One Good Thing (7 page)

It broke whatever spell had held him enthralled. He gripped my shoulders and pushed me back.

“Evan,” I pleaded, in a low, husky murmur that didn’t sound anything like me.

“No,” he shook his head as if to emphasize his refusal. His lips were swollen, his pupils dilated until there was only a thin line of color. “This is a bad idea all the way around.”

“I don’t think it’s a bad idea,” I muttered.

“Yeah, three glasses of whiskey will do that to a person,” he said sarcastically. “Or were you on your fourth?”

“Are you mad at me?”

His voice softened. “No … I’m frustrated. Not with you. In a general sense.” He smiled slightly.

I moved toward the sofa, flopping down on it. The burst of defiance that had made me kiss him earlier had swept through me and left me drained.

“You think I’m a joke, don’t you? That’s why you don’t want me. It would be pity sex!” I exclaimed. It was a worry I never would have given voice to if my mind wasn’t so hazy.

“Pity sex?” he repeated. “Is that a real thing?”

“I mooned you at the park,” I said miserably. “And then you saw me crying outside the bar. If you had sex with me it would only be because you feel bad for me. Or because you thought it would be so awful it would be funny.”

“Believe me,” he said. “That wouldn’t be why.”

I perked up. “Really?”

“Really.”

I buried my face in my hands. “But I
mooned
you!”

He laughed. “It was my fault for letting Vader get loose.”

“But you laughed at me! And you were playing with me! You pretended you didn’t know me … and then the carnation!” I accused, remembering the day in the office.

Somehow he seemed to follow my broken thoughts. “I wasn’t laughing
at
you. I was laughing because I’d never found myself in such a bizarre situation before. And you were so prickly … I couldn’t resist teasing you.”

“Prickly.” I glared. “Like a cactus.”

He sat down next to me, and I shifted toward his weight, falling against his side. “I don’t think I would make out with a cactus.”

I laughed, imagining it. “Sounds painful.”

I supposed I could be a little prickly, but it was worse around Evan. There was just something about him—maybe it was because he had a knack for witnessing my embarrassing moments. Or maybe I was more aware of him witnessing them than I would be with someone else.

But that was too confusing to think about when I wasn’t sober. Maybe even when I was.

My head felt heavy, so I stretched out, laying my head in his lap and staring up at him. He brushed my hair away from my eyes with gentle fingers, leaving a trail of heat wherever they touched.

“That red thong is in the hallway closet,” I said sleepily, waving my hand toward it. “Right over there.”

His hand stilled. “Are you
trying
to torture me, or does it just come naturally?”

I turned to my side, burrowing my face against his leg, and smiled. I heard him groan and my smile vanished. “Did I hurt you?”

“Something like that,” he said, but he didn’t explain. “Why did you and your boyfriend break up?”

“He said he wasn’t having fun with me.” I closed my eyes and kept them shut. It was nice, the warm scratch of denim against my cheek, the press of his thigh, the weight of his hand on my shoulder. I felt surrounded. In a good way.

“Maybe he wasn’t the right person for you, then.”

“No, he was,” I said. “I thought he was. We had the same taste in everything. We didn’t even have to try.”

“Sounds boring to me.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” I protested.

“No, you’re right.” He paused. “That cat isn’t going to claw my face off, is it?”

I cracked one eye open and saw Princess standing in front of Evan with her back arched and her tail up. I shut my eyes again and waved a lazy hand. “No. Just ignore her and she’ll leave. Princess is my roommate’s cat. She hates everyone except Alyssa.”

“I’m not much of a cat person,” he admitted.

“No, you like dogs who stick their noses up women’s dresses,” I muttered.

“How else am I supposed to meet people?” he said.

My eyes cracked open again so I could glare. “That’s a bad joke.”

“I have all kinds of them. Eventually you’ll wear down and think I’m hysterical,” he said and grinned.

“Yeah, right. Do you always dress Vader up?” Something about a single guy putting his pet in a costume was weird.

“It was a favor,” he explained. “My cousin wanted to go to the contest because he liked this girl who mentioned she was going to be there. But he doesn’t have any pets, so he asked if he could borrow Vader.”

“You let him lie to her?” I asked, my brow furrowing. That didn’t seem very nice.

“You don’t know my cousin. He wouldn’t stop bothering me until I agreed to it. Anyway, I figured there are worse lies to tell someone.”

I scowled. “Were you there to hit on women, too?”

He shook his head, smiling. “I was there because I didn’t trust him to watch Vader once he started talking to her. And I was right. He let go of the leash and Vader ran off and … found you.”

“Found me,” I said with a snort. “Yes, he did.”

Evan traced the outline of my jaw with one fingertip. “I’m glad he did.” Before I could open my mouth and protest, he asked, “So what all did you and your ex have in common?”

I closed my eyes and burrowed deeper against him, forgetting what I’d been about to say. “We liked the same movies and TV shows, restaurants. Concerts. You know, date things. We never argued about what to do. We never
argued
. But he wasn’t very interested in my paintings,” I said, a little sadly.

“You’re an artist?”

“I was an art major,” I said with a stifled yawn. “I haven’t painted in months.” I admitted. I didn’t know why I’d told someone I barely knew something I hadn’t told anyone else. The alcohol, most likely.

“Why not?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured, and then paused for a minute, losing my thought. “I don’t know if …”

But I never finished whatever statement I’d been about to make because sleep came for me. Sometime in the night I thought I felt a chaste kiss, pressed against my temple, but I was drifting in and out of a dream. I didn’t know what was real and what was illusion.

When I woke up, daylight was working its way past the curtains, and I was alone. I pushed myself up.

“Ahh,” I groaned, pressing my palm against my forehead. As though that would stop the headache. It was like putting a Band-Aid over a gunshot wound.

I slunk back down to a horizontal position, my stomach clenching.

So this was what it was like to be hung over. As far as getting drunk went, I didn’t think the pros outweighed the cons.

I blinked against the light, noticing some items set out on the side table that hadn’t been there before—a couple of water bottles, a sleeve of saltine crackers, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a can of ginger ale.

And a note.

I reached out a shaky hand to grab it.

I’ve gathered some hangover supplies for you. Sorry I didn’t stay the whole night—there was a
Star Trek
marathon I wanted to get back for.

—Evan

“Oh no,” I moaned.

My head fell back against the couch cushion.

If I’d been worried about facing him before, how in the world was I going to face him now?

*

“I can’t go back to work,” I told Alyssa, curled up on the corner of the sofa with my water bottle. Maybe if I rolled up tight enough I would vanish. No more hang over. No more embarrassment.

“Of course you can,” she said. She leaned back on the recliner with Princess. The cat lazily flicked its tail back and forth and eyed me from my roommate’s lap. Maybe I imagined it, but the damn animal looked disapproving.

Some help she was—couldn’t she have leaped out and scratched me last night? Or him. Anything to stop me from making a huge mistake.

“You’re both mature adults.”

Evan might have been. I didn’t feel much like a mature adult, more like a fish flopping around on the dry beach of adulthood.

Or maybe a stone in water was a better analogy—I had this awful premonition I was going to sink.

I plucked at the sleeve of my dress; it was the same work dress I’d worn the day before, crumpled beyond recognition and stained with beer. “Does alcohol make sex better?” I asked the question quickly, my face heating.

“I wouldn’t say it makes it better.” She laughed. “It makes you more prone to have it though.”

“Are you sure? Like the quality itself doesn’t go up?”

She tilted her head to the side, bemused. “I don’t know; maybe it’s different for some people. Was it that good?”

“Well we didn’t … you know, all the way.”

“Right. But obviously something about it caught your attention.”

“No,” I said. “Not really.” I regretted bringing it up in the first place. There was no way I wanted to rehash the details of what had happened with Evan.

She glanced at me skeptically. “Whatever.”

“How was your date?” I asked.

Her fingers stroked over Princess’s head as she started to tell me all about it. “Fine. We went to a dance club.”

“Was he a good dancer?”

“He was awful.” She smiled slightly. “Remember when you bumped into that guy at the club and he spilled his drink all over the place? He was really pissed off.” In college, Alyssa had managed to break me out of my shell enough to get me to start going to a dance club near campus. Now that she mentioned it, a memory of a drunk guy yelling at me started to emerge. I thought drinking was supposed to make people happier … it must have backfired for that dude.

“Ugh … I think I tried to forget him. Wait,” I said after a second, “are you saying I’m an awful dancer?”

“You’re just as good a dancer as anyone else. I think you get caught up in your head too much.”

I sat up a little straighter, which made my head hurt. “What does that mean?”

“Like you have trouble going with the flow.”

I glared at her. “I didn’t realize you were such a dance goddess.”

She laughed. “I just know when to let go of distractions.”

“Yeah,” I said, and snorted. “I did that last night and look where it got me.”

“Uh, almost having hot rebound sex?”

“With a coworker!” I exclaimed. Oh, bad idea. Loud exclamations made me feel like I was going to throw up. I pressed my hand to my stomach. “Which wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t put the idea in my head. I’m beginning to think you’re a bad influence,” I told her, more quietly.

Then my phone rang loudly, piercing my skull. “Uh,” I moaned.

The phone was on the coffee table. Alyssa leaned forward to see who was calling. “It’s your mom.”

I reluctantly took the phone from Alyssa, and she went into the kitchen as I answered.

“Hi,” I said. Or more like croaked. Oh God, I sounded awful.

There was a pause that seemed to last about ten seconds.

“Did you just get up?” my mom asked.

“No,” I lied, after I glanced at the clock and saw that it was almost noon. “I just have a bit of a cold, I think.”

“Do you feel all right?”

“Yeah, I don’t have a fever or anything. How are things there?” I asked quickly.

She started to tell me about her latest patient—a cat who’d somehow eaten like half a ball of yarn. My mom was a veterinarian, so she had all kinds of weird stories like that. It also meant she wanted me to be as successful as she was and hoped I would go back to school and get into veterinary science. She’d never forbid me from getting an art degree or anything like that, but she’d made it pretty clear she hadn’t thought it was a very good choice.

Not that it had been much of a choice. I’d been undecided for the first two years, until I realized most of the classes I was taking were art classes anyway.

“How’s SLQ?” she asked casually.

I knew it was forced casualness. “It’s going really well,” I said brightly.

“You’re not bothered that it’s a low-level job?”

A little bit, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. “Nope,” I said, shaking my head for emphasis even though she couldn’t see me.

“Do you see Drew much?”

I’d told her about me and Drew breaking up. She said his name really delicately, like she didn’t want to startle me. I didn’t think I was
that
messed up about it. “Not too much.” I paused. “I actually went on a date last night. A guy I met at work.” Well, it wasn’t really a date, but she didn’t need to know that.

She hesitated. “Isn’t it a little soon?”

I felt like banging my head against the wall. I’d hoped she would take a date as a good sign. Like I wasn’t dwelling on the breakup. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.

These conversations were part of the reason I’d moved out. I always felt like a failure when she started asking me this stuff and that hint of worry crept into her voice. I could just imagine her peering at me if I was home.

“It was just a casual thing,” I said. “We probably won’t even go out again.”

“What’s his name?”

“Evan.”

“And do you know much about him?”

This was starting to feel like an interrogation. I was just waiting for the bright lights to shine in my face.

If she was concerned for my safety, it was unnecessary—I couldn’t have been safer with Evan. I’d thrown myself at him with a handbag full of glow-in-the-dark condoms, and he’d still managed to walk away. He was responsible.

Or not that into me.

Walking into the office on Monday morning was like walking to the front of the classroom for a speech. I’d hoped when I’d graduated college that horrible my-palms-are-clammy-and-I-need-to-pee feeling had been done away with for good.

I was wrong.

This must have been punishment for drinking too much whiskey.

When I arrived Evan was already in his office. He didn’t look at me as I scurried by, nearly stumbling in my haste to get to the cubicles.

I kept my head ducked low as I typed. And when, a few minutes after I’d sat down, my computer dinged to indicate I’d just received a new e-mail, I jolted in my chair.