by Mimi Strong
Dalton grinned like a kid being caught with his hand up a vending machine, his fingers wrapped around a stolen chocolate bar.
“Whoops,” he said.
“Uh, whoops?”
The moment of romance was gone, and my passion morphed into something else—something defensive. His arms around me no longer felt like heaven, but like a mousetrap. I shoved against his chest and wriggled myself free.
“I’m sorry you’re offended,” he said.
“I’m sorry you think shushing a woman is appealing in some way.”
“You’re cute when you’re mad.”
“You’re not,” I lied.
He stepped back, taking an audible breath. “It was nice to know you.”
And then began the speedy getaway I’d been anticipating all day.
He backed away over the hedge and onto the sidewalk. The driver was already circling around to open the car door for him. I could sense Shayla’s presence on the porch behind me, but she was staying quiet for now.
Something about the way Dalton was grinning and backing away from me set me off even more. He was treating me the same way he had that girl Alexis, who probably had good reason to be angry at him. What a smarmy creepazoid!
“Good to know you,” he repeated awkwardly.
My head started to move from side to side with all the attitude that had to go somewhere. “Oh, you don’t know me,” I said.
Shayla chimed in, “That’s right. You don’t know her.”
He glanced up at her and shrugged. “Your loss.”
Shayla murmured behind me, “Oh, no, he didn’t.” Louder, she called out to him, “More like your loss.”
“Yeah!” I added. “Your loss, mister. I would have rocked your world.”
Dalton shot me one last smirk, then he climbed into the back of his fancy car with the tinted windows and shut the door.
Getaway complete.
As the red taillights disappeared down the street, Shayla traipsed down the front steps and slipped her arm around my back. “Let’s get you out of these wet clothes and into a shot of tequila. Or wine. We don’t have tequila, but we do have wine.”
“Oh, Shay. What did I just do? What’s wrong with me?”
“You have too much pride,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You could have had your world rocked by Mr. Smoldering Eyeballs himself, but I can loan you Drake for the night if you run him through the dishwasher.”
I patted her hand. “No thanks, but I appreciate the sentiment.”
“He was taller than I expected. A lot of actors are quite short, you know.”
I followed her into the house and back to the kitchen, where she found the big bottle of red we’d started the night before. We’d planned to make sangria, and bought the cheapest red in the store, but then we decided it was okay on its own, and nobody needs extra fruit juice calories in their drink.
We raised our glasses in a toast, standing by the fridge.
“You’re perfect,” Shayla said. “Guys like him think you’ll be so impressed he’s even talking to you, that you won’t say feathers if you have a mouth full of them. But you sure showed him.”
I swirled the wine and started drinking as Shayla unzipped the back of my dress and peeled the damp fabric away. I felt warmer already in just my underwear plus the wobble-taming waist shaper. I took a seat at the walnut pedestal table in the kitchen.
She’d heard a few details from the driver, and I filled her in on the rest, from our odd bookstore meeting to him accompanying me to the wedding.
Giggling, I said, “And tonight, I was going to sleep with him. Dalton Deangelo. With his penis right up in my vagina and everything.”
“And you would have rocked his world. You would have spoiled him for all other women.”
I finished the red wine and got my glass refilled.
“Who are we kidding? I would have turned out all the lights, then lay there with my bra still on, holding absolutely still to reduce jiggling, and faked an orgasm so it could be over.”
Shayla giggled into her glass. “And you would have been so good, so convincing.” She rolled her eyes up, fluttering her eyelashes. “Oh, Dalton, you’re an animal! I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk tomorrow!”
“Gross!”
We laughed for a bit, and when the giggles died down, she said, “Too bad you didn’t saddle that one up. Would have made for great stories. He’s bumpy all up and down his front. They don’t make ’em like that around here in Beaverdale.”
“No, they do not.” The wine was warming me up, and I thought about getting a robe or something to throw on over my underwear and Spanx, but my room was up the stairs, which was too far. “You know, I forgot to ask him why he was even in town.”
Why had Dalton Deangelo been in little Beaverdale, Washington, population 14,041?
I guess I haven’t told you much about Beaverdale, also known as The Beav or B-dale to locals. The town was incorporated in 1898, and the main street was named after the father of the town, Mr. Leonodis Veiner. In 1942, the street was accidentally renamed Leonardo Street when City Hall contracted out the new street signs to a sign maker up in Seattle. A copper-haired city clerk by the name of Donovan Monroe (my great-grandfather), rushed his paperwork that day so he could get to the pub and await the news of his first child’s birth, surrounded by his friends. The pub was on the opposite side of town as the hospital, and the bartender kept the telephone line clear for the news, because that was how they did things in those days.
My grandfather, Arthur Monroe, came into the world at three in the morning on January 7, 1942, and the pub never closed that night. My great-grandfather did, however, disappear for a few hours that evening to find some trouble. The kind of trouble who hangs a red light in her window.
Nine months later, my grandfather’s yet-to-be-named half-sister was born at the town’s only bawdy house.
On the very same day, the sign installers got their packages and did their installation, renaming the following streets:
Leonodis Veiner Street became Leonardo Street
Orchid Drive became O Drive
Euripides Avenue became Spider Avenue
and
Larch Street became Lurch Street
People in town were cross at my great-grandfather for celebrating the birth of his first child by siring an illegitimate child with one of the town’s loose women, but they were generally happy about the renamed streets, save the good people who now lived on Lurch Street.
The little brown-haired baby was left at my great-grandmother’s door step. According to family stories, my great-grandmother Petra Monroe (yes, I was named after her) opened the door, took one look at the squalling infant in a basket, and shut the door again. It was October now, gray and rainy, and she shut the door.
She crossed the house to the back pantry, poured a mug full of dandelion wine, and quaffed it back in one swallow. She was unbuttoning her blouse already when she opened the door again, and a moment later she held the baby to her bare breast, heavy with milk for the baby boy asleep in the crib upstairs. The girl baby latched on even easier than the firstborn, and my grandmother cooed at her, “You’re a clever baby.” Their eyes met and they fell in love at first sight.
The baby was named Clever Monroe, and she grew up sharing the same classrooms and toys as my grandfather, Arthur Monroe. They were joined in 1952 by plump-cheeked Beatrice, who enjoyed being the baby of the family until 1962, when my great-grandmother gave birth to Icy, twenty years to the day after her first child, Arthur. My great-grandfather waited in the hospital for news of that delivery, because that was how things were done in Beaverdale in 1962.
They smoked five cigars, two packs of cigarettes, and one “marijuana cigarette” between him and his friends. My great-grandfather had the night of his life, and woke up in a clean hospital bed next to my great-grandmother, an ice pack between his legs from the vasectomy he didn’t remember agreeing to.
The next morning, I did that
thing where you wake up and you know you’re awake, but you’re afraid to open your eyes or do any movement beyond breathing because you’re not sure exactly how hungover you ought to be.
Given my fuzzy recollection of the previous evening, moving my head was not advisable. Something smooth and hard was pressed under my cheek.
Dalton Deangelo? And his chiseled chest?
No.
By the feel of it, the hard thing was just my non-sexy, non-smooth-talking, un-kissable laptop. I cracked open one gummy eyelid to see a dresser, blue and yellow with a distressed paint finish, piled with books. At least I was in my bedroom and not under the garbage truck that ran me over and dropped a load in my mouth.
I rolled back and peeled myself off my computer, surprised to feel only mild nausea.
What had I gotten into the night before? The last time I really drank with Shayla, we’d had tequila shots with two of the Australians working at her restaurant. The Aussies were an engaged couple who (I thought) looked like brother and sister, both six feet tall with shaggy, shoulder-length, honey-hued hair. I started calling them The Beautifuls after the first drink, and it stuck.
Shayla’s post-shift unwinding turned into a full-on party at our shared rental house, and while people set up a limbo challenge using a broomstick, and a frisbee challenge using our plastic camping plates, I retreated upstairs to my bedroom and partied down extra-hard on my laptop. That was the night I purchased an authentic German cuckoo clock via an online auction.
Since I already had a cuckoo clock, still tucked away in its shipping box and nestled in my Closet of Regret, I wondered what new thing had caught my drunken fancy the night before.
I opened my email to find a dozen confirmation messages.
Apparently, I’d joined the Dalton Deangelo fan club. An adrenaline blast of horror shot through me, making my brain throw up inside my head.
I closed the laptop to keep the awful truth quiet, and begged my fluttering heart to chill out. Dalton was a huge star, and he probably hired high-priced people to hire medium-priced people to deal with fan clubs. He was too busy running into bookstores and flirting with…
The thought of him kissing another girl sent a fireball of jealousy to my stomach. If only he hadn’t shushed me with his too-perfect finger, then his bumpy chest would be snuggled into the sheets next to me.
I know some people brag about living their life without regrets. How ridiculous. We all have regrets. Some of us just deny them better than others. I keep mine in the Closet of Regret, along with the afore-mentioned cuckoo clock, a fresh fruit juicer, and a pair of pink roller skates.
Shayla opened my bedroom door and meandered in, eyes half-lidded.
“Timber,” she said before falling onto the bed next to me.
“Can you be heartbroken over someone you just met? Is that even valid?”
Face-down, she muttered into my blankets, “I’ll buy you a hug. Get ready.” She threw one heavy arm over my body.
I groaned and patted her head, enjoying the feel of her silky, black hair. Since she turned fifteen, she’s been using a shampoo for show horses. Apparently, it gives horses and humans a glossy mane and tail, and though the product never did anything for me, Shayla could be its spokesperson.
Actually, she could be the spokesperson for anything. She’s absolute gorgeousness, from the nail beds of her always-pedicured toes to her full, naturally-ruby-hued lips and her golden eyes. Her skin is like chocolate milk next to mine, and her smile is dazzling, which distracts people from her secret shame, which is her unusually large feet. She claims to wear a size ten shoe, but if you catch hold of one of her new pairs, before she’s filed away or peeled off the size, you’ll find the number eleven.
“Shayla, I dreamed about your grandmother, Clever. She was dancing in her ruffled skirt, doing those high kicks.”
She chuckled and gave me a back pat. My father and her mother are cousins, which makes us some type of cousins, though she came from the fun side of the family. She insists I got lucky on the brains side, but she’s as smart as anyone I know.
“Hit the shower and I’ll get the coffee on,” she said. “That workshop starts in one hour and Dottie gets pissed if people come late.”
What workshop? I was about to suggest that Shayla was dreaming and talking in her sleep, but I remembered glimpsing a confirmation email about a workshop.
“Nooooooooo,” I cried.
Shayla rolled to her side and opened one golden eye, looking like a smug dragon. “You’re more fun after a glass or two of red, and I’m rather charming, if I do say so myself.”
“So, we’re going to a workshop in one hour? Rolling sushi?” My mouth watered at the idea of cool cucumber slices.
Shayla laughed. Her voice flat with irony, she said, “Yeah. Rolling sushi.”
“I want sushi.”
“There’s no sushi. We’re going to learn how to be captivating, and have men wrapped around our fingers.”
“I’d rather have sushi.”
“Sushi doesn’t give hand jobs in the back of fancy cars while a chauffeur drives you around.”
I cleared my throat and pulled myself up to sit. “I guess I didn’t hold back any details last night, did I? Oh, the pain of the bare-assed truth in the morning light.”
She patted my knee. “Don’t be so dramatic. You met a hot actor, and he turned out to be a twatwaffle, and now you’ll go to this workshop and move on with your life.”
“Some life.”
We both glanced around my room, at the stacks of books on my dresser and on the floor.
“Peaches, are there any books left in the actual bookstore?” she teased.
“What did I pay for this non-sushi workshop?”
“It’s non-refundable.” She jumped up from my bed and started browsing through a stack of books. “This looks good.” She flipped to the end to read the last page, as she always does. It makes me want to tackle her to the ground when she peeks at the ending, and I swear she does it half the time just to antagonize me.
I rolled out of bed and took myself to the bathroom for a hot shower and a big glass of water.
As agonizing as the workshop sounded, it was something to do, to keep my mind off Dalton Deangelo. As I washed my hair, I thought about his bumpy abdominal muscles, and how some other girl would be enjoying them. Maybe he was showering with her right now! Euch, what a pig.
I sincerely hoped that the dinner rolls he ate the night before were converting to fat at that very moment, because I’m mean like that.
The workshop was at the Beaverdale Community Center, and we took Shayla’s little Rav. Thanks to coffee and toast, I was feeling human.
We parked the Rav in front of Black Sheep Books, and we both hissed like angry cats at the window display of our enemy as we walked by.
“They have dead flies in their front window,” Shayla said.
“Figures.” I narrowed my eyes at the red-painted bricks. Just as Superman has his Lex Luthor, Peachtree Books has Black Sheep Books. I have, on occasion, threatened to burn them to the ground, but they had it coming.
“Doesn’t look very busy in there,” Shayla said.
The little store was full of customers—at least five people—but it was good of my best friend to demonstrate her loyalty by lying.
I pushed my sunglasses up my nose, enjoying the sun on my pale skin. Catching glimpses of myself in shop windows, I liked what I saw. After I turned twenty-two, I stopped looking like a pudgy teenager and turned into a voluptuous woman. My blond hair had darkened through my teens, and I’d recently started getting highlights put in at my hairdresser’s.
That morning, most of my favorite clothes were in the laundry, so I’d put on my favorite turquoise dress with a black belt. The brilliant shade of blue brought out my eyes and made me look neither tan nor pale, and the hem line ended at the exact perfect spot above my knee—the almost-skinny stretch. Around my neck, I wore chunky wood beads that tied in with my cork-soled sandals. No
t bad for a hangover morning.
Shayla wore jean cutoffs and a striped shirt with a wide neck, falling off the shoulder.
A man in a city-worker reflective vest wolf-whistled at us from where he was kneeling on the sidewalk, tugging out a dandelion by its root.
“For shame, Lester,” Shayla said to him. “I’m your cousin.”
Lester wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, his thick bicep tanned and rippling beneath the sleeve of his tight, bright-white T-shirt.
“The whistle was for Peaches,” he said, grinning. “She ain’t my cousin.”
I linked arms with Shayla and giggled like we were thirteen again and talking to out-of-town boys at a softball game.
After we were past hearing range of Lester, Shayla said, “They can smell it on you. One night with a man attracts more men.”
I shoved her away. “Gross.”
“Not literally, dumbass. You just wait, though. This is going to be your summer. Grandma Clever taught me to trust my intuition, and I can feel it in my bones.” She poked me in the arm with one fingertip. “The object of your ladyboner lust will be back. Dalton Deangelo is going to call, and you should give him another chance.”
I glanced back over my shoulder at Lester, who had been following my butt with his eyes and looked away quickly. He had such broad shoulders, and he was always tanned from the landscaping work he did around town. I did not care for the Birkenstock sandals he wore with wool socks, but that was just a wardrobe flaw. I’d never considered Lester Dean as a dating option before, but he was recently separated from his wife, and not that much older than me—barely thirty. An older man was certainly intriguing.
“What do you think of Lester?” I asked Shayla.
“Irrelevant. Dalton Deangelo will call.”
She pulled open the glass door of the community center and we stepped into the brutally air-conditioned space, the air so cold it gave me goose bumps. My father would have freaked out over the waste of taxpayer dollars.
Shayla continued, “Once you two start dating, you can invite me along to exciting Hollywood parties.”
Hollywood parties? No, I didn’t think so. Meeting Dalton had been fun, but all that nonsense he’d said about us being stardust seemed ridiculous—ridiculous like the cheesy lines Drake the vampire always said to his waif-like love interest of the week.
