REAL LIFE
Tuesday
THE FIRST THING I register is a heaviness across my stomach, a bar of gentle pressure, like a weighted blanket, only concentrated. A cold breeze wriggles through the sheets. I nestle back into the delicious warmth behind me. My head spins from the motion. My stomach roils. Something stiff rocks against the backs of my thighs, and a bolt of heat, of want, goes down my center.
Holy shit!
I scramble upward, eyes snapping open on the pewter gray of morning, blankets snared around my thighs. I’m on the floor.
Why am I on the floor?
Why am I on the floor with him?
I search my immediate surroundings for clues.
King-sized bed. Window open above it, a damp wind wisping in. Bare legs, covered with goose bumps. And the shirt I’m wearing— No!
Shit. Shit. Shit.
Tissue-paper thin. Faded to near transparency, long enough to reach a third of the way down the fronts of my thighs but somehow not long enough to cover my whole ass. A cartoon horse barrel racing with a cartoon cowboy on its back, yellow serifed font superimposed over it: THIS AIN’T MY FIRST RODEO.
No, no, no, no, no, absolutely not. This is not my shirt.
Sure, it used to be my favorite shirt to sleep in, but once that UPS box of my stuff showed up (a whole two days after our breakup), I’d stuffed this shirt—along with every other trace of Wyn I could find—into the Crate & Barrel box from our first set of shared dishes and shipped it right back to him.
Why am I fixating on the shirt?
Surely, I should be panicking about the fact that my ex-fiancé is lying on the floor beside me, bare chested, face half buried in a pillow, his arm still a deadweight across my lap and his erection wedged against me.
“Psst!” I shove him. He rocks right back into the same position. I’ve always been a terrible sleeper, whereas Wyn—who never stops moving while awake—sleeps so hard that I used to check his pulse in the night.
“Get up!” I shove his shoulder harder. His eyes flutter open, slitting against the half-light of morning.
“What?” he grumbles, one eye closing to better focus on me. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?” I hiss back. “How did this happen? How could I let this happen? How could you let this happen?”
“Hold up.” He pushes himself up, scrubs his hair back. “Tell me what happened.”
“What happened?” My whisper pitches up to a teakettle whistle. “We slept together, Wyn!”
His eyes widen. “Slept together?” He laughs hoarsely. “When would we have slept together, Harriet? In between you and Kimmy doing body shots and me—literally—carrying you up the stairs?”
“But . . .” I look around for all that evidence I’d cataloged. “I’m wearing your shirt.”
“Because you puked on yours,” he says. “And when I went to get you another one, you demanded, quite vehemently, the I’ve been to so many fucking rodeos shirt.”
I gawk at him, trying to recall the night he’s describing. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
“Are you kidding?” he says. “You once told me you wanted to be buried in that shirt. And then that you didn’t want to be buried, so I’d have to cremate you in it.”
“I don’t demand things,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “That part was a pleasant surprise.”
“Wait.” The front of my head throbs. I push my hands against it, hard. “Why am I on the floor?”
“Because you refused to take the bed,” he says. “And why are you on the floor?”
“Because,” he says, “I refused to take the bed first. I think you were trying to make a point, but you passed out pretty fast, and then I was worried you might get sick again and choke on your own vomit.”
“Oh.” Another nail pounds into the spot above my right eye. My stomach makes a noise like a possum who’s both dying and in heat.
I remember chugging the glass of wine in the kitchen and going back onto the patio.
I remember Parth playing one of his famous party playlists through the fancy outdoor speakers hidden in fake rocks, and everyone dancing, except Cleo and Wyn, who hung back by the fire, deep in conversation, and I remember how despicably beautiful he looked, backlit by the flames. Then Parth hauled him and Sabrina bodily over to the rest of us, and I remember telling Wyn that sitting by the fire, he’d looked like the devil, and him saying, Stop flirting with me, Harriet, and me feeling angry and something else entirely. Things get fuzzy after that. Probably for the best, if that last little flicker is anything to go on.
“Why don’t you feel like complete shit right now?” I ask.
“Probably,” he says, “because I drank half as much wine as you, and one hundred percent fewer shots than you took off Kimmy’s stomach.”
“That was true?” I say. “I did a body shot?” “No, you didn’t do a body shot,” he says.
My shoulders relax.
“You did four body shots.”
“Why didn’t anyone stop us?” I ask.
“Probably because Cleo went to bed early, Sabrina and Parth were having the time of their lives, and every time I came near you, you’d rub your ass on my crotch until I left you alone.”
I scoot abruptly back from him. “There is absolutely no way I did that.” “Don’t worry,” he says. “It was clearly vengeful grinding.”
I rub the heels of my hands over my eyebrows.
Wyn reaches back for the glass on the nightstand behind us. “Drink some water.”
“I don’t need water,” I say. “I need a time machine.” “I’m not made of money, Harriet. Water’s all I’ve got.”
I swipe the glass from him. As soon as I’ve drained it, he plucks it from my hand and stands, padding into the bathroom portion of our fuck-palace and turning on the faucet. I crawl toward the balcony and push up onto my knees to open the door, dragging the blanket outside with me to swallow some big gulps of fresh sea air.
The sun’s barely come up. There’s too much mist to see much of anything. Everything’s a shimmering gray.
“Here.”
I flinch at the sound of his voice. Wyn’s stepped out beside me and holds the refilled glass out, along with a couple of ibuprofen. Begrudgingly, I down the pills.
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” I say.
“You’ve always made that clear.” He lowers himself to sit beside me on the damp wood, his arms coiled around his knees, his gaze out on the water. Or where the water must be, hidden behind the silver curtain. “Since when do you drink like that?”
“I don’t.” At his look, I add, “Under usual circumstances. But as you’ll recall, these circumstances are less than ideal.”
He pushes his hair out of his face. “Can I ask you something?” “No,” I say.
He nods, his gaze steady on the invisible horizon.
My curiosity bubbles up until I can’t ignore it. “Fine. What?”
“You’re happy, aren’t you?” He looks at me sidelong, the corners of his mouth tense, thoughtful ridges between his brows.
That exaggerated seesawing sensation rocks through me, only with the added benefit of there being a turbulent ocean of alcohol in my stomach.
There’s no right answer. Tell him he did the right thing, and he gets absolution. Tell him I’m not happy, and I’m admitting that even now, a part of me wants him. That he’s gone back to being my phantom limb, an unstoppable ache where something’s missing.
I’m saved by the bell. Except the bell is an air horn app at top volume, blasting through the hallway, followed by a muffled shriek—Kimmy—of “GROCERY. GLADIATORS. BITCHES!” Parth lays on the air horn again.
Wyn lumbers to his feet, his question forgotten, my answer avoided. “At least someone remembered to hydrate before bed.”
