Chapter Two #2
I let out a long sigh of despair.
Sometimes I feel like Wonder Woman or Hannah motherfucking Montana or something.
By day, I write for people who barely appreciate me, taking the straw they send me and spinning it into pure gold.
But by night, I’m revered, beloved by a niche community of online freaks just like me.
My latest fic has hundreds of thousands of saves.
Sure, nobody knows that StepOnMeRyke432 is me, but the validation those numbers give me?
More than I could ever ask for. Honestly, who needs parents or a partner when you have virtual fame?
Oh, right.
Me.
Your online readership, in my experience, won’t stroke your hair while you sleep. Or take care of you when you’re sick. Or threaten to kill anyone who touches you.
I shudder.
Just then, my phone rings, breaking me out of my erotic daydream. I look down at the screen and feel the equivalent of a cold shower soak my senses.
It’s my brother.
“What up, what up?” I can hear the clanging of plates and utensils behind him. “What are you doing on Main Street? You’re two minutes away, and you can’t spare a second to come say hello to your big bro?”
I roll my eyes, annoyed. “For the very last time,” I say, “stop tracking me on Find My Friends, Tey. Or I swear to God I’ll turn off my location.”
“But what if you’re kidnapped by an ax murderer?”
“Then my blood will be on your hands,” I laugh. “Anyway, I’m at Sift. Getting a little work done.”
I can practically hear his eyes narrow on the other end of the line. “But you hate working at Sift. You always say the smell distracts you from being productive.”
Damn. He’s good.
“Fine,” I acquiesce. “If you must know, I’m going on a first date.”
There’s a leering silence on the other end. Never good.
“Joonie.” His voice teeters between gentle and stern. “What happened to Job?”
“Um…” I search for an excuse but come up with squat. “He died?”
“You promised!” my brother groans. I picture the look of desperation on his face as he preps the polo tahdig and fights back a grin. “You swore you’d give this one a real shot!”
“I did! I really did, Tey. You don’t get it. This guy was capital-w the Worst. He told me that if he had daughters, he would name every single one after his mother, Elizabeth. So, like, one daughter named Eliza. Another named Beth. One named Liz. One called—”
“Okay, enough. I get it,” he says, cutting me off, but he’s not quite ready to let me off the hook. “Sure you aren’t exaggerating? Who the hell is pumping out four daughters, anyway? You?”
“I’m sure.” I choose to ignore that last comment. “He was okay at first, but he was no—”
“Ryke,” my brother says, finishing my sentence.
“Right.” I swallow, preparing myself for what comes next.
“And how many men have you ended things with prematurely because they didn’t hold a candle to Ryke?” he asks, treading carefully. “Twenty? Two hundred?”
I gasp. “Teymoor Saboonchi, are you slut shaming me?!” I feign horror. “I thought you were raised better than that. What would Oliver say?”
Tey groans, and I grin, knowing I’ve won this round.
Oliver is Tey’s partner and a public defender. He has bought Tey more books on social justice than he has room for. Every time I call my brother a bad feminist, even in jest, Christmas comes early. For me, anyway.
“Speaking of Oliver, I want you to come to Sunday dinner this week,” he says. “At the restaurant.”
“Done.” Even though my parents have fled town to become pirates or whatever, my brother and I have maintained our weekly Sunday dinner tradition. I, for one, am a huge fan. Free food and making my brother uncomfortable at work? Who doesn’t love dinner and a show?
“And Nico is coming,” he adds as quickly as possible.
“Tey!”
“Gotta go, bye!”
He hangs up the phone, leaving me to fume alone in front of the baked goods.
Nico is Tey’s best friend, my childhood crush, and the current bane of my existence.
Tey met Nico playing Little League, where they failed to impress their coaches and ended up benched for the majority of the year.
Those two instantly became an inseparable duo.
Legend has it that Nico once beat up a kid for making a terrorist joke about my family.
Tey told the coach, and that racist kid was promptly kicked off the team.
He was the first friend my brother came out to, and they’re still tight.
Can’t say the same about me.
I didn’t always find Nico to be as unbearable as listening to an off-key children’s choir.
In fact, there was a time when I found his chiseled frame and buzzed blond hair appealing.
Back when I was having trouble at school, Nico was one of the few people who stuck up for me. I looked up to him in so many ways.
I guess he acted that way because I was an extension of Tey and all that.
But it felt good to have someone in my corner—a cool older kid, at that.
I might have even developed a small middle school attraction to Nico.
Okay, fine. When he started defending my honor, it felt like my favorite TV character had actually listened to my ship request. I fell hard.
The hopeless romantic: That’s me.
To a literal fault.
But it all came crashing down like the stock market after tenth grade.
Now I go out of my way to avoid him. Tey knows that.
Why is he torturing me?! Because I couldn’t make it work with a guy who once compared my birth control prescription to his preventative Rogaine?
“Hi! Are you Joonie?”
And it’s showtime.
I look up into a pair of deep-blue eyes the color of the nearby harbor.
The owner of the eyes has hidden them behind round wire spectacles and floppy black hair.
His ears are studded with small silver hoops, and he’s wearing black nail polish on his thumbs.
A tote bag from a foreign bookstore hangs off his right shoulder.
There’s a Bernie 2020 button pinned to the handle.
Underneath all that hardware, he kind of looks a little bit like a blue-eyed Ryke.
Like always, the highlights of the life we could have together flash before my eyes like a movie trailer.
The stolen kisses in public.
Trips to faraway lands.
The moment when he gets down on one knee and—
“So, where are you from?” he asks, taking a seat across from me.
“Oh, I’m from here—Mystic born and raised,” I say, wiping the drool from the corner of my mouth. “You’re from Groton, right?”
“No, where are you really from?” he asks, his eyes moving up and down my torso appreciatively. “You don’t see a lot of caramel-colored people in these parts. Your beauty is totally exotic.”
I suddenly feel the muffin churning in my stomach.
Hipster boy might read like a sensitive soul on-screen, but in person, he’s just as bad as the rest of them. Maybe even worse, because he’s got the righteous superiority of someone who thinks of himself as an ally.
Silly me.
“Can you excuse me for a moment?” I say as sweetly as possible, shoving my laptop into my purse under the table and throwing my coat over my shoulders. “I need to use the restroom.”
“Sure thing!” His tone is cheerful. Oblivious. “It’ll give me a chance to order. Do you know if the beans here are ground sustainably? I’m trying to reduce my caffeine footprint.”
“You know, I’m not sure,” I tell the dude. Mike, I think his name is. Maybe Matt? “Why don’t you ask and I’ll pee?”
I make a beeline for the bathroom, but at the very last second turn into the kitchen.
“Back door?” one of the pastry chefs asks with a half smile.
“Back door,” I confirm.
Then I sneak out of the bakery, get into my car, and don’t look back.
I know what you’re probably wondering. Do I feel any remorse, an ounce of guilt, for abandoning the well-meaning Neanderthal while he’s pestering that poor barista about her coffee beans?
Honestly, no. I do not. I’ve saved us both a hell of a lot of time.
Had I been honest with him, he’d probably ask me what he did wrong.
Then I’d have to explain, and he’d get angry, and we’d do that whole song and dance where he cries and calls me a bitch three months early.
There’s nothing more fragile than a man’s ego. Well, maybe his masculinity.
It’s tied. Fifty-fifty.
By the time I pull into the parking spot outside my apartment complex, I am totally and utterly emotionally exhausted.
Not ideal, considering I still need to come up with a slogan for this femcare company other than “Take It Up the Ass!” The second I unlock the door to my studio, I flop facedown on my bed and exhale.
My apartment is tiny but cozy. I’ve decorated it with vintage movie posters, corny book quotes, wacky wallpaper, and colorful furniture.
My bedside table resembles a corncob and my sofa is polka-dotted.
I absolutely detest minimalist apartments.
Why would I pay to live somewhere with no personality?
I’d rather sleep in my car than in a white Scandinavian box cosplaying as an IKEA warehouse.
My phone pings. I look down.
The Bernie Bro has left me a voicemail.
I inhale sharply, shut my eyes, and prepare myself for the worst.
Then I press play.
“How could you do that to me, Joonie?” he wails.
“Running out on our very first date? Seriously? That’s really shitty behavior, even for some guy you don’t know.
I waited for you. For, like, ten whole minutes.
You’re probably used to getting away with this sort of stuff because nobody ever calls you out.
So I’m putting an end to that cycle. You’re selfish, Joonie. You’re judgmental and cruel and—”
I really need to stop dating all these loser boys. Where can I find a real man in eastern Connecticut?
Maybe I need to date a dad. But whose dad? And how does one procure a dad?
“If you had just gotten to know me, you would have seen that I’m a really good guy,” the dude continues, monologuing. “I was a Boy Scout. I’m registered to vote. I attended the Women’s March and the Black Lives Matter protests! And I’m an incredible lover. If you asked my ex, she’d tell you—”
Oh, who am I kidding?
As my date continues to drone on and on over the speaker, I pull out my laptop and open up the last chapter of the fic I’m writing. Smiling to myself, I reach for a throw pillow to prop myself up and open my bottom drawer.
Then I touch myself to the idea of Ryke until I fall asleep, sated.