This is off to a fantastic start. I settle into the spot next to Shane—as far from him as I can get on a cushion that is bent on tipping me into the middle, and give Josh an apologetic glance.
And then I catch a glimpse of what’s on Shane’s phone, and I freeze.
It’s me—or it was me, at about sixteen, sitting on Shane’s lap in Rainie Lawrence’s hot tub, one of my knees sticking up out of the water.
Completely and totally naked.
“Shane,” I say. “What the hell—”
“This,” Shane says, gesturing toward his phone with gusto, “is a special presentation I prepared just for you. I call it ‘naked photos of Anna-Marie Halsey that are not on the internet.’ I’ve gathered quite a collection over the years. Watch, Josh. You might learn something.”
Shane holds the phone out so both of us can see, and Josh and I stare in frozen horror as he scrolls through pictures—ones I had forgotten even existed. There’s me in Shane’s bed, posing for him twisted in the classic T&A shot so you can see both my boobs and ass. A topless photo I don’t remember taking on some camping trip, and it’s no wonder given the startling number of shots I’m downing. An assortment of selfies I do vaguely now remember, mostly of me in my bedroom, featuring various boob shots, and oh god, there’s one of full genitalia.
“Sh-Shane—” I finally manage past my shock. “I don’t think—”
I shoot a panicked look up at Josh who has averted his eyes and looks like he’s given up on punching Shane and is now thinking about strangling him.
I’m ready to join in.
“Shane, stop being such an asshole, and—”
“Hey, this is a good one!” Shane says, arriving at a picture of him and me in bed together. I had completely forgotten about that time he talked me into propping the phone up and set it to shoot continuously while we did it in my bedroom.
It’s a freaking miracle he hasn’t plastered these all over the internet. Knowing Shane, he would somehow dodge the child pornography charges.
“Stop it,” I say more firmly. “Now.”
Shane’s grin only widens. “I will, but you have to see this next set. Brings new meaning to the words ‘money shot’—”
Josh leans forward in his chair, damn close to getting in Shane’s face. “She said stop.” His hands inch forward, and I’m pretty sure he’s about to grab the phone right out of Shane’s hands.
I beat him to it, taking his phone and flipping it over the back of the Love Sac. It smacks against the kitchen lineoleum, and I hope I managed to at least crack the screen. Not that even a fully broken phone would keep the pictures from existing.
God, I was an idiot as a teenager.
“That’s it, Shane.” I scramble off the Love Sac. “We’re leaving.”
Josh stands to go, moving immediately to my side, but Shane waves his hands in surrender. “Hey, wait,” he says. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to make you laugh. Relieve the tension a little, all right? I didn’t mean for you to take it like that.”
I look up at Josh, and he still looks like he wants to punch Shane in the face, and I do too, but this is exactly the kind of punk thing Shane’s always done to make me laugh. He’s a dick, but he means well by it.
“I’m not laughing,” I say, and he makes a pouting face at me.
“Fair enough,” Shane says. “Slideshow over. Now can we please kick some futuristic zombie ass?”
Josh gives me another skeptical look, but now that Shane has his bright idea to be an ass out of his system, it’ll be fine. “Is that okay?” I ask Josh.
Josh shrugs. “Sure, fine. Whatever you want.”
It’s clearly not fine, and I waver, thinking about just telling Shane he’s out at one strike, but I don’t think that walking out at this moment is going to be the best way to convince Josh I don’t have complete shit taste in men.
“All right,” I say, “let’s play already.”
Shane glances up at Josh’s tense face and then eases back onto the Love Sac, the self-satisfied smile returning to his face. “And really,” he says. “It’s nothing Josh here hasn’t seen before, amiright?”
I freeze, looking from Shane to Josh. Because while Josh has certainly seen me naked plenty of times, he doesn’t have any pictures like that. And not for any reason Josh should be jealous of.
He’s never asked me for any. Josh respects me. He’s never done anything to make me uncomfortable, and any time he thought he might—like when he showed up in Everett uninvited—he’s given me ample opportunity to tell him it’s not what I want. Josh pushes me just the right amount, asking me for things that terrify me, but always leaving me an exit, never boxing me in.
And then I realize what bothered me so much that night at the hot springs. Shane says he wants me to laugh, but he’s always laughing at me, and he goads me when I don’t join in.
Shane’s smile fades as he looks up at the expression on my face. I realize I am still mad at him, but for more than just being a jerk that night at the hot springs, for more than inviting us here with the intention of making us both uncomfortable. I’m mad at him for being such a shitty boyfriend to me over the years. For being a shitty friend.
Josh is watching me, following my lead, because he respects me enough to let me call the shots in my own life. Shane may want me to laugh, but really he only wants a reaction out of me. Josh is the one who wants me to be happy.
“What?” Shane asks.
“Shane,” I say. “You’re a dick.”
Shane laughs at this, but it’s an uncomfortable laugh. “Yeah. But you love it.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t. I don’t love that you laughed at me while people took pictures of me naked. I don’t love that you expected me to laugh about it, too. I don’t love that you saw it on the internet and didn’t even bother to give me a heads up about it. I don’t love that you asked us over here just to mess with us. After all these years, you don’t give a shit about me or my feelings.”
I look up at Josh, who doesn’t have even a trace of a self-satisfied look. There’s a smile playing at his lips, which he’s clearly trying to smother, but it’s not a smug one.
He’s proud of me.
“Um, okay,” Shane says. His tone hardens, and he gestures at Josh. “Is that what this guy has been filling your head with? That I’m some asshole who doesn’t care about you? And you believe that shit?”
I shake my head at him. It’s because I’ve known him so long that it was so hard to figure it out. I wouldn’t take this from any other guy.
And I’m sure as hell not going to take it from him. Not anymore.
I point a finger at him. “Don’t talk about my boyfriend like that. In fact, don’t talk to either of us anymore. We’re done, Shane.”
And I turn and walk out of the apartment, up the crumbling concrete stairs, and out to Josh’s car, with Josh following tentatively along behind me.
My boyfriend, I said.
And I’m startled to realize that I like the way it sounds.
Nineteen
Anna-Marie
I get as far as Josh’s car before I spin around and grab him by the waist, pulling myself into him. Josh offers no resistance, holding me tight.
“You okay?” he asks.
I want to cry, mostly because after everything I’ve put him through, he’s still concerned about whether or not I’m okay. “I’m sorry about that. You were right. It was a bad idea.”
“Hey,” Josh says, rubbing my shoulder. “I think that was good, actually. It sounded like something you needed to say.”
I smile. “You mean the part about you being my boyfriend?”
Josh lets out a little sigh, like the words make him unspeakably happy, but he’s afraid to lean into it.
I know exactly how he feels.
“I meant the part where
you called Shane a dick, but I like the other part, too.”
“I meant it,” I say. “The boyfriend part. If you still want to be.”
Josh’s arms tighten around me. “Hell, yes, I do.”
I wrap my arms around his neck, and his hands draw me in by the waist, and now we’re kissing up against his car like people do at the end of movies right before the credits start to roll. But this doesn’t feel like the end. It feels like the beginning. Our bodies are hungry—I want to tear his clothes off right here, and I can tell by the way his hands press at my back that he’s feeling the same. I look up at him, breathless. “Let’s get out of here.”
Josh groans. “This is petty, but I kind of want to make out in front of Shane’s house for a little bit longer.”
This makes me laugh, but genuinely, not like Shane’s ridiculous stunts. “Rios,” I say, “I’m not sure how much longer I can control myself, and I’d rather not face the release of a second sex tape.”
Josh looks over his shoulder, and for a moment I think the jealous part of him is going to want to have sex right here on his Porsche in front of Shane’s house, neighbors with smart phones notwithstanding. Then he sighs. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and he opens the passenger door for me.
The thought of going home where we could—and likely would—be interrupted by any number of family members doesn’t sound great, so I direct him to a grove of trees not far off the highway, and we pull the sleeping bag out of the trunk. We find the first soft patch of ground and attack each other, working off the stress of the last few days, dissolving into each other like there’s nothing in the world but the two of us. Josh must need this as much as I do, because we’re up late into the night, and then we wake up in the early morning still wrapped tight in each other and do it all over again.
I’m stretched out beneath him, head thrown back, eyes filled with stars, when something moves in the trees a few feet away. Josh might have mistaken my scream of surprise for one of pleasure, but when I shove him off me, he jerks back in alarm.
“What?” he says.
A jumble of words come out of my mouth that aren’t even close to forming a sentence, and the only coherent thing I can do is point and say “that!” because I’m staring up into the wide eyes of a moose that from this angle looks like it might be seven feet tall at the shoulder.
It lowers its head, ears pointed back, and licks its lips at us. This moose is either channeling Lily or it’s identified us as a threat and is about to charge.
“Whoa,” Josh says, with a kind of hushed awe in his voice that is entirely inappropriate to the situation. Moose kill more people in Wyoming every year than bears and wolves combined. You’re not supposed to be within twenty yards of a moose, and here we are mere feet away.
All the hair rises down the moose’s back like a cat.
“Run,” I say.
Josh looks at me in surprise. “Won’t that startle—”
There isn’t time for this. I shove Josh off me and haul him toward the nearest tree. He fumbles for our clothes but I don’t care if there’s a whole jamboree of Boy Scouts in these woods, I would rather run past them all naked than be trampled by the woodland equivalent of a steam engine. I pull Josh by the arm behind the tree, just as the moose takes off through the clearing, hooves pounding over the soft ground and right over the open sleeping bag, flipping it upward in a cloud of dirt. One of my fake Uggs goes flying, along with a piece of silver that catches the first rays of sunlight filtering down through the leaves.
It’s my phone case. Oh, god, there’s my phone, the screen shattered, the case nearly broken in half.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
The moose makes a low moaning sound and pauses, and I pull Josh around the tree to keep it between us and the moose while he sorts through the clothes he has in his hands. Pine needles poke the arches of my feet, and I scuff my toe on a rough tree root.
“Here.” Josh hands me his shirt. The morning air is bitingly cold and my breasts are all kinds of articulate. I pull it over my head, feeling decidedly less sexy in it than the times I’ve lounged around his place wearing his shirt.
Josh puts on his pants, and leans around the tree, but I pull him back at another moaning noise from the moose. I look down and see that he doesn’t have any more clothes. This is it—his shirt and pants, no shoes. He reaches into his pocket and takes out his phone—at least he has that, and his wallet, and I left my purse in his car—but neither of us has what resembles clothes that are fit to be wandering back into town in.
The moose shuffles through the brush and noses around our sleeping bag again. And while I can replace my fake Uggs and am obviously going to have to replace my phone, I can’t help but feel like this moose has taken something more important from me. I’d say it was my dignity but I’m not sure there’s a scrap of that left after the past few days.
Josh swears, and I realize the moose is relaxing, its ears no longer drawn back like an angry dog, its hair no longer standing on end.
It’s also lying down on top of our sleeping bag, as if we’d occupied its favorite morning napping spot, and it’s pleased to discover we’ve left behind extra cushioning in the form of our bag, shoes, and clothes.
Josh takes my hand. “What do we do?”
“I think the universe might be trying to kill us.” I swallow the other thought, which is that the fates are clearly against me and Josh having anything resembling a normal relationship, even if I were miraculously capable of such a thing.
“Okay,” Josh says slowly. “But what do we do about the moose on your clothes?”
There’s really only one thing we can do. “We’re going to move very slowly around to the car, keeping trees between us and the moose as much as possible. And then we’re going to get in your car and drive back into town and find something that actually covers my butt cheeks for me to wear while we sneak back into my house for regular clothes.”
Josh glances down at my ass. “You do look good in my shirt.”
I squeeze his hand. “And I’ll wear it for you whenever you want, but I’m not going to be caught pants-less during the family reunion. Again.” Turns out I do have one small scrap of dignity left, and damn it, I’m going to guard that sucker with my life.
After long, painful minutes (literally, because neither Josh nor I are accustomed to walking barefoot through the forest) we finally circle back to the Porsche. It actually surprises me the car hasn’t been inhabited by a family of rabid raccoons in our absence, but it’s blessedly empty and we get in and pull slowly back onto the road.
The damn moose doesn’t even stir, which furthers my theory that the universe—or at least Wyoming—has some kind of score to settle with me. I didn’t know when I came back for the reunion that I was entering some sort of death match, and I’m incredibly outmatched.
Josh rests his hand on my knee as we drive back into town. “You okay?”
He’s been asking that a lot lately, and while I’m thrilled he cares, I’m less excited about being the one in this very new relationship who needs constant tending. “Yeah. I just need a shower. And to never come back to Wyoming again.”
“I can support that.”
When we get into town it’s still too early in the morning for the grocery store to be open. Not that they carry many clothes, but they do have a selection of t-shirts with steer horns or a pair of pistols with the words “got guns?” across the chest, and occasionally these gems come with matching shorts to complete the set.
“Is there anywhere else that carries clothes in town?” Josh asks.
I sigh. “The only thing open at this time is the bait shop, but unless I’m going to wear a fly-fishing vest, I don’t think they’ll be able to help.”
Josh shrugs. “It doesn’t hurt to try.”
I direct him to the right part of town, and Josh parks on the far end of the lot so fishe
rmen don’t randomly pass by and see me tugging down the hem of his shirt. Josh saunters up to the bait shop like this is something he does every day, and it occurs to me that I don’t know if Josh has ever been fishing in his life. I can’t picture it, but I couldn’t picture him learning Dothraki either, so who knows.
Josh comes back with a plastic bag with a vaguely clothing-shaped lump in the bottom, which would give me hope if it weren’t for the look on his face, which rests somewhere between shame and glee. He opens the door, and passes me the bag.
“What is it?” I ask. It comes out in my flat voice, which is the one I use to address Will after he’s used the last of my mango shampoo, but Josh doesn’t seem put off.
“It will definitely cover your butt cheeks.”
I snatch the bag and peer inside. He’s bought a pair of those plastic overalls fly fishermen wear when they wade out into rivers, and from the amount of material there, it looks like these could fit a very large man.
I glare up at Josh, and he holds up his hands. “You don’t have to wear them. But they’re pants. We could also sit here in the car until the grocery store opens and see if we could find you—”
“No,” I say, more snappishly than I mean to. I soften my tone. “Thank you. Really. I’ll wear these. At least I won’t be flashing my ass at my uncle Joe and revealing to him that I had the Millipede Corporation tattoo he gave me removed.”
Josh has just settled into his seat, and he pauses and stares at me. “I have so many questions about this.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “I bet you do.”
“Your uncle Joe does tattoos?” Before I can tell him about Joe’s brief stint as a tattoo artist, Josh continues on. “And most importantly, you seriously had a Death Arsenal tattoo? Which you had removed? Why?”
Josh looks as if I’m telling him I turned down a starring role in Spielberg’s next film, and I laugh harder.
“Was it a tramp stamp?” he asks. “Please tell me you did not remove a geeky tramp stamp. My heart will never recover.”
Now we’re both laughing, and it feels so good I never want to stop. “Sadly, Rios, I did exactly that.”
The Girlfriend Stage Page 20
