Flawless

by JD Hawkins

  Meanwhile, I know Darren’s life too, another golden boy with lots of shit beneath the surface. I know that his parents had money but squandered it on pills, and sometimes he and his brother would stay at our house for weeks at a time in high school when his parents were bingeing. Darren doesn’t tell anybody that the only way he could afford to go to USC was on scholarships and loans, that he’s estranged from everyone in his family except his brother, that if you look closely, he’ll nurse the same beer for hours at a time because he’s worried about having inherited his parents’ addictive personalities.

  Even when Darren had just graduated from law school and I had just gotten my MBA and we were both working insane hours, we always made time to get together at least once a week. When I got offered the CEO position at LoveLife, my biggest hesitation about moving to Austin was leaving Darren behind, but lo and behold, his firm was actually creating a new office in south Texas and wanted several seasoned lawyers to help start things up. So here we are.

  “You’ve got that look on your face,” Darren says as we make our way through Tarrytown, past the Northwest Hills.

  “What look?”

  “Who is she?” Darren asks, cracking a smile.

  “There is no ‘she,’” I scoff.

  “Uh-huh. Is it that woman you met after the convention? Somebody new?”

  “I never got the name and number from the woman at the convention, and I’m way too busy at work right now to be chasing tail,” I evade. “What about you? Still seeing Keisha? How you two doing?”

  “Strong as ever. Man, I think I might love her.”

  “So when are you trading this hunk of junk in and buying yourself a minivan?”

  Darren lets out his trademark infectious guffaw. “You know Keisha and I would never get a minivan. I get that Josh is your cousin and all, and I’d be very happy if either me or Keisha could make picnic lunches as good as Allie’s, but I would strap a child directly to the roof of this car before I’d give up my baby.” He pats the steering wheel affectionately. “Seriously though… there’s nothing on your mind? I swear you’re not telling me something.”

  My friend knows me all too well. “Just got a lot going on, as usual, but I guarantee it’s not important. All I want to do today is leave it all behind and enjoy myself out on the water.”

  “Fair enough. But you know I’m here to talk, if and when,” Darren says.

  With that, he lets the subject drop and refocuses on the road. That’s one more thing to love about Darren—the guy always knows when to give someone their space.

  We drive over the crest of a hill swollen with green vegetation, down toward the rippling turquoise water of Lake Travis. Teenagers plunge off cliffs in cannonballs, families stake out spots on the shores, and children build giant sandcastles as we wind our way toward the docks. My boat glimmers in the distance, a Bayliner 285 Cruiser, a svelte beauty of a machine with over 300 horsepower. Darren and I park and hop out as we see Allie and Josh waving in our direction.

  Even though Josh is my cousin, I didn’t grow up knowing him at all—we weren’t close with my father’s side of the family. But I reached out to him once I moved to Austin and we actually ended up getting along really well.

  He’s not the kind of guy I would’ve hung out with in LA, more of an idealistic dreamer than a pragmatic doer. He teaches Philosophy at UT Austin, has that sort of professor-nerd look to him, lots of checkered shirts in yellow and burnt sienna that should have been put out of their misery decades ago. But for whatever Josh may lack in style, he makes up for in humor and good spirits. He’s the type of person who would literally give you the shirt off his back and make sure you had a hot meal and a couple slugs of fine whiskey before sending you on your merry way.

  As far as Allie goes, she seems as if she were teleported to the present day from a Vietnam War protest in the late 1960s. She’s also a professor at UT, and teaches Gender and Women’s Studies. Unlike Josh, though, she happens to own an excellent wardrobe that contains no yellow or burnt sienna, and whenever he’s up floating in his daydreams, she has her feet firmly planted on the ground.

  “Josh—a little help here?” Allie says, her arms overburdened with bags full of food, and we all unload our stuff onto the boat, cracking open light summer ales and digging into tubs of guacamole, salsa, and tortilla chips. Within a few minutes we’re out on the water, everyone else on the lake becoming miniature, humans to ants to barely more than specks.

  “First dibs on the wakeboard!” I shout. Josh fake-wrestles me before letting me pass. I slip my feet into the shoe-like bindings, strap in, grab the cable, and lower myself off the boat.

  “Ready?” Darren yells back to me, taking the helm.

  “I was born ready!”

  Darren floors the engine, foot on the gas, and in no time I’m standing, feeling the water wick off my body, making minor corrections to keep my stance and stay afloat. I want to scream with all the adrenaline pumping through my body, reminding me what it’s like to truly be alive. I turn, chest facing away from the boat, board toeside, launching into the air and doing a nosegrab before successfully landing back on the water’s surface. Then I climb back onto the boat and Darren and Allie each have a go at the wakeboard. They’re amateurs compared to me, but they know how to stand up for awhile without falling, which is really all you need to have a good time. (Josh, on the other hand, claims to have done the worst belly flop of his entire life the first time he tried it and has since declared that he is a boat-only person.)

  As I sip from another beer, I lay back on one of the bench seats, closing my eyes as I dry off in the sunshine. My mind wanders, drifts, and eventually makes its way to this past work week. I think about Zoe slinking into my office in that sexy little pencil skirt, bending over to look at my record collection as I tried to ignore the biteable perfection of that heart-shaped ass. And then when she got angry, her cheeks flushing, like she could barely control the words exploding out of her. It was all I could do not to throw her on the sofa and bury my tongue in her pussy. Damn, she’s hot when she’s riled up.

  I grab my damp towel from the deck and throw it over my lap, feeling myself getting hard as I imagine Zoe and me going at it in my office, a titillating strip tease as I sit back in my chair, each of us taking off one item of clothing, then another, as her hips gyrate, her full, round breasts exposed, my face buried between her thighs.

  The truth is, I haven’t been trying to piss her off deliberately. Or rather, my intent isn’t malicious. Zoe just marched into my office on day one, already taking the job so seriously, and while I admire her ambition and her passion—and hell, I find intelligent women irresistible—I can’t help but feel like she could benefit from taking things down a notch. I know she’ll be great at the job, and marketing this app shouldn’t be rocket science, so there’s no need to make things harder on herself. And I’m the one who gets paid the big bucks to take on all the shit and the responsibility and to stress over our bottom line. Not her. Besides, if she doesn’t want to take my shit, she can throw it back at me. My stamp of approval means nothing in the long run.

  “Liam, come on over here, we’re eating lunch,” Allie announces, and I pull myself together so I can go help her spread out a plastic gingham tablecloth.

  “And what manna from heaven did you put together this time?" I grin, but my mouth is already watering. I might be the resident gourmet in our group, but when it comes to whipping up old school comfort food from scratch, Allie’s got me beat on all fronts.

  She grins. “We have barbecue chicken, bacon mac and cheese, my secret recipe baked beans, peanut coleslaw, a green salad, sliced watermelon, and cinnamon pecan pie. Whew!”

  See what I mean?

  “That’s what I'm talkin’ about! I love you, babe,” Josh says, coming over to plant a kiss on her cheek as he reaches for a leg of chicken.

  “But which part of you loves me most?” she asks, swatting his hand away from the food. “Your heart, or your stomach?”


  “You left out another very important part of me,” he teases.

  “Mm-hmm,” she deadpans, shooting him an eye-roll.

  “My soul,” he replies, trying to keep a straight face, but we all end up laughing.

  “Okay, everybody dig in,” Allie commands, and we don’t need to be told twice.

  For a few minutes, we’re all so busy feasting that nobody bothers talking, so content to be enjoying the perfect weather, the amazing food, and each other’s company that words aren’t necessary.

  “So Darren, how’s Keisha?” Josh finally says, barely intelligible through a mouthful of chicken. “Sucks she had to work a double at the firm today, bro.”

  “She’s good, man. Amazing, actually. I wanted to wait until all three of you were here together to tell you—”

  “You got engaged?” I ask.

  “You’re having a baby?” Allie guesses.

  Before Darren can answer, Josh says, “I know. You guys are selling all your worldly possessions and moving to a nudist commune to raise goats and farm organic lavender.”

  We all stare at Josh. “What? It’s a possibility, though I admit an unlikely one.”

  Darren shakes his head. “You all are awful at guessing. Don’t ever go on Jeopardy. What I was going to say was that Keisha and I found a place with a lake view, right outside the city. We’re moving in together.”

  “That’s awesome,” Allie says. “Congrats!”

  “Glad you’re not leaving us for a bunch of nudists,” Josh adds.

  “I’m happy for you, Darren,” I say. I shake his hand and clap him on the back.

  It’s a big step for him, the first time he’s ever moved in with a girlfriend. There’s a part of me that can’t believe it, that the two of us are already fifteen years out of high school. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to be done with the days of trying to get laid by one of the good-girl hotties from the debate team, of wondering whether we’d find someone to buy us booze on a Friday night, of sneaking in through bedroom windows past curfew. But it’s unsettling for me too, that Josh and Allie are married, and Darren and Keisha are moving in together. It’s like everyone else around me has already found what they’re looking for, and I’m still trying to figure out what I want.

  “What about you, Liam? I know better than to ask about a girlfriend, but are there any lucky ladies who’ve grabbed your attention lately? Or maybe grabbed more than that?” Allie pokes at my abs with a half-smile. She loves to tease me about matters of the heart.

  “Nobody at the moment,” I say, avoiding her gaze. “Too busy with work. Too many late nights. Alas, the sacrifices a successful CEO must make…”

  Allie moves back into my field of vision, looks deep in my eyes. She tosses her long blonde hair over her shoulder and smirks. “I call BS. I don’t think you’re telling us the truth.”

  “And what’s the truth?”

  Allie crosses her arms. “I haven’t figured it out yet, but I’m onto you, Bartock. And I know how to make you talk.”

  “Oh yeah? How?” I say, raising an eyebrow.

  Allie picks up the pie pan and starts walking away from me. “Oh, I have my ways. You didn’t want any of this pie, did you, Liam? ‘Cause I think I might just throw the whole thing overboard.” She holds the pie over the rail, a wicked smile spreading across her angelic face.

  “Oh no you don’t!” I jump up from my seat and chase after her, and the pie, and everyone joins together laughing.

  By the time Josh pulls the boat into the dock in the late afternoon, I’m exhausted from the heat and the beer and the physical exertion, the satisfied exhaustion of a day well spent. Despite Allie’s threats, I kept my lips sealed about Zoe and everything going on at work. All I want to do now is go home, shower off the sunscreen and sweat and grit, and starfish across my bed, cool and crisp from the air conditioning. I feel like I could sleep for decades, drunk with fatigue.

  “Hey, that woman looks like your type,” Darren says, grinning and nodding over his shoulder toward the shore.

  Initially I think my eyes are playing tricks on me. Maybe I had a couple more beers than I realized. But after blinking a couple times, I know that what I’m seeing is real.

  There are two women stretched across beach towels, their legs and backs to the sun, bikinis undone to soak up the warmth. One of those women? The dark, flowing hair. The tiny tattoo on her left shoulder. The gold flash of her anklet. There’s no denying it. Of course, of all the women at the lake today that it could possibly be—it’s Zoe.

  6

  Zoe

  Savannah and I lie on the shore at Lake Travis, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun. To our right, several young children attempt to build a sand castle, and to our left, a group of guys toss around a foam football. Savannah’s nose is buried deep in a crime novel, her pale complexion shaded by a rainbow umbrella, and I sprawl across my towel, listening to music, glad to have a reprieve from the challenges of the work week. We munch on slices of watermelon and toss the rinds in a plastic bag for trash.

  Savannah and I were paired as freshman year roommates at Emerson and we’ve been best friends ever since. On paper, it doesn’t seem like we’d necessarily get along. Savannah’s the sporty, athletic type, a bit of a jock. Even when we go to yoga classes, she’s competitive about it. She’s from Madison and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her as happy as she was last year when we flew up to Wisconsin for UW’s first hockey game of the season, blissed out in her Bucky Badger beanie, chowing down on pretzel bites with a beer in hand.

  “Zoe...Zoe...Zoe!”

  I take out my earbuds, the Beach Boys’ psychedelic melodies and heartthrob drum beat fading away. I straighten out my towel, then turn over and apply more sunscreen so that I don’t go home with a stomach the color of a crisped hotdog.

  “What? Did a seagull poop on me?” I ask.

  “No, not this time,” Savannah says. She puts down her book, her short, dirty blonde hair still slicked back from swimming in the lake. She has a grin spread across her face like a kid in the world’s largest candy store.

  “What is it?” I ask. “A shirtless volleyball team?”

  “Nope, just an extremely hot guy out there wakeboarding. He’s GQ hot, Zoe. He’s hotter than the hot sand that has already managed to wedge itself into my bathing suit.”

  “How handsome is he really? Like, Jude Law handsome, or are we talking another Paul Scheer doppelganger?” I tease.

  “Paul Scheer is hot! Don’t act like you don’t appreciate the tooth gap,” Savannah insists. “But seriously, this guy is ridiculous, like a cross between Jude Law and George Clooney.”

  “Well it doesn’t matter anyway,” I reply. “I didn’t wear my contacts and my new glasses are somehow still lost in the mail. I’ll just have to imagine him.”

  She shakes her head. “You are missing out. If I could teleport, past me would have reminded you back at the house to go back in for your contacts. We’ll have to try to flag him down later. He is so your type.”

  “Savannah, it’s been barely two weeks since Jonathan left. I’m not on the prowl for some random hook-up.” It’s only a partial lie. It’s not like I planned to sleep with Liam that one time. And since I started working at LoveLife, I’ve become even more determined to stay single and figure out exactly what I want before I go throwing myself at random guys just to fill a need.

  Savannah turns to me. “Sit up.”

  I obey her command. She puts her hands on my shoulders.

  “This may be hard to hear, but as your BFF, I feel that it is my duty to remind you that this is really for the best. Be honest—you’d been unhappy for a while. He wasn’t the guy you fell in love with anymore.”

  “That’s not entirely true. I mean yeah, we were going through a rough patch. He was so stressed with work, and we weren’t really connecting anymore, but most couples have—”

  “Zoe, stop. Most couples do have their ups and downs, and Jonathan had a lot of good qualiti
es, that’s not what’s up for debate. It’s just that deep down, especially after all the serious fights you guys had over the last couple months, about your future—did you really think he was The One? Because the Zoe I know doesn’t settle. And you deserve better,” Savannah declares.

  I stay quiet for a moment, digesting her words. There was a time when I was convinced that Jonathan and I really were destined for our Happily Ever After, but I slowly came to realize that staying with him would mean a lifetime of compromises, of remembering the way we used to be during that first year, before Jonathan disappeared into his job and stopped having fun. Or maybe the warning signs were there all along, and it just took me all those years to see them.

  “Of course I don’t want to settle, and sure, I recognize that the Jonathan I fell in love with was not the same Jonathan who cheated on me with his assistant and took off for Italy without a glance backward. But I guess sometimes I wonder if…if I’m not gonna find The One. Maybe I’m just meant to be the spinster friend with the cat.”

  Savannah crosses her arms. “I know you love that cat, but you are going to find an absolutely amazing man—it just hasn’t happened yet. I mean, look how long I was single before I met Thomas. That was, what, almost five years? And besides, there’s nothing wrong with being alone. You’re a confident, independent woman. You don’t need some guy—”

  “Savannah, please,” I sigh. “I don’t want to talk about dating or Jonathan or being single forever anymore. This day is about us! Let’s break open that bottle of rosé that’s been chilling in the cooler.”