Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (11 page)

 I sighed. "Okay. Keep your voice down, yeah? You remember Heather?"

 "With the teeth. You fucked her Mom."

 "Steve..."

 "Yeah. Sorry. I do. Yes."

 "She's seeing my brother."

 "Heather's Mom is seeing your brother? Wow. She is some kinda deluxe cougar. I may have to get in on that action."

 "No," I said. "
Heather
is seeing my brother."

 "Hot," said Steve. "Do you know there's like a whole strand of Amazon.com devoted to that?"

 I didn't say anything. I didn't see the point. He wasn't going to listen to me. All he wanted was a free lunch and someone to catch the spray as he spilled the sticky contents of his weird little mind.

 "Girls who like to fuck brothers," he said. "Especially twins. Often at the same time."

 "So that was you screwing up my Amazon recommendations, was it?"

 Steve held up both hands. "It was. I consider myself, as a social commentator, duty bound to figure out exactly what is floating the average housewife's personal porno-boat these days. Apparently it's only incest if their balls touch."

 Jerry chose that moment to come over. He caught the end of what Steve was saying and caught the brunt of my nervous rictus smile.

 "Hey you," he said. "No Lacie today?"

 Thankfully he didn't sound like a man hell bent on kicking my ass for breaking his niece's heart. "No," I said, conscious of every tooth in my head as I smiled. "She's busy. She was on her laptop a moment ago. Said she didn't have time for lunch."

 "Huh," said Jerry. "Working on that novel of hers, I guess. What can I get you?"

 I settled for coffee and pie. Steve ordered up a burger, fries, a side of onion rings and a slice of chocolate pie. "Whatever love advice you've got going on, it had better be amazing," I said. "That's all I'm fucking saying."

 "Cyrano's got nothing on me," said Steve, through a mouthful of burger. "You wait. Your little singular anomaly won't know what hit her."

 "My what?"

 He put down the burger. "You are clearly not a student of the classics," he said, taking a gulp of coffee. "Okay, so about this nothing you did..."

 "Heather," I said. "She's seeing my brother."

 "But not in an Amazon.com kind of way?"

 "No."

 "Just so we're clear, we're talking about Bryan?"

 "Yes."

 "And she's okay with the no-feet thing?"

 "She's fine with the no-feet thing."

 "That's great," said Steve. "I like that. Good for Heather. That really speaks to her character, don't you think?"

 "Yeah. She's a saint. Whatever." I said, determined to come to the point. "I took Lacie to meet Bryan, right? That was when I found out he was seeing Heather. Heather was there."

 Steve screwed up his face. "And she remembered you?"

 "She did. And she also remembered that I..."

 "...fucked her Mom," Steve finished. "Oh wow. I think I see your problem. So now Emily Dickinson over there thinks you're a dirty gross manskank who double-dips moms and daughters alike?"

 "Thanks. Yeah. I wouldn't quite put it that way, but yeah," I said. "The point is, I was a dirty gross manskank before she even met me, so where does she get off making judgments on stuff I did before I even knew her name?"

 Steve bit his lip. "Okay. I have a vague idea of what's happened here. You're not telling me everything, are you?"

 I explained about the four phone calls. By the increasingly pained look on his face I knew I'd fucked up. "Right," he said, biting into an onion ring. "The Fuckpants thing. Princess Fuckpants, was it?"

 "Yeah. It was."

 "Mind giving me some context on that? As in, how did you say it? Was it like, playful?"

 "Not exactly."

 "Okay. Can you use those words in a sentence? What did you say, exactly?"

 "Um...I said 'Hey, Princess Fuckpants – since when was your pussy so stainless and pure?’” 

 Steve sighed. "Yeah. I think I'm beginning to see why she might be annoyed."

 "In my defense, she’s acting like the messiah fell out of her sniz and like I’m the manwhore of Babylon. I should get her flowers, right?"

 "Does she like flowers?"

 "I don't fucking know. But I was reading this thing last night and there's a whole, like language of flowers. You can communicate really specific things with different flowers."

 Steve rubbed his temples. "Clay, unless there is a rare breed of Himalayan orchid that specifically communicates the message 'I'm sorry I called you Princess Fuckpants', I think the best thing you can do is go over there and say you're sorry."

 "Just like that?"

 "Just, as I say, like that."

 I took a deep breath. "Okay." I finished my coffee and dumped a twenty on the table. "If this doesn't work then you owe me lunch."

 "Done."

 I crossed the street and looked in at the store. Cassandra had gone and it was just Lacie. My heart leapt into my mouth as soon as I saw her. "So...um..." I began. "I...uh..."

 She lifted an eyebrow and peered at me in a bored sort of way. I could feel my temper boiling - she wasn't exactly giving me anything to work with here - but I swallowed it down. No. "So," I said, again. "You were probably wondering what the deal was with me and Heather."

 "Not really," she said. "It's none of my business, after all."

 "Oh. Well. Yeah. That's true, I guess."

 She stared at me for a long moment, as if she couldn't quite make herself believe that someone quite as stupid as me had figured out how to blink and breathe oxygen at the same time. "I'm sorry," she said. "Do you not understand sarcasm?"

 "Lowest form of wit, right?"

 "No," she said. "I wasn't trying to be witty. It happens to be my business, okay? You make it my business when you go around saying things like 'I'm clean' before having unprotected sex with me. How many other mother and daughter teams have you banged lately?"

 Okay. So that was her problem. "I never had unprotected sex with you."

 "Really? So what was that in your car that night in Burlington? A fucking line dance?"

 "Oh, that."

 She frowned at me, her mouth hanging open. "'Oh, that'? Yeah, you're not helping yourself here, Clayton. This is kind of serious. How many other 'oh, that's were there? And when did you last get checked out?"

 She lowered her voice at the end of the sentence. When I opened my mouth to speak the bell rang and we were no longer alone. A biker walked in, all in black leather. She kind of fluttered and stuttered in a way I'd never seen before and it took me a moment to realize I needed to close my mouth too.

 Goddamn, he was good looking. Like, so good looking it was almost ridiculous. He frowned at me for a moment and then said, "It's Clayton, right?"

 "Uh, yeah." My brain was about five minutes behind everyone else's. Nobody's jaw needed to be that square. Or his eyes so blue. It was just...unnecessary. Worse, Lacie was gawking like a total fucking goon. "Trey," I said, finally making the connection in my head. "Right?"

 "Hey man." Oh great. Even his grip was godlike.

 "Hi, can I help you?" said Lacie, in a breathy rush that sounded like she was asking him to father her babies. 

 "Actually yes," he said. "You could. Can I get a closer look at that desk in the window? The roll-top one."

 "Escritoire," said Lacie. "Eighteenth century French influences."

 "Escritoire. Right," he echoed, and fuck me if he didn't pronounce it like he'd just stepped off the plane from Paris. She gave me a dirty look and I stomped out into the back. Out with the mom-joke, in with the biker God. Whatever.

 I avoided her for the rest of the afternoon. Her old man came in and we worked on a dining table, taking it apart and removing the old paint. Despite what I'd told Lacie I wasn't an expert stripper in any sense of the word and I was always worried I was going to scorch the wood with the paint remover gun. I preferred doing it with chemicals - the paint just floated right off and revealed the wood-grain underneath. 

 "I never understood why anyone would want to paint a solid oak table," I said. "Why mess with perfection?"

 "Some people, I guess," said Gus. "Gotta gild the lily. It's not enough for them."

 "Yeah, and they end up making a mess."

 "C'est la vie," he said, fishing a table leg out of the vat. "You're always gonna end up cleaning up one kind of mess or another, or so I've found."

 He was a nice guy, her Dad. Steady-headed and kind - the kind of Dad I'd always wanted. I was pissed that everything was falling apart around me; what was going to happen when he figured out I was the one who was making his daughter so miserable?

 The thought of her was like a sore spot inside of my mouth. I couldn't stop thinking about her. The question gnawed at me inside for hours until finally it came out. "Is Lacie okay?" I asked.

 I don't know why. Maybe I just wanted him to ask her and her to tell him and then we could just get it over with. I could get fired and I'd never have to see her again, which was probably what she wanted. 

 "Nope," he said, matter-of-factly.

 "No?"

 He shrugged. "She's never okay. I don't know what to do to make her happy - never did."

 To say I was surprised was an understatement. Surprised, relieved and kind of mad too. I was relieved because here was her Dad admitting that she was as closed off with him as she was with me, so it couldn't be just me. And I was angry - angry at her for not even letting her own father know what the fuck was going on in her head.

 "She doesn't tell you?" I said.

 Gus shook his head. "Never does. Never has. Not since she was a little girl, anyway. After the thing with her brother we all learned to smile pretty and pretend everything was okay."

 "Oh," I said. "Right."

 He frowned. When I'd first started working for him I thought Lacie must have taken wholly after her dead mother, but her eyebrows were the same shape as her Dad's. She also had his frown - the same two little indentations over the upswept part of her brow. "I thought you two were getting pretty friendly," he said.

 "We were. Are."

 "Huh," he said. "Guess it's not just me she doesn't talk to then."

 "No," I said. "It's not." I swallowed. "Do you mind me asking what happened?"

"Cancer."

"Oh shit, man. I'm sorry."

 He shook his head. "Two years between them. Byron was two years older - couldn't have asked for a more picture perfect family. One of each." He reached into the miniature fridge and took out a couple of Diet Cokes. "At first we thought he was just accident prone," he said, popping the top on the can. "Bruises. You expect little boys to play hard, don't you? Then his kindergarten teacher called us in - stone faced as you like. We thought she was going to start talking child protective services. Caroline - my wife - she was furious that anyone would call her parenting into question."

 He took a long pull of his drink. "But that wasn't it. This teacher - she had a sister who was a cancer nurse. Mostly pediatric cases. I guess she just knew the warning signs and said had we thought about taking Byron for tests?"

 "Oh my God."

 He shrugged. "Leukemia. What are you gonna do?"

 "I'm so sorry. She never..."

 "No. She doesn't. I blame myself sometimes. We didn't want him to know, you see. They talk about positive mental attitude and you know how kids are - they pick up on emotions. Get anxious real easy."

 "Yeah. I know that."

 "Well," he said. "We played it down. We never let Byron know exactly how sick he really was - to keep our spirits up as much as his. That poker face of hers? We taught her that."

 "You do what you have to, right?" I said. "To keep them safe."

 "I guess so," he said, and sighed. "I guess so."

 I waited a while before trying to approach her again. Trey wasn't there so she'd stopped being all pink and fluttery; when I walked in she just looked cagey. "Can we please talk?" I asked.

 "Why?" she said, leaning back against the desk.

 "What do you mean 'why'?" I knew things were never going to be the same again and it pissed me off. Like she was inventing things to get mad about.

 "Well," she said. "You're just gonna say you don't do that kind of thing and I'm going to say that you do. That you did. And that you need to get checked out."

 "Excuse me?" I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "Just because I've slept with more than one woman in my life I'm suddenly Captain Herpes?"

 She arched an eyebrow. "You're honestly gonna look me in the eye and tell me the whole mother/daughter thing wasn't skeevy?"

 "Okay, yeah. It was skeevy. It was also a mistake. Have you never made a mistake like that before?"

 She had the decency not to say it, but I could tell she was thinking it.

 "Look," I said, swallowing my anger. "I know life hasn't been great to you. But it hasn't been great to a lot of people. And I get it, I really do - you don't want to show how you feel..."

 Lacie held up her hands. "Whoa. No. Wait."

 "...I know what happened with your brother..."

 The look in her eyes was all out mean now. "No," she said. "You do not get to go rummaging around in my head, trying to figure out what I feel and what I think, okay? I have had enough of that shit for a fucking lifetime."

 "...I just wanna..."

 I reached out to touch her arm, but she jerked away. "No, Clayton. Jesus. I said no. Just leave it alone. We had fun. It's not fun any more. So that's that."

 Wow. Cold. "Okay," I said. Two could fucking play at that game. "Okay. So we're cool? Because I have to work."

 She gave me a slitted, catty look. "What? You think I'm going to make you lose your job. Please."

 "Big of you," I said, and walked out.

 I got in my car and called Steve. "You owe me lunch," I said.

 I heard him exhale. "You're fucking kidding me?"

 "Nope. Right now I'm looking for that rare Himalayan orchid that says 'I'm sorry you're an emotionally closed off bitch and I hope you enjoy growing old and lonely with half a dozen cats.'"