by Jessica Pine
I realized there was no way to admit that I didn't know his name without looking like the sluttiest slut that ever did slut. Forget Madame Bovary - Hester Prynne, c'est moi.
For a brief, mad second I considered taking a wild guess. Paul? John? Ringo? Havelock Maximillian Kittenplan III? Fortunately Aunt Cassandra introduced me to the novel experience of being pleased to see her and delurked from behind the armoire she'd been pretending to dust.
"Hiiii," she said, practically vibrating with glee. "You must be Clayton, right?"
"Clayton," I said. "Yes. This is Clayton. Clayton, this is my Aunt Cassandra."
He threw me a look of appalled pity. As soon as his back was turned I stuffed my fist in my mouth and sank down beneath my laptop.
Cassandra took him into the back to talk to my Dad, while I stared vacantly at my laptop screen and wondered what were the odds that we'd hire the guy with whom I'd had a frenzied one night stand while stoned out of my apparently tiny mind. Actually the more I thought about it, it wasn't that unlikely. When your state capital only needs one high school and one elementary then you can officially call yourself a small-town state. And small towns have a way of bleeding into one another.
He came back in looking sheepish.
"You got the job, didn't you?" I said.
He rubbed the nape of his neck. "Yeah. I did. Sorry."
"It's fine," I said. "We're adults. We can deal with this, right?"
"Absolutely." Even as he said it I saw his gaze drift down my top, but I couldn't very well complain because my mind was right back there in his car, his hands on my butt and his...oh dear. I could feel my face burn once more.
"Don't look at me like that," I said, crossing my arms across my chest.
"Looking at you like what? I wasn't looking at you like anything."
"Give me a break. I know exactly where your mind was going."
He grinned and I was glad of the counter between us. As parking-lot misdemeanors went, he was looking pretty damn good. "Oh wait, I know this one," he said. "This is what the shrinks call projection."
"Projection?"
He nodded. "You think I'm thinking naughty thoughts about you because your dirty little mind is running rampant trying to figure out the best way to plunder my virtue." He looked disgustingly pleased with himself. "Yeah, you see - you've got your four year degree on the history of dick jokes and I've got my friend Steve."
I frowned for a moment. This kind of put a different complexion on things. "You call your penis Steve?" I asked, slowly.
He looked as puzzled as I felt. "No. My actual friend Steve. He's really smart. Knows everything about everything. Psych, projection, you name it."
"Yeah, okay. You got me," I said, holding my hands in the air. "Projecting like an IMAX here. I thought you were a stripper?"
"I am," he said, and rapped his knuckles against a cabinet that had been gaudily painted in a Romany style. "If you wanted this stripped, I could strip it."
I sighed. Oh God.
"Look, is this gonna be a problem?" he said.
"No. Like I said, we're adults."
"Good. Because you need to show me where the keys are kept and the book for checking them in."
"Right," I said, realizing for maybe the first time that he wasn't here purely for the purposes of pissing me off. "Come round. I'll show you."
As soon as he was on the other side of the counter I knew I'd made a huge mistake, and that the odds of us dealing with this like sane, sensible adults were about as good as our current odds of turning into a pair of giant, bright pink weasels and dancing the Macarena. The walls of the tiny office suddenly drew in closer than ever before, and the air was close, warm, fragrant with the smell of him - not the cologne smell, but the one underneath it, the one that was skin and flesh and hair, the smell I'd tasted when I licked my palm before returning it to his dick.
He was standing far too close. I got as far as "So...um..." before I felt his hand brush the small of my back. It was so quiet that I could hear him lick his lips, and then - just as he'd said - my dirty little mind went racing ahead of me, thinking of things we hadn't managed to do in his car.
"The blue fob is the key to the garage door," I heard myself say. "Don't take that one, though. We'll get you one cut. The yellow is..."
His hand was on my hip. I covered it with my own, meaning to remove it, but somehow I swayed back against him and the heat of his body was there to meet me. I swallowed as I felt his hand sweep my hair back; his lips were smooth and dry against the side of my neck. "The yellow one..." I started again, but already I could feel that needy, knowing tug between my legs as my hips stirred to life.
"Come on," I said. "You want everyone to say you got the job because you were screwing the boss's daughter?"
I reached behind me, perhaps to justify to myself that he wasn't only doing this because he needed a job. My hand found the fly of his jeans and set my mind at ease. His hand slithered up under my top and into the left cup of my bra.
"Who's everyone?" he said, his voice soft and slurred, the way it had been on Saturday night.
"Everyone is everyone. You can't be a stranger to small towns."
"Fuck 'em," he said, and turned me around to face him.
It seemed a convincing argument. He had just enough stubble to lend an edge to his kiss. His tongue was rough and agile and I made an embarrassingly needy sound in the back of my throat when it swept against mine. God only knows what would have happened if the doorbell hadn't rung. Customers.
I smoothed down my top and hoped to God my hair didn't look too crazy. A young couple had wandered in - him in a sweater vest and her in one of those floaty print dresses that figure heavily in 'bohemian' themed photo shoots. Maybe I should have settled on Helvetica. Clayton came out after me.
"The ones on the left aren't priced yet," I said. "So if you see anything you like just ask."
"No, it's fine," said the girl. "We're just browsing."
Oh yeah. Story of my life. She looked at us and waved a finger back and forth between us. "Is this your...um..."
"Family business?" said Clayton. "Oh yeah."
"How sweet. You make such a perfect couple."
"Oh, thank you," I said, with the widest, fakest smile I had ever faked. Under the counter I tenderly crushed my 'husband's toes with my boot.
"Okay," I said, when they'd gone. "You’re not funny and I don’t like you.”
He arched an eyebrow. “You’re a really bad liar.”
I sighed and wondered how to make him go away. “All right,” I said. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to work here and I’m going to work here and we’re just going to be normal. Like nothing happened.”
He nodded. “But afterwards we can get high and fuck in the back office, right?”
“No,” I said. “We can’t get high and fuck in the back office.”
“Why not?”
“Because that would be complicated. And God knows people don’t have one-night-stands because they like ‘complicated.’”
“Okay,” he said. “So...why don’t we make it another one-night-stand?”
“What?” Maybe there was something wrong with him.
“Last weekend,” he said. “I had a one-night-stand with a chick named Lindsay. You had a one-night-stand with a stranger. Now I’m not a stranger and your name isn’t Lindsay, so officially we have a clean slate.”
“Go away,” I said, so he did.
He came back about three hours later. Thirty minutes after that our so-called clean slate was thoroughly filthy once again; I’d never been much good at making resolutions.
Chapter Four
Clayton
Of all the antique stores in all Vermont, I had to walk into hers. On the first full day of work she wasn't there. On the second she stuck her head around the workshop door, saw me and disappeared before I could head after her. The third day I ran her to ground in the backroom behind the counter, where the keys were kept.
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"I have a solution," I said.
She ducked me and went back into the store. "Solution to what?" she said, entering something on her laptop.
"This. Us. Awkwardness."
She didn't take a beat. "You're moving to Tierra del Fuego?"
"Ow."
Lacie chewed her lip. "Okay," she said. "That was uncalled for. What do you suggest?"
For some weird reason it was like being catapulted back in time to senior prom. I could actually feel my heart speed up as I prepared to speak. "We could...um...that is, if you wanted to...we could like, maybe...date?"
She was biting her lip to hide her smile now. "Date?" she said.
"Yeah. Like when you go out - eat food, drink beer. Usually together."
"I know what a date is, dumbass." She pushed her hair back from her face and tied it back with a band from her wrist. No wonder her straightened hair had looked wrong on the night we met; its natural state was curly - really curly. I couldn't decide if it was dark blonde or light brown.
"If I date you," she said. "I'll never hear the end of it. And neither will you. This town feeds on gossip."
"So that's a no?" I asked. My stomach felt like I'd just plunged off the high part of a roller coaster.
She shook her head. "More of a caveat."
"A what now?"
"A caveat. It's Latin."
"What does it mean in English?" I said, conscious not for the first time that she was way smarter than me. It was lucky I'd been the one to bump into her that night; if Steve had got there first they'd probably already be picking out wedding china.
"Beware," she said. "Warning. Caution. I'm just saying - if you want to then it comes with a catch. You can't keep anything secret in a town this small."
I was sure she was making excuses. "Why? Does everyone know we had sex?"
A pale rose blush sneaked up under her skin, making her freckles stand out all the darker. Now I knew exactly where her freckles stopped. "No," she said. "Of course not."
"Then you managed to keep it a secret, didn't you? See? Was that so hard?"
She sighed and leaned back against the counter. "If people see us on a date they'll assume we're having sex."
"Well, we'll just to have sex then. I wouldn't want to disappoint anyone."
She sighed again. "Were you always this annoying, or was I not paying attention?"
"Look," I said. "If you don't want to go out just say so and we'll carry on like we did before."
"Before?" she said, raising an eyebrow.
"Yeah. Avoiding each other between make-out sessions in the back room. I don't know how that's working out for you but..."
Lacie held up a hand. "Fine, okay. You've made your point. It's a date."
I agreed to meet her at seven thirty and rushed home to change into something that didn't stink of wood stain. Unfortunately everything in my house now smelled of weed because Steve had appointed himself some kind of dealer-in-residence. There was a Harley parked outside the trailer and my blood ran cold; had Psycho Bob come to check in on his assets?
I tried the door. It wouldn't open. "Steve?"
"Um...hey. Just a second."
Okay, what the fuck? "Steve, have you barricaded yourself in my house?"
"Yeah - just...it's just a thing. Wait there."
"I don't really have any choice," I said. It was that or get down on my back, scoot under the trailer and climb up through the goddamn floor. I didn't really want to do that.
Steve opened the door. A great billow of smoke came out like something from a Cheech and Chong movie. His eyes were small and red. "What the fuck?" I said.
"I'm sorry," he said, as I closed the door behind me. "It's good shit but it makes me really fucking paranoid."
"What happened to that thing where dealers aren't supposed to use?" I asked. "That's what you said to me."
"Okay, so maybe that didn't quite work out..."
"Didn't quite work out? Understatement. You look like you've been pepper-sprayed. And your shirt's inside out. What the hell have you been doing?"
"Nothing," he said, slapping my hand away from the label of his shirt. The living room curtain slid back and revealed a tall, leather-clad figure. For a second my heart skipped a beat but I looked up and saw it wasn't Psycho Bob at all. This biker was at least thirty years younger, and didn't have the dipped-in-piss-and-iron-filings look of an old school Angel. I stared at him for a moment trying to figure out exactly what it was that made him unusual - maybe the smoke was already fogging my brains - but then he smiled and it all made sense; he was stupidly, cartoonishly handsome.
He looked like he should be wearing a pirate costume and adorning the cover of a bright pink book, probably with some kind of swooning maiden in his muscular arms. His hair was blacker than black and his eyes were bluer than blue. His smile revealed a dimple at the corner of his mouth and his chin was just the perfect kind of square.
He was the kind of man that most men would agree was a douche, or would if he wasn't so fucking huge. He had to tilt his big-ass handsome head just to fit in the narrow hallway.
"This is Trey," said Steve. "He's um...he's a..."
"I'm Bob's nephew," said Trey, sticking out a hand the size of a side plate. I shook it with a grip that was nothing short of pathetic. "Sorry, but I have to split. Good to see everything's going well though, Steve."
"Totally," said Steve. "Copacetic." He did some kind of embarrassing fist-bump thing that made my spine curl in on itself, and we watched as Trey swung one long leg over the side of his Harley and roared off through the trailer park.
"His nephew?" I said, slowly. For a so-called criminal mastermind, Steve had suddenly taken a worrying turn for the dumb.
"What?"
"His fucking nephew? Do you know what this means, you moron? It means that Bob is sending his nephew to check up on us and now Bob probably knows that we're cutting the product with catnip. Oh, and also he knows where I fucking live, so thanks for that, asshole."
"Okay," said Steve. "So just like chill, because it's not what you think."
"It's not? Okay then. Tell me. What's going on here? Because from where I'm standing it looks like you're hanging around my house, smoking weed with enormous fucking bikers when you should be out selling the stuff. When do we gotta kick back to Psycho Bob, anyway?"
"I'm gonna stop you right there," said Steve. "Because you're being really judgmental. I have it on good authority that Bob is not psycho - he's just a little hypoglycemic sometimes; he's not good if he doesn't eat."
"Right," I said. "So that time he broke a guy's kneecaps with a motorbike chain - he only did it because he was hungry?"
"Well, I wouldn't put it exactly like..."
"...so if we don't make him his money back he's not actually gonna punch our teeth so far down our throat we'll have to brush by sticking our toothbrushes up our assholes, just so long as we slip him a corndog or two?"
"...Clayton, now you're just being unhelpful..."
"...or does he have surprising tastes for a steel-capped, snag-bearded heavy metal lunatic and we should whip up a nice light caprese salad with arancini stuffed fucking peppers? They call him Psycho Bob, Steve. Not Hypoglycemic Bob. Not Hungry Bob. Not Gourmet Bob. Psycho Bob. Clue's in the name, bro."
Steve sighed. "Look," he said. "Everything is going to be fine. Breathe. Chill. You're really beginning to worry me."
"What? Me? Worry? Why should I worry? You've only turned my house into some kind of cannabis bodega and painted a big-ass YOU ARE HERE arrow to me on a map. And where the hell is Bog anyway?"
"That is exactly why you shouldn't worry," said Steve, wandering back into the living area. "Bog is on top of the deals. He's handling it."
I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Steve, Bog has difficulty differentiating dreams from reality. He can barely keep on top of figuring out which part of his body itches when he needs to scratch. Are you seriously..." I realized it was hopeless. "You know what, fuck it. I knew
this was a bad idea from the start. I do not have time for this. I have a date."
Steve stuck a fresh joint in his mouth. "Really? Well, that's awesome."
"Yeah. She is," I said. "And I'm going to be really fucking pissed off if I don't get to spend more time with this girl because I've been murdered by a bloodthirsty Hell's Angel and his goddamn handsome giant of a nephew."
There was a long moment while Steve's fried brain tried to make sense of what I'd said. "Handsome?" he said. "You think handsome? Yeah - I guess he is. I'd never really thought about it before."
"You should knock that shit off," I said. "Too much of that stuff kills brain cells. Look what happened to Bog."
He'd made me late. I took the world's shortest and coldest shower, threw on a clean shirt and jeans and drove back into Westerwick. I met Lacie in the tiny town diner and knew at once I was under-dressed. She was wearing a dark blue polka-dot dress that nipped in at the waist, and had switched her usual braided thread wristbands for a pretty enameled bracelet. I don't know how long she'd been sitting there, but she didn't look up when I came in. There was a book open in front of her and a cup of coffee at her elbow.
"What are you reading?" I asked.
Her eyes didn't move from the page. "Words, words, words."
"Hamlet," I said.
She looked up over the rims of her reading glasses and I knew I was right. It was one of the few parts of Shakespeare I remembered from high school - the part where Polonius is trying to suck up to Hamlet and Hamlet's having none of his bullshit; it struck me as a pretty good comeback considering it had been written five hundred years ago.
"So you do know Shakespeare," she said.
"Some," I said. "I'm probably not as well-acquainted with the dick jokes as you are."
She closed the book - something about the sea - and slipped it into her bag. "Actually Hamlet's more well known for the vagina joke," she said, taking off her glasses and putting them in their case.
