10. Chapter Ten
Chapter Ten
I ran out of the shop on Thursday, to get a head start on date prep. I shaved, showered, deep-conditioned the hair, buffed the body of dead skin cells, applied toner everywhere, and oiled up. I was going to be the best version of me.
Then came the hard part. What vibe was I going for? If I wiggled out of here in a cocktail dress and fuck-me heels, I’d have an orthopedic issue by the end of the night and would stick out at a damn book signing. So how do I go straight for the middle—relaxed but also looking like I was putting in some effort but not so much effort that made me seem like I was a teenager on her prom night?
I chose my Doc Marten boots, tights, a circle skirt, and a fresh screen-printed T-shirt of my recent cockatiel drawing. I layered a flannel over it to add a nonchalant air.
The frosting to my shit cake was my makeup and hair. I had about twelve minutes before I needed to go out the door because I spent too long worrying about my outfit.
After I ran a brush through my dryish hair, I sprayed a little root blender on my new growth. The aerosol can farted out the last drops of red before the spray fully covered my roots, so I smeared a bunch of burgundy eye shadow on my silver roots to do the coverage job that my hairstylist should’ve done last week, but I’d been too much in a Beau haze to remember to schedule an appointment.
I checked the time and had fuck all left. I smeared enough of that same burgundy eye shadow to fill in the brows I over plucked twenty years ago. In my defense, pencil thin brows were in at the time, and I didn’t know they wouldn’t grow back. Finally, eyes. A little swipe of some going to “land me in the ophthalmologist’s chair if I don’t throw it out soon” mascara would make do. I lined my eyes with the globby end of the wand and blended the line with my pinkie. Sure, I had nice brushes, but they were shoved at the back of the drawer, and I was not getting those in the two minutes I needed to leave the condo.
Since I was not using an applicator or a brush, my eyes looked a bit racoonish, but it was a smokey eye. And raccoons were the kind of animal that embodied my soul—dexterous hands, tubby bodies, a penchant for eating garbage. Claiming smokey eye since 2001 covered up the fact that I never really learned how to do eye makeup. I misted on some setting spray and was ready to go.
I jogged so I could make it to the bookstore on time, arriving in a far too moist condition for a date.
A man was waiting outside the bookstore, but he was in no way Beau. This guy wore a pair of clunky boots, baggy jeans that fit his hips well, a corduroy jacket, and some Rivers Cuomo-looking, horned-rimmed glasses. Maybe Beau was inside? I nodded at the guy as I pulled the door open to the store.
“Sir,” the guy said.
I stopped. Did I know this man? Then the recognizable shape of his shoulders and swoop of his hair hit me. “Holy shit, Beau. I didn’t know that was you.” I hadn’t seen him without green athletic gear. What’s the opposite of Lois Lane’s situation? Where she has the hots for Superman but ignores Clark Kent? Dammit. That was the word for it. Because dammit, what Beau in glasses did for me.
He held the door open for me. “Want to do this?”
Inside the store, we settled into some plastic chairs. With the presence of some elementary-aged kids, I suddenly grew self-conscious over wearing a cartoon oral sex joke across my chest. I buttoned my flannel.
“I thought it was funny,” Beau said.
“You think all my shirts are funny.”
“I know.”
Preeti, from head to toe, was dressed in a rainbow of colors: bright purple cat-eye glasses, a yellow blouse, green cardigan, and a purple-blue flowered skirt. She paced the front of the room, handling a microphone hooked into a tiny speaker, as if it were her personal karaoke machine. Her speech accompanied a slideshow. One slide showed the first drawings of her career, which had developed into her independently produced animated series. Another slide consisted of the latest from her graphic novel.
To a layperson’s eyes, her cartoons went from cute to cuter, but I noticed how even the plump sausage cartoon hands improved, how her shading gained more depth. I sat forward in my seat as she demonstrated to the excitement of one of her new and young fans how she drew a dragon. “Curved lines and dots,” she said. “One at a time.”
I bought a copy of the graphic novel Captain Capybara and the Golden Sloth and held it to my chest. I scanned the short line of people, mostly children, getting Preeti’s signature inside the front cover.
“You should get her to sign your copy,” Beau said.
“I’m not a kid.”
“You don’t have to be.”
“You wouldn’t want to wait in line with me. We should—”
He stepped in line and gestured to a space in front of him. It wasn’t his fault that he didn’t know I felt a little fraudulent around real artists.
I made it to the front of the line and handed my book to Preeti. The quickest possible way out was to go through the motions .
Peering over her giant purple glasses, she asked, “Whom should I make this out to?”
“You can just sign it. I'm sure your wrist hurts.”
“Saoirse,” Beau said. “Make it out to Saoirse.”
“S-A-O-I-R-S-E?” Talented artist and knew how to spell names that didn’t appear like they sound? Goddess.
My ears turned hot. In a stroke of her pen, I was absolutely not worthy of breathing the same air as Preeti.
“She’s an artist too,” Beau chirped. “Drew that cartoon on her T-shirt.”
“Really? Can I see it?” Preeti’s eyes beamed from behind her glasses.
I sheepishly unbuttoned my flannel and exposed the freshly screen-printed bird on the bicycle.
Preeti leaned forward and muttered the words underneath it. “Free… beak… rides?”
“Yup.” It wasn’t lost on me that Preeti’s grandiose project was a novel that enriched the lives of children. I wrote T-shirts that made Beau giggle. I was the fraud in an artist’s clothing. Why did amusing my smirking companion supersede common sense?
“She has other animals too. Possums and cats,” Beau, the effervescent source of not making the situation better , added.
“And do those animals ride the bird’s beak?” Preeti’s mouth gaped, quite possibly in the horror of it all—cartoon interspecies orgies. But it was a level of world-building I hadn’t thought out. Me, ever-the-pantser of an artist.
“I think... they keep it between birds.” I winced, but then a lightning bolt of inspiration struck me. “But who knows what happens in that dirty alley behind the free clinic.” I should seriously stop yes-anding this situation.
“Best of luck to you and your art, Saoirse.” Preeti handed me the signed copy.
“Thanks.” I couldn’t run out of Crooked and Booked fast enough.
The ever-pounding run of a clunky booted stride trailed after me laughing. The little ding of the door of the bookstore also was thankfully behind me.
“I think I’ll go die now,” I said.
“Maybe you could’ve broken her in with the possum or cat, but I’m sure she’ll never forget the bird.”
“I want to forget the bird.”
“Where are we going next?” An eagerness lit up Beau’s face.
“This was the plan. Now I guess we will go home. ”
“No, no, we are not going home . Not yet.” He swiped the book from my grip. “What did she write to you?”
“I’m sure it was ‘Thanks for coming!’ or ‘Appreciate the support!’”
He angled the book toward a streetlight. “Ride that beak, Saoirse. Squeeze with your thighs and don’t let up on life until it passes out.”
“That is not what it fucking says.” I reached for the thing like I was a teen girl in a mean game of keep away.
He tucked the book in his back pocket, the gargantuan kind that came with vintage jeans. “Drinks like you promised. And I’ll give you your book back.”
That was how we ended up in this chic cocktail lounge, where they have freaking vinyl bound menus with a gold embossed logo to add to the glamor of it all. The place was named Vine and Spirits because the building grew a lot of ivy all over the front. I kept my gaze fixed on the menus, trying to decipher the drinks and their strange names. What did I begin drinking after a book signing on a Thursday night? Chamomile tea?
“What are you thinking of getting?” Beau wiggled in his seat to the beat of the jazz music playing in the background .
“No idea. You?”
“Espresso martini.”
“Ugh, no. I have to work tomorrow, and I’ll be up all night from the caffeine.”
“I have a cycle boot camp class at six a.m. tomorrow, but I figured I could be a little bad tonight.”
“At your age, you can make bad decisions and spring out of bed the next day.”
He tilted his chin in the air. “At my age? How old do you think I am?”
I couldn’t be old enough to be his mom. Maybe his older sister or former babysitter. “I’m thirty-seven years old.”
He squinted his eyes at me. In disbelief? Or confirming the bags under my eyes and the sprinkling of silver saying I’m desperately in need of another visit to the salon? “I’m twenty-five.”
“So, I could’ve been your babysitter.”
“Sadly, you were not.”
Before I could lecture him about how problematic it was to fetishize the babysitter and the babysat, the bartender finally made it to us and asked for our orders. I gestured for Beau to order first—to stall until I made up my mind.
He swiveled on the barstool so his knees met mine. Nudging my knee with his, he said, “C’mon Sir. Be a little naughty with me. ”
My spinal fluid hit reverse. “Make that a second.”
“Two espresso martinis.” The bartender brewed espresso, flipped a shaker, and shook it with such gusto, I couldn’t tell if he was angry about the order.
“I thought you were worried about the drink keeping you up all night,” Beau said.
“It will. I better have something good to do.” A beat passed between us. Our flirtations up until then seemed like jokes, a game of chicken until one of us finally pulled away. I pressed my knee back against his. I was going full throttle toward him, foot firmly on the accelerator.
The martinis arrived. We both took sips, but I loved how the froth stuck to his pronounced cupid’s bow on his lips. He had to lick a droplet away.
I took a gulp of my martini to help myself ask this next question. “Why are you single?”
“Are you asking what’s wrong with me?”
“I’ve been trying to figure that out since I’ve met you. You said no current romantic attachments. So do you have any war wounds?”
“You’re assuming that matters of the heart actually deal with the heart.”
His answer felt cryptic. “They don’t?” I asked.
“A lasting relationship relies as much on the brain as it does the heart. ”
“So much wisdom for a youngin. And you’re being coy.” I gave the bottom rung of his bar stool a playful kick.
He sipped on his martini again. “Women find me attractive.”
“No shit.”
“And I’ve dated, but I’ve never been someone’s first and final choice.”
I took another sip of my martini and raised my eyebrows, as in well, what does that mean?
“I tend to be the rebound.” There was no usual smirk or glow in his eye as he said it.
“Give me an example.”
“I’m good at helping the women I’ve dated find what they’ve been looking for in someone new or return to what they were running from.”
“So, you’re a fixer who doesn’t pick the right ones.”
“They feel right enough at the time. There’re just some aspects about me that they weren’t comfortable with.”
“Are you a werewolf? In a religious cult? Were you somewhere you shouldn’t have been on January sixth?”
He shook his head and laughed. “We live in an area where a lot of people are very educated, and I didn’t finish college due to the accident. ”
He rubbed the top of his thigh. I saw horrific flashes of seeing someone so athletic and put together mangled in metal. I stilled the hand on his thigh. The past was past , I wanted to say. We were not the things that happened to us . But like the reticent old lady like I was, I said it with the touch of my hand. He sighed.
“What’s stopping you from going back to school?”
His smile became a little forced, maybe even sardonic. “It probably missed me at this point.”
“You’re still young.”
He shrugged. “You lit up when she discussed her drawing process.”
“It was kind of brilliant how simple she made it all seem.”
“But you got so hesitant talking to her. What’s going on there?”
“Did you see her drawings? They were paintings! ”
“I like how yours always come with a little commentary.”
“I’m not on the same level. Did you hear how many drawings she went through before landing that illustration gig? I’ve never had that level of discipline ever in my life. ”
He fished the graphic novel from his back pocket and placed it on the bar. He opened the front page and pointed to Preeti’s message.
Saoirse, from one artist to another, you captured his likeness well . Ride that beak. Preeti.
Preeti outed my fuccboi cockatiel as Beau. She wasn’t horrified by the horny bird. She got it.
He brushed the placket of my flannel aside to get a better look at my T-shirt. Staring right at my tits, he studied the cartoon. “Now that she mentions it, I’m seeing a likeness, except my hair doesn’t stick up that high.”
Obviously, his back was to the mirror during cycle class because it was that high. But I drew it when Beau was a distant fantasy to me, when he was Superman.
I asked the bartender for a pen and swiped a clean cocktail napkin from across the bar. “If you want to be a physical therapist, you should be a physical therapist.” With some arcs, lines, and dots, I captured his jawline, aquiline nose, brilliant eyes, and his silly hairstyle. With a few more swoops, I added his broad shoulders, strong legs. “If not for yourself, for those who need to know there’s still something to the second act.” Adding a bit of shading—the kind one can do on a cocktail napkin and ballpoint pen—I finished the cartoon but not before doodling a speech bubble and a few more accessories. The cartoon Beau held a foam roller under his armpit, had a rubber strap draped over his neck, and presented a model spine like it was a trophy. The speech bubble said, “Your spine is fucked.”
I slid the napkin over to him. “Put that on your vision board.”
He huffed out a single laugh and tucked the napkin in the pocket of his jacket. “You want to get out of here?”
I nodded. We finished our martinis.
Outside of the cocktail lounge, he took my hand into his. “I have a roommate.”
“Of course. It’s the only way anyone can afford to live here.” I squeezed his fingers into mine, an auto response. He said roommate because he wanted to take whatever was going on between us inside, to be alone. My body thrummed at the possibility. “I don’t. Have a roommate, that is.”
He smiled, tiny. Unnoticed if one was uninitiated to his quirks. Genuine, not his stupid customer service one. “So, we’re heading to yours, then.”
We forged ahead, making small talk about how close we lived to the bike trail. Bemoaned that the area neighborhoods had an unfortunate lack of streetlights. Living in Gorda Vista, we weren’t exactly worried about a criminal lurking in the shadows, but some coyotes had been spotted. And fuck if I'm getting rabies from a coyote.
Beau gestured vaguely toward a cross street we walked by. “I live over here.”
“Never thought the NIMBYs would allow apartments there.”
“No, I have a room in a house. A generous step up from a cardboard box.”
“You got a real room and board thing going on. How very nineteenth century.” I laughed, imagining Beau as a Mr. Bishop who seduces the governess with his vim and vigor.
“Amenities include a basketball hoop in the driveway.” He broke away from our hand-holding and mimed shooting a basket, jumping, and cheering at an invisible three-point shot.
I caught myself with the widest grin watching him be an utter goofball. He had to have noticed because he stopped. “You have a beautiful smile.”
Damn, a compliment. How should I respond to that? Thank you? You too? “Tell that to my dentist,” I replied with a snort. Ah, sarcasm, the shield I needed when Beau set his charisma protons on faze.
I spotted the gray rows of condos that were my place. “I live in a condo, in case you thought I lived in some Real Housewives of Suburbia monstrosity. My ex-husband and his new wife bought me out of my former house. He’s my landlord, the ex. Bright side? I got rent control.” I had been trying not to talk about Chris and Claire because they were in my past. And tonight’s date wasn’t about them, I lied to myself.
“What’s your roommate like?” I asked, mainly to distract myself from the ex-induced negativity spiral.
He stopped and drew out cloth to clean his glasses from the pocket of his jacket. Cleaning his glasses might have been the sexiest thing I had seen him do, and I’ve watched his ass move in Spandex. “Older, clean, super nice, pays the rent on time, but it’s not exactly a panty dropper to say, ‘I have a roommate.’”
“Women want to drop their panties just looking at you, so consider your roommate situation panty neutrality.”
We arrived at my front step. I was in the midst of coping with the idea that—holy shit—he’d see my living quarters when he leveled me with, “What do I do to your panties?”
I froze, right foot on the top step, left still on the bottom. My arm crooked at an angle in preparation of putting my key in its lock. “Things. ”
He touched my elbow. “What kind of things?” I pivoted to look at him, stepping up to the top step. His left eyebrow quirked above the rim of his glasses. He closed the gap between us, but he stood on my bottom step. The top of his hairdo lined up with my chin.
Holy shit, we might kiss. Holy shit, we might dry hump. Holy shit, we might get naked. Holyshitholyshitholyshit. My hands shook, confirmed by the jangling of my key chain. “Beau? The last time I did anything remotely like this, I was married to him.”
He kissed the top of my hand. His lips were warm in the cool night. “I’m a big fan of baby steps.”
“Of course you’d have a perfect answer.”
He did that lean in where he was definitely going in for a kiss.
“Beau?”
His lean stopped, his lips hovered only a few inches before mine.
“Let’s say we get carried away, and we don’t baby step. I’m not on birth control, and I think if I found any condoms in my junk drawer, they’d be expired.” Not at the bitter end, but Chris and I were trying to have kids, so it was strange to return to this part of my life that avoided the outcome of sex. My heart hammered in my chest merely thinking about all the baggage that came with sex and babies and no babies.
He held my face in both of his hands. “We haven’t even kissed, Sir.” He ascended to the same step as me and went for it. I no longer blurted the words produced by my current anxiety loop. He opened his mouth slightly and sucked on my lower lip. It had been years since I’d been kissed like that. Embarrassingly, my knees buckled, and I stumbled into him moaning.
“I’m kind of lousy at this.” My sinuses stung while I forced out a nervous laugh. Making out on the front porch was supposed to be a happy occasion. Why was I going weird and vulnerable?
“I’m sure it’s like riding a bike.”
“You know I’m lousy at that.”
“Then we should keep practicing.” He went in hard and deep, his tongue sliding across mine. I gripped his neck for dear life. His kisses were going to kill me. Once we had a good thing going with our tongues and lips, he grabbed me by my waist, his thumbs gently grazing around my bra line. “Why the fuck aren’t we inside?” He smiled and a stray kiss of mine went for his teeth.
Because with the way things ended with Chris, kissing and groping might as well be the equivalent of the Moon Landing, one giant step into the unknown. And then my brain went Chris Chris Chris Chris. Our sex became so clinical that I didn’t even think we kissed when we initiated it. Ovulation, work schedules forced it. Books and blogs told me to fake it until I made it, but all the faking meant sex felt more like picking my nose. How very unsexy. The sex was with no kisses and barely any eye contact, in which I noticed a water spot in the ceiling and not the man over me trying his damnedest to get me pregnant.
And then my mind twisted and turned to those times when I sat on the toilet, staring at the giant blood spot in my underwear, begging it not to be real. The first one sort of shriveled me for a while, but I read the literature, I went to the therapy, I said another time will be different. But again and then again. It stopped being devastating and just a fact.
Saoirse couldn’t have babies.
I turned the knob of my front door, my heel backing into the threshold. “Why me?”
Beau short-circuited and was stuck on an “Uhhhhh…”
“Apart from you getting a kick from attempting to clear cobwebs out of my vagina. Why me? I’ m just—”
“You’re great.”
“I’m broken. You’re trying to fix me and make things okay, but maybe I’m fine being broken. Have you ever considered that?”
“You’re not—” He lurched forward probably for some stupid kind of hug.
“I can pay for your Uber home.”
His mouth fell open. “No. That’s okay.” He stepped off my stairs and paused on the sidewalk out of the cluster of condos.
“It sucks now, but I swear, Beau, I’m saving you from your pattern. I’d be another person you’d try to fix.”
He nodded and walked briskly into the dark, where the coyotes lurked.