Rock Bottom Girl

by Score, Lucy

  “What did you say back to her?” Bill asked.

  “Is she coming?” Floyd asked.

  Marley: You’re lucky my only other option was laundering the bed linens for my parents’ next Airbnb guest. Be there in ten.

  Me: Bless you. P.S. They all think this is real so, you know, dress sexy and get ready to French kiss the hell out of me.

  She responded with a middle finger emoji.

  “Well?” Uncle Max demanded.

  “Joke’s on you, jerks. Now we gotta quit playing so you can help me clean up.”

  35

  Marley

  I don’t know what kind of place I expected Jake to live in. But it wasn’t the pretty brick two-story with big windows and wrap-around porch. My curiosity had been piqued when I picked him up last night. And now I was going to get to see behind the curtain. See how Jake Weston, former teenage rebel and current history teacher/cross-country coach, lived.

  There was a tidy front lawn with a big maple tree and actual flower beds. Sure, they looked a little neglected, but the whole package still said “family home.” This was a place where people would gather for Thanksgiving and a girl would make an entrance on the stairs in a poufy dress on prom night.

  This was not a bachelor pad designed to debauch women. Not a Jake Weston residence.

  There was a freaking welcome mat at the front door. Next to it rested a pair of those five-finger running shoes that must have been too smelly to make their way inside.

  I reached for the bell but paused when I heard a noise from within. It sounded like someone was dragging something heavy across the floor.

  “We don’t have enough time to actually dust,” I heard Jake yell. “Just kinda blow the bigger dust bunnies under the furniture.”

  “Hey, yo! What do you want us to do with the lo mein that’s stuck to the sink?”

  Was that Floyd?

  “Just chisel it off as best you can! And hurry up. She should be here any second!”

  “You have any nudie magazines that need hiding?”

  “If I knew I was going to be playing janitor, I would have stayed home tonight.”

  “Just shut up and try to get some of the smears off the kitchen table, okay?”

  What the hell was I walking into?

  I pushed the bell, and several voices yelled “Come in!” at the same time.

  Before I could turn the knob, the front door opened, and the foyer beyond filled with a mob of people.

  “Um. Hi,” I said.

  “Hey, Mars,” Jake said, muscling his way through their ranks to give me an awkward and out-of-breath peck on the cheek. He had a wet, dirty rag in one hand, and when I eyed it, he tossed it over his shoulder.

  The bearded man behind him wearing a t-shirt that said Queer caught it in mid-air.

  “Come on in,” Jake said, reeling me in like a fish. “I believe you know everyone except for my uncle. Uncle Max, this is my girlfriend Marley. Mars, this is—”

  The bearded man yanked me out of Jake’s grip and gave me an enthusiastic hug. “You have made me so happy,” he said. “Now, I just need to take a quick selfie with you.”

  “Oh, I, uh.”

  Jake broke Max’s hold on me. “Uncle Max, let’s let her breathe for five seconds before you go rubbing Lewis’s nose in this.”

  “He always thought you’d go gay in the end, but I knew all you needed was a special woman to get you to settle down,” Max said, tapping away smugly on his phone.

  “My uncles are gay. They always assume everyone else is too,” Jake explained. “They were heartbroken when my cousin Adeline married her husband.”

  “It would have been so much fun to have lesbians in the family,” Max sighed.

  “Definitely.” I had no idea what to say to anything. I wasn’t even sure why I’d come over.

  “What’s up, Cicero?” Floyd waved. “Still have a job?”

  “Hi, Marley,” Bill Beerman spoke up, his voice barely a squeak.

  “Hi, guys. Oh, Mrs. Gurgevich. I didn’t recognize you.” Mrs. Gurgevich looked…ravishing? She was decked out in sparkle from her fancy caftan to the very large diamonds on her fingers. “Wow, those are some rings.”

  They looked like hefty engagement rings. Four of them. I’d seen the woman every day of my junior year of high school and didn’t recall her wearing a single piece of jewelry.

  Mrs. Gurgevich wiggled her fingers. “Let Ms. Cicero in, gentlemen,” she said, clearing a path through the testosterone.

  “What’s going on?” I hissed at Jake as everyone peeled off to the right of the—I knew it—prom dress-worthy staircase.

  “The teachers want the dirt on what went down with Hooper, and my uncle wants proof of monogamy so he can blab to his husband about it.”

  “Why does it smell like Lysol in here?”

  He skated a hand over the back of his head. “You probably don’t want to know.”

  I heard a galloping coming from upstairs, and we both watched as a blond furball launched itself down the stairs.

  “Homie!” Homer planted his front paws on my chest and shoved his cold nose into my face. “Hey, buddy! Wow. Are greetings like this why people have dogs?” I asked.

  “Geez, I wouldn’t know. He just kind of grumbles at me and then pushes his food dish around when I come home,” Jake said, eyeing his dog.

  “You have a nice place,” I said, glancing around the foyer as I gave Homer a good scruff. The trim work was dark, the hardwood original, and the ceilings high. There was a living room with a lot of glass and a lot of built-ins to one side of the staircase and what looked like a dining room turned poker den on the opposite side.

  “You should’ve seen it ten minutes ago,” Floyd piped up from the dining room.

  “Har har. Very funny. Are we playing or what?” Jake growled. “Come on in, and don’t mind the inquisition.”

  * * *

  I played, poorly. It had been a long time since my college poker days. And as in all other areas of my life, Lady Luck was not on my side. But it was fun to kick back and listen to the razzing. To hear Mrs. Gurgevich drop fascinating nuggets about a life that sounded nothing like that of a high school English teacher.

  She knew Tony Bennett from her back-up singing days?

  She had a lover in Greece who was twenty years her junior?

  Jake sat next to me, his knee pressing into mine as he manspread in his chair. He didn’t look like he belonged to this house. Except for maybe the velvet Dogs Playing Poker art. That definitely was his style.

  We played. We ate pretty great beef jerky. And I dodged questions like a skinny, spectacled seventh grader dodged balls on the playground.

  Mrs. Gurgevich wanted to know if Lisabeth Hooper was finally someone else’s problem.

  Floyd wanted to know if I was getting fired.

  Bill had questions about Coach Vince blaming poor little innocent me for the red dye incident. I didn’t have answers for any of them. Next week would be early enough for me to face whatever legal trouble I may have stirred up.

  And Uncle Max had 17,000 questions about what kind of life partner Jake could expect out of me.

  It was awkward, amusing, and somehow even a little bit fun. Mrs. Gurgevich took me out with a full house, and one by one everyone else fell to the reigning poker queen until it was down to her and Jake, eyeing each other across the green felt and trash talking.

  I was still having trouble believing that my high school English teacher who dressed in catalogue-ordered monochromatic polyester was a devilish, delightful, worldly woman who once dated a music star. We had it narrowed down to Neil Diamond, John Mellencamp—in his Cougar days—or Billy Ray Cyrus.

  “I call,” Mrs. Gurgevich said. She sounded so blasé as if she hadn’t a care in the world or a worry over the seventy-five-dollar pot in front of her. “Full house.”

  Her smile was feline, like a lion ready to rip her prey’s face off.

  “Huh,” Jake said, looking down at her cards. “T
hat looks like a winning hand to me.” He started laying his hand down one card at a time. Carefully. Precisely. “I mean, it would be if I didn’t have these four gentlemen jacks.”

  The rest of the losers and I crowed at the showmanship. Mrs. Gurgevich raised an expertly sketched on eyebrow.

  “Your lady friend is a good luck charm,” Uncle Max observed.

  “Yeah, she is,” Jake said, looking in my direction and winking.

  I tried to dissect exactly why his cocky attitude and overly confident persona was so appealing to me. Normally, I went for a different type. Non-threatening. Easygoing. Maybe just a little preppy leaning.

  Jake was rough enough around the edges that I could get splinters. Maybe it was just the fact that he was a damn good kisser.

  With the game officially over, everyone set about cleaning up and packing up leftovers. It was a mass exodus of yawns and “see ya Mondays,” and before I knew it, I was alone with Jake Weston in his house. I debated going home. I glanced his way and noted the very nice flexion of his ass muscles as he bent to pull the trash bag out of the can. Yeah. Going home was smart.

  “You want a beer?” he offered.

  “Uh. Sure.” I wasn’t in any danger here. This was a fake relationship. I wasn’t going to fall prey to his charms, rip my pants off, and tackle him. And let’s be honest. Would that be so awful? My last relationship had been, shall we say, lacking in the bow chicka wow wow department for quite some time.

  Could wild sex with Jake Weston really do me any harm?

  36

  Marley

  Jake pulled a pair of beers from the fridge and popped the tops all one-handed and sexy-like. “Come on,” he said, nodding toward the back door. “I’ll show you the porch.”

  It sounded like a euphemism. And along I went, willingly.

  “Oh, wow.” Okay, I was a little disappointed that it wasn’t a euphemism, but the disappointment was tempered by the fact that we were standing in a cool-ass screened-in porch. The seating was of the cozy, wicker, old-lady variety. But the cushions were deep and inviting. There was a tiki bar crammed in the corner with a half-dead palm of some sort in the other corner, and the lighting was soft and glowy from an actual table lamp, and a few strings of lights hung from the ceiling.

  “This is my favorite thing about the whole house,” he said. “Thinking about doing a grilling patio over here.” He gestured into the dark yard.

  The crickets were loud, the lights were soft, and my beer was cold. Life felt pretty damn good.

  I sat down on the couch, relaxing into the cushions. Jake ignored the chair and crowded me on the couch. He kicked his feet up on the coffee table and took a long pull of his beer. “You mind?” he asked, pulling a cigar out of his pocket and rolling it between his fingers.

  “Not at all,” I shrugged. My shoulder was squished against his, and I missed the contact when he leaned forward to light the cigar. When he relaxed back, he looped his arm over my shoulders. His body heat took the chill out of the night air.

  The smell of cigar smoke was sweet, pungent. Blue rings of smoke floated lazily to the ceiling.

  The crickets lulled me into a relaxed trance.

  “You cold?” he asked.

  I rubbed my arms. “A little.”

  Jake reached behind us and pulled a quilt off the back of the couch and arranged it neatly over us. I pulled it up to my chin and let my head tip onto his shoulder.

  This felt…good. How long had it been since I’d felt like this? Everything was always such a battle. A constant, overwhelming wave of anxiety. Always afraid of losing the job, the man, the security. But right now, in this moment, on this pretty little porch, I felt good.

  “How did you end up with this house?” I asked him.

  He tilted his head and blew a gauzy cloud of smoke upward. “It was my grandmother’s. She died a year or so back and left it to me.”

  “That explains the family feel,” I said. “You haven’t changed it much, have you?”

  “I’ve added a superficial layer of mess to make it feel more like mine,” he joked.

  “Mmm. I know all about waiting,” I told him.

  “Waiting?”

  “You know. Having all these plans but waiting to do anything about them until something is right or the timing is perfect.”

  He scratched at the stubble on his jaw. “Huh. Is that what I’m doing?”

  “You’re too busy. You’ll get to it after the holidays. You’ll carve out some time for it after you’re done binge-watching Riverdale. You’ll wait until you meet the right person, have the right job.”

  “I still feel like a visitor in the house,” he admitted. “It still feels like Grams’s house.”

  “If you were going to start with one thing, what would you change?” I asked.

  “You want?” he held the cigar out, and I took it from him, puffing lightly on the end. “I think the living room. It’s my couch, but everything else is still hers. The curtains,” he decided.

  I handed the cigar back. “Good call. Gingham isn’t your style.”

  “I don’t know what it is. But as soon as I moved into this place, just me and Homer roaming around with all those bedrooms, all that square footage, I started thinking that maybe it’s time to try the whole relationship thing. To be honest, I’m a little afraid Grams’s spirit is haunting me. She wanted me settled down for a long time.”

  I smiled at the idea of a Grams Ghost. “Is that why you came up with this arrangement?”

  “I know it’s stupid. To be thirty-eight and have no idea what a relationship is supposed to be like. And maybe I won’t like it. But I feel like I gotta try, you know? I got the house. I got a great job. Who knows, maybe I’ll like being bossed around, having to check in, making decisions with someone.” He squeezed my shoulder. “You’re making it pretty easy on me so far.”

  “I guess I didn’t really think you were serious about it,” I admitted with a yawn.

  “Well, I am. And I’m counting on you, Mars, to whip me into relationship shape. I want to give it a go. I figured relationships probably take practice, just like sports. Right?”

  “I guess you’re right. I’ll take it more seriously,” I promised.

  “Good.” It was quiet for a while. A comfortable silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts. “What do you want? Out of life, I mean,” he asked. “I was embarrassingly honest about tryin’ out the whole boyfriend-to-husband track. What kind of plans do you have?”

  I blew out a slow breath. “I don’t know the specifics, but I want to do something big. Something important. I want to be important, essential. My sister is…amazing. She’s always been larger than life. Crazy smart. Freakishly beautiful. But the good that she does in this world is kind of mind-boggling. I want to do that. Be that.”

  “Okay, so define big,” Jake pressed.

  “It’s stupid,” I told him.

  “Nobody’s dreams are stupid,” he countered.

  I sighed. “I want people I don’t even know to have heard about me. And not in the loser, jobless, homeless, pity party way. I want to be impressive. I want to do important things, not just collect a paycheck or wait to get downsized again. Do you know how many times I’ve been let go, downsized, laid off, or fired?” I shifted my head to look at him.

  “How many?” he asked, passing me the cigar again.

  “Six. Since college. It’s like I’ve developed this radar. As soon as there’s the tiniest hint of trouble, my clock starts ticking down. Waiting for the inevitable. I’ve never been important enough to keep. I’ve never survived the first round of layoffs. I’m dispensable. Replaceable. No one misses me when I’m gone. I want to see what the other side is like.”

  “Damn, Mars,” Jake said. “That would really mess with a person.”

  I gave a sad laugh. “It’s hard not to feel like a loser. And this job isn’t making me feel much better now that I’m physically losing.”

  “That’s because you’re looking for
outside validation.”

  I lifted my head off of his shoulder. “Okay, Dr. Phil.”

  “I’m serious. I’ve spent the last fifteen years working with teenagers. I’m practically a life coach. You need to figure out what would make you more confident in yourself. No amount of ‘atta girls’ from other people is going to give you that swagger you’re looking for. You’re a hell of a girl, Mars. Start acting like it.”

  “And how would you suggest I make myself more confident?”

  “Set some goals. Things you wanna accomplish. Then go out and crush ’em. Start with some small ones, things you can definitely do. But don’t be afraid to put bigger, scarier shit on that list. Every time you cross one of them off, you just proved to yourself that you can do something good.”

  “Wow.” Okay, maybe I was tired. Or maybe it was the intoxicating pheromones of cigar smoke and sexy man, but that actually made sense. “You really are like a life coach.”

  “Stick with me, pretty girl. Stick with me.”

  * * *

  I woke up to birds chirping, a crick in my neck, and someone else’s body pressed up against mine. When I opened my eyes, I still wasn’t sure where I was and who was breathing softly into my hair. I was outside. Sort of.

  Oh my God. The screened-in porch. Poker. Jake.

  I tried to sit up, but strong arms banded tighter around me. “Nope. Five more minutes,” he mumbled, rubbing his chin over the top of my head. I used my hands to pat myself down. I was still fully clothed. I’d had two beers last night, but I wanted to make sure I hadn’t stripped down in my sleep and mounted the man.

  “Relax, Mars. We just fell asleep.”

  “Shit. I didn’t tell my parents I wasn’t coming home.”

  “I texted your mom from your phone. She instructed you to have a good time with about six winky emojis. Now be quiet and let me enjoy waking up with a girl.”