by SM Lumetta
Just when I do, Doc catches my eye and grins. He smacks Fox on the shoulder one more time and slips around him. “Miss Fordham,” he says, his accent thickening. “How are we this evening?”
“Fine, thanks,” I say, a crooked smile on my face. Doc has always been charming, but he’s aiming the good stuff right at me. That would explain the concentrated Aussie accent—aka, the panty dropper. I narrow my eyes momentarily, but decide to see where he’s going with this. I’m about to ask how he’s been when I see his eyes drop to my chest and lower, all the way down and back up.
Now, he’s a dude. I’m not shocked, or even offended—though I probably should be. Feminism and all. But this is a dude I’ve known for at least five years. I used to joke that Fox brought him back from Down Under as a souvenir.
“Seriously?” I ask. “Did you just scope me?”
“I’m sorry, I did,” he says, not the least bit ashamed, though I notice his voice has quieted ever so slightly. “I couldn’t help but notice how amazing you’re looking these days. I thought to myself, why the hell have we not hooked up?”
“Uhhh.” I have big plans for answering him, but I’m too stunned. I mean, Doc flirts. Most of the guys I know do in that innocent or harmlessly teasing kind of way. He’s not teasing right now.
“Would you like to get out of here?”
“Excuse me?” I think he just propositioned me. Rewind. Yep, he totally did.
“I mean, like, take a walk down the beach,” he amends. He shifts from one foot to the other, bringing his face a few inches closer. The room suddenly feels very small.
I stare and try to figure out whether this is April Fool’s Day or the Twilight Zone. Finally I ask, “Are you for real right now?”
He grins again. “Absolutely. I think we could have a lot of fun.”
Despite being weirded out and sure as shit caught by surprise, I can’t help but to be charmed. I feel my mouth curving against my will and I sound like a kind of goofy-giddy-girl when I reply. “On the beach?”
“For starters.” He smirks, and I can practically see the dirty visuals playing in his head.
I look down and see his fingertips fiddling with the button on my jean cutoffs. I push his hand away. Part of me—a part that clearly forgets Nora’s hatred of Doc—wonders if I would consider this if I wasn’t currently trying to get knocked up. By his best friend, no less. For a moment, I’m confused.
Before I can do much more than drop my mouth open to get a little more air, he leans in and whispers, “I’ve always fancied you, Sophie.”
My eyes go wide, but I have no time to respond because someone yanks Doc away from me. Fox. And he looks pissed.
“Dude,” he says. “What the fuck are you doing? You don’t mack on Sophie. That’s against the rules!”
Rules? First I’ve heard of any rules.
“What rules?” Doc and I say in unison. He smiles at me, his eyes dancing. I smile back, but my mind is on Fox. He doesn’t like Doc hitting on me and it only adds to the melee of crazy going on in my head.
Fox huffs. “The no-friends-we-know rule,” he replies, stumbling awkwardly over the words.
“You just made that shit up,” Doc says. “The only rules are no fucking my sister, which is not hard, because she’s married and on the other side of the planet, and no fucking my mum.”
“Your mum is on the other side of the planet, too,” Fox says.
“Right, so no worries,” he says and shrugs. “What are we talking about now?”
I can’t see Fox’s expression with him facing away from me, but I do see Doc roll his eyes. “I need a drink.”
Doc steps over to me again and puts his hands on my hips. We’re very close and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was going to kiss me. Over his shoulder I see Fox shooting eye daggers at Doc’s back. I’m gently pushed to the side as Doc grabs a bottle behind us.
I don’t know what I’m feeling but when I look at Fox again, he’s already walking away. I follow him to the deck. “What was that about?”
He grabs my hand and drags me onto the sand. It’s cold on my feet as they sink into it. Every step feels harder than the last, mostly because Fox is walking too damn fast. The wind has picked up and even in the dark, I can see thin whitecaps rolling over the water. We get two houses down before he stops, so a view of us from the party is obstructed.
“You said no hos,” he growls.
I have barely stopped tripping thanks to his punishing pace. I steady myself and stare at him, stupefied. “Uhh. I know?” I don’t know why I answered that as a question.
He takes a fidgety deep breath and rolls his shoulders around before crossing his arms over his chest. “You can’t be fucking other people, then, either.”
I hold his gaze a few beats longer before I laugh in his face. “Okay, seriously, dude? You’re telling me? First of all, Doc came on to me. I did nothing.”
“I saw you smiling,” he reasons. “You were considering.”
That’s not exactly true, but even if I were, I would never have gone through with it.
“Please. I’m not like you,” I snap. “I don’t hop on any dick just because they smile at me, and I certainly don’t randomly fuck friends.”
He raises an eyebrow.
The wind whips around, blowing all my hair into my face. I think the wind likes to make me look stupid. I wrestle to get the hair out of my mouth at the very least before spitting my defense. “Wes was an isolated incident. Also, we were drinking and he was moving away.” My justification for a one-night stand with an old friend is a valid argument, right?
He makes a noise as if it negates my point.
I level a look at him. I’m hoping he knows he’s in for it now. I lift each foot out of the sand, almost marching in place. The adrenaline is amped for some reason. “Regardless, how many friends of mine have you banged over the years, Fox? Seven? Eighteen?”
He kicks sand. The wind catches it and some of it pelts me in the face. I basically smack myself to brush it off. I bend down, grab a handful, and throw it at him.
He blocks as much as he can and shouts back at me, “Three, thank you very much!”
I make a spitting face, trying to get the sand out of my mouth. And my hair. Again. I can guess how this takes away from my point. “And how many of those three do I still speak to?”
Silence. Well, except for waves and wind. I feel a chill and rub my arms. More sand. Goddammit.
“That’s what I thought,” I say. “None. Do you still talk to Wes? Yes. You do. Most of us do.”
His face prunes. “What’s your point?”
“What’s yours? I haven’t done anything. Wasn’t going to—I may be trying to get preggers, but I’m not about to go outside of our agreement. That’s not how I work.” Overcome with a fresh wave of anger, I make a sort of growling noise. “Have you?”
His eyes go wide. “No!” he shouts. “What? You don’t trust me now?”
“Never said that, Fox,” I say with a sigh. “But you jumping all over me about your friend hitting on me reeks of hypocrisy.”
“He’s your friend, too,” he blurts, sounding like a child. “What about Zeke? You were ready to—”
I hold up my hands to interrupt. My face goes slack as I look at him, dumbfounded. “Do you listen to yourself sometimes? It’s embarrassing. ‘Why would I be jealous?’ ” I parrot his defense about Zeke while in Big Sur. “ ‘You’re clearly with me.’ ”
He shifts on his feet. He makes the spitty, got-sand-in-my-mouth face. I feel slightly vindicated by that. “Listen, forget I said anything about it. Let’s just go back to the party. Okay?”
“How about ‘I’m sorry for acting like a complete jackass, Sophie’? Huh? No?” I shake my head and start walking back without him. The wind has taken a break, thankfully, so I tuck my hair behind my ears. Fox quickly catches up and walks silently for a moment before speaking again.
“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’ve had a few�
��”
“Don’t crutch, man,” I hiss. “It’s a dick move.”
A barrel of waves crash, but I can still hear him sigh, guilty. “I’m sorry it didn’t work last month.”
The words and what’s behind them are genuine, but I can’t get a handle on him right now. He acts jealous then pretends he was offended by petty injustices. I’m disappointed round one was a failure, sure, but honestly, part of me was relieved. Mom and Nora keep reminding me I’ll never be “ready” and I get that. Still, I wasn’t as disappointed as Fox seems to think I should be. I can’t say why, but hopefully I’m not making some life-ending mistake.
“When do we try again?” he asks as his house and the party come into view again. I wonder if the bargain of friends with benefits we struck over the trip last weekend has lost its luster. I turn and look at him, asking with my eyes. He seems to realize he messed up somehow, but I’m not about to say why.
I see Doc on the deck. He winks at me. A crooked smile flashes over my face. I shake my head, mostly in frustration, and prepare to make myself intimately acquainted with several more vodka tonics. Fuck it.
“Lolls?” Fox uses my nickname. He’s trying to make everything okay, even though he clearly didn’t see that wink.
A growing number of “feelings” swirl in the empty space in my abdomen. I can’t identify or sort through them so I ignore the discomfort. I also blame them for the next jab I toss at him.
“I’m sorry you’re off hos for another month.”
Fox stops walking and remains behind. I continue into the house and introduce myself to that next drink.
I wake up the next morning feeling like my face is surgically grafted to the floor. It takes so much effort to lift my head, I briefly check for stitches and wood-grain marks on my cheek. I hadn’t meant to crash at Fox’s, especially since he pissed me off so much, but then I drank significantly more than I intended. Certainly too much to drive myself home.
The floor is cold on my skin when I slowly push up and sit back on my knees. Once I’m mostly vertical, I survey the room. The open layout of the house makes it seem extra spacious, more so than it already is. The sun boasts a beautiful day, pouring in through the street-facing windows. The warmth makes me feel a little less hollow than I did last night. Despite that improvement, my head is still pounding.
I pad down the hall to the bathroom and throw back a few ibuprofen capsules. No one else is here that I’ve seen, so I’m not as horrified when I turn to the full-length mirror on the back of the door. I have no pants on. I hope I removed them, at the very least, when everyone else had gone. Otherwise, I can only pray there are no pictures. My mother will print them out and blow them up for family Christmas if the evidence is available. Our family get-togethers thrive on humor, especially when one of our own is the butt of the joke. It’s a lifelong goal for most of us to remain out of the spotlight. Cameron usually offers himself up because he’s crazy. And he loves the attention, which would explain why he does so much stand-up comedy and drag gigs. Nowadays, he’s been laying kind of low. I need to call him to make sure he’s still planning to talk to Mom and Ruben tomorrow night for Operation Gender Reveal, the sequel to Coming Out 2007. I still can’t figure out how he’s keeping such a bomb ass sense of humor on for the whole thing, because it stresses me out just trying to wrap my head around it. Maybe I shouldn’t think about this with a hangover.
The audience collectively grunts, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.
I look around the living room and find my phone, but the search for my pants comes up empty. What the hell did I do with them? I decide to wake up Fox regardless of how difficult it is just because I’m horrible enough to bring him into my pain.
“Foxenheimer,” I say, bursting through his door. A girl sits up like a shot and for a few brief seconds, I feel the rug pulled out from under me. She’s holding the comforter up over her chest while I try to stop my heart from bursting through my own. When Doc sits up and pops bug eyes at me, I breathe a sigh of relief. And then dragon fire. My chest is tight and my nails are scraping the doorframe and the floor—I’m including my toenails here, because my toes have curled into the wood. I do my damnedest to skewer him with my gaze.
“Well,” I say, truly hoping he feels the red-hot pokers I’m throwing at him. “I’m so glad you found a replacement, Doc.”
“I thought you said your name was Dundee?” the girl asks. She sounds a little like she sucked on a helium balloon for about an hour—that, or she’s fifteen. She looks young enough. Jesus, did she wander in off the beach?
Doc is quick, though, and says, “Dundee’s my last name.”
It’s not, by the way. It’s Wellesley. Polly Pocket is satisfied, though. She leans into him, and I enjoy his suddenly queasy pre-walk-of-shame expression.
With a pointed look of disgust, I slam the door behind me. I realize that I went in there without pants.
When I hear barking outside, I know Fox probably slept on the deck again. The sliding door is slightly ajar, a vodka bottle blocking the final five inches of the path before it locks. I push it open and step outside. No, I have absolutely not taken the time to find and put on any sort of pants. I’m over it. At least my clam basket is covered, even if my booty cheeks peek out.
“Grandmaster Spaz!” I say, wondering if that will wake him up. I was pretty loud. Which would be funny if he has the same type of hangover I have. And since the ibuprofen has not kicked in any assistance yet, I grasp more firmly—and with a significant wince—that I am not immune to the same pains when trying to inflict the torture on someone else in my condition.
It does, in any case, wake him up. “Whaaat?” he asks with pain in his voice, which evolves inexplicably into a throaty chuckle. “Hey, Lollipop. What’s crackin’?”
“Any particular reason you let Doc bone some high schooler in your bed last night?” I ask, stealing the bottle of water he has next to the lounger he’s all too comfortable in. When he doesn’t answer right away I look back. He’s scoping me. Again with the scoping. Dudes.
“You’re not wearing pants.” It took him a minute, but hangovers don’t generally allow for observance. Unless it’s loud noises or smells. That’s when you suddenly become superhuman. A look of heated panic crawls across his face. “Hold up, you didn’t hook up with—”
“Doc? Are you still on that? Give me a break, man,” I reply, quietly and more gently this time. This is about self-care, people. “He hooked up with some black-haired sprite who thinks his name is ‘Dundee.’ ”
“It’s like he has no self-respect,” Fox mumbles as he rubs his eyes. “Using a code name from an Aussie-stereotyping ’80s movie? Lame.”
I roll my eyes. And wait. I don’t think he realizes yet the egregious error that Doc has made. I shift my weight to my other foot. For shits and giggles, I pop a hand on my hip. Finally, he gets it.
“Wait, did you say he fucked her in my bed?”
I push my eyebrows into my hairline to indicate that he’s slow on the uptake.
Fox scrambles out of his deck chair, but stops once he’s mostly vertical. He moved too fast. Good. Once he retains his equilibrium, he rushes into the house. Flower jumps up from her spot next to the chair and pads over to get some behind-the-ear scratches. I sit down in Fox’s place and get some Flower love of my own. To my delight, she settles her head on my lap. I end up adjusting so that she joins me on the lounger and takes up a huge space between my legs, enough so that I have room to give her belly rubs. I could easily fall back asleep. But I don’t because a minute later, I hear Fox yelling and Doc arguing. I don’t know what happens to the girl in the situation, but I do hear some pitter-pattering and a front door slam. Fox yells something about burning the house down, but I’m guessing I missed something in there.
The next thing I know, Doc must be gone because Fox is standing on the deck next to me, fuming. “Fucking asshole. Totally crossed the line.”
“He says you told him it was cool,” I say. He
didn’t, but I’m kind of smarting over his bullshit confession and attempted hookup with me last night. I feel stupid. It felt so nice to be wanted like that. To be pursued without asking for it. I look up at Fox and notice a blunt chest pain hammering high at my ribs. I blink the haze of whatever I’m dealing with away. I don’t want to sort through that right now. Thankfully, my girl Flower is keeping my legs warm or the chill that ricochets through me would have made me shiver visibly. Not that Fox would notice—he’s not done ranting.
“Bull fucking shit. Fucking dick. Why the fuck would I say, ‘sure, man, screw your brains out on my thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets’?”
“What? Get out. You got that shit at Target,” I say, not waiting for his confirmation. I was with him on that particular shopping extravaganza. “In any case, have you seen my pants? Or whatever I was wearing?”
He looks at me and I wonder if I should have expected to have some semblance of conversation about the argument last night. Or not. I mean, Fox is a dude. What bothers me most is the way he’s looking at me. He’s worried.
“Are we okay?” he asks. “The last time I talked to you last night was coming in off the beach, and it didn’t feel so—”
“We’re fine,” I say hurriedly, looking away. My stomach is flipping and I don’t want to think about why. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Do you want to date Doc?” he continues his train of thought without my permission. He’s genuine, though I can’t place any other intentions by his tone.
I twist and glare at him. “You’d be cool with that?”
I note his face is a wee bit crestfallen and shocked in disguise. “Um, well… if that’s what you wanted, I guess.”
And now the moment feels even weirder than it did last night. I wonder what’s wrong with me. I don’t quite know how to react. I end up snorting, because you know, I’m such an elegant lady and all. “No, Fox. I have no interest in Doc. He took me by surprise last night, that’s all. I should’ve known he was just looking for a tuna boat parking space.”
