Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
“Can I tell you a secret?” Xander says, slurring his words.
I look over at him, dubious. He sees my expression and it sets off a chain reaction of delight.
It starts at his eyes, which are already hooded thanks to the Malbec, but still manage to crinkle in the corners.
Then, the delight spreads to his nose as he scrunches it up.
And finally, landing on his lips, which spread wide, splitting his face in two. It’s contagious.
Turns out, Xander is a fucking lightweight. And no amount of alcohol could ever shut him up. If anything, it’s removed the last of his restraint, which I didn’t realize he’d been exercising.
We’re both sitting on the bed, our backs against the headboard, passing the standard-sized bottle of wine between us. And in a turn of events I didn’t see coming, not that my vision has been 20/20 since I subbed my tomato juice for straight vodka this morning, but Xander is drunker than me.
“This better be good,” I say, knocking his elbow with mine. “The last five secrets you’ve told me were lame.”
“As if,” he says, and there’s lightness to him I haven’t seen before.
It makes me think of what he would have been like as a kid growing up.
And from his last couple of secrets, I’m getting snapshots of what it was like.
Getting picked up by two loving parents from a particularly rowdy house party.
Piling as many teenagers as possible into the back of his parents’ car to avoid getting busted by the cops.
In-N-Out burgers to soak up the alcohol before dropping everyone off at home.
Xander Miller is fucking wholesome.
He leans in so our entire sides are touching each other, like we’ve formed an alliance. I ignore how every single cell has rallied to the touch. “Did I tell you about my role in the Enron collapse?”
I whip my head to look at him. Is he for real?
He watches me for a moment before laughing. “Got you. I was still in high school when that happened.”
“Oh my god,” I say, laughing, and Xander takes this as a cue that I’m forgoing my turn because he takes the bottle out of my hands and sips. I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs.
After his sip, he puts the bottle between his thighs and leans his head on the headboard. “Thanks.” He lolls his head toward me.
“For what?”
“For getting me drunk,” he says, sighing with content. I study him a moment, with his eyes nearly closed, but his mind still wide-awake. Could this be the closest thing Xander’s had to a solid sleep in who knows how long?
“Please, I do not need any more encouragement when it comes to that domain,” I say, brushing off the genuine gratitude.
I know he’s not literally thanking me for getting him drunk, but more so what being inebriated brings.
A dullness that gives your brain a break.
Which might be worth its weight in gold when you’re suffering insomnia.
“Which domain do you need encouragement in?” he says, all relaxed. “Oh, I know. Breakfast.”
“I eat breakfast just fine,” I say, giving him side eye. “And that was a weak-ass attempt to bring the conversation back to me sneaking out,” I concede. Looks like we’re having the conversation about what happened eleven years ago.
“How’d you do it?” The way he asks, there isn’t an accusatory tone to be found. Morbid curiosity, maybe?
I hesitate. I’m starting to learn Xander’s way of getting his point across, and it involves asking questions I can’t seem to connect the dots with until he delivers the punchline.
Usually knocking me on my ass. And yet, I can’t ignore the question, so I proceed with caution. “What do you mean, ‘How’?”
“In order to get to the front door in that apartment, you had to walk through the kitchen,” he says, and my mind immediately flashes to the commando crawl I expertly performed the morning I accidently fell asleep and found myself awake in Xander’s bed. “But I was in the kitchen.”
“I don’t remember,” I say, lying. I will not admit to army-approved techniques I’ve deployed to get out of hostile situations.
“Why not just say goodbye?”
I’m about to shoot back, “Why does it matter?” when Xander lets out a soft sigh. “You missed out.” I hesitate because I’m concerned he’s going to get all emotional drunk on me. “I make the best eggs Benedict.”
“No you don’t. Em does,” I say.
“Your best friend, from the café, who was shouting, ‘Fuck Xander’?” he asks.
“That’s the one,” I say, giving him a finger gun and shooting it in his direction like Xander’s dad probably does followed by the word champ.
“How can you be so sure Emily’s eggs are better than mine? You left,” he says.
“I’m well aware I left commando-crawl style. I was there,” I say, conceding.
A soft laugh comes from his throat. “I knew it,” he says, matter of fact. Then he scrubs his face with his hand. “Okay, so you want to know what’s so embarrassing about that?” Embarrassing? That’s new. My silence invites him to continue.
“My housemate walked past you in the hallway on the way back from the croissant run I asked him to do.” He was going to make eggs and include croissants? Okay. Not bad. A bit considerate.
“And?”
“I told him we had a connection,” he says, before sipping from the bottle.
“I told him that you were into me.” He coughs out a laugh.
“And I went on and on about it until he told me that you were gone. And I still didn’t believe him until I walked back into my room.
” He offers a shrug at the end and it’s so earnest I know it’s not about his ego, and yet I can’t help but say it out loud. Call it a defense mechanism.
“So fragile masculinity,” I say, like a smartass.
“Just a fragile human heart,” he says, correcting me.
And I know he’s right. Because in my drunken slushy mind, I know exactly what he’s talking about.
There was a connection. I just had to sever it before we could both really get hurt.
Because I don’t do feelings. Feelings are bad. And he made me feel way too much.
“I’m sorry I snuck out.”
This apology lends itself to intense staring on both our accounts.
“We’ve established how you did it. I want to know why,” Xander says, still staring. “Did I get the wrong impression that you liked me?” There’s so much honesty in his eyes, I decide not to deflect and instead answer the damn question.
I shake my head. “No, you didn’t get the wrong impression.
” Xander’s eyes go wide at this confession.
“Everything you felt, I felt it too. I just know that relationships don’t work—and statistically speaking, we’re no different.
It was easier to bail before things got complicated. And hard. And messy. And sad.”
He nods slowly, accepting it. “Okay.”
“Okay.”
“How’d you get fired, anyway?” he says, moving us along.
The change in conversation throws me. “You really want to know?” I say, thankful he decided that talking about my termination is better than continuing down the path of apology, which we all know is the gateway conversation to deep and meaningful.
And I don’t think I’ll ever be drunk enough for that.
“I mean, you are talking to a lawyer,” he says, raising his eyebrows. “Do you think you have a case for wrongful termination?”
“The idea of taking a case like this to court and not winning, it’d be over for me,” I say.
“Case like this?”
“Putting a woman’s sexual activity on display like she should be condemned,” I say, looking straight ahead, avoiding eye contact.
And that’s truly why I could never hate my mom.
In a world that still slut shames women, my mom doesn’t just celebrate it.
She writes a New York Times bestselling book about it.
She produces a show about it. She leads a revolution about it.
I will my eyes to stay straight, because it seems that while we’ve avoided any deep and meaningful between us, we’ve stumbled on vulnerability, and it’s making my skin itch. I feel my heart pound a little faster at this confession.
“Can you walk me through what happened, start to finish?”
“You’re going to judge me,” I say, still avoiding eye contact.
“I’m not here to judge you.”
“One of my Bone It hook ups,” I start, but stop and look over at him. His eyes are steady and soft, so I continue. “Picked me up from the school and was a little handsy at the school gates. So apparently I’m a pervert now.”
“I could win it for you,” he says, like it’s a done deal, and he must read the shock on my face because he says, “Hello, I’m Xander Miller. A lawyer. Nice to meet you.”
I shake my head. “Aren’t you in corporate law? White-collar crime shit?” He laughs at this.
“Correct, but part of that white-collar crime comes under employment law. Let me look into it for you,” he says, and this time I can tell he’s asking for approval. It dawns on me that even in this drunken haze, I’m getting pretty good at reading Xander Miller and his intentions.
“You’ll have to get me way more drunk to even consider that,” I say, reaching for the bottle between his strong thighs that I am not hyper-fixating on.
I take a Xander-sized gulp. It turns out that Xander-sized gulp was the last one.
“Shit,” I say, inspecting the empty bottle. “Do you think we can DoorDash another?”
Xander springs into action and gets his phone out. He smashes the screen a little too hard but declares with a grin: “Done.”