Troublemaker

by Kayley Loring

  My hands are up in my hair, and I’m rolling my head around like I’m in a porny shampoo commercial.

  And I remember all of a sudden that I’m wearing my glasses.

  What kind of a nerd wears glasses while dancing in a nightclub?

  Never mind—not going to think about it now.

  And I’m definitely not going to think about the fact that I’m not ready to start dating again, because I’m just dancing with a stranger.

  I raise my hands up, letting my hair fall around my shoulders. And since my hands are already up in the air, I run my fingers through his short dark hair and then rest my arms on his shoulders. I’m grinning like a saucy little minx, but I can’t help it. “I like your wavy hair.”

  “I gotta say, I like your fingers in my hair.”

  Dammit, I need to know if he has hair on his chest. I bite my lower lip and unbutton just one button on his black shirt, because I’m tipsy and I’m celebrating my new life, and hello perfect smattering of chest hair. I want to get you wet and slide around on you, all the way down your happy trail.

  Huh?

  The song cross fades to some dreamy hip hop song that’s just a little slower, but my heart rate is picking up. I take one step closer, and he puts one hand on my hip, and dear God I like how this feels.

  We’re close, so close, swaying together.

  Thanks to these high-heeled boots, my lips are right by the impossibly sexy spot where the smooth honey-colored skin begins its sultry transition to barely hairy chestville, and it smells so, so good right here. I want to press my lips against this warm, smooth, man-scented skin. Or if I tilted my head back and up just a little…

  His other warm hand is on my other hip now, and why does that feel so good?

  I barely know him, and I barely know myself right now, but I feel so safe in his arms and also so excited.

  He is a gentleman. I love that he waited for me to move in closer first and then boom. Hand. Other hand. And oh my, if I’m not mistaken, this gentleman has something big and naughty starting to happen in his pants.

  He moves that hand that’s on my hip the tiniest bit, barely a squeeze, but it shuts my eyes and weakens my knees and takes my breath and everyone else in the room away.

  I’m limp.

  I’m floating.

  It’s just us now.

  And then I’m tilting my head back and up just a little…

  His hand is cupping my neck and his full, soft, warm lips are pressed to mine, and we’re completely still or maybe we’re spinning.

  It’s the first kiss of the rest of my life.

  It’s perfect, and it could be enough, just this.

  I could back away now, get an Uber home, and have a perfect memory of a perfect moment with a handsome stranger.

  His lips pull away, ever so slowly.

  I pull back so I can see him. My eyelids are so heavy, but I need to see him. I need to see his heavy lids and his slightly flaring nostrils and the tip of his tongue through his parted lips. He stares hard at my mouth.

  His hand is still behind my neck.

  His other hand slides up the side of me, from my waist up to my face, thumb dragging along my jaw, fingers sweeping up into my hair.

  I gotta say, I like his fingers in my hair.

  I gotta say, I’d like his fingers all over and inside of me, and…

  Whaaaaaat?

  I don’t even hear the music or the other people anymore.

  Just the blood rushing in my ears.

  My heart pounding.

  I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose as I inhale and grab his shirt.

  His hands cradle my face, thumbs brushing my cheeks, and he kisses me differently this time. Harshly, gently. Determined but hesitant. And then I moan and bite his bottom lip so lightly, but it flips a switch and there’s no more hesitation. For him or for me.

  He pulls my hair aside, kisses his way down my neck, and holy shit I could fall so hard and fast for this man.

  I don’t know or even care where we go from here.

  I’m here for this.

  I want to give him every kind of kiss I can think of, but if all we have is this moment, then I will just do this…

  I place my hands on either side of his face and kiss him, quickly. Once, twice on the mouth. And then I drag the tip of my tongue up from his slightly stubbly chin to his bottom lip, and he pulls me in by the waist and takes charge of my mouth. Everything that I need to know about this person is distilled down to the way he communicates with his hands and his lips and his tongue. Everything that I needed to be reminded about what’s great about men and taking chances and my instincts are in this kiss.

  He tastes like peach pie and vanilla ice cream and hops and the kind of fun I want to have on non-school nights.

  Or every night.

  I could live in this kiss forever.

  But everything’s spinning, and my eyes aren’t even open.

  Uh-oh.

  I might not feel good.

  Fuck you, my liver. Not now!

  I pull away from Alejandro as graciously as possible, cover my mouth, and serpentine as quickly as possible through all of the idiots standing between me and the ladies’ room.

  I’m nauseated.

  I’m cold.

  It’s just me and this terrible feeling now.

  I somehow manage to make it past all the other girls in line for the two toilets—fuck you, nightclub designer—and the angel at the front of the line lets me go ahead of her when one of the stalls opens up.

  Yeah.

  Now I remember why I hate going out to have fun.

  Not one night at home while reading or knitting or making lists has ever ended with my face in a toilet.

  This is what I like to call “a teachable moment.”

  Raw fish, plus sake, plus German herbal digestif that’s popular with horny frat boys, plus dizzying interaction with dreamy stranger equals harsh realities of stepping outside of my comfort zone before I’m ready.

  There are people on this planet who seem like they’re very comfortable with making poor decisions and doing things that result in them expelling liquid from their mouths in public. I am not one of them.

  Never again.

  Never again.

  Well, not for a while, anyway… I want to make out with the hot guy again.

  When I finally re-emerge from the ladies’ room, after cleaning the toilet and myself as best as I could and chewing a handful of breath mints (fuck you, karma), I run straight into Franklin.

  “Hermione!” he yells, placing his hands on my shoulders. “You ran right past me! Which end did things come out of?”

  “I really don’t like you very much right now.” I frown at him, elbowing him aside so I can find Alejandro.

  I’m half-expecting him to be waiting for me around here because surely it was obvious that I was running to the bathroom to vomit.

  Franklin comes with me, holding my hand. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him I was making out with a handsome stranger. Ten, fifteen minutes of searching the dance floor, around the dance floor, the mezzanine where I first saw him, it occurs to me… Why would he wait around for the stranger who just ran off to barf?

  Some electronic dance music that I hate is playing now, and the lights are flashing, and there are even more people in here than half an hour ago, and I just want to go home.

  Franklin’s got plans with his guy in a couple of days, so we leave.

  I still have a perfect memory of a perfect moment with a perfect stranger.

  As long as I only remember the part up until I had to barf.

  REASONS WHY I’M GLAD WE BROKE UP FOR GOOD THIS TIME – Emilia

  11. Because I had the best kiss of my life with a sexy stranger (who may or may not be named Alejandro) and I felt more of a connection with him in that kiss than I ever did with you. Ever.

  12. Seriously, he was so sexy. You were the kind of guy that my mother thought was sexy. “Like a young Michael
J. Fox but much taller.” She meant it as a compliment, of course. Even though she wasn’t referring to the Marty McFly version of Michael J. Fox. She meant the conservative Young Republican Alex P. Keaton from 80s TV hit Family Ties. I remember back when I first met you in college, I was so impressed that you ironed your shirts. You take great care of your clothes. Good for you! I bet Alejandro takes great care of his women. And I don’t just mean in bed, although obviously I do mean in bed.

  13. Because it turns out I’m a lot happier when I’m not around you.

  14. Because Atticus is so much happier now, I could cry. Fuck you, Brent.

  15. Because I got to be a saucy vixen (I think), for once. And once was enough. I think. For years, I thought that my libido—on a horniness scale of 1 to 10—was maybe a 6 at best. But now I’m realizing I just wasn’t as attracted to you as I thought I was. Or maybe I’m just not as attracted to anyone as I was to Alejandro. Even if it was just for that brief amount of time we spent with each other. Which is fine. Maybe that kiss didn’t mean as much to him as it did to me. And that’s fine. For me, that kiss was a brief but totally fulfilling, much-needed mini-vacation. I was just out there sightseeing, after all. Now I know what’s out there. And when I’m ready to stop being a tourist, I’ll find another Alejandro. In a quieter place. So it’s good that he wasn’t there when I came out of the bathroom. It’s fine. Really.

  5

  Alex

  “Hey, Dad! Let’s go see if they have the new Mario game!”

  I so want to go see if they have the new Mario game.

  “Nope.” I grab a shopping cart and call out to Ryder in my Dad Voice as soon as he starts to run off. “Get back here! Stay with me. Stay focused. We’re here to get your back-to-school supplies and that’s it. No games. No toys. Just school stuff. And if they’re out of that stuff here, then we’ll have to go to another store. I don’t want to spend more than half an hour here, you got me?”

  He stops in his tracks, turns around, and twists his lips to one side. “Can I ride in the cart?”

  “Nope.”

  “Can we get a donut at the Starbucks?”

  Fuck, I want a donut from Starbucks.

  “No. You just ate breakfast.”

  “Can you get a coffee at the Starbucks, then? Because you’re being a really big grumpy dumpy face.”

  He’s not wrong. I am being a really big grumpy dumpy face.

  I was in the middle of some very enthusiastic and filthy reminiscing about Emmy From the Club this morning, when my son started banging on the bedroom door, yelling that my mom was on the phone and she said it’s an emergency. The emergency was that she saw her friend’s daughter post on Facebook about how the Office Max in her neighborhood was cleaned out of back-to-school supplies yesterday. She wanted to make sure I get to Target as soon as it opens. School starts in a week, and I was just going to order this shit online, but here we are at Target, and I just want to go back to reminiscing about Emmy.

  It’s been two and a half weeks. I can’t stop thinking about her. I also haven’t had one free minute to do anything about it.

  “I don’t need coffee, but thanks.” I muss up his hair. He’s a good kid. And he’s just trying to get me in a good mood so I’ll buy him the new Mario game, and I’m not falling for it.

  He heaves a sigh of exasperation. “Well, what do you need, then?”

  Emmy. I think I need Emmy From the Club. That mouth and those hands and all the surprising things she said and did with them.

  “I need to get your school supplies, and then we need to drop you off at Grandma and Yayo’s because I have a couple of meetings. And then we’ll spend the rest of the day at home, okay?”

  He hunches his shoulders, groaning and trudging along beside me.

  This kid.

  Ryder always comes first, but Nova really picked a shit time to drop a bomb on me.

  I just wish there was some way I could find Emmy and explain why I had to bolt that night. I’d figured she was going to throw up and I followed her so I could hold her hair out of her face or something, but then I saw her go into the ladies’ room. And then I felt my phone vibrating in my pocket. There were eight notifications from my ex-wife, so I went outside to call her back. That’s when she told me that she’d just been offered a role in the ensemble for the international tour of Cats, but she’d have to leave in two days. For an indefinite amount of time—a few months at least.

  Which is insane. But she’d been in that ensemble ten years ago, so she knows the show and a lot of the people involved, and it’s been so long since she’s really been able to dance professionally. Being in her thirties, it might be the last big dance gig she ever gets. She was so excited. I knew that if I tried to talk her out of it, she’d resent it, and ultimately Ryder would be the one who’d be affected the most.

  Because of Cats.

  Fuck you, Andrew Lloyd Webber. You can kiss my magical Mr. Mistoffelees.

  I had to go pick up Ryder so he wouldn’t have to be around the manic chaos that is Nova Tully when she’s getting ready for an international tour.

  I had to call my agent to get me out of a TV job that shoots in Canada in October so I can be here for Ryder full-time.

  And I am here for him.

  Full-time.

  I love having him around.

  He’s my buddy.

  But every so often, when he’s sleeping or watching Pokémon, I close my eyes and I can still feel Emmy’s lips on mine.

  Those sweet, pink lips.

  That kiss that felt like the end of all my jaded thoughts and the beginning of the kind of story I really want to tell myself.

  That there’s still love and magic out there to be made, even when you know they both die a bewildering, miserable death eventually.

  “Are you sure you don’t need coffee? Because you don’t look awake to me.”

  “I’m awake. Where’s the school supplies aisle?”

  Ryder points me in the right direction. He comes here with his mom a lot. I pull my phone out to look at the list that his teacher sent, along with a somewhat alarmingly cheerful email introducing herself to the parents.

  And speak of the alarmingly cheerful devil, there’s a new notification from Ryder’s school.

  “Oooh! Can I get a calculator?!”

  I can’t help but laugh at how excited he is by the shitty plastic calculator he’s holding up. “You think you’ll need one for school?”

  “Maybe? Can I just have one for home?”

  “Sure, why not. You can use it to count up all the times I was awesome.”

  “I don’t even need all my fingers for that,” he deadpans.

  This kid.

  “Harsh.”

  “How many notebooks do I need?”

  “Hang on, I just got an email from your new teacher.”

  It’s only addressed to me. Not a bcc email to all the parents. Which is weird and slightly disturbing.

  TO: directoralexvega@gmail.com

  FROM: estiles@silverlakeelementary.org

  SUBJECT: school supplies

  Dear Mr. Vega,

  Good morning!

  I hope this email finds you well and as prepared as possible for Ryder’s new school year! I am the new second-grade teacher here at Silver Lake Elementary School, and I have the note from Mrs. Hernandez (at the front office) to address emails to you regarding Ryder Tully-Vega this year. I just wanted to make sure that you received the email I sent a few days ago. The one regarding Ryder’s school supplies. I didn’t hear back from you, so I wanted to confirm that you have the list. I’m attaching it again here.

  Please let me know that you got this!

  Thanks so much!

  I look forward to meeting Ryder next week.

  Best,

  Miss Stiles

  Well, at least there are about six fewer exclamation points in this email.

  “What’s she say? Is it about me?”

  “She just wants to make sure we got the li
st of school supplies. Hang on.”

  I reply with a three-word email and then open up the list.

  Miss Stiles. Another “Miss.” I hope this one isn’t going to be like Ryder’s first-grade teacher. She eye-fucked me so hard at the parent-teacher conference, I was chafing by the time I got out of there.

  I finally look over at Ryder, who’s watching me with an expression on his face that nearly breaks my heart. It’s concern. For me. Why would my seven-year-old son be worried about me?

  “What’s wrong, buddy?”

  He shrugs. “Are you sure you don’t want a donut?”

  “Yeah. But let’s try to get everything on this list, and then if we have time, we’ll see if they have the new Mario.”

  “Okay!”

  “Okay.”

  Maybe a new Mario adventure is what I need to take my mind off of Judge-y Leggy Glasses Girl with the Soft Pink Lips.

  Or if there’s a single-player mode for this game, I can finish reminiscing about her while Ryder keeps busy.

  I don’t think I’m ready to take my mind off of her yet.

  6

  Emilia

  The first day of school is nothing like the first kiss with a sexy stranger.

  First kisses with sexy strangers are dazzling because they’re so unexpected. They might lead to another kiss, a night of hot and dirty sex, an awkward morning after. They might even lead to a few months of bliss, a lifetime of happily ever after, or an even more unexpected tango with a public toilet—followed by mild disappointment. And then a month of hot and dirty fantasies and some very rewarding tangos with a vibrator.

  But you always know the First Day of School is coming. It’s there on your calendar and your day planner and your upcoming To-Do list and your daily/weekly worksheet, highlighted and bookmarked with a neon pink sticky note. You plan and prepare and mentally practice your introduction and your explanation of class expectations and agreements. You memorize the names of your students. You get your best friend to help you decorate and organize your new classroom with inspiration, flow, safety, and practicality in mind. Despite your best friend’s exasperation with the overuse of plastic products and rainbow colors, it turns out better than you’d imagined. And way cuter than any of the other classrooms as far as I could tell from peeking inside—not that it’s a competition.