Chapter 17
WINE CLUB
Cricket
Three years ago, my sister Belle got promoted to partner at a prestigious law firm, and my parents threw her a party at one of the most exclusive clubs in Chicago.
Country clubs, I mean. Borderline secret society club.
Not like a club-club. A dancing club.
They don’t do dance club-clubs.
While we were at dinner, I had two glasses of wine and accidentally taught my other sister’s son and daughter, who were eight and six at the time, the penis game.
This is what red wine does to me.
And it’s why I’m now stripping my shirt over my head in what Heath has told me used to be the gift shop so that I can try on a tie-dyed style Makepeace Cellars shirt.
“Please put your boobs away,” Heath says.
He’s leaning on the counter, staring at my chest, his fifth glass of wine almost empty.
I hiccup.
He giggles.
“You’ve already seen it all,” I remind him.
He lifts his glass in a toast. “We’re even.”
“To even!” I cry, lifting the shirt I found like a glass. “Cin cin!”
The chicken in the corner bagocks, then lays an egg.
Heath and I look at it.
Then at each other.
The world spins a little when he makes eye contact with me, but that has to be the wine.
I’ve had two and a half glasses—more than my limit—and everything’s warm and fuzzy.
In my head.
In my heart.
In my vagina.
Heath chokes on his wine, and I realize I said that last part out loud. Possibly all of it. Definitely the vagina part.
“Did I tell you about my sister Belle’s promotion party?” I ask him while I pull the shirt on.
“Three times,” he confirms.
We stare at each other again.
And then we both crack up.
This is nice.
Also, I don’t think I can count right now.
“My dicks are parents,” I announce.
He giggles.
The chicken clucks at me.
“My parents are dicks.” So I’m this drunk. Heh. Fun. “They’ve never forgiven me for being the child to finally send my mother to plevi—pavel—pelvic floor therapy.”
“My mom’s a pelvic floor therapist.”
I stare at him. “No.”
He grins.
I fall a little more in love.
“I know everything about vaginas,” he tells me. “We—hic!—talked about them at dinner every night.”
“I love your mom.”
“I love my mom.”
“Can she adopt me?”
“You have to take my dad too.”
“Is he a dick floor therapist?”
Once again, Heath chokes on his wine.
He wipes the red liquid off his beard, and I sigh in utter happiness.
I miss utter happiness.
“He’s Thor,” Heath says.
“Is he a hammer floor therapist?”
“Stop being funny.”
“If you pee yourself when you laugh, you should definitely see your dad for dick floor therapy.”
He cracks up and keeps cracking until he’s guffawing.
“That’s right, baby,” I crow, lifting my empty wine glass. “I am funny and chaos and you love it. Cin cin!”
“I don’t want to like you.”
“I have a massive crush on you.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Like everyone doesn’t.”
“I have—hic!—baggage.”
“I have a whole train car.”
“I have a FedEx plane.”
“I have an warehouse.”
“I have the Library of Congress.”
I gasp. “That’s so meta and huge.”
“So’s my dick.” His eyes go huge and his lips part like he knows he shouldn’t have said that, but I laugh so hard I have to sit down.
The chicken bagocks and flaps her wings, running across the empty space with her wings flapping.
“Don’t chicken on the sit,” Heath says. “Fuck. Dammit. Now I’m doing it.”
“More wine.”
I lift my glass.
He pours, but nothing comes out, so I lean into the bottle and look up into it.
“Don’t get wine in your eye!” he shrieks.
“It’s corked!” I shriek back.
We stare at each other, then he lifts the bottle, eyes the cork, and we both giggle again.
“Call Mabel,” I say. “She’ll open it. She can do everything.”
Drunk Heath does a drunken scowl at me that makes me giggle more.
“I can wine a bottle of open.” He pushes a corkscrew down beside the bottle, then tries again, and again.
I laugh so hard I snort, but he finally gets it on a try that’s number I don’t know because I can’t count right now.
“Told you so,” he huffs while he fills my glass all the way to the brim, then does the same with his glass before sliding down the side of the checkout counter to sit across from me.
“You have very pretty eyes,” he says.
“My sisters have grue eyes.”
He blinks slowly. “You drunk really are.”
“They are,” I say. “They’re grue. Green in some lights, blue in others. My dad always tells me how lucky they are that they got such pretty eyes.”
“Your dad’s a wanker.”
“My mom tells me I could be a size four too if I worked out like my sisters do.”
“Your mom’s a dick.”
“I used to pretend I was switched at birth, but really, I was an old egg. My mom was nine-thirty when born I was. Nine-thirty. I was born. Nine-thirty. Fuck.”
He doesn’t laugh this time.
Instead, he stares at me with an intensity that makes my head even woozier than the wine has. “You don’t need to be your sisters.”
My eyes bug out. “Oh my god. I don’t need to be my sisters.”
“That’s what I just said.”
“That’s what you just said.”
“Your parents don’t deserve you if they make you feel like you have to be your sisters.”
Dammit.
Dammit.
I forgot this part.
The part where enough wine makes me sappy and sobby. “Don’t say that.”
“They don’t. If they can’t honor and respect you for who you are, fuck ’em. Stop taking their calls. Don’t go visit. Stay here. Have real family.”
“Stop being nice,” I whisper.
“Minny and Jabel—fuck. Ginnnnny and Mmmmaaaabel and Pip and Samantha and Olivia are family. They’re my family. They can be your family. One of us should keep them.”
“We can share.”
“Nope. Gotta move.”
“I do?”
“I do.”
My heart cramps and my stomach rolls over and I suddenly feel half-sober. “What? Why?”
“Not safe.”
“For who?”
“Ladenver. Lavender. She’ll get hurt. Then my in-laws will take her from me.”
No.
No, no, no. “They can’t do that.”
“Tried already. Before someone stole—hic!—your beav.”
“No one stole my beav, dude. I flashed it.”
“Nuh-uh. They stole it.”
I have no idea what he’s talking about, and I don’t know if he does either.
Drunk ramblings are fun.
Hopefully him saying they have to leave is drunk ramblings too.
“I love Lavender here.” No. That’s not what I meant to say. “She loves me here. No. Wait. She loves it here. That. That’s it.”
“I’m a bad dad.”
“You’re the best dad.”
“Nuh-uh. Not like my dad.”
“You’re patient—”
“Nope.”
“And kind—”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yes you are.”
“I’m a faker. A big fakey faking fakity faker.”
“No.”
“Yep. Not kind. No patience. Want to time all the scream. Scream all the time.” He grins at me, then makes jazz hands. “Surprise! I suck. Bad dad. Bad husband. Bad friend. All bad.”
I make as mean of a face as I can. “You are the bestity bestest bester-man.”
“Still have to move.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Life sucks.”
“It does not! It’s beautiful and wild and unexpected and we have to most the make of it.”
He gulps half his glass. “You mom like my sound. Sound mom like my. Sound like my mom.”
“Maybe I was switched out of your family at birth.”
“How—hic!—old are you?”
“Thirty and six weeks.”
“Nope. Natasha is thirty and two years.”
“Is that your sister?”
“Yep.”
“Is she perfect?”
“She nurses babies.”
I gasp. “Your sister is a wet nurse?”
He squints at me with one eye. “No. She catches them when they come out of vaginas. But only if the doctor isn’t there.”
“Ooooooooh.”
He giggles again. “Your oh face is funny.”
“It really is. That’s why I don’t fuck in rooms with mirrors.”
“I dream about your oh face.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Don’t want to, but I do. I like your boobs.”
I giggle.
He giggles.
I gulp more wine.
He gulps more wine.
The chicken waddles between us and bagocks at both of us in turn.
“Are we friends?” I ask Heath.
He stares at me for so long that I think he’s forgotten the question.
Actually, I think I’ve forgotten it too.
“We’re something, Cricket,” he says. “And I don’t hate it the way I lie to myself and say I do.”
Well.
That’s something to unpack later.
Probably.
If I remember.
“Is it hot in here?” I ask Heath.
“No, it’s just me.”
He adds a wink, and I laugh until I fall over.
For a day that started as a glitterfied disaster, this is nice.
I think I’ve needed this.
And tomorrow—tomorrow, life will be okay.
I’m sure of it.