Читать книгу The Awkward Path To Getting Lucky - Summer Heacock - Страница 13

8

I get to Ernesto’s a little early, and I’m sitting at the bar, stomach flopping, ignoring how bizarre this entire situation of mine is by sketching tiny Coopertown Ravens on a bar napkin, when Ben comes walking in. I set my pen down on the bar top and smile. “Glad you could make it. I wasn’t sure the translation stuck.”

He grins and rolls his eyes as he takes the seat next to me. “In my defense, I find your shop a very difficult place to keep any wits at hand.”

“Fair enough,” I concede. The bartender comes by and Ben casually orders the same beer I’m drinking. My curiosity is piqued, so I channel my skin-twitching anxieties into Q and A. “Did you order that because it’s what I’m drinking, or is this what you usually drink?”

“Excuse me?”

“The beer. Is that your usual drink?”

His eyes narrow slightly at me, considering. “No, it’s not. And yes, I ordered it because it’s what you had, and it was easier. I didn’t really think about it.”

“If you’d gotten here first, what would you have ordered?”

His lip twitches. “Why do you ask?”

“The drink of choice can say a lot about a person,” I suggest, morphing my nerves into theories. “It’s not an exact science, but I think there’s something to it. Like, if you ordered a whiskey, but made a sour face with each drink, I’d say you were trying to impress me with your manliness. If you ordered a martini, I’d wonder more about what kind of business you do. If you ordered a fancy martini with lots of specifics, I’d say you might be a little pretentious. If you had a beer like this on your own, I’d say you were laid-back. But see, you ordered it because I had it, so now I don’t know much at all.”

Somewhere in my mind, a voice reminds me that Ryan always orders whatever’s on tap.

Ben laughs and rubs his hand over his forehead. “You get all of that from a drink order?”

I take a sip of my beer and try not to imagine how Ryan’s date with Alice will go as the bartender sets Ben’s glass down in front of him. Ben stares at the drink and chuckles to himself. He twists a bit in his chair, and I point to his chest, exclaiming, “Hey! You changed your shirt!”

He looks down, then back up at me. “Yes?”

“Did you change your shirt because we were having drinks, Ben?”

He laughs loudly and rubs his hands roughly over both eyes this time. Reaching over, he grabs his glass and takes a very long drink.

“You are...” He sets his beer back down and stares at me, grinning as he searches for the appropriate word. “Very intimidating. Do you know that? I honestly can’t tell if this is your personality and I should be really intrigued, or I’m being punished for the other morning.”

I sit straight up, mortified. “What? No! I’m not punishing you! Why would you think that?”

He leans forward and puts one hand on the bar. “You’re just really forward. Not that it’s a bad thing,” he clarifies. “I just kind of feel like I’m making a poor showing, you know?”

Running a hand through my hair, I huff. “I’m sorry. I think I’m so used to being Little Miss Sassypants with everyone at the shop, I don’t know when to shut it off. But I swear this isn’t a deliberate thing.” A horrible calculation of the sheer volume of time I’ve been with Ryan pops into my head. “And...um. Wow. This is probably an overshare, but I just realized it’s been an age since I’ve been on a date, so it’s possible the etiquette has escaped me. Really, I’m sorry if I offended you.”

He smiles kindly and leans back in his chair. “You didn’t. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t reading you wrong. And how long is an age?”

I do the math in my head and try not to visibly shudder. I don’t have the stones to say I haven’t been on an actual date in probably three years. Nor do I have the stones to say that technically I’m only on a break from the person I went on those last dates with.

I’m an asshole.

I finally say, “Longer than a while, less than an eon?”

He studies me for a moment. “I get that. This is actually my first night out in a good minute.”

“Life, am I right?”

“I will cheers to that with my questionable drink choice,” he says with a wink.

“Aww.” I laugh. “I really am a jerk. I’m sorry. I just think it’s interesting! Really, what would you have ordered if you’d gotten here first?”

He thinks about it for a moment. “Let’s see. I have to be in the mood for a martini, but when I am, I order it dirty and with gin. Garner whatever information from that you can. Also, I’m a dreadful Irishman, and my father is forever disappointed, but I don’t generally care for whiskey, so my manliness will have to remain in question. So if I’d ordered first? Probably a Guinness or a gin and tonic. Those are my regulars.”

I giggle into my glass. “Those are good regulars. Guinness will be my next order if we make it to drink two, just FYI.”

“If?”

“Well, it’s all very up in the air, isn’t it? I’ve managed to intimidate you, we have translation issues and I’m kind of a dick. I mean, the cards are stacked against us, Mr. Cleary.”

“See, now we have to make it. It’s a challenge. We must conquer this mountain.”

I take in a dramatic, shuddering breath. Reaching out, I take his wrist and squeeze it defiantly. “You’re right. We can do this. Success will be ours.” Thankfully he laughs, so I let him go and take a drink. “We need to keep our momentum going.”

“It’s crucial,” he says with a wink and takes another sip of his beer. “Tell me something fantastic you did today.”

My hands feel suddenly hot as I remember Alice and her info-bomb. She’s very pretty. Red hair, freckles, a perkiness I don’t possess. I wonder if Ryan has told her about our situation. Maybe they’re going out fully knowing the endgame is sex.

I gulp my beer and push the images out of my head.

I think about telling Ben that the most fantastic thing I did today was ask him out because my business hasn’t had company in two straight years, and at the moment, the prospect of a trial run is starting to seem very appealing, but that seems slightly inappropriate. Slightly.

I sigh. “I feel like I’m letting down our cause to say all I really did today was plot how to make ravens out of fondant. Although, on Friday, I got to design a boob-cake. That was a highlight.”

Ben splutters on his beer. “Boob-cake?”

“It’s a cake shaped like a breast.”

“Your job is obviously better than mine.”

I consider this as I take a long sip. “Probably fact.”

Reaching up and loosening his tie a bit, he asks, “So, how did you get into the business of boob-cakes to begin with? If I’d been given that pitch on career day in high school, I don’t think I could have resisted the lure.”

“The boob-cake siren song is a mighty one,” I agree. “And it just sort of happened. Shannon and I went to State together. She was a business major, and I was dicking around in communications with an art minor solely because my mother refused to have a child planning to base her life off an art degree.

“Shannon graduated and got married, had her son, and I met Butter during my senior year on campus. She was part of this bake sale that was trying to raise money for the culinary arts majors to take a trip to France, and she sold me the best goddamn cupcake I’d ever had in my life. To this day, nothing has ever tasted as good as that crème brûlée cupcake.

“We became pals, and after we’d all graduated, we tried our hands at various crap jobs. A few years ago, Shannon had a moment where she realized that she hated watching her degree gathering dust but couldn’t see herself schlepping in an office somewhere. I was working as the lowest level assistant possible at a horrible radio station that aired nothing but aggressive talk radio, and I had exactly no desire to move up the ranks. One night we were ranting about adulthood, and Butter brought cupcakes. Lightning struck, and that was it. Cup My Cakes was born.”

“Butter’s kind of the lynchpin, then?”

I nod. “Indeed. We owe all our baking know-how to her. Well, and her Noni back in Hawaii, who taught Butter everything she knows.”

“I feel like I need to send her a fruit basket or something.” He laughs. “My team is obsessed with those cupcakes. And to think it all started because you ladies realized how much adulting truly sucks.”

I take another drink. “I’m pretty sure that’s how Charlie’s Angels formed.”

Before I can turn the conversation to the fantastic parts of his day, he turns in his stool to face me, leaning one elbow on the bar. “Kat, in the interest of keeping this second drink dream alive, I’m going for gold here. I have a confession.”

I make my eyes go wide. “Oh, my. Okay.” Turning dramatically in my seat, I place my hands in my lap. “I’m ready.”

“Yes, I did change my shirt because I was meeting you for drinks. And I actually let myself fret about it for a while, too. So when you noticed, I almost fell out of my chair. And I ordered what you were drinking when I came in because I was so nervous, I honestly in that moment forgot what it is I normally drink. And, Kat, I have been buying from your shop for five months, and every week for five months, I’ve thought about how I might someday work up to asking you out. When you said someone was getting married at the shop the other day, for a second I thought maybe it was you and I’d missed my window.” He grins at me, and I take special notice of his white-but-not-too-white teeth. “Now, I’m not saying I’d ever anticipated those particular circumstances bringing this date about, but I’m glad they did.” He holds his hands up in front of him. “Our glasses are almost empty. So. That’s my Hail Mary for a second drink.”

I tilt my head to the side as he takes the last sip from his glass, setting it back down on his napkin with an ominous clink.

This is wrong. Ben isn’t here because he’s emotionally confused by his significant other dating someone new. He’s not here because he’s debating whether or not to try practice sex with me. He’s not here on the whim of a bad mood and a semi-joking idea.

Here’s here because he likes me. Because he has been thinking for some time of being here with me.

I feel genuinely sick to my stomach with guilt at the thought of what’s unfolded in this bar. I want to come clean with him about the reality of my current romantic entanglements—but more than that, selfishly, cowardly, I want to keep feeling what it’s like to be on a first date with Ben Cleary.

“That was a pretty solid Hail Mary,” I offer.

“I went for it,” he says. “Although, to sweeten the pot, I will say, were there to be a second drink, I would also be willing to throw in dinner, because I’m a gentleman like that. And because I’m hungry.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Wait. Unless...you don’t study people about their food the way you do with their drinks, do you?”

I shake my head. “God, no. That’s not okay. Drinks are drinks. Food is for eating and magic and shutting the hell up. You don’t mess with food.”

“See, now I know we can be friends.”

I gesture to the bartender, and Ben’s lip twitches ever so slightly. I take a breath and say, “We’ll take two Guinnesses.”

* * *

All in all, this was a weird day.

Back in my apartment, I set the two ridiculously large boxes of sexual therapy devices on my coffee table.

It’s incredibly late, and I have to be up at dawn to be at the shop, but I’ve got only twenty-nine days to beat this deadline. Shannon’s right; this is never going to work if I keep finding reasons to put it off. It’s my deadline, and I need to bloody well stick with it.

I open the boxes and start laying out the bounty. Damn, the gals really spared no expense. I think they’ve overestimated the actual number of vaginas I have.

Flipping through the Encyclopedia Vaginica Shannon printed off for me, I realize that I remember most of these instructions from my doctor. Start slowly, be gentle, go small, work your way up. The vagina is a muscle, I need to retrain it, yada yada.

Okay, so this isn’t so bad. Shannon managed to get through this in three months, and that was with two tiny humans at home demanding all her attention, so I can totally do this in four weeks. It’s like if I tore my rotator cuff or something. I’d have to do all these stretching exercises to get it back into fighting shape. Not that I want my special to be fighting anyone.

Special. Damn it, Liz.

“Make this a calm and relaxing experience. Play soothing music, burn scented candles, take calming breaths.”

I don’t have any scented candles, and I wonder if Netflix would count in place of calming music?

I take a deep breath. I can do this. It says this should be a twice-daily routine, but I’m wondering if I can work it in at bedtime and before work. Brush teeth, wash face, train special.

I grab an armful of the therapy gear from the boxes and walk them into my bedroom. Tossing them on my bed, I start changing for sleep.

I had a good time with Ben. While I feel like an absolute monster of a person for not being more open about the realities of my life right now, I’ve justified the omissions by reminding myself that most people don’t unload their entire life stories on the first date.

Jammies on, I head to the bathroom to scrub my face and teeth. I think back to Ben’s smile. He really does have nice teeth. And that jaw, though. Seriously. It’s criminally defined.

As I give my molars a good once-over, I can’t help but wonder what I’ve been thinking by ignoring such a huge part of my life for two years. While it’s great that my militant drive to succeed has gotten the shop into pretty solid shape, doing so at the complete expense of my romantic life seems a little extreme.

I don’t remember the last time Ryan and I went out for drinks just to go. Sometimes we go for dinner out, and maybe even a movie on Saturdays, but for the most part, we have been in stuck in the deepest rut ever. Like, natural sunlight can’t reach the depths of this rut.

And it’s been nearly four years. Two of which have been wonky as hell and entirely without physical intimacy. Four years in a relationship is an eternity in your twenties.

But I’m about to dance out of my twenties. And two years of special solitude is more than long enough, damn it. So I’m getting my nethers in line, and then things will get back to awesome with Ryan, and we are about to land a high-check contract. I’m going to be one of those women who has it all.

But right now, all I want is some Doctor Who—and to figure out what the hell a dilator actually is, so I can go to sleep.

Okay. This thing says five to ten minutes—depending on my comfort level—lots of lubricant, then yay sleep.

I’m trying really hard to not think about how odd this all is. But it’s medicinal. Medicinal sex toys. That’s something I could totally explain to my landlady if she came strolling in.

The thing I bought at the shop with Butter was too, uh, sizable, so I’ll have to start smaller. Looking at the pile of items, I feel like I’m in the middle of a hidden camera show. Any minute now, my mom will come bursting in with a camera crew and the pope.

Those must be the calming thoughts the instructions talked about.

Relaxing environment. I grab my remote and queue up an episode of the Tenth Doctor. I shut the lights off and take a deep breath, pushing all thoughts of Ryan and Alice and contracts out of my mind. I ignore the fact that I’m pawing at the protective wrap on a bottle of water-based lubricant my oldest friend and coworkers had overnight delivered to our bakery.

I choose the smallest rubber device, which is innocuously flesh-colored, and take a breath. Here we go.

This isn’t so bad. The papers said to try thirty seconds at first. I start counting in my head.

I’m not a prude by any means, but something about this feels impossibly awkward with the good Doctor allons-y-ing across my TV.

I don’t think I made it to thirty seconds, but I go ahead and stop anyway. I put the suddenly less innocuous-looking thing on a tissue on my nightstand and shut off my TV. So, maybe no Netflix. Quiet therapy. Time alone with some Zen-like thoughts. That will be good. I can focus more.

And that was pretty easy, so maybe I’ll try something a little larger in scale.

This one is inexplicably purple and sparkly. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to represent something or if it’s just supposed to be festive, but, hey, whatever floats your special.

I take another deep breath.

This isn’t working quite as well. I’m startled to meet instant resistance, and my mind flashes with the image of an eyelid slamming shut at the sight of a giant purple glittering finger poking at it.

Ow. OW.

“Fucking ouch!” As a reflex, my hand jerks away from my body, and the sparkly purple faux-penis goes flying across my bedroom. I regret it immediately. “What the hell? It wasn’t that much bigger!” I say this to no one, and I really super hope the pope isn’t coming.

I look down at my bed, comforter covered in naughty implements, and a feeling of dread settles in.

I’m never having sex again.