me breastfeeding did wonders for losing the baby weight.

  The baby weight.

  I’d gained no more than twelve pounds during the pregnancy, and the baby weighed seven.

  The doctor thought I was lying. He treated me like a criminal, like one of those girls who throws her baby in the garbage with the umbilical cord still attached.

  I can’t read those kinds of news articles. Literally. I don’t mean I avoid them, or don’t enjoy them, I mean I can not read them. My breathing gets shallow, my body starts to shake, and the words swim around on the page.

  Life changes you, makes you into a lightning rod for certain emotions.

  You know that show about the women who didn’t know they were pregnant until they went into labor? Do you ever sit and watch in disbelief, thinking they must be lying?

  I can’t speak for all of them, but I can tell you at least some of them are telling the truth. Especially the smart ones, because smart people have a way of being incredibly stupid when it comes to things like an unexpected baby growing inside of them.

  I avoid talking about what happened.

  Maybe it wouldn’t always be awful, though.

  Keith had been understanding, listening without pushing for more.

  Before me in the quiet bedroom, the curtains drawn against the afternoon sun, the tuckered-out underwear model muttered about oatmeal and stirred in his sleep.

  I leaned down and kissed him on the shoulder blade before leaving him to his nap.

  I closed the door so he didn’t get woken up by me making lunch.

  Ten minutes later, just as I was sitting down to enjoy my grilled cheese sandwich, someone knocked on the door.

  Keith’s ex-girlfriend Tabitha stood on the other side of the door, looking as surprised to see me as I was to see her.

  “You look sober,” I said.

  “Unlike last time.” She ducked her head, looking vulnerable as she tucked some long, wavy brown hair behind her ear. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I interrupting your dinner? That smells really good.”

  What was she up to?

  “Yeah, I’m just making dinner.”

  “It smells incredible.”

  What’s that expression? Keep your friends close and invite your enemies in for a grilled cheese sandwich?

  I said, “Keith’s having a nap. Do you want to come in and have something to eat? You can have the sandwich I already made, and I’ll just—”

  She bolted in the door and toward the grilled cheese sandwich on the coffee table so quickly, I swear there were cartoon motion lines behind her.

  She moaned with pleasure as she ate the four-cheese grilled sourdough, and I tried to block the idea those hamster grunts coming out of her big mattress lips were also her sex noises.

  I grilled up a second sandwich for myself.

  We talked for a few minutes about how I was enjoying LA, how I liked the neighborhood, and blah-blah-blah.

  I sat down next to her and went for the jugular: “All right, Tabitha, enough foreplay. Let’s hear your side of the Las Vegas story.”

  She turned three shades of pink. “Keith told you?”

  “I know everything. We did one of those meditation mind meld things, because those are totally real. Obviously you regret what you did and you want him back, right?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you want him more because I have him?”

  Her mouth dropped open.

  “So that’s a yes,” I said. “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. I’m familiar with the concept. I had this dress with dolman sleeves—that’s where it’s really big under the armpits, like bat wings, but narrow on the cuff. I thought it wasn’t flattering, so I gave it to the charity shop. Two weeks later, I saw a woman in town wearing it—and I knew it was the same one, because that shit was vintage from the eighties—and I wanted it back so bad, I actually considered offering to buy it from her.” I took a big bite of my grilled cheese sandwich. “But I didn’t, because I’m classy. So I followed her into the community center gym and stole it while she was working out.”

  Tabitha moved further away from me on the three-seater couch.

  “That’s a joke,” I said, spitting a few chunks of food out accidentally. “I actually beat her up and took it off her body.”

  Tabitha’s eyes grew wider and wider.

  “C’mon, Tabs. Can I call you Tabs? I’m just messing with you. I don’t believe in violence. I’m more of a poisoner, you know? That’s how most female serial killers take care of their victims.”

  Tabitha set down the remaining quarter of her sandwich, her eyes darting between me and the front door.

  “So, tell me about Las Vegas,” I said, acting as chipper as the head cheerleader at an all-cheerleader sleepover.

  “I don’t know if I should.”

  “Someone might be convinced to put in a good word for you with Mr. Underwear Model.”

  She bit her lip, not saying anything, but not leaving, either. I sniffed the air. Perfume? She looked more dressed up, her fake-looking hair more carefully teased to be full, than the previous two times I’d seen her. Oh, she had not been expecting to see me here at all. In fact, I was pretty sure if I pulled up that little skirt she was wearing, I’d find some slutty underwear.

  I should have turfed her out before Keith even knew she was there, but my curiosity got the better of me.

  “You were in Las Vegas,” I began for her. “There was a hot tub at the hotel pool, and you were drinking Jagermeister shots, and then you wandered into the wrong hotel room. You took off all your clothes and got into a soft, comfortable bed, only to discover your ex-lover next to you. He’d just eaten room service food with cracked pepper, and you both started sneezing violently, and before you knew it, you both were sneezing and sneezing, with no clothes on, and his penis just slipped right in.”

  Tabitha snorted, hesitant to laugh at first, but then I started laughing and soon we were both going.

  “Hey, accidents happen,” I said with a shrug. “That happened to a friend of a girl I know, I swear. True story.”

  “It all started when we couldn’t get tickets to see the Blue Man Group.”

  “Why couldn’t you get tickets?”

  “Are you going to let me tell you, or do you have to control absolutely everything?”

  “Ouch.” I relaxed back into the corner of the sofa, eating the rest of my sandwich and nodding for her to
continue.

  She said, “What they don’t tell you with these coupons is that there are blackout dates, and some of these shows are really expensive, even with the coupon. My friend Twyla knew a girl at the Rio, though, so we took three different buses and got lost a bunch of times, and we ended up going to see the Chippendales.”

  “Oh! Those are the male strippers who wear the bow ties? I think I see where this is going. All that dancing around while the ladies screamed for more made you go crazy. You called up your ex in a moment of weakness.”

  “Close.” She nodded her head toward me and raised her eyebrows suggestively.

  “Fuck me. Your ex is a Chippendale?”

  “Ten points for Peaches.”

  “Did you know he was a dancer? Or was it… like, he comes out from behind the curtains, all oiled up, wearing his little cowboy boots, and he looks familiar, but you don’t realize until he’s giving you a lap dance?”

  “He was dressed as a construction worker, and I was so embarrassed about being dragged up on stage that I couldn’t even look the guy in the eyes. I didn’t know it was him until I had my hands on his butt. I thought I was having déjà vu, because his butt felt so familiar, but then I looked up, and we were looking into each other’s eyes.”

  “That is insane!”

  “He said fate must have brought us together so we could say a proper goodbye. We dated back in high school, then tried to make it work long distance when he went off to work on the oil rigs, but we broke up over the phone.”

  She stared off at nothing, at the spot on the wall where someone who was a better decorator than Keith would have hung up some art.

  “And that’s why you cheated on Keith,” I said.

  “I’m not saying I shouldn’t have done what I did, but Keith and I were taking some time apart. We’d been fighting constantly, and his sister Katy was living here, and the three of us kept getting into these strange power struggles.”

  “Because Katy is a Level Ten Bitch-monster.”

  Tabitha laughed guiltily. “She’s my best friend, but I know what she’s like.”

  “Wait. You and Keith were broken up when you went to Las Vegas?”

  “We weren’t exactly together. I’d moved back home with my parents. Katy wanted me to move back in to the apartment with her and Keith, but I still had some hard feelings about things he’d said to me.”