My Coyote Ugly Life

by Jessica Spoon

  “We’re not going on a date,” I inform him. “I already ate.”

  “Fine,” he shrugs, like it’s all the same to him, then his eyes flash with unconcealed desire, “we can skip dinner and go straight to desert.”

  “No!” I cry out and slide under his arms and move away from him. I can’t sleep with him. His Devil Penis Magic is off the scales and I would succumb to massive heartbreak. I must keep repeating this to myself. “We can’t sleep together, Grayson.” God, it feels good to say his name. I suppose after a kiss like that, we can be on a first name basis for a while.

  “Why?” he asks this like I’m the one who’s crazy.

  “Because we can’t.”

  “You wanted to the other night,” he reminds me with a wicked smile.

  “That was then.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he shakes his head at me and crosses his arms over his chest.

  “It makes perfect sense.”

  “Explain,” he lifts his hand out for me to go on.

  “That was when I thought I’d never see you again. Now, I know, I’ll see you all the damn time. We live in the same town,” I explain logically.

  “That still doesn’t make sense,” he says.

  “Yes it does!” I lift my hands in the air, letting them flop back down to my sides.

  “Are you saying… that you don’t want to sleep with me, because you’ll have to see me afterwards and you can’t sneak out in the middle of the night?”

  “It sounds horrible when you say it like that.”

  “Well, it is pretty shitty, Ree,” he raises his brows at me.

  “It’s not ‘shitty’, it’s uncomplicated,” I explain.

  “Do you have alcohol?” he asks suddenly.

  “What?” I jerk my head back at the subject change.

  “Beer, vodka, whisky, alcohol. Do you have some?”

  “Well… yeah.”

  “Kitchen?”

  “Yeah…”

  Then he takes off out of the office. I follow him to the kitchen where he opens the fridge and pulls out a beer, pops the top off, and takes a long drink. I stand there, mouth hanging to the floor as he chugs half the bottle.

  “What are you doing?” I demand.

  “I need alcohol to have this conversation with you,” he explains.

  “We don’t have to have this conversation. You can leave,” I say, (I think) unnecessarily.

  “Oh, we’re having this conversation,” he informs me.

  Well!

  He finishes the bottle, dumps the dregs of it in the sink looks at me and asks, “Empties?”

  “Door next to the fridge.” He opens the door to the cabinet, places his empty bottle in the can, goes back to the fridge, opens it, comes out with two (my God) more bottles of beer, closes the fridge, opens the bottles and places the caps on the counter. He walks to me, hands me a bottle and walks towards the living room. I follow him, in somewhat of a daze, beer in hand and watch as he sits down on my sectional. He pats the seat next to him, “Sit.”

  My feet move of their own accord, my brain not sure what is going on right now, and I sit down on the opposite side of the sofa.

  “So,” he begins, takes a drink of his beer, and continues, “you like things ‘uncomplicated’?” (Yes, he even made the air quotes with his hands.)

  My brain comes back, now that we are back on topic, “Yes.”

  “So you meet a guy, sleep with him and then never see him again?”

  “Usually…” I say slowly, my head tilts a bit, confused as to where this conversation is going.

  “Usually? So there is leeway with this ‘uncomplicated’ lifestyle.” Again with the air quotes.

  “Not really.”

  “Explain.” He sits forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his fingers holding the neck of the beer between them.

  “I date…” I begin. How am I talking about this with him? He’s like a conversational wizard. “But never more than a month.”

  “Okay,” he says and sits back, taking another drink of his beer, “So we date for a month,” he concludes.

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold the phone.

  “No, we don’t,” I clarify. “I will not date anyone from Belton.”

  “Really?” he asks sarcastically.

  “Really. Not since high school.”

  He’s silent for a while, studying me. I sit further back onto the couch, cross my legs (Indian style) under me and drink my beer. I look at him (yep, still studying me) and just hold his eyes. I usually like this game, but he unnerves me a bit (okay, whatever, a lot) so I look out the patio doors to my backyard.

  Oh… look at that squirrel. Sorry, buddy, no nuts out yet.

  I need to get some corn and put it out for him. Get one of those nice little squirrel chair thingies that you nail to a tree and you stick a dry corn cob on it and the squirrel sits in his little chair and just goes to town on the thing. I love those things. I really love fall when they try to fill as many nuts in their mouths as they can. Haha, so funny. “I’ll make you a deal,” he says pulling me from my happy squirrel thoughts.

  “I’ll make no deals with you, Chief.” His smile is the only acknowledgement of that statement as he continues, “We date for a month-”

  “No,” I interrupt.

  He then pulls out Cop Move 10 (the ‘Don’t Interrupt Me When I’m Talking’ look) and says, “We date for a month and at the end of the month if you don’t want to take things further, then we go our separate ways, staying friends.”

  I started shaking my head halfway through his statement, “It won’t work. If I want to take things further, then what happens six months down the road when we’re both invested and we end up arguing all the time and it turns ugly and you find a hot young piece of ass that gives head better than I do and you leave me high and dry with a mortgage and six kids?”

  “Okay. First of all, six kids in six months? Baby, you’ve really got me working overtime,” he smiles at me; I roll my eyes at him. “Second: Do you give good head?” he wags his eyebrows at me and I can’t help it, I laugh.

  “No,” I say after I straighten my face, “I give horrible head.”

  “Hmm… I don’t believe you,” he still grins at me.

  I smother a smile.

  Asshole.

  I actually don’t know if I give good head, because I’ve never done it. My college boyfriend and I had never gotten around to it and for some reason I’ve always thought of it as too intimate of an act to just do willy-nilly.

  “Okay, next deal then,” he says; his face back to serious.

  “Grayson… No.”

  “Just one night.” My eyes bug out of my head. Is he serious? “We’ll have sex tonight and that will be the end of it.”

  “No,” I say offended. “Sex isn’t some kind of business deal you can just make.”

  He stands up and comes over to me.

  Slowly… stalking.

  Once he is right in front of me, he leans closer, his eyes smoldering, “Gorgeous, it will be a very worthwhile deal.”

  I swallow hard and shake my head ‘no’ while looking in his eyes. “I haven’t showered since this morning.”

  “That’s fine,” he says, bending closer, placing his free hand against the back of the couch and running his nose along the bridge of mine, causing my breath to hitch.

  “N-no,” I stutter out. Real smooth.

  “Fine,” he says standing up, “we’ll hang out tonight, and every night until you sleep with me. Get to know each other.”

  Is he crazy? That’s worse!

  That would be like starting a real relationship. Getting to know each other? Pfft. Who does he think he is?

  “No. You can leave,” I inform him.

  “Babe, not gonna happen,” he tells me shaking his head.

  “Fine, whatever. Stay. I don’t care. Stay the night for all I care!” I immediately regret my rant as I see his eyes light with delight.

  Before I can re
cant my statement he says, “Sounds perfect. Drink you’re beer. We’ll watch TV or something.”

  “No-,” I begin but he cuts me off.

  “Too late. Deal made. You lose.”

  Jerkface dickass.

  ***

  So that is exactly what we do for the next four and a half hours. Sit uncomfortably next to each other (well, I sit uncomfortably. He lounges back like he hasn’t a care in the world) and watch TV.

  Sports.

  Baseball.

  Clearly, I’ve lost my mind on this crazy train. He grabbed the remote and I’ve been in too much shock to argue.

  At eleven thirty I get up and start my usual bedtime routine. I take our empties to the kitchen, pick up the caps and place them in a jar in the closet with the empties (I save them, because I keep thinking I’ll do something creative with them), wipe down the sink and counters, get the coffee ready and programed for the morning, turn off the kitchen light and head to my bathroom; leaving him on the couch watching baseball.

  Pfft.

  I wash my face, brush my teeth, take my hair out of the tangled knot on top of my head and brush it out. I turn to walk out of the bathroom and see Chief Cole (yes, I’m back to calling him ‘Chief’) standing in the doorway, watching me.

  I jump a bit, “Would you stop that!?”

  He just smiles at me and walks the rest of the way into the bathroom. “Got a spare toothbrush?” he asks from behind me, his eyes on mine through the mirror.

  “What? You didn’t bring one? All those expectations that you were going to get in my pants and you didn’t bring your own toothbrush?’ I ask, full of attitude.

  He smiles, “Figured you’d have one.”

  Jerkface dickass.

  I open a drawer, pull out a new toothbrush package and slam it on the counter. Then I walk out of the bathroom, head to the bed and crawl in. A few minutes later, Chief Cole comes over and stands by the bed.

  “Wanna move over a bit?” he asks.

  “No,” I reply. I always sleep in the middle of my king bed stretching out in a starfish position.

  “Babe,” he deadpans.

  “There’s two spare bedrooms on the other side of the house for you,” I inform him.

  “No,” he says. I sit up in bed and look at him. “I sleep in here,” he informs me pointing to the floor.

  “Okedoke,” I say pleasantly, hop out of bed and walk over to my ottoman that is at the foot of the bed. I move it to the wall where the patio doors are and pull on the strap.

  This specific ottoman is totally kickass. The top of it is two sides and when you pull on the strap, the top lifts (forming kind of a headboard) and a pull out bed comes out. It’s about five and a half feet long, three feet wide and the mattress is only about three inches thick.

  “There ya go,” I tell him, looking at him then back down at the kick ass bed I just gave him.

  He looks at the bed, then back to me, then back to the bed, then back to me.

  “I don’t fucking think so,” he tells me.

  “What? What’s wrong with it?” I ask him, completely serious. This thing rocks.

  “Ree. I’m six-two.”

  “And?”

  “This freaking thing isn’t big enough for me,” he looks at me like I’m mentally damaged.

  “Well, not if you lay down on it! Duh,” I tell him. “But see it’s got a back,” I point to the headboard made out of the ottoman top, “You can sleep sitting up. They teach you how to do that, like, week two in the academy right?”

  “Babe. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, because I feel like you are being completely serious right now, and I’ve got to admit, that worries me about your state of mental health, but hell no. There is no fucking way I am sleeping on this thing,” he informs me pointing to my awesome ottoman.

  “Well,” I huff out, placing my hands on my hips. “You’re awfully ungrateful!”

  He lowers his head, looking to the floor and shakes it.

  “You can either sleep on it or you can sleep on the couch or you can sleep in one of the spare rooms,” I tell him and his eyes come back to mine, “Those are your choices.”

  “No. There’s one more choice,” he tells me.

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?” I ask. He moves quick again (how does he do that?!) grabs me around my waist and tosses me over his shoulder.

  “Grayson!”

  “Yeah, baby. Say my name,” he says sarcastically.

  “This is not funny!” He tosses me on the bed and follows me in, pulling me into his side and throwing the covers over us.

  “What the-!” I scream. “What are you doing!?”

  “Shh. Sleepy,” he says above my head, his mouth against my hair.

  “Well I never!” I huff.

  “That’s the point, babe.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s the point, Chief?”

  “You’ve never had someone like me, and baby, I’m not letting you go, easily. So be prepared to fight.”

  “Oh, I’m prepared all right! You be prepared to fight!”

  “Shh. Sleepy,” he tells me again.

  “Hrmph,” I pout.

  Well, I may as well get comfortable. Which, (let’s be honest, shall we?) it isn’t very hard to do. All snuggled up to his hard body.

  Oh my God when did he take his shirt off? I burrow closer into his warm skin and inhale. He smells so good. His arms tighten around me and I allow myself to relax into his body. Just for tonight.

  I promise…

  ***

  I wake up slowly the next morning and a moment of hysteria takes hold.

  I don’t remember hooking up with someone last night.

  I feel the (very male) body pinning me down, laying over the top of me, an arm around my waist, leg thrown over both of mine and his face in my neck.

  The previous evening comes rushing back to me.

  Dammit. Stupid Chief of Police.

  I move to get out of bed, but the arm around me tightens, pulling me closer into his body.

  “What are you doing?” His voice is muffled; his mouth in my hair.

  “Getting up,” I inform him.

  “Too early,” he tells me, sounding sexy and making me fight the urge to roll him over and ride him like a cowboy rides a bucking bronco.

  Mmm… that sounds fun…

  “What time is it?” I ask him; I should ascertain if it is actually early.

  “I don’t know,” he says, “four?” I realize he may be right, since it is pitch black in here right now.

  I raise my head to look at the alarm clock and realize he’s almost right, “Four thirty,” I say then nuzzle back into his warm body and the bed, quickly falling back asleep.

  ***

  “Oh, gosh! I’m sorry, Ree!” I hear my mother say.

  “What?” I lift my head, note the alarm says it is only seven thirty, feel Grayson move next to me, and then… I… start… to panic. “Shit!” I jump up, my brain registers that Grayson is up and moving, and I look at my mother. “What are you doing here?” I ask her.

  “I just thought I would come by and take you out to breakfast,” she says a smile forming on her face as she looks at Chief Cole getting out of my bed. In nothing but a pair of gray boxer briefs.

  Oh, Dear God.

  How did I not know I was sleeping next to a half-naked Grayson!? Holy shit-nuts he is sexy as fuck!

  I look back at my mother and see her looking at me with a proud and hopeful expression, “It’s not what it looks like, Mom,” I tell her.

  “What does it look like?” she asks me, a hopeful lilt in her voice. “I guess the date went well?”

  “Not really,” Grayson mumbles sleepily, after pulling his jeans from last night on and goes into the bathroom, buttoning them up on his way.

  “Azaria Elle, what did you do?” she whisper-shouts at me.

  “Nothing!” I stomp my foot. My mother gives me a stern look, so I puff out a breath. “Whatever.”

  Grayson comes out of the
bathroom, looking sexy with mussed hair and sleepy eyes. He walks by us saying, “I’ll make coffee.”

  “Oh, Chief Cole, I’ll do it,” my mother tells him, stopping him in his tracks and hurries out of the room.

  “Mom, it’s programmed to start in half an hour!” I call after her.

  “Okay, honey! I’ll just go ahead and start it,” she yells back.

  Grayson watches her walk out of the room then looks back at me, “Your mom do this often?”

  “Yeah,” I tell him honestly, nodding my head and noticing (and slightly disappointed) that he put his shirt on.

  “I suppose I’ll get used it,” he mumbles looking back out the bedroom door.

  “Get used to it?” I ask him with a jerk of my head.

  His head turns back to me, his eyes and mouth turn soft, forming into a smile, “Yeah.”

  I take a deep breath and begin, “Look, Chief, thank you, really. I’m flattered that you’re so…” I rack my brain for the right word, “enthusiastic about me, but seriously, this has to stop. We don’t even know each other, really, and I think it’s a little… you know… weird that you just act like we’re this couple or something. I mean, we’re not you know? You’re just the Chief of Police in the small town I grew up in and I don’t wanna piss you off, but I think we should just keep it friendly.”

  I’m pretty proud of myself for not losing my cool and I was so into my little speech that I didn’t notice Grayson’s face get hard and crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Enthusiastic? Really, Ree?” he asks me.

  “Maybe not the right word,” I wave my hand in the air, “but you know what I mean.”

  His stance changes, his arms hanging lose at his sides again and his face becomes blank. “You want it professional, babe? You got it,” he says, his voice cold, making my stomach clench for reasons I can’t figure out.

  “Grayson,” I say on a whisper, for some reason not liking that look on his face and that voice directed towards me.

  “Later,” he says curtly and walks out of the room. I hear the front door close moments later and just stare at the space he used to be and think about what the hell happened.

  I was honest with him, not rude and it is weird. He acted like we’ve known each other for ages, when we just met a few nights ago. I should be more freaked out about the fact that he basically forced himself into my bed and slept with me. Just slept. But it was oddly comforting.