Pot Shot

Chapter One Nomi

CHAPTER ONE

NOMI

It’s eleven p.m. the night before our Memorial Day beach trip, so you know what that means.

Pube chores.

Grimacing, I wrestle the electric razor free from its packaging. As a natural brunette, I have no choice. When I purchased the red, bandana-printed bikini, I didn’t realize it’d look like a bearded bandit robbing the county bank down there. I’ve gotta take care of business.

Regrettably, business is booming.

I plug in the razor and hike a foot onto the bathroom counter. I saw this tip on a male makeover show, and if men can buzz their body hair away, why can’t I? It’s satisfying, removing whole stripes of hair at a time, and way less painful than waxing. Genius, I huff.

I traverse nooks and crannies with ease and pause for a quick tug of weed from my vape. It’s a new strain I’m trying for work, and my head feels thick and syrupy. The body high’s spreading, too, and a pleasant, giddy rush tingles in my lower belly.

Ahh. I make a mental note. This is horny pot.

I take another hit, admiring the line of my leg in the mirror’s reflection, then release the vapor seductively in an exaggerated pucker.

Behold your Valedictorian, Sparrow Nook, New Jersey, for she has come far.

The clipper guard yanks a thick patch and I hiss, nearly losing my balance. I toss the offending plastic away. I need a closer shave, anyway, which will be good enough as long as nobody gets too close down there.

Fortunately/unfortunately, nobody ever does.

Contrary to what my best friends Eve and Graham think, I don’t try not to date.

It comes very naturally. When I was younger, I was too sick to care.

Now that my Crohn’s disease is technically in remission, which means I only get sick once or twice a month instead of constant misery, I still don’t care.

Dating is hard, stressful, and involves too many restaurants and public bathrooms. It’s easier to just…

not, and focus on my health, friendships, and opening my dream business—a cannabis dispensary with lounge à la Amsterdam “coffeehouse.” Great lighting, excellent vibes, and a place you can buy, partake, and socialize.

I sigh dreamily as I raze my bikini line down to the skin.

Once New Jersey legalized cannabis, it was like a spotlight clicked on and an aggressive stage manager whisper-yelled “Showtime!” before shoving me onstage.

I’d been lost for so long, unsure of what to do with my life when illness consumed so much of it.

But as soon as the legislation passed, I started researching how to open my own dispensary.

I got a job at the first one in the area, worked up to manager, and I’ve been planning and saving ever since.

See? No time for love.

When the right hemisphere of my mons pubis is suitably bald, I eye the narrow strip of hair lining the inner sanctum.

You could leave it, Spinster Nomi whispers in my head. Nobody will ever see it.

I take another tug of weed.

She’s right, of course. Nobody has ventured this far since… when was that party where I made out with Lil Dom, Sparrow Nook’s goofiest cop?

Ugh, she fake retches in my head. I still can’t believe you made out with Lil Dom!

“I was lonely,” I mutter aloud. “I liked his mustache.”

See? You can’t be trusted, she says. Leave the inner bush as deterrent.

I sigh. As much as I’d like to, it looks ridiculous.

How can I respect myself with the Swedish Chef lurking in my panties?

It’s like a soul patch with too much soul.

A metaphorical no trespassers sign surrounded by weeds.

I take another hit, lean into the one-legged lunge on my counter, and spread myself carefully—

My front door slams against the wall. I shriek as the bulky razor slips, colliding horrifically with flesh, then falls. My foot careens off the counter.

“Nomi!” Eve calls. “You’ve gotta try these! Nomi?”

I look down at the warm, slick coating of blood on my fingers and the shrieks graduate to screams. Eve throws the bathroom door open, and now she’s screaming, too.

Evangeline Ionides may present as a black cat lesbian, but she’s the human equivalent of the pot-laced cinnamon rolls she makes every Christmas.

Eve does not do strife; she cannot witness suffering. A softie of the highest order.

“Jesus, Nomi!” Eve gapes at my hunched body naked from the waist down. Blood drips between my fingers onto the tile, and she covers her eyes immediately. “Is that your period?! Why’s it so heavy, oh my GOD!”

“No, you dweeb! I cut myself shaving!” I moan at the sharp stinging pain coming from just left of center, in folds town. “Hand me a towel!”

Eve fumbles one-handed around my bathroom, still covering her eyes, chanting oh, God until she finds a towel and throws it at me. It lands over my head. Everything goes dark.

“Eve!” I stumble into the wall. “Fuck! I’m the one with the injury—calm down!”

“How can I calm down?!” Eve screeches. “You want to have children one day!”

Her words are muffled by the towel still over my head. I can’t let go of the—area—or else the world will end. My head feels strange and light.

“Call Dr. Appa—I think I need stitches.” I stagger into her. “Please, Eve. Need you to be calm.”

“Okay, okay, this is okay,” Eve says far too loudly as she holds me up. “I’m gonna wrap your—”

“—area.”

“—area,” Eve agrees, “with this towel.”

“Don’t make me move my hands,” I mewl. I’m the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, except this is taking all my fingers, and I’m theoretically straight.

Eve grabs the towel and wraps it around my lower half. It’s big enough for the edges to meet but not fold over, so she holds them shut as we shuffle pathetically to her car.

“How did this happen?!”

“You! You happened! Your car’s out front—I thought you were upstairs, asleep!

” Eve and I share an old Craftsman bungalow split into two extremely non-regulation apartments that her Uncle Dimitri rents to us super cheap.

The reason it’s so cheap is that the only way to reach the upstairs apartment is by walking through the downstairs apartment to the one stairwell.

This isn’t the first time Eve’s terrified me by barging in, but it’s definitely the bloodiest.

“I was at Graham’s because it’s too hot to bake upstairs right now.

We perfected the new recipe for the pot scones, by the way.

The key was pomegranate—can you believe it?

The tart sweet blends with the cannabis just right, and I was so excited, I couldn’t wait to show you!

” Eve, our future dispensary’s ultra-talented baker, stops chattering to gag a little at my bloody leg, then guides me into the front seat and buckles me in. “Do you want one?”

“No!”

“You sure? You know how scones dry out. They won’t keep for tomorrow—”

“Eve, drive!” I blink against the bleary weight of the drugs already in my system. “Wait, can you drive? Are you high right now?”

“No.” She glances at my toweled lap and laughs nervously. “Not yet at least. Scones haven’t hit.”

“Scones? Plural?!”

“Experimentation requires sacrifice, Nomi!”

Eve speeds through the streets of Sparrow Nook, our quaint town located halfway between Philadelphia and the long, sandy strip of the Jersey Shore.

So help me God, Eve better not get us pulled over for speeding.

Lil Dom got dumped a month ago, and speeding tickets in Sparrow Nook have tripled since.

There was an article about it in the paper and everything.

“Was it the big flap?” Eve’s eyes flick from the road to me.

“Huh?”

“You know, the big flap. Every woman has one big flap.”

“What? No, they don’t.”

“Hate to pull the lesbian card, but I’ve seen quite a few flaps, and—”

“Eve! Just park!”

Eve jerks into a spot in front of the old Strange Drugs Pharmacy.

The coming soon: for lease sign in its window winks at me as Eve pulls me from the car.

I moan, not wanting my dream location for our dispensary to see me like this.

We waddle past it—me in front, Eve holding my towel from behind—one door down to the clinic run by Sparrow Nook’s beloved Dr. Srinivasan, better known as Dr. Appa.

Sparrow Nook doesn’t have its own hospital or emergency room—you’d have to drive half an hour for that—but we do have Dr. Appa.

During the day, he runs a family practice, and at night, he has on-call urgent-care hours.

And tonight, I need poor, elderly Dr. Appa to urgently care for my area.

“You called ahead, right?” I pant as Eve readjusts my towel.

“Yeah, Dr. Appa said the new guy’s working tonight.”

“New guy?” I wail, a wave of dizziness crashing over me. “I don’t want a new guy! I want Dr. Appa!”

“NEW GUY!” Eve yells as soon as we’re inside. “WE HAVE AN EMERGENCY!”

The reception area is empty and quiet except for the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the daytime staff long gone.

It’s creepy. Standing here, inconveniently high and half-naked beneath a towel in front of the kids’ area with its disappointing wooden toys, feels especially wrong.

Footsteps hurry from the back, and I blink as the new guy’s face comes into focus.

Dark, wavy hair parted on the side, the tips ending in springy little curls.

A pair of gold-rimmed glasses shoved high on a long, straight nose.

Behind them, big, blue eyes stare at me in disbelief.

No.

The broad-shouldered man in the white doctor coat freezes. His face turns pale and ashen, as if it’s his vulva that’s hemorrhaging. “Nomi…Wyeth?”

“No!” I try to step backward, but Eve’s there, blocking my exit.