Love by the Book (20 page)

I nodded again and ran up the stairs after him, getting a lungful of fresh air into me just before I started to black out.

Three episodes of
Justified
and nary a hand held or a thigh grazed later, I saw Frisco stifle a yawn. It was the moment of truth: could I stay or would I go?

I got up from my side of the couch and stretched in what I hoped was an alluring way. “Well, I guess I should get going . . . ?” I let the question dangle in the air for a minute, like so much pickled shark.

“Yeah, I'm pretty beat myself,” he said, running his hand over his stubbly chin.

My heart sank, but I wasn't yet defeated. I leaned over his lap, ostensibly to give Billy a scratch but really to give Frisco the chance to look down my T-shirt.

He leaned away and gave Billy ample scratching room, which the dog appreciated and I did not. My little light of hope was flickering.

“Okay, well, thanks for dinner. It's my turn next time.”

“No problem. I'll walk you to the door.”

I shuffled down the hallway like a man on death row.

He opened the door and turned to let me out. “Thanks for coming all this way, Lauren. You're a great girl.”

“And you're a great guy,” I said. This was it. This was my chance: it was rape-kiss or nothing. I had to take it. I tilted my head and lunged for his face.

Frisco deftly caught my mouth with his cheek and pulled me in for a hug. “Be careful out there. Let me know when you get home. I'll see you in a couple of weeks at the market—you'll get a prime piece of hakari, I promise!!” he called before he shut the door.

“Whatever,” I muttered. “Night.”

I slunk away into the darkness, leaving the smell of pickled shark and defeat in my wake.

Lucy was away for the weekend with Tristan, so I had the flat to myself, and after last night's hug-and-run, I needed someone to talk to. I distracted myself by going to the gym for an hour or so (though not particularly successfully, as every time I picked up a weight or stepped onto a machine, I'd remember the hug and stop to mutter a few expletives under my breath).

Back at home, I sat on the couch and checked my watch obsessively until it was late enough that I knew Meghan would be awake in Maine. I stepped onto the balcony, lit a cigarette and dialed her number.

“Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up,” I chanted into the phone.

“Hello?”

“Thank
GOD
! I have to talk to you about this American guy. He's a billionaire tech guy and I did loads of research on him to prepare for the date because the book told me to but I can't figure out what a bitcoin is and I hate pickled shark and he's super hot and smart but all he ever does is hug me.”

“Whoa! Slow down there, cowboy—deep breaths. Now, what about bitcoin?”

I calmed myself enough to give Meghan a relatively coherent account of the situation with Frisco.

“What am I doing wrong? I'm following all of the book's advice, but it's just not working!”

Meghan sighed. “I hate to say it but . . . maybe he's just not that into you?”

“How am I supposed to know? I haven't read that book yet!”

“Not the book, numbskull, the concept. I don't want to harsh your buzz, but maybe he's not interested.”

I felt a stabbing pain in my chest and tried my best to brush it aside. “But he asked me out again! And when we said good night last night, he said he'd see me soon!”

“Maybe he's gay.”

“That's your answer for everything.”

“Look, you're amazing. You're smart and beautiful and funny. This guy . . . if he doesn't see how great you are, he's not as perfect as you think he is.”

I mumbled noncommittally.

I heard her take a deep breath down the phone. “So, I saw Dylan again.”

My stomach contracted. “Oh yeah? How's he doing?”

A pause. “Look, I've got to tell you something, otherwise you're going to find out on Facebook or some shit.”

I knew immediately that whatever it was, I didn't want to know. “Do you have to?”

A sigh. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Better come right out with it.”

“He's seeing Kelly Leibler.”

“
That
Kelly Leibler?”

“The one and only.”

“Oh.” My stomach contracted further and I could taste a little bit of the morning's coffee in the back of my throat. Kelly had been the golden girl in high school: blond, tiny, permanently tanned, and mean as a box of snakes. I had spent my formative years skulking around in Doc Martens and black eyeliner, filling journals with stories imagining the demise of Kelly and the other golden girls. And now she had Dylan.

“They're shacked up together, apparently. I hear she moved into the house a few weeks ago.”

I was silent for a minute.

“Sorry, maybe I shouldn't have told you, but I figured it was better to hear it from me. She looks like shit, if that makes you feel any better. Saw them together at Sangillo's—all those years on the tanning bed have started to catch up with her.”

I tried for a minute to picture her as a wizened old crone, but it didn't do much to dent the feeling of free-falling emptiness. I took a deep breath. “I'm glad you told me. And I'm happy for him. He deserves to be happy.”

“C'mon, it's me. You don't have to do this bullshit.”

“I am! I'm very happy for him. I hope they have a long and fruitful life together and die in their sleep within seconds of each other, like that old couple in
The Notebook
.”

I heard a long sigh. “Kid . . .”

“Okay, fine. I hate it, okay? He should be on the Island of Lost Men where he belongs! But here I am, getting fucking
HUGS
from a fucking
YOGA ENTHUSIAST
and he's living happily ever after with Kelly fucking Leibler.”

“Feel better now?”

I sighed. “You know I have no right to say anything about what he does with his life.”

“Yeah, I do. But I know that doesn't make it any easier to hear he's with someone else.”

We said our good-byes and hung up. I knew it was none of my business—I was the one who left him, after all—but the idea of another woman in the house we'd shared together, another woman taking my side of the bed . . . it was terrible. But more than that, I felt like I was watching one more person make the leap into adulthood while I regressed into extended adolescence.

I grabbed my laptop, already filled with self-loathing for what I was about to do.

You see, Facebook and I have an abusive relationship. No matter how many pictures of other people's holidays and babies I'm forced to slog through, I keep coming back for more. I'd log on with the intention of having a quick peek and find myself flicking through photographs of the cousin of someone I went to elementary school with. “Why? Why am I looking at these?” I would ask myself as I clicked through to the next reel.

But still, I came back. And now here I was, furtively searching for photographic evidence of Dylan and Kelly while feeling increasingly gross about myself.

It took some work as Dylan had unfriended me when I'd left and Kelly was using a nickname, but eventually I found it: a photo of the two of them sitting on my old front porch, blond and tanned and smiling, holding a couple of Budweisers out to the camera.

She still looked as mean as a scorpion behind that smile, and I was pleased to see that Meghan hadn't been lying about her overtanning: her face looked like a piece of untreated rawhide. And was she wearing a scrunchie? I leaned in for a closer inspection. Yep, definitely a scrunchie. I had to admit, I felt better. She was still super cute, and I was pretty sure her boobs had somehow grown even bigger, but . . . c'mon: a scrunchie? Who did she think she was, Kelly Kapowski?

I shut the laptop and spread out on the couch, determined to nap my way into oblivion. I figured if I could get a couple hours of sleep under my belt, when I woke up it would be a respectable time to start drinking.

I shifted slightly on the cushions and felt something sharp dig into my thigh.

“What the . . .” I felt around and found the culprit: a long chain with little clamps at either end. I figured it was a necklace of Lucy's and stuck it on the bookshelf.

I flopped back on the couch and drifted off, dreaming of an army of blond zombies intent on hugging me to death.

I had gone for my usual Saturday run and was sitting in the living room having my usual Saturday enormous wedge of cake when I heard a noise coming from Lucy's bedroom. I figured she'd slipped in when I was out running.

I hadn't seen her in days—she'd been working nonstop and had been sleeping at Tristan's most nights.

“Luce?” I called. “Is that you?”

More rustling, followed by an agonized cry.

“Lucy? Are you okay?”

No response. I got up and put my ear to her door. “Lucy?”

A whimper, and a bang.

“Luce, seriously, you're freaking me out. Can you come out here?”

There was a pause. The door suddenly flew open, revealing Lucy in a state of extremely high agitation. Her room, which is normally a bastion of yellow, floral-printed neatness, was a mess. Clothes were strewn across the bed, hanging from every edge of the wardrobe and covering most of the floor.

But that wasn't the weirdest thing. The weirdest thing was that all the clothes were black and seemingly made of leather or some sort of synthetic. I thought I saw some
PVC
in there, too.

“Oh, Lauren. You have to help me!”

“What the fuck is going on? It looks like the Addams Family blew up in here!”

“Oh, babe, I'm in trouble. I've got to find an outfit for this party Tristan's taking me to tonight and nothing looks right!”

“That doesn't sound like such a terrible emergency. What kind of party is it?”

Lucy looked coy. “It's a special sort of party.”

“That's not helpful. Wait—is this the party you and he fought about the other week?”

“Yes, and I've agreed to go now and it's very important to Tristan and if I don't get the outfit right he'll be so disappointed!”

“Jesus, take a breath! What kind of outfit do you need? Is it, like, fancy? Black tie?”

“Not exactly, though there is an element of fancy dress involved . . .”

I rolled my eyes. “Can you just tell me what's going on so I can help you?”

“Fine, but you have to promise not to tell anyone. And you can't let on that you know anything when you see Tristan.”

“Okay! Okay!”

Lucy led me to the couch and sat down across from me. “Tristan has . . . particular tastes in things.”

I thought of Frisco and his hakari. “Rich people usually do.”

“This is a bit different. It's sort of . . . sexual.”

“Ooh! Exciting!”

“You see, Tristan has a very important and stressful job, so he likes to unwind when he's at home.”

“Are you doing a magazine profile on the guy or are you telling me what he's into in bed?”

Lucy's eyes narrowed. “Fine. He's into . . .
spanking
,” she whispered. “Whips and leather and all that.”

“Kinky! The old guy has life in him yet.”

“Babe, this is serious!”

“Sorry, sorry. I know it is.” I put my hand over hers. “Are you okay with being spanked? Because if he's crossing a line and hurting you, I'll—”

She cut me off. “No, Lauren. I'm not the one being spanked.”

The penny took a moment to drop, and then fell with a clang. “What, so
you
spank
him
? He's into
that
?”

Lucy looked mildly affronted. “He likes it when I'm in charge. He's the boss at work so he doesn't want to be the boss in the bedroom. Or something like that.”

“Huh. So how into it is he? Is it, like, every time?”

Lucy hid her face behind her hands. “He has a room.”

“What do you mean, he has a room?”

“A room! Filled with paddles and whips and things! There's a little box in there that he locks himself in when he feels he's been naughty. He calls it Aunt Dorothy's Cupboard.”

I tried to suppress a snicker. “Why the fuck does he call it that?”

“I don't bloody know! I think it's to do with some mean old great aunt of his.”

“Okay . . . so what happens in Aunt Dorothy's Cupboard?”

“I lock him in there and make him beg to get out. Admit that he was a very naughty boy and all that.”

Suddenly, a lightbulb went on. I ran over to the bookshelf and started rummaging around until I found the chain I'd placed there weeks ago.

I turned and showed it to her. “This isn't a necklace, is it?”

She went a deep plum color. “Oh God.”

It was a nipple clamp. I had accidentally sat on a nipple clamp in my own home.

“I thought it was a necklace! I thought you were getting all punk in your old age!”

I started to laugh and Lucy couldn't hold out for very long; soon we were both in a state of high hysterics.

“I can't believe you've been spanking him all along and you haven't told me!” I said between convulsions.

“I just couldn't bring myself to say it aloud! What was I meant to say: ‘Lauren, the love of my life has turned me into a reluctant dominatrix?'”

“Oh my God, that's it! That's the name of your autobiography!
Reluctant Dominatrix: The Lucy Johnson Story
.”

That set us off again for a good five minutes.

“Seriously, though, are you okay with it?”

Lucy shrugged. “Sort of, I guess. It's kind of sexy being in control. Plus, if he gets on my tits, I can leave him in Aunt Dorothy's Cupboard for an hour or so and watch the telly. Anyway, enough of this—I still need your help with finding an outfit for this party.”