Unstuck

by Liliana Camarena

  “I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that having sex with your friends reaffirms the friendship,” “Nick, be serious,” I said.

  “I am, Sugar. You have to stop over thinking this. You have to let go of your obsession with control. Who knows this could turn into something more.”

  “No,” I said almost too loud “This can’t turn into something more than great sex once or twice,” “Why?” he was being patient. I already heard in his voice that he wanted to strangle me.

  “Because I don’t do relationships,” I whispered.

  “Sugar.”

  “I just don’t, Nicholas,” I said interrupting him.

  “So you are attracted to him. Why don’t you go up to his room right now and just jump his bones,” like it was that easy.

  “He’s not in his room,” I said as I turned over and stretched my neck to see that he was still in his office.

  “You don’t know that,” he said because he loved to argue with me.

  “I do actually,” I was still looking at him. He was on the phone with someone. Smiling. The smile he had for Brian and sometimes for me.

  “How do you know that? We’ve been on the phone for almost an hour,” He really loved to argue “I’m looking at him right now,” I said embarrassed.

  “Ew, Lucinda Stuart are you stalking him?” I laughed out loud.

  “No, I can see him from my window. He is in the phone with Brian,” I said as I looked at him.

  “I really don’t want to know how it’s that you know it’s Brian,” I sighed. I didn’t want to tell him so I was grateful when he went on “Seriously, Sugar, you need to figure this out because this is no way of living. Besides you haven’t had sex in months, that’s awful.”

  “It’s,” I nodded to myself.

  “Talking about sex,” I heard Stacy’s voice.

  “Ew, enough I really don’t want to picture you two having sex. I’ll let you to your night activities for now,” I said.

  “Who said we only do it at night?” I heard him holding back his lau.ghter “Ew. Stop. I’ll talk to you later,” at this point I was laughing as well.

  “Later I might be busy still.”

  “Bye Nick,” I said and hung up.

  I close the blinds and changed into my pjs before opening them a little. There he was, still on the phone not smiling anymore. He had a small frown; it wasn’t even a frown he looked as if he was talking about something important. I sighed and turned on the T.V. I flipped channel after channel until I was tired of the nothingness that meant to do that. I was bored as hell and it occurred to me that I would use my time wisely. I grabbed my laptop and googgled Patrick Maynard for the first time ever. I’d never ventured to search his name just like that. I used to go to specific economy and business sites where I would search for his name or company. Today I wanted to know about his past, his dirty socialite past. I began by looking at the images and of course what immediately stood out were a few pictures of us.

  “That’s new,” I said as I opened a picture of the two of us leaving his apartment in NY. We were both laughing at something. Probably some idiotic thing, we hadn’t slept all night, we were tired and in need of food. You could clearly see in the picture we hadn’t slept. I didn’t venture on reading the article that went with the picture.

  After that picture I saw some of him alone during galas. Whoever saw these pictures would say that he looked perfect, handsome, and happy to be there; I knew different. He looked uncomfortable in almost all of the pictures in his adult years. Once I got to the old pictures I saw that he was very into being a socialite. There were lots of pictures from when he was in his 20s I assume and he posed for the camera with a wide smile, like he was trying to be sexy on purpose, of course, he didn’t fail. In those pictures I saw him with a lot of girls, models and a couple of celebrities. I had to laugh at that because I remembered what he told me the time we were club hunting with Regina. He had slept with lots of celebrities. He just didn’t take them out on dates.

  And then, the party pictures. Those were a revelation; Patrick going into clubs, Patrick coming out of clubs, Patrick making out with strangers and one that I will never forget, Patrick throwing up on the street. Wow! That was special. I wanted to feel sorry for him but it was too funny.

  Of course, because of the Maynard last name, a few of his brothers’ pictures popped up. Both of them. Jameson seemed to have the hippie, relaxed vibe since he was young; there were a couple of pictures of him in a protest to save the white rhino, he had long hair and looked weird. I laughed out loud. There were pictures of Stuart. Well, Stuart could have a competition with Patrick to see who had the most exposed teen years because I googled him and I found not only 1 but 3 pictures of him throwing up in the street. A couple of pictures of a street fight with some drunken dude and the rest of them were just like Patrick’s with girls and during red carpet events. It seemed Stuart became the Stuart I’d met the moment he set foot in college because from then on there were only red carpet pictures of him. I guess Patrick wins in the early twenties exposure. I closed my laptop with a smile on my face. It was nice getting to know more of Patrick and his family.

  Next Morning I woke up renewed and excited. It was decorating day and I couldn’t wait. I showered really quickly and wore a pair of jeggings, snickers and a sweater with a t-shirt underneath. It was impressive how fast the winter was coming. I was sure it would snow any day then. I went down the stairs and start preparing the coffee pot. While the coffee brewed I went out to the living room and contemplated the tree. It was white and usually white trees weren’t warm and homey but this one was so full; it reminded me of snow, I know it was the whole point of being white but it actually looked like it was snowed in. It made me want to hug it because I was sure it would be as fluffy as a teddy bear.

  “You really love Christmas,” I heard Patrick say from the foyer.

  “Just the decorations,” I said turning around and walking to the kitchen. Patrick followed me and I gave him the binder as he sat on the stool in the breakfast bar. “We don’t have any leftovers,” I said smiling.

  “Oatmeal please,” he said and I nodded. I made two servings of oatmeal and gave one to him.

  “Do you want to eat it in front of the tree?” he asked “I know you are kidding but during December the midnight munchies will be held in front of the tree,” I declared and he nodded “As you wish, Pepper,” he said.

  After breakfast I did the dishes and told Patrick that he could go to work if he wanted because I was opening all the boxes first to see what I had to work with but he said that he had cleared all his work schedule for today in order to watch front row my complete process. I shrugged and warned him that this would take me all day. He didn’t care.

  And so the decorating process began. I opened all the tree decorations first placing them around me and opening them so I could look at them. They were beautiful. I’d decided to go with the black and white with red accents color scheme. I thought it would match perfectly with Patrick’s living room, the black chairs in there, the white couches and black throw pillows on them as well with the hardwood floors. The red accents on the decoration were only to make it more Christmas-y. We had checkered ornaments with little red bows on top, striped ornaments, chevron ornaments, solid black ornaments, solid white ornaments, polka dot ornaments and a few solid red ornaments, not much only to spray some red in the tree.

  “So,” I said as I tried to hang an ornament on the lower part of the tree “I googled you last night,” I said and saw Patrick looked up from his iPad.

  “You did?” He asked.

  “Mmhmm,” I said while hanging more ornaments.

  “What did you come up with?” he sounded worried.

  “Well I stuck to the pictures because there were so many, Patrick,” I said trying to hold my laugh.

  “Oh no,” he finally said.

  “I saw the one where you are throwing up in the street,” I finally turned to look at him.

&nb
sp; “I wasn’t even drunk! I had some bad shellfish,” He shook his head “Well you’ve seen me throw up, it’s only fair that I got to see you in action,” I said grabbing another ornament and looking for the perfect place for it. “And all the girls, Patrick,” I finally said. He sighed loud enough for me to hear. I heard him moving and then I found him in the couch in front of me. I was sitting on my heels in the floor.

  “You know I wasn’t serious with any of them right?” he asked with that frown I had seen the night before while he was on the phone with Brian. I was pretty sure it was Brian.

  “I know, Patrick. It doesn’t matter you were young and living the life,” I said returning my eyes to the tree.

  “I guess,” He shrugged.

  “I saw Jameson and Stuart too,” I said laughing

  “Did you see Jameson’s protests?” He smiled

  “I did! He had long hair. He looked weird,” I said shaking my head as I grabbed a checkered ornament.

  “And it smelled because he was in a saving water phase. I remember I asked him once to collect the rain water so he could shower and not waste water. He smelled so bad,” He said laughing and I did too.

  “And Stuart,” I said “he stopped the whole scene when he went to college?” “Yeah, my father told him that he had assured a place in the hotels if he got his shit together. He took it too seriously though,” Patrick said and I nodded.

  “It was enlightening, my research,” I said smiling and turned to look at him.

  “Well the cat is out of the bag,” he said and went back to his iPad.

  “I found a new picture of us I hadn’t seen,” I said with my eyes glued to the tree.

  “Yeah?” he looked up and I nodded “from when?” he frowned.

  “Leaving your NY apartment,” I shook my head while looking down at the boxes around me “there’s no way we could convince anyone that we aren’t involved now. They saw us leaving together your apartment,” I shrugged.

  “Does it bother you?” he asked and I looked at him shaking my head.

  “No, you?” I asked and he smiled.

  “You should know by now that it doesn’t. Not at all,” I nodded and went on with the decorating. When I was done with the whole half bottom part of the tree I realized that I was going to need a ladder to get the top part decorated. I found one in the garden’s supply closet.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Patrick asked while carried the ladder to the living room. I could hear a smile forming on his lips.

  “How am I supposed to decorate the top part of the tree?” I asked as I placed the ladder in front of the tree.

  “Ok, let me do it,” he said getting up from the couch “Do what?” I asked confused

  “I’ll get on the ladder and put the decorations on the tree,” he said going up a few steps in the ladder. I had to laugh at the sight “What’s so funny?” he asked not getting why I was laughing so much.

  “Patrick, never, in your 35 years of life, have you ever done anything that involved house work. I don’t think this is a job for you,” I said laughing again.

  “Funny, Lucinda,” he said trying to sound serious “Pass me the damn ornaments,” he said extending his hand.

  “Ok, if we are going to do this you need to follow my instructions. I don’t want you to mess with my tree,” I said as I looked for a solid red ornament.

  “Fine. Tell me what to do,” he said and I gave him the ornament. The process of guiding Patrick through the decoration of the tree was exhausting but funny as hell. We laughed for hours but he got pretty exasperated at times and I got frustrated. I thought I excelled at giving directions; it was him who didn’t get what I was trying to say!

  “Please, Patrick, just put the damn bow straight,” we had been at least 20 minutes in the bow that topped the tree. It was beautiful it was stripped in black and white. Patrick had a hard time placing the bow the way I wanted it.

  “Look, Lucinda, it’s there, straight,” he said gesturing towards the bow with both hands.

  “I think it looks straight,” I heard Brian’s voice and let out an audible squeal “what are you doing here?” I asked. That came out really wrong.

  “Thank you for the love,” he said giving me a hug and then crossing his arms “I came here to witness with my own eyes what my ears couldn’t believe,” he said looking up at Patrick struggling with the bow.

  “I told him that I was cancelling our work meeting today because we were decorating,” he said coming down the ladder “It’s straight,” he said looking at the bow.

  “I decorated, you watched,” I scrunched my nose at the sight of, as I saw, the crooked bow.

  “C’mon, Pepper, what was I doing for the past 30 minutes?” Patrick asked as I walked towards the tree.

  “Placing a bow in all the wrong possible ways,” I said giving up on the bow. It wasn’t that crooked was it?

  “Christmas Nazi,” said Patrick to Brian and he laughed.

  “Straight or not, I can’t believe you got him in the Christmas spirit,” said Brian sitting down in a couch that wasn’t invaded with ornaments.

  “She did, we even took a picture with Santa,” said Patrick grinning.

  “Don’t you dare,” I said as he took his phone out of his jeans pocket.

  “Let me see,” said Brian once he saw my face and grabbed Patrick’s phone. As soon as he saw the picture he laughed out loud. Brian was actually turning red.

  “This is hilarious,” he said between laughs while he wiped a tear.

  “It’sn’t that funny,” I said with my arms crossed.

  “It’s Lucy. I am looking at one of the most important business men IN THE WORLD,” he accentuated “and his assistant in picture with Santa. It’s damn funny,” he gave back the phone to Patrick who shook his head with laughter.

  “She even told him her Christmas wishes,” I heard Patrick as I busied myself placing the Chevron Christmas tree skirt I had picked. It was the perfect last touch. Brian kept on laughing like it was a stand up show what he was witnessing. I shook my head.

  “Why do I have so many extra ornaments?” I said exasperated. I knew I had some extra but not so many boxes. I had at least 3 big boxes filled with ornaments.

  “And what the hell is this?” I said as I opened a large box. “What?” I whispered.

  “I ordered another set of everything for your house, Lucinda,” said Patrick and I looked at him. “I knew you probably want it decorated so I asked the girl to send two of everything. The tree is smaller, though. It wouldn’t fit in there,” he said with a smile. I know I was looking at him wide eyed. I nodded and looked back at the ornaments. I got up and went to the kitchen to collect myself because I knew I was going to cry. Why the hell did he have to be so thoughtful? I wiped a couple of tears, gave a deep breath and went out and hugged him.

  “Thank you,” I said and he hugged me back.

  “You are very welcome, Pepper,” I quickly went back to my decorations because it was weird we were exchanging touching moments in front of Brian. Brian that was there because Patrick had told him about us decorating, probably the night before when I saw Patrick on the phone. I knew it was Brian! Brian, who hadn’t stopped by the house since the day we broke up. Brian who seemed pretty ok with the hug or the fact that the three of us were hanging out pre-Halloween style. I was happy, I decided.

  The guys saw me decorate the rest of the living room and then the foyer with garlands that had red twinkling lights and black and white striped tiny bows like the one in the tree. It looked beautiful. Once I was done with the decoration of the living room, foyer and dining room we realized we were starving and ordered some Thai food that we ate in the library while we talked a bit about MBU. It seemed we were all quite excited about the project; Brian seemed so happy to be preparing new profiles for the teachers, he said he was tired of having the same businessman profile repeated over and over again in front of him. “No offense,” he said. “None Taken,” we both reassured him.

&n
bsp; The afternoon went by so quickly and Brian decided to stay for munchies instead of dinner since we had eaten lunch so late. Patrick immediately asked for Miranda’s Panini and Brian decided that he was going for the same since I was cooking for the three of us. Obviously, I ate the same. Once it was ready Patrick announced that the meal qualified as midnight munchies, therefore it was supposed to be held in front of the Christmas tree.

  “This house needed a bit of warmth,” said Patrick as the three of us sat on the floor and stared at the tree. We had turned the lights off and the only lights came from the tree. Even though the colors I had picked were cold, the lights did give away certain warmth.

  “This house needed a woman,” said Brian still staring at the tree. I turned to look at both of them and they both looked at me. Awkward. I wasn’t going to allow awkwardness ruin my perfect moment with my perfect tree.

  “This house needed Christmas. It’s perfectly fine every other season,” I said “Well, kids, I’m leaving. I had enough Christmas decorations for at least a week,” said Brian getting up and taking his plates to the kitchen.

  “Don’t you decorate?” I asked going after him.

  “Dude, save yourself…,” said Patrick that was right behind me.

  “I do decorate, Lucy. Not myself, but my apartment is decorated,” he smiled and I was disappointed. I truly wanted to decorate his place too. I could come up with another color scheme for another space. Oh! The possibilities.

  “You broke her heart,” said Patrick hugging me and I smiled. “You still have the pool house,” said Patrick and I light up again. He was right!

  “Anyway, I’ll see you both tomorrow,” Brian said.

  “Wait,” I said running after him “I’ll go with you,” I grabbed the wreath I had chosen for the front door and went with Brian.

  “Here,” I gave him the wreath “help,” I signaled the door. He shook his head and smiled “There,” he said and I smiled looking at the wreath. It was beautiful. It had solid black and red ornaments with a checkered ribbon that ended in a bow in the very center. “Looks good,” he said and I nodded. “The porch looks amazing,” he said again. I had the feeling he wanted to say something but didn’t dare to. I took the chance to admire the porch. The arch of the porch was decorated in garlands with white lights as well as the two tiny pines that were to the right and left of the porch. It was amazing indeed.