70. Chapter 70
Chapter 70
David looked from one to the other. “Do you two know each other?”
Having partially recovered, Evan smirked. “I’ll say. I gave her a Screaming Orgasm.”
“What?”
“And a Full Monty she’ll never forget.”
“We met on my last birthday when Jules and I were doing a pub crawl,” Paige clarified, taking a seat on one of the stools at the island next to Evan. “She and I ended up at Three Amigos, and while Jules was dancing with some guy, Evan and I talked for a while. And I was also in his bar the night you and I FaceTimed after you got custody of Jacob.”
“That’s where the bass player bought you a drink?”
She hid a smile. “Yes.”
David looked at Evan. “She was the nice woman you told me about.”
“Yes.”
“You talked about me?” Paige asked Evan, who nodded. “What did you say?”
David turned to Paige. “He said you were stunning.”
Paige gave Evan a smile. “You did? That’s so sweet.”
“It’s true. You were rocking that little dress, with a hint of side boob.” He motioned toward her feet. “And … those boots.”
David’s eyes narrowed. “Side boob?”
“Jules dressed me,” she said, then explained the birthday ‘tradition’ that had sprung up over the last five years.
“Wait.” David stared at Evan. “Jules is the woman you couldn’t stop thinking about?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, my God, the whole time you were telling me about that woman, I kept thinking it sounded exactly like Jules. And it was.”
“You’ve been crushing on Jules?” Paige asked Evan.
He shrugged. “Maybe a little.”
David coughed.
“Okay, more than a little,” Evan admitted without embarrassment. “But you know … she’s hot as fuck. Not to mention a little crazy, which I happen to really go for.”
“This is all kinds of surreal,” Paige murmured, picking up David’s Margarita and taking a drink, only to frown at the salt on the rim.
“It is,” Evan agreed.
David grabbed a glass for her and went through all the options. “Original or mango?”
“Mango.”
“Blended or shaken?”
“Shaken.”
“Salt or sugar?”
“Sugar, of course.”
Evan reached for a chip and dipped it in the guacamole before popping the entire thing in his mouth and shaking his head at Paige. “Jesus, I can’t believe you’re David’s ex-wife … and Cat Lady.”
“Cat Lady?”
“Yeah. David wouldn’t tell me your name, so that’s what we called you.”
Paige looked at David, who was dipping the rim of a Margarita glass into the sugar. “You were calling me Cat Lady?”
Setting the glass aside, David measured out the tequila, mango liqueur, and lime juice into the cocktail shaker, while nodding in Evan’s direction. “He started it.”
“Why?”
“Because of the video you sent me of Sputnik and the laser. I was at his place, and … anyway, I told him to stop.”
“Then you also said it was fine,” Evan pointed out.
“Only because you wanted to call her ‘Agent Provocateur’, instead—”
“He did?” Paige looked confused. “Why?”
“Because of the bra you … left behind … that night.” Appearing slightly uncomfortable, David shook the shaker several times, then poured the contents into Paige’s glass and slid it over to her.
“The night of the handcuffs,” Evan supplied helpfully, even though it was clear she wasn’t confused about what night was being referenced. “Speaking of which, you have no idea how much mileage I’ve gotten out of David oiled and trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. Oh, my God. Even more than his sex dreams—wait. Holy shit, those were about you—”
“Sex dreams?” Paige blinked at the change of topic and took a big sip of her drink.
“So much for taking that to the grave,” David said with a glare at Evan.
“Well, I haven’t told anyone else. And they were about her, so she doesn’t count.”
“You weren’t supposed to tell anyone at all, which would include her.”
“Sorry,” Evan apologized, although it wasn’t very convincing.
“We also agreed to never talk about the night of the handcuffs ever again, remember?”
“Well, she was there, so talking about it with her … doesn’t count.”
“Yes, it does.”
Paige looked at David over the rim of her glass. “You had sex dreams about me?”
Reluctantly, he nodded.
“How many?”
“A … few.”
This time it was Evan who coughed.
“Okay, more than a few,” David admitted.
“And one of them was a wet dream,” Evan added.
David grabbed his drink, drained it, then started to make a new one.
“Really?” Paige leaned forward with a smile. “That’s actually kind of hot.”
Evan grinned. “Ashley thought it was because of her.”
Paige swiveled in Evan’s direction. “Why?”
“Because he had the wet dream after essentially cutting her off for almost three weeks.”
She turned back to David. “You cut her off for three weeks? From sex?”
Vigorously shaking the cocktail shaker, David gave Evan another glare, before telling Paige, “Yes.”
“Was she pissed?”
David tilted his head as he poured his drink, knowing what she wanted to hear; thankfully, he was able to deliver. “Yeah, she was pissed.”
“How pissed?”
“Extremely pissed.”
“Good. That pleases me.”
“Huh.” Evan contemplated the obvious satisfaction in Paige’s voice, along with her elated expression, thinking he had really misjudged the sweetness of this woman; she was showing more than a hint of being a fireball. “You know, if I’d known you weren’t as nice as I was thinking you were, things might have turned out differently.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“On the night we met, my first impression was that you were a total sweetheart, which immediately put you off my radar because I don’t do nice girls.”
The tequila was starting to kick in a little bit, so she grabbed a few chips to off-set it. “So, if you hadn’t thought I was a sweetheart, you might have, what? Hit on me?”
With David giving him a stone-cold stare, Evan slid his glass over for a refill. “Well, let’s just say if you’d shown any hint of being a fireball, I wouldn’t have put my blinders on so quickly,” he answered Paige with an easy drawl. “Because you were really easy on the eyes. I mean, you still are, but unfortunately that ship has probably sailed … right?”
It was said in such a way that he appeared to be hopeful the ship hadn’t sailed, but Paige knew he wasn’t being serious. “I’m afraid so,” she told him, as if trying to let him down easy. “But it would’ve been fun being hit on by a hot bartender.”
David was now giving her a less-than-thrilled stare. “Should I leave so you two can really get your flirt on?”
Evan raised his eyebrows in amusement, but Paige’s drew together in surprise. “What are you … you’re not jealous, are you?” she asked.
“You get jealous when women flirt with me,” David pointed out, dodging the question.
“That’s different. Those women were actually flirting with you. Like hardcore. This—” she indicated herself and Evan, “—really isn’t flirting.”
“She’s right,” Evan said. “This—” he indicated himself and Paige, “—is more like … rapport.”
“Well, this rapport—” David waved a hand between Paige and Evan, “—is a little disconcerting, to be honest. So, stop it.”
The demand to ‘stop it’ had Paige pursing her mouth. “More disconcerting than Evan hearing us having sex thirty minutes ago? More disconcerting than finding out he’s your best friend, Dick, who saw one of my bras and seems to know everything about me? I think not,” she countered. “But if I can deal with all of that, then you can certainly deal with a little bit of rapport, don’t you think? So, get over it.”
With a grin at Paige’s response (because it was fun to see her put David in his place), Evan got up and mixed his own Margarita, since David had fallen down on his duties, then sat back down. Leaning toward Paige, but pointing at David, he said, “So, he’s the ex we were talking about. The asshole.”
She blinked. “Er, yes.”
David’s eyes widened. “You called me an asshole?”
“I didn’t.” She pointed at Evan. “He did. But in his defense, he didn’t know he was talking about you. And why are you offended? Your nickname for him is Dick.”
“Being called an asshole is worse than being called Dick. Especially since I wasn’t calling him a dick. And why was he calling me an asshole in the first place? What did you say about me?”
She tilted her head, thinking back. “Nothing bad, that I can remember.”
“She didn’t say anything bad about you,” Evan said. “She was defending you, actually. I was the one trash talking your ass.”
“Why were you trash talking my ass?”
“I didn’t know we were talking about you at the time. And it started off very innocently. I asked her what her story was, and she told me about her book—oh, shit!” He grabbed Paige’s hand and squeezed. “I read it, by the way. I really liked it.”
“You did? Oh, thanks.”
Feeling incredibly annoyed that because of Ashley, another person had known about Paige’s book before he had, David was caught off guard when Evan slapped his hands on the counter and blurted out, “Holy fuck, you’re Damon!”
“Oh, Jesus,” David groaned loudly and began mixing another batch of Margaritas. “Here we go.”
Cracking up, Evan pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I’m changing your name to Damon in my contacts. Hell, yeah, I am.”
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Too late, already done,” Evan said with satisfaction. “It still doesn’t make up for ‘Dick’, but it’s close.”
“Speaking of terrible nicknames, I’d like to circle back to mine.” Paige looked from Evan to David. “Why do I even have one in the first place?”
David paused for a moment. “If I tell you the truth, will you promise not to get pissed at me … or punch my balls?”
“I’ll promise to try. How’s that?”
“All right,” he said, then cleared his throat. “After the divorce, I didn’t want to talk about it. At all. Which meant that I didn’t want to talk about you. If the topic ever came up—which was rare, and usually only with Dick—I referred to you as my ‘ex-wife’. And I’m sure that seems shitty, but it just kind of hurt to say your name, so I didn’t. And after a while, it was a habit.”
“Okay, well, that doesn’t piss me off. I can understand your reasons, because I sort of did the same thing. No one I work with knows I was married, and my assistant, Andrea, only found out a few months ago because you ambushed me at work.” She pursed her mouth. “But that doesn’t explain why I’m called ‘Cat Lady’.”
“Well, I’d kept you mostly a secret for a while, you know, when we were, uh …” he trailed off with a quick glance at Evan.
“Pretending to date while fucking around in the name of sexual healing?” Paige supplied without thinking.
Evan blinked. “Wait. What?”
“You didn’t know about that?”
“No.”
“He does, now, though,” David muttered. “Thank you.”
Paige turned to him in disbelief. “You kept that from your best friend, but couldn’t keep it from your mom?”
Evan frowned at David. “You told your mom? Dude, no.”
“Not this again,” David said, taking a deep breath. “I didn’t tell her. She weaseled it out of me—and only the part about us pretending to date, not the fucking around part.”
Evan seemed to think about that for a moment, then asked, “So whose idea was it to fuck around for, uh, sexual healing?”
“His,” Paige answered, at the same time David said, “Mine.”
“It was part of his secret ‘plan’ to get me back,” she added.
Evan’s eyes gleamed. “Subterfuge. I love it.”
“Word-of-the-Day?”
“Actually, it is.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. “With a couple of hours to spare.”
Paige realized she should start getting the shrimp tacos made, otherwise they wouldn’t be eating until midnight, so she got up to start making them, pulling all the ingredients out of the fridge.
At Evan’s urging, David shared the entire plan, while helping Paige chop cabbage, dice tomatoes, slice avocados, mix creamy slaw sauce, cook black beans and pan-fry the shrimp.
When David was finished relaying the story, Evan nodded his head in approval. “Well done.”
“Thanks.”
Paige rolled her eyes and began arranging everything on the counter in a mini-buffet line. “It only succeeded because I fell for it,” she said, only to realize what she’d said when the two men started laughing. “Shit. That came out wrong.”
While Evan watched, David stepped behind Paige and hugged her from behind. “So, anyway, back to your nickname.”
“Yes, please. We keep getting off track.”
“It’s almost like you don’t want to tell her,” Evan teased.
Ignoring his friend, David focused on Paige. “The night you sent me the video of Sputnik, Dick and I were hanging out at his place, and when I laughed at it, he wanted to know what was so funny. So, I told him the woman I’d been casually seeing had sent me a video of her cat, and he was like, ‘You’re dating a cat lady?’”
“And ‘Cat Lady’ was born,” Paige surmised.
“Yeah. And it stuck, which made things easier for me to keep you on the down low, or whatever, because as long as you were just the ‘Cat Lady’, it seemed to deflect Dick’s interest, and at the time, that mattered to me. I didn’t know where we were going, or if we were going anywhere, so the less real interest he came at me with, the better. But later, after you fell for my plan—” he broke off when Paige punched him in the arm, “—I didn’t really get a chance to talk to Dick until that Sunday when I …”
“Deliberately made other plans so you wouldn’t have to see me? That Sunday?”
“Yeah, that Sunday. Which would’ve been the perfect time to come clean and tell him about you, and who you really were, but Jacob’s abuse and my being fucked up made me sit on it. Part of me wanted to wait until I knew we were solid again, because if things didn’t get fixed, I didn’t want him to know that I’d failed with you again.”
“David, you didn’t fail the first time,” she protested.
He shook his head. “Thanks, but I essentially gave up on you—on us—which is a fail in my book. And then I pretty much did it again a couple of weeks ago,” he added.
“Well, now that cry for help makes more sense,” Evan mused, getting up to make another Margarita.
“Cry for help?” Paige asked.
“He wanted my advice on how to make amends with you. But it looks like he didn’t need it, after all.”
“Which is good, since you didn’t have any advice to give,” David pointed out.
“He managed to do just fine on his own,” she said. “More than fine, actually. Especially on Friday—”
David silenced her with a hand over her mouth. “Nope. Not another word.”
“I wasn’t going to divulge any sensitive information,” Paige mumbled, then when he released her, she pointed out, “Since he obviously can’t be trusted with it.”
Completely un-offended, Evan got plates and silverware for the three of them, and then cut into the front of the line to load his plate up first.
“His manners aren’t that great, either,” Paige whisper-shouted to David.
“As the youngest of three kids, who was constantly bullied and had to fight for scraps at the table,” Evan said, “I learned very early that manners were overrated. To this day, I have to fight not to be the last one to eat at family gatherings.”
Once their plates were filled, they sat down and began eating. After several bites, Evan studied Paige for a moment, his expression turning contemplative. “Jesus, this is so strange. We talked about you as David’s ex, then about you as the girl from the bar, then as Cat Lady, so it’s like you’re three different people. And the times you and I talked about him—” he motioned toward David, “—as the asshole—”
“Yeah, about that,” David said pointedly.
Evan took a big bite of his taco. “Well, as I said, it started innocently enough. We were talking about Paige’s book and her uncle, then we had a Screaming Orgasm shot. Next, I made her a Chocolate Cake shot to make a birthday wish on, and she said she wished to be normal, sexually, which led to me suggesting she have a one-night stand with someone to break her five-year celibacy—”
“Seriously?” David looked like he wanted to spear Evan with a fork.
“What? I would’ve given that advice to anyone,” Evan defended himself. “Anyway, she said that wasn’t going to happen, because she wanted the fairytale, and then we were talking about her ex-husband and how she’d been trying to reach out to tell him about being molested, because he didn’t know. But he apparently wasn’t interested, so he seemed like an asshole to me for not giving her a few minutes of his time. I didn’t know we were talking about you, and didn’t have any exculpatory context—you know, like someone working behind the scenes, fucking around with your phone and emails—and that you weren’t really blowing her off. So, I was like, ‘He sounds like a complete asshole,’ and even though Paige didn’t know about what was going on behind the scenes, either, she still defended you.”
David gave Paige a quick kiss. “Thank you.”
She returned the kiss. “You’re welcome. I just couldn’t believe you were being an asshole on purpose. Jules said you were like a pod person, but I just … couldn’t go there.”
Evan chuckled and said, “Pod person,” at the same time that David sighed and muttered, “Fucking Jules.”
“And that’s how ‘the asshole’ was born,” Evan told David before going back to his taco.
“So,” Paige said to Evan, turning the conversation a little, “during any of the conversations you and David had about me as his ex, did you ever think I was an asshole?”
“Truth? I might have thought you were being a bitch when you weren’t responding to any of the texts David sent you asking how you were, after—holy shit. That was you Ashley sent to the hospital.”
“Yes.”
“All roads lead to Ashley, don’t they?” Evan made a sound of disgust in the back of his throat. “I never fucking liked her.”
“Me, either.” Paige then leaned toward David. “So were you maybe thinking I was a bitch, too, when I didn’t respond to your texts?”
“No,” Evan answered for David. “He said you weren’t like that.”
David nodded. “I was mostly thinking not responding to me was your way of trying to put that night behind you, and I couldn’t blame you for that.”
His plate clean, Evan pushed it away and picked up his Margarita, raising it in Paige’s direction. “You know, it’s funny, but when you and I were talking about your ex being with a woman who wasn’t worthy and having a child with her, I was thinking that sounded a lot like David’s situation. And it was.” He shook his head in wonder. “It’s hard to wrap my head around how none of the pieces got connected … and there were a few opportunities. Like the last time at the bar, when you told me you were seeing your ex and he was going through some stressful stuff, and you hadn’t seen him in ten days. I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection then, or even later that night when I talked to David. But now that I do have all this connecting context, more things make sense … especially you being so sad your ex moved on and had a child, which was probably because of your miscarriage.”
“Yes.”
Evan turned to David. “And your concern that Jacob might be an issue for Cat Lady now makes total sense. Jesus Christ, my mind is on fire right now,” he murmured, before swiveling back to Paige. “I mean, oh, my God, the thousand dollar mattress was for you—”
“You spent a thousand dollars on that mattress?” Paige asked David, stunned.
“It was totally worth it,” he assured her. “We’ve had some good times on it.”
“—and all that shit we moved from the storage unit was yours—”
“Technically, it was ours,” David corrected Evan, putting an arm around Paige and pulling her close.
“—and you’re the one I gave up my concert ticket for—”
“What do you mean, you gave it up for me?” Paige asked, her ears perking up at hearing that.
“I mean, I gave it up …” Evan trailed off, catching David’s deer-in-the-headlights look. “Shit. I’m sorry.”
Paige looked up at David. “What did you do? I was under the impression something ‘came up’ and Evan could no longer go with you, but obviously that wasn’t true.”
“I … ” David cleared his throat, then started again. “I asked Dick to give me his concert ticket so I could take you, instead.”
“The ticket he gave me as a birthday present, by the way,” Evan clarified.
Paige blinked at David for several seconds. “I can’t believe you did that,” she said slowly, equal parts appalled and touched by his actions. “Oh, my God.”
“I know it was an asshole move, but that night was a turning point for us, so it’s hard for me to have any real regrets.”
Turning to Evan, Paige asked, “Why did you give up your ticket for someone you didn’t even know?”
Evan paused before answering. “I didn’t want to, at first because … Barenaked Ladies. But then David said ‘Please’, and I figured he wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t mean something to him, so I gave it up for the greater good, so to speak. Or, what I was hoping would be the greater good. And … it was. So, no real regrets on my end, either.”
Silence descended over the three of them for a few moments, and then all of a sudden, Evan seemed to run out of steam. He slumped forward, resting his head in his hands. “Holy shit. What a night.”
Paige glanced at the clock on the wall to see what time it was, only to be shocked to find it was fifteen minutes past midnight. “Oh, my God. We missed the countdown to the new year.”
David saw she was right. “Shit, we did.”
“Who cares?” Evan’s voice was muffled. “You two rang it in earlier, remember?”