EMPTY BED. QUIET APARTMENT. The only signs Joel was here last night are his scent on my sheets and the ache in my muscles. I roll onto my stomach and pull my pillow tight over the back of my head, trying to convince myself I’m content to wake alone—that I prefer to wake alone.
“You realize all you have in your fridge is butter and pickles, right?”
I push the pillow away and stare at Joel like he’s an apparition. He’s standing in my doorway with a tub of butter in one hand, a half-empty jar of pickles in the other, and one sandy blond eyebrow firmly raised.
“What am I supposed to make you for breakfast?” he complains, making me feel so warm and fuzzy inside that I’m pretty sure I need to giggle rainbows or explode into glitter. How many butterflies does a girl need to feel in her belly before she turns into a butterfly herself?
“There’s a coffee shop down the street,” I offer.
“How do you live?” He lifts the yellow tub in front of his face and narrows his eyes. His mohawk is spiked firmly in place, and I wonder how many of my hair products he had to mix to get it to stand up like that. “This butter isn’t even any good. It expired two months ago.”
“There’s ice cream in the freezer . . .”
I giggle at the look he gives me, and he shakes his head. “We need to go grocery shopping.”
“We?”
“Yes, we.” A smirk taunts me from the corner of his gorgeous mouth. “Are you going to drive me, or are you going to make me walk again?”
DESPITE HOW TEMPTING it is to see if Joel would actually walk if I refused to drive him, I take him to the grocery store, feeling awkwardly domestic. I’ve never grocery shopped with a guy before. I keep stealing glances at him as we cross the parking lot, and he smiles at me when I grab a grocery cart and start pushing.
“So is this your thing?” I ask, casting him a sidelong glance as we walk down the cereal aisle and he tosses boxes in my cart—all of them featuring cartoon characters and colored marshmallows. When he looks at me for clarification, I quietly explain, “Your shtick or something. Having sex with girls and then taking them grocery shopping.”
Joel doesn’t try to keep his voice quiet when he says, “I’ve fucked you like a million times and I’ve never taken you grocery shopping.”
The old woman walking past us, who definitely heard every foul word out of Joel’s mouth, gives us a reproachful look from behind her oversized spectacles. I smile sweetly at her and nudge my elbow into Joel’s side, but he just chuckles. I tilt my chin up to give him a look, and he tucks his hand into my back pocket and gives my butt a tight squeeze.
“You’re horrible,” I say, not removing his fingers from my pocket.
“You love it,” he counters, and I can’t even pretend to disagree. He fondles my ass until I step out of his reach, and when I glance back at him, he’s enjoying the view. I turn back around, enjoying giving it to him.
“Can you get me that creamer?” I ask when we get to the dairy section. Normally, I get coffee at school or at the place down the street from my apartment building, but if we’re seriously making breakfast at my place this morning, I need something to put in my coffee, and the crème brulée creamer I want is all the way at the back of the top rack.
Joel crosses his arms and leans against the whitewashed wall, smirking and shaking his head.
I glare at him, but then I do exactly what he wants: I stand on my tippy-toes and reach up as high as I can. My ass curves out, my shirt pulls up, and my breasts push into the icy air of the refrigeration. My cold nipples strain against my top as I turn my face to Joel and make my eyes big and my lips pouty. “I still can’t reach it,” I say.
“Do you need my help?”
“Please?”
His lips pull into a satisfied smile, and he comes up behind me, pushing his hard-on tight against my ass as he reaches up to get the creamer for me. “This one?” he asks, intentionally pointing to the wrong one to torture me.
“The one next to it,” I say, and he curls his fingers around my hips with his left hand to tug me even tighter against him as he reaches for the creamer with his right.
“This one?” he asks, pointing to the one on the wrong side.
“The other one,” I say, standing on my tippy-toes again to create friction between us. I point to the one I want, my shirt lifting up to reveal my taut stomach again.
“Oh, you mean this one.” While Joel reaches for it with his right hand, his left snakes around my waist. His fingers trail lightly over my stomach and sneak under my raised top, giving me goose bumps all over and making me shiver. His lips press near my ear and he says, “I can’t wait to get you back to your place.”
I don’t think he means it literally, but I sure as hell feel it literally. I’m about to pull him into a dirty bathroom so he can fuck me against a wall.
“Split up so we can get this done faster?” I suggest, and we speed-walk in opposite directions.
I don’t even know what the hell I’m shopping for, so I throw a few things in the cart—bacon, eggs, bread, whipped cream, extra-large condoms—and then I walk back through the grocery store searching for Joel.
I find him in Aisle 6 with two girls who barely look legal.
I take a step back to be better hidden from view, watching as he flirts with them. They smile and giggle, flip their hair and bat their eyelashes. Then they mold themselves to his sides for a picture.
They must be fans, and fans, I’m fine with. Pictures, I’m fine with. I’m even fine with one of them writing what I’m assuming is her number on a piece of paper and handing it to him. What I’m not fine with is him tucking it into his pocket and reaching forward to play with her necklace.
Part of me wants to march right up to them and stake my claim, wants to let the girls know that Joel is mine and if they don’t want to get their eyeballs clawed out, they’d better stop looking at him. But I’m not going to give him the satisfaction of turning me into that kind of girl, especially not when he’d just continue being a man-whore and driving me crazy. Instead, I grit my teeth and abandon my cart right where it’s parked, walking from the grocery store with my head held high but my molars threatening to grind each other into dust. I climb into my car, back out of the spot, and drive all the way home. When my phone beeps along the way, I don’t bother looking at it. I don’t check it until seven beeps and two missed calls later, after I’ve slammed my apartment door behind me and have grounded myself on the couch.
Where the fuck are you?
Joel’s latest in a long line of texts—which went from being confused, to concerned, to angry—just pisses me off. My phone receives the brunt of my temper as I type back, Home. Looked like you got another ride, so I figured I was off the hook.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I don’t bother responding. Anything I say will just make me sound jealous—because I am jealous. I hope Joel fucks those girls and makes them a breakfast they all choke on.
Did you seriously leave me at the fucking grocery store?
Not responding.
This is so fucked up!
Not responding.
You’re fucking crazy!
I text him a GIF image of Marilyn Monroe blowing a kiss at the camera before I turn my phone on silent and toss it on the coffee table.
When Rowan calls me, I’m angrily biting into an unlucky pickle.
“Did you really have sex with Joel and then leave him at the grocery store?”
“He brought it on himself,” I insist, and she starts laughing.
I hear Joel yell in the background, “I TOLD YOU!”
“What did he do?” she asks.
“He dragged me to the grocery store, and I left him alone for two minutes—two freaking minutes, Rowan—and he goes and gets some other girl’s number.”
She yells at Joel, “You took her grocery shopping and got some other girl’s number?!”
“She just gave it to me!” he yells back.
“And you took it?!”
“He’s an asshole,” I say, biting off more of my pickle.
“It’s not like I was going to go home with her right then or something!” Joel insists, like that makes a difference. I can practically hear Rowan’s eye-roll.
“Joel, you should probably stop talking,” she orders.
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t, I’m going to smack you and it’s going to hurt.”
“Whatever,” I hear him say. “Dee is crazy.”
I hear a loud WHAP! and then an “OW! WHAT THE HELL!” Loud laughter follows—I’m guessing from Adam and Shawn.
“One more word, Joel!” Rowan warns, and I smile around a mouthful of pickle. “Hold on,” she tells me, “I’m going outside.”
A door opens and closes. Footsteps. “He’s such an ass,” she finally says. “I’m sorry he did that.”
“Don’t be.”
“You seem okay.”
“I’m always okay.”
A short pause, and then, “Are you over him now?”
“I was never under him.” Unless last night counts . . . and the dozens of times before that.
“You know what I mean. Are you two done?”
“For now.”
A longer pause, and then, “Are you still coming to Mayhem tomorrow?”
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I say, already planning what I’m going to wear to make Joel sorry he ever even considered calling another girl.
Rowan sighs heavily into the phone. “You’re so not done.”