Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You what?” Em’s face does a three-way surprise expression—eyebrows shoot to the sky, eyes bug out, and mouth drops halfway to the floor.
“Unfortunately, my new one-woman show, Sleep Wanker, is coming to a late-night sleep study session near you,” I say, straight-faced.
The fact that this legit happened to me last night registers on Em’s face, and her entire body shudders as fits of laughter spill out from her.
“I will not laugh,” I say in the face of Em’s deadly contagious laughter.
“I refuse. Because this is super serious stuff. I need advice. I need to know how to navigate tonight. Do I ignore it? Do I confront it? Do I ask Ben if he studied the tapes? No. I can’t.
I won’t,” I say as Em’s laughter gets louder.
The straight face I’m holding is about to break. I clench my jaw tighter and swallow, but Em’s chortling pushes me over the edge. The corners of my lips start to curl, giving me away. I avoid eye contact for a second to reset.
“I think you should, um, well …” Em attempts to talk her way through her laughing fit, but she can’t finish the sentence.
The gleam in her eye turns into a full-blown tear that rolls down her cheek—and that does it for me.
I start laughing. And my laughing spurs on Em’s laughing, and we’re just two dickheads who went out for a café lunch on a Monday only to end up laughing uncontrollably instead of eating anything.
Em finally regains some semblance of control.
The laughter subsides. And I think we’re in the clear.
But then she takes a sip of water and instead of swallowing it, she looks at me again and it must remind her of what I told her.
She sprays it out all over our table. Our Cuban sandwiches—with the perfect crusty sourdough bread—turn soggy under the mist.
This sets me off and it’s getting to the point where we’re both wheezing as we recount the story to each other through a random collection of consonants and vowels that don’t sound like any language on this planet.
I put my hand out to cover Em’s face and look away so I can’t see her reacting to my reaction, which is reacting to her reaction—my last-ditch effort to break the cycle.
“I’m good. I’m good. I’m good,” Em says, repeating the mantra. She starts to break on the third repetition. Yep, she’s a goner. She’d be terrible at meditation. But I know without a doubt that “sleep wanker” will forever more make Em collapse with laughter.
Ten long minutes later, we have our shit under control and I can take a moment to enjoy our surroundings.
We’re sitting inside our second-favorite café, Roasting Warehouse.
And warehouse it is. Exposed beams and bricks and pipes that do nothing to keep the heat out.
It’s a scorcher of a day and still, I refuse to drink my coffee cold.
I take a sip of my double-shot cappuccino.
“This mess is two-fold,” I say, returning to the reason I shared the story in the first place—to figure out my next move before tonight. “One. Sweet Ben. Two. Xander,” I say, counting them out on my fingers.
“But you said Xander handled Ben. So where’s the mess? I mean, besides the fact you’re fighting deep-seated feelings,” Em says, but I cut her off at the F word. I don’t do the F word.
“Feelings?” I shake my head. “It’s chemistry.
Hormones. Bodily functions. I can’t control it.
” It’s the perfect defense for why my rules have held up for me personally for eleven years, why millions of women worldwide agree, and also why the execs at Netflix gave Mom a lucrative deal for her TV show.
It’s flawless.
“Yes, yes, the chemistry teacher doesn’t believe in love,” Em says, like she’s said it a million times before.
Because she has. Still, I can’t stop thinking about the wicked grin on Xander’s face in the parking lot, and for some reason it has me wondering what he’s doing right now.
Or who, I guess, if he’s into some afternoon delight.
“Now, I will admit,” I say, smiling at her slyly, which has her leaning in for the juicy gossip. “That if I had met Xander for the first time last Friday, I wouldn’t hesitate to …” I let the sentence trail off but wiggle my eyebrows.
“Okay, I need a photo,” Em says, letting her speech about love go. Yes, yes, the English teacher is a romantic.
“I don’t have a—wait,” I say, remembering the photo he sent from the Cardi B concert. I swipe open my phone and navigate to our text message before handing my phone over to Em.
She’s quiet for a moment. But her mouth drops open as she zooms in and I can’t help but smile. “You need to break your one-night-only rule for him.”
“What?” I say, which actually means “No fucking way.” I ignore my stomach bottoming out at the idea that all my memories of Xander could double as future projections. Future pleasure.
“Not for love,” Em says, understanding the true tone of my question. “For sex.”
“No.”
“Come on. Do your Bone It boys really measure up to the original?” Em says, eyebrows raised.
“Let me put it this way. If Bone It had a rating system like Uber, Morgan would get five stars. Smooth ride. Knows how to handle a stick. Arrived at my destination multiple times,” I say, always ready to go to bat for my rules.
“You need to fuck Xander,” she says like it’s a done deal. I stare her down, but this only encourages her. “Fuck Xander,” she repeats, adding on a fun little hand clap. Oh god, here we go. The theatrics of Emily.
“Fuck Xander. Fuck Xander. Fuck Xander,” Em chants and claps, her voice getting louder every time she repeats it, like she’s a kid in class playing the penis game.
Then, she pauses midchant. And I know she’s waiting for me to join in. And I also know she won’t stop until I do.
“FUCK XANDER,” I chant and clap loudly.
I say it at the exact same time there’s a change in songs on the “café chill vibes” playlist, so my chant echoes across the space.
And then my gaze lands on one of the patrons and I freeze in fucking terror.
“Fuck,” I say in a whisper. “Xander?” Em doesn’t register the question in my intonation because she doesn’t stop.
“Yes, you need to fuck Xander immediately,” she declares.
“No, Xander is here,” I hiss, but I’m not looking at Em anymore because my eyes are locked on Xander. Sitting right there. Staring back at me with that wicked grin.
Why are warehouses made like amphitheaters where the acoustics carry across fifty tables and reach into every corner?
There’s no way in hell Xander didn’t hear a) his name and b) that we were just chanting about fucking him.
What horrible thing did I do in a past life to deserve this kind of karmic retribution?
Just then a waitress delivers Xander’s food and he breaks eye contact with me to thank her, which sends her blushing in his presence. Looks like the entire world wants to fuck Xander.
Okay, so now on top of the enormous task of figuring out how to handle the catastrophic moment of getting caught sleep masturbating by tonight, I now have to redirect my brain cells to being caught chanting about having sexual intercourse with Xander.
I am not prepared for this. Time is ticking. I have maybe three seconds to figure out how to play this out as the waitress places the food down and starts to leave.
To add sprinkles to the shit sundae I’m now eating, further neural pathways have broken off to discuss my choice of outfit, reminding me that I’m wearing yoga leggings that haven’t seen a yoga pose since they were downward dog proofed during quality control before being shipped to stores, and a T-shirt that has a stain on it I only noticed when I got out of the car at the café.
Also, yesterday was the absolute last day I could physically get away with using dry shampoo as a replacement for washing my hair.
Normally, I wouldn’t give a flying fuck about any of this, but with the embarrassment compounding rapidly since Wankergate and subsequently getting caught red-handed chanting “Fuck Xander,” forgive me for being a little sensitive.
Em follows my line of sight and studies Xander for a moment before turning back around, her face beaming. “Holy shit, that photo does not do him justice,” she says, her voice booming with permission. “Xander’s hot.”
Yeah, I know. “Shhh!” I hiss, whacking Em in the arm for being so loud.
In turn, Em yells out for being hit. That sound carries toward Xander, further pulling his attention to the sound tsunami we’ve created.
The waitress leaves, and Xander looks at me over his coffee cup that he’s slowly taking a sip from.
Is he mad? Oh, no doubt he’s mad. It also happens to be sexy somehow.
Smoldering, one might even say. Like a predator stalking his prey.
I put my hand to my mouth, pretending to chew on my thumb.
I can’t believe the way Emily’s smiling at me right now. Rude.
“Put that smile away. Now is not the time to smile. Now is the time to strategize. What the fucking fuck do I do?” My eyes flash back and forth between Em and Xander.
“Go over and say hello?” Em suggests, like we weren’t just caught chanting about objectifying him.
I give her my best “are you kidding?” look. “I can’t just go over there,” I say.
“Well, awkward chitchat is better than staring at him from across the room pretending you didn’t just scream excitedly about screwing him,” Em says, like it isn’t her fault I was doing it in the first place.
Also, damn it. She’s right. I can’t not get up and say something.
“Okay,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Okay. Okay. Okay.” Maybe if I repeat it enough times, I’ll believe everything’s okay. “I can do this.”
“That’s the spirit,” Em says, taking a swig of her coffee and sounding not at all sincere. “You can reminisce about your Sleepless in the Saddle incident.” She waves her mug in the air and then giggles.