I wake up the next morning feeling like my face is surgically grafted to the floor. It takes so much effort to lift my head, I briefly check for stitches and wood-grain marks on my cheek. I hadn’t meant to crash at Fox’s, especially since he pissed me off so much, but then I drank significantly more than I intended. Certainly too much to drive myself home.
The floor is cold on my skin when I slowly push up and sit back on my knees. Once I’m mostly vertical, I survey the room. The open layout of the house makes it seem extra spacious, more so than it already is. The sun boasts a beautiful day, pouring in through the street-facing windows. The warmth makes me feel a little less hollow than I did last night. Despite that improvement, my head is still pounding.
I pad down the hall to the bathroom and throw back a few ibuprofen capsules. No one else is here that I’ve seen, so I’m not as horrified when I turn to the full-length mirror on the back of the door. I have no pants on. I hope I removed them, at the very least, when everyone else had gone. Otherwise, I can only pray there are no pictures. My mother will print them out and blow them up for family Christmas if the evidence is available. Our family get-togethers thrive on humor, especially when one of our own is the butt of the joke. It’s a lifelong goal for most of us to remain out of the spotlight. Cameron usually offers himself up because he’s crazy. And he loves the attention, which would explain why he does so much stand-up comedy and drag gigs. Nowadays, he’s been laying kind of low. I need to call him to make sure he’s still planning to talk to Mom and Ruben tomorrow night for Operation Gender Reveal, the sequel to Coming Out 2007. I still can’t figure out how he’s keeping such a bomb ass sense of humor on for the whole thing, because it stresses me out just trying to wrap my head around it. Maybe I shouldn’t think about this with a hangover.
The audience collectively grunts, rolls over, and goes back to sleep.
I look around the living room and find my phone, but the search for my pants comes up empty. What the hell did I do with them? I decide to wake up Fox regardless of how difficult it is just because I’m horrible enough to bring him into my pain.
“Foxenheimer,” I say, bursting through his door. A girl sits up like a shot and for a few brief seconds, I feel the rug pulled out from under me. She’s holding the comforter up over her chest while I try to stop my heart from bursting through my own. When Doc sits up and pops bug eyes at me, I breathe a sigh of relief. And then dragon fire. My chest is tight and my nails are scraping the doorframe and the floor—I’m including my toenails here, because my toes have curled into the wood. I do my damnedest to skewer him with my gaze.
“Well,” I say, truly hoping he feels the red-hot pokers I’m throwing at him. “I’m so glad you found a replacement, Doc.”
“I thought you said your name was Dundee?” the girl asks. She sounds a little like she sucked on a helium balloon for about an hour—that, or she’s fifteen. She looks young enough. Jesus, did she wander in off the beach?
Doc is quick, though, and says, “Dundee’s my last name.”
It’s not, by the way. It’s Wellesley. Polly Pocket is satisfied, though. She leans into him, and I enjoy his suddenly queasy pre-walk-of-shame expression.
With a pointed look of disgust, I slam the door behind me. I realize that I went in there without pants.
When I hear barking outside, I know Fox probably slept on the deck again. The sliding door is slightly ajar, a vodka bottle blocking the final five inches of the path before it locks. I push it open and step outside. No, I have absolutely not taken the time to find and put on any sort of pants. I’m over it. At least my clam basket is covered, even if my booty cheeks peek out.
“Grandmaster Spaz!” I say, wondering if that will wake him up. I was pretty loud. Which would be funny if he has the same type of hangover I have. And since the ibuprofen has not kicked in any assistance yet, I grasp more firmly—and with a significant wince—that I am not immune to the same pains when trying to inflict the torture on someone else in my condition.
It does, in any case, wake him up. “Whaaat?” he asks with pain in his voice, which evolves inexplicably into a throaty chuckle. “Hey, Lollipop. What’s crackin’?”
“Any particular reason you let Doc bone some high schooler in your bed last night?” I ask, stealing the bottle of water he has next to the lounger he’s all too comfortable in. When he doesn’t answer right away I look back. He’s scoping me. Again with the scoping. Dudes.
“You’re not wearing pants.” It took him a minute, but hangovers don’t generally allow for observance. Unless it’s loud noises or smells. That’s when you suddenly become superhuman. A look of heated panic crawls across his face. “Hold up, you didn’t hook up with—”
“Doc? Are you still on that? Give me a break, man,” I reply, quietly and more gently this time. This is about self-care, people. “He hooked up with some black-haired sprite who thinks his name is ‘Dundee.’ ”
“It’s like he has no self-respect,” Fox mumbles as he rubs his eyes. “Using a code name from an Aussie-stereotyping ’80s movie? Lame.”
I roll my eyes. And wait. I don’t think he realizes yet the egregious error that Doc has made. I shift my weight to my other foot. For shits and giggles, I pop a hand on my hip. Finally, he gets it.
“Wait, did you say he fucked her in my bed?”
I push my eyebrows into my hairline to indicate that he’s slow on the uptake.
Fox scrambles out of his deck chair, but stops once he’s mostly vertical. He moved too fast. Good. Once he retains his equilibrium, he rushes into the house. Flower jumps up from her spot next to the chair and pads over to get some behind-the-ear scratches. I sit down in Fox’s place and get some Flower love of my own. To my delight, she settles her head on my lap. I end up adjusting so that she joins me on the lounger and takes up a huge space between my legs, enough so that I have room to give her belly rubs. I could easily fall back asleep. But I don’t because a minute later, I hear Fox yelling and Doc arguing. I don’t know what happens to the girl in the situation, but I do hear some pitter-pattering and a front door slam. Fox yells something about burning the house down, but I’m guessing I missed something in there.
The next thing I know, Doc must be gone because Fox is standing on the deck next to me, fuming. “Fucking asshole. Totally crossed the line.”
“He says you told him it was cool,” I say. He didn’t, but I’m kind of smarting over his bullshit confession and attempted hookup with me last night. I feel stupid. It felt so nice to be wanted like that. To be pursued without asking for it. I look up at Fox and notice a blunt chest pain hammering high at my ribs. I blink the haze of whatever I’m dealing with away. I don’t want to sort through that right now. Thankfully, my girl Flower is keeping my legs warm or the chill that ricochets through me would have made me shiver visibly. Not that Fox would notice—he’s not done ranting.
“Bull fucking shit. Fucking dick. Why the fuck would I say, ‘sure, man, screw your brains out on my thousand thread count Egyptian cotton sheets’?”
“What? Get out. You got that shit at Target,” I say, not waiting for his confirmation. I was with him on that particular shopping extravaganza. “In any case, have you seen my pants? Or whatever I was wearing?”
He looks at me and I wonder if I should have expected to have some semblance of conversation about the argument last night. Or not. I mean, Fox is a dude. What bothers me most is the way he’s looking at me. He’s worried.
“Are we okay?” he asks. “The last time I talked to you last night was coming in off the beach, and it didn’t feel so—”
“We’re fine,” I say hurriedly, looking away. My stomach is flipping and I don’t want to think about why. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Do you want to date Doc?” he continues his train of thought without my permission. He’s genuine, though I can’t place any other intentions by his tone.
I twist and glare at him. “You’d be cool with that?”
I note his face is a wee bit crestfallen and shocked in disguise. “Um, well… if that’s what you wanted, I guess.”
And now the moment feels even weirder than it did last night. I wonder what’s wrong with me. I don’t quite know how to react. I end up snorting, because you know, I’m such an elegant lady and all. “No, Fox. I have no interest in Doc. He took me by surprise last night, that’s all. I should’ve known he was just looking for a tuna boat parking space.”
Fox snorts then coughs. “Please stop doing that.”
“What?”
“The vagina nicknames. It’s awkward.”
“No more awkward than your penis titles. I’m so proud of you for saying ‘vagina,’ by the way. Usually it’s pussy this, pussy that,” I say.
“I’m a medical professional. It shouldn’t be shocking when I use the terminology.” He turns and sits down on the other lounger. Flower jumps out of her nap spot between my legs. She whines and barks at him before just going back in the house. “Anyway, I don’t know. Doc’s kind of always had a thing for you.”
I snap my head in his direction, holding him with my gaze of death. “Are you kidding me?”
His expression takes on one of contrition. “No. I always thought he just wanted to bag you, so I encouraged him elsewhere.”
“By?”
“By telling him you thought he was gross.”
“What are you, thirteen? No, that’s too old. Eleven?” I don’t wait for a reply and get up. “Look, I gotta go. Hopefully I didn’t lose my keys along with my pants.”
“Why don’t you hang out? I’ll make breakfast.”
“I’m not helping you clean this shit up. I have work to do anyway,” I lie. I don’t. I finished up anything I had to send off to the production manager by Thursday. I just feel awkward and need to get home and in my own space for some recharging. “Not to mention, you don’t cook.”
“Dammit.”
And for a minute there, I thought he genuinely wanted me to stay.