Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
I’m in the changing room at Victoria’s Secret with about forty different types of sleepwear from summer flannel (my choice) to lacy negligee (Em’s choice). You’d think they’d have mastered change room lighting in this place, you know, being the home of the angels and all. But no. It is severe.
I’m in nothing but my panties surrounded by three mirrors, which means there’s no escaping my naked body.
No matter where I turn, there I am. I’m getting a front row seat to the cellulite on the backs of my legs, which I’ve been blissfully unaware of until this very moment.
Who can I call to get a lobotomy so I can leave the store with a shred of self-esteem?
I vow to return to my late-night shopping from the safety of my sofa where the lamp in the corner of the room does not accentuate the dark circles under my eyes that I had, up until this moment, thought I’d kept under wraps with creams and serums and solid sleep.
Em’s hand appears through the curtains, handing me three more options.
I inspect a particularly lacy number that leaves nothing to the imagination.
The product tag reads, A sexy-sweet essential in lustrous satin with delicate sheer lace and eyelash trim.
Whatever eyelash trim means. Basically, it’s exactly what I’d wear if I wanted it off my body in sixty seconds.
Not what I’d wear to ward off old friends/flames/hookups/whatever.
I sigh, resigned that I won’t be escaping this change room anytime soon without trying it on.
I rallied Em into this shopping trip with promises of a dramatic retelling of the events of the afternoon.
She is an English teacher, after all. It dawned on me as I texted Em that I was going to be sleeping next to Xander for the next four weeks and I don’t own a piece of sleepwear that wasn’t designed to be ripped off in the heat of horny.
Em isn’t helping, but she is making it fun.
“So let me get this straight,” she says, her voice muffled through the curtain.
I can tell she’s still laughing. “They didn’t need any more single sleepers, so you decided to sign up anyway and sleep with Xander—your ‘guy friend’ from university who you slept with then bailed on the next day without so much as a thanks for the orgasms, plural—for four weeks. In front of people!”
“God, Em. You make it sound like we’re making porn,” I say, twisting into the tight lace before bending over. To my surprise, my entire insides aren’t on show. Impressive. I guess Victoria can manage to keep a Secret.
“Sleepy Spits Not Swallows,” Em says, deadpan.
I burst out laughing. “Sleeping Booty.”
“What is this? PG13?” she says. “Does the guy that gave you your sexual awakening not deserve better?”
“Cum and Cummer,” I say, going there. I hear a slow clap from behind the curtain.
“And that is why you’re the queen of Bone It,” she says, recalling when we first happened across the app many moons ago.
We were hanging our bodies off the bar stools in the corner of the Retreat like bar flies.
It’s the kind of bar that opens at midday on a workday.
Dark. Sticky floors. Leather-faced locals who serve as a warning sign of your future should you continue to consume alcohol in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
It was also the bar that was closest to the school, and we decided we were in dire need of a recovery drink post-death-by-boredom staff meeting that should have been an email.
The entertainment we coupled with our beers?
Downloading the latest app that promised no dating.
And that’s when I realized we’d hit the jackpot.
Men upon men who’re simple, fun, and in a committed relationship with themselves.
Complete with their gym selfies and their V-neck T-shirts and their fedora hats.
All the trappings of the perfect one-night stand.
Plus, you could filter to within a five-mile radius.
We finished our drinks. I swiped right on someone named Chet.
Em left. And ten minutes later, Bone It became my app of choice.
“But serious question. Do you know how you sleep?”
“Like a champ?” I say as I peel back the curtain and step out into the main dressing room area.
Em is standing in front of the mirror covered in feather boas.
I’m talking the rainbow. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet.
I don’t even know where she got them; I didn’t see them when we were browsing the racks.
But right now, she’s wearing all seven. She looks like a Technicolor Big Bird.
That’s Em for you—always finding the fun in the most mundane.
Which is why I’ve even entertained the idea of wearing lustrous satin.
“It’s true. Not even your own fart can wake you,” she says, twirling.
I stop in my tracks. Oh shit, I didn’t even think about sleep farting in front of Xander.
Insomniac Xander. Xander who does not sleep.
Xander who will hear every single bodily function I can’t control when I’m in the depths of my slumber.
“I sleep fart?” I say, horrified. Em looks at up me with a smirk. If the answer is yes, it will haunt me for the rest of my days.
“Not that I know of,” she says, her smirk turning into a “gotcha” smile.
“But you’re the big spoon. You can’t stay on your side of the bed.
You’re all up in my space, body limbs constantly trying to play footsie with me, and you know I’m cool with it, obviously, but is he going to be cool with it?
I mean, what if he thinks you want to do more than sleep with him?
” Em says, and this realization is worse than sleep farting.
“Which is exactly why I cannot wear this,” I say, refocusing on the reason we’re here in the first place. “My nipples are showing.”
I walk up toward the mirror and meet Em there. She does a power pose, like she’s at the end of her own runway show before looking me up and down.
“You look hot. Now tell me, was he just as hot as you remember?”
His face flashes in my mind. The curls that can’t be tamed. The newly acquired half-moon shaped scar underneath the bottom left corner of his lip.
What is it about scars? It’s like they activate something in my DNA from my sixteenth-century ancestors when times were brash, fencing was all the rage, and scars were a sign of bravery—and hence something to get all hot and bothered about.
My silence speaks the kind of volume you get from a Harry Styles concert where fifty thousand hot and horny screaming fans sing along to every single word of every single song.
“He looked good,” I say, trying to cool my body down—it’s heated up a couple of degrees just thinking about him.
“That hot, huh?” Em says, reminding me that while I pulled off the performance of a lifetime as Xander’s girlfriend of eleven years, I cannot pull one over on my best friend.
I ignore that comment as I make my way back to the change room.
“Hey, why can’t you just wear your old UCLA T-shirt to bed like you usually do? ”
“Because I don’t need to advertise our time together every time I see him,” I say, even though I’m the one with the memory of an elephant that not even drinking continuously through four years of university has managed to dull.
I go back to the dressing room and add the negligee to the growing “no way, get fucked, fuck off” pile. I turn to the next option. Lacy dusty-pink shorts and a cropped white T-shirt. “I don’t want him getting any ideas,” I say, trying try to get these shorts to sit straight on my hips and failing.
“And what about you?” she says as I give up and step out for my grading.
This time Em throws one hand over her mouth, not even bothering to cover up her true reaction. “You know I didn’t put that in your pile. It’s very … Forever 21?” she says, letting the laugh spill out.
I turn to face the mirror. She’s right. I look like I’m trying to avoid the inevitability of aging by wearing—or rather stuffing myself into—clothes that belong to a not quite legal teenager.
“Point taken,” I say. “One more.” I walk back to the change room, ignoring the camel toe that crept up in the five steps it took to get from the change room to the mirror.
The things youths will wear to sacrifice comfort.
I pick up the final item and inspect it.
The summer flannel set with a red and white plaid pattern.
“Seriously, though. If I remember correctly, Xander wasn’t the one who cannonballed three pints of ice cream post-ghost. He did a number on you, Ash. How will you sleep next to him for an entire month straight?”
“You do not remember correctly,” I say, cutting in because the facts are always important. “I came home. We smoked. We got the munchies. We munched.”
“Really?” Em says dubiously.
“Well, I munched. You couldn’t stop laughing enough to put the spoon in your mouth,” I say, shaking my head at the lightweight that has and always will be Em. “Come on, it was eleven years ago. We’re not young anymore. Or dumb. We’re old. I’m poor. He can’t sleep. There’s nothing more to it.”
I throw on the flannel and inspect myself in the mirror. I mean, plaid is hanging off my body. This could work.
“So, you’re just going to … hang out with him every night for four weeks?” she says, as I press the flannel against my chest, trying to create some sort of figure. Call it habit.
“Exactly,” I say, releasing the material and letting it return to swallowing me up whole.
“You know, that sounds a lot like dating someone,” Em says. “And as you never fail to remind me, you don’t date. Ever.”
“No, it sounds a like going to work with a coworker,” I say, concluding our conversation. But I’m not sure if even I’m convinced. It does sound a lot like dating someone without any of the benefits. Fucking hell.
I step out one final time.
“I wouldn’t bang you in that,” Em says at the sight of me.
“Perfect.”