Chapter 8
By the time I get home, I’m ready for Roy. And I’ve got a few questions of my own.
Taking initiative is such a rush. Who’s a badass? That’s right. It’s me.
His door swings open, and instead of being halfway up the next step like I usually am, I’m standing there with my arms crossed,
Bad Cop style.
“Oh,” he says, looking past me nervously. “Something wrong with the apartment? I can’t get anybody out on a weekend, it costs
extra.”
“It’s Wednesday, Roy, and that’s not what I want to talk about. That guy. The one you let up to my apartment?”
He screws up his face like he’s prepared to deny something. “Um . . .”
“What did he look like? I need you to describe him.”
“Oh yeah, yeah, sure,” he says. “I can describe him. The stripper.”
“The what?”
“The stripper.”
“Roy,” I say, trying to stay calm. “Why did you think the man was a stripper?”
“He was very athletic,” Roy says approvingly.
Huh. Poodle Dude is athletic.
“And blond,” Roy adds.
Poodle Dude is also blond!
Looking more and more like it wasn’t the alderman!
“And he was wearing a stripper outfit,” Roy continues. “That was the clincher.”
“What, like matching workout wear?” I ask, frantically trying to remember exactly what Poodle Dude was wearing last time I
saw him. “With logos and stuff?”
“No, no.” Roy waves his hand, annoyed. “More like—a sexy doctor.”
My heart actually stops.
An athletic, blond, sexy doctor.
“Hey, I don’t judge,” Roy says, palms up. “Just don’t do it on company time. Take it from somebody who knows.”
I can’t believe it. I was so busy panic-spiraling that I didn’t think of the most obvious answer.
Chris was here.
Panic evaporates and is replaced with pure love and light and rainbows and unicorns. Amazing how something I thought was horrific
could turn out to be the best possible thing! Goodbye Roy and shitty apartment and angry men with fancy dogs! Hello, beautiful
old life!
Roy keeps talking, but I don’t register what he’s saying, I just leave him in the doorway and float up the stairs, taking
them three at a time as I whip out my phone and dial. It’s already ringing by the time I get to the top of the landing. I
unlock the door, and I’ve just shouldered my way in when Chris picks up.
Through the phone, his voice is distant. “What’s up, Mo?”
Not the most romantic opener, but I’ll take what I can get.
“I’m so sorry,” I wheeze, trying to catch my breath. Maybe I should have given it a second.
“You’re sorry?” He sounds confused. “For the penis thing?”
“No, no. I mean, yes, absolutely,” I say, pacing from the fridge to the bed and back again. I’m too happy to stand still.
“I’m sorry I missed you today. At my apartment. I heard you came by.”
Came by to say you were wrong. To try and win me back. To make this all okay again.
But I don’t say any of that. I want to hear him say it.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, like he’s vaguely distracted by some of the noises on his end of the line. “Yeah, it’s cool.”
“It’s cool?” I ask, stopping.
“Yeah, you got it, right?”
“Got what?”
“Your toothbrush,” he says. “The one you left at my place. I slipped it under the door.”
That’s when I see it.
I wasn’t looking for it, so I didn’t notice it, but there’s my toothbrush, on the floor, pushed up against the wall behind
the door. Covered in old floor grime. I’d left that toothbrush at Chris’s condo on purpose. It was my toothbrush of hope,
my just-in-case-I-end-up-sleeping-over-and-we-get-back-together toothbrush.
But now I understand. When I burst in, bracing for a murderous alderman, I must’ve kicked the toothbrush, and I was so focused
on something big potentially hitting me in the head, I didn’t notice the tiny thing that could stab me in the heart.
“Yeah,” I say numbly, “I got it.”
When I wake up the next morning, my eyelids are puffed up and crusted shut and I feel like death after a quick thirty seconds
in the microwave. I roll over and something pokes me in the sternum.
Oh, great, the toothbrush. Just who I wanted to see.
I grope around for my phone and when I find it, I send Hannah a text.
Devastating news. Not being stalked.
Hmm. That sounds weird.
Me: It was Chris returning my toothbrush ugh
Me: Plz don’t tell Eva
I wait for the inevitable you’re too good for him, you can do so much better, to which I will obviously reply no no he’s too good for me, and then she’ll boost me up again, and I’ll argue again, and so on . . . because that’s what besties do.
I stare at the screen. Nothing.
Except the notification: Read 7:23 am.
Huh.
The memory of Hannah asking, “Did you get fired again?” echoes in my head. Is she busy or is she deliberately not replying?
Is she sick of me asking her for help, just like the rest of the internet?
She’s my best friend, she can’t be sick of me . . . right?
I glance at the screen again. Still nothing.
But this time, I actually process the read notification.
7:23??
SHITBALLS I’M LATE FOR WORK.
I spring out of bed, throw on some clothes and my vest, shove a bunch of pepperoni in my pocket because my stomach is screaming for breakfast and that’s all I’ve got in the fridge, grab my stop sign, and tear down the stairs.
I might not be a natural at this job, but it matters to me that I do it right, that I protect those kiddos, even if they are a bunch of miscreants.
I’ve almost covered the length of the first block when I think that maybe I should go back to see Tasha after my afternoon
shift, check if there’s any progress on the sinkhole situation. I need a friend, and if that friend happens to be hot, that’s
okay. Hot friends happen. We’ll go to improv shows together and talk about manhole covers. And I’ll stop flirting and sweating
so much around her, because we’ll just be normal friends, and anyway my heart belongs to another, even if he’s making things
really hard right now.
I just really, really need a friend.
I could like manholes and their covers, I think, as I become vaguely aware of the honk-honk of a car alarm coming from somewhere close by. Then I turn the corner to where my post is and, suddenly, the only thing I’m aware of is the alarm.
The alarm, and also the car it’s coming from. Which is an SUV.
An SUV that has dived, nose-first, into the sinkhole.
An SUV that is a seafoam-green Kia Sportage.
The back wheels are spinning, several inches off the ground.
Three white standard poodles are gathered by the edge of the sinkhole close to the front of the car, by the driver’s-side
window. One of them is standing on its hind legs like a person, whimpering. One of them is sneezing uncontrollably. The other
one starts barking like crazy and spinning around in circles as I join them.
And then all four of us peer through the window, where Poodle Dude lies slumped over the steering wheel, blood trickling from
his nose, his open, glassy eyes staring back.