32. Paige
“I swear, if you say ‘pivot’ one more time, I will actually kill you.” Gina wipes her long bangs away from her face.
I bite my lip. It’s all I can do not to blurt it out again.
My my soon-to-be- former couch is wedged onto my building’s luggage cart at a weird backward-reclining angle. It took the two of us twenty minutes and most of the strength we had just to get it onto the cart. Another ten minutes to get it out my front door.
Now the cart is stuck at the turn in the hall between my apartment and the elevator. The couch has locked itself into place, and only the cart moves under it while we push and pull and try to move it around the turn.
I’ll admit we probably could have moved the couch out more efficiently if we started moving it before polishing off three-quarters of the box of wine Gina brought over, but that ship sailed several mugs of wine ago.
“We could just take it back inside?”
“No!” Gina climbs over the armrest, slipping but landing on her feet, to join me on my side of the hallway. “No steps backward. This couch is the hotbed of deceit and criminal activities and hurt. It needs to go.”
It’s also where I’ve slept every night since I left Damiano’s apartment, but I’m not admitting that out loud.
“Clearly, it doesn’t want to go.”
“It’s a couch, Paige. It has no wants. It has no needs.” She plops down onto the couch, sitting at a backward-tilted angle, her feet up in the air. “But you do. And what you need is this beast out of your life.”
She reaches her hand out for me to hand her the Garfield mug she’s using as her travel wineglass. I grab it from the floor a few feet behind us and hand it to her. I grab my Ziggy one and plop down onto the couch next to her. I found this entire set of 80’s comics mugs at Salvation a while back. Ziggy and Garfield definitely get the most use. Pretty sure Tom took the Hagar one when he moved out. No one ever reaches for Family Circus.
I join her and kick my feet up in the air. Huh, why don’t they make couches angled back like this? It’s like a cocoon. I snuggle my face into the back cushion and take a deep inhale.
“Oh no, you don’t.” She pushes my head away from the cushion. “Do not try to find him in the couch. You made your decision.”
“I know.”
“If you want to change your mind, change it. But otherwise, don’t slip back.”
“I know.”
“And getting rid of this couch is Step Two in the Gina Stratham Break Up and Move On Plan.”
Here we go again.
“First, ditch the guy.” She holds up one finger.
“Check,” I say with no enthusiasm whatsoever.
“Second, get rid of something that represents him or your relationship. Burn it, toss it, destroy it.”
“Donate it. Check.”
She gives me a look. Gina thinks the couch should go on the curb, not back to Salvation. But she raises a second finger anyway.
“Third, drink copious amounts of alcohol with someone who gets you.”
We clink our mugs and take a drink.
“And last—”
“Do not say ‘have sex with some other guy.’”
“Have sex with some other guy. It doesn’t even have to be a new guy. Text Spencer. He’ll be over here before you can shave your legs.”
I am nowhere near close to hooking up with someone else. But I also know Gina won’t drop this. “Yeah. Soon.”
She gives me a look.
“I mean it.” I don’t mean it.
Gina sips her wine, staring at me while she bottoms up her mug.
Gina hops up off the couch and tries giving it another push. It doesn’t budge. “We’re not getting this unstuck, are we?”
“No. I guess we need to unwedge it enough to get it back into my place.”
“I have a better idea. Your hot new doorman.”
“What about him?” Is she back on the hooking up thing, or is she still on the moving the couch thing?
“Or the other new guy at the reception desk? Let’s get them to help.”
“They’re not going to move my couch. They’re busy with their actual jobs.”
“Their jobs are to help the building tenants. Just ask nicely, and they’ll do it. Use your magical pretty-please powers on them.”
“I do not have magic powers.”
Gina gives me a look. She regularly gives me crap because guys usually do whatever I ask if I ask nicely. She calls it my magic power, but it seems conceited to admit it, so I deny it whenever Gina brings it up.
But it does work pretty much every time, especially if I touch the guy when I ask. Like touch his arm or something. And it does come in really handy, like when Gina and I got stopped by two police officers while we were day drinking out in the open or when I needed to talk my way out of a parking ticket for Jo-Jo.
“I don’t want to bother those guys.”
“Okay, fine. I’ll go ask.”
“Don’t—”
She’s already on her way to the elevator. I’m stuck, trying to climb my tipsy ass out of this tilted-back couch. But I give up when the elevator door chimes to take her down to the lobby. I sink back into the cushions. Truth is, Gina and I aren’t moving this couch forward or back without some help.
I tip my head back, eyes closed. Another deep breath—his cologne, his sweat. Him. Gina’s right, I need this thing gone. But another deep whiff first.
Less than five minutes later, Gina’s back with two tall, muscular, dark-haired guys. Since when is Chicago swarming with Italian stallions everywhere I look?
“That the couch?” one of them asks.
I fully expect Gina to make some snarky comment since it’s the only couch currently stuck in the hallway, so of course this is the couch , but she doesn’t.
“Paige, this is Matteo, and this is Angelo. Guys, this is Paige.”
I get a “hi” from one and a nod from the other.
“So are they moving this with you on it or what?” Gina asks.
Oh, right. It takes me two drunken attempts, but I manage to climb off this thing without falling.
Gina and I stand out of their way. “Kudos to Sheila,” she whispers, referring to the manager of my building. “These two are fucking fire. Let’s invite them to your place when their shifts are over to thank them for helping.”
“Absolutely not. Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t I dare? I love a good dare. You know that.”
“Please don’t.”
The two of them very easily lift the couch off the luggage cart and unwedge it. They’re walking it down the hall like it doesn’t weigh all that much. Pretty sure I could have stayed seated on it and they still would have moved it without breaking a sweat.
The four of us, the couch, and the two mugs Gina refilled with the last of the boxed wine while the guys were unwedging the couch step into the elevator and head down.
Gina is eyeing these guys hard. “You guys want to come back up for a round of ‘thank you’ drinks?”
Their eyes dart to each other. One shrugs. “Uh. No-fraternizing policy.” The other one nods aggressively.
“Says who?” Gina is relentless.
“Uh. Our boss wouldn’t like it.”
“Sheila? Sheila used to hang with us all the time. She won’t care.”
Gina’s right. Sheila came to my apartment once because a neighbor made a noise complaint. She found Gina and me having a drunk dance party, and Gina convinced her to join us. She’d hang every so often until she went off and had a kid.
The two of them look at each other like deer in headlights. “No one’s watching the door. I really need to get back.”
“Me too. To the, uh, desk.”
“Really?” Gina calls after them as they step off the elevator.
She may be disappointed, but I’m relieved.
I say a quiet goodbye to the couch as I push the button to go back upstairs.