The Wild One (17 page)

“Yeah. It's like he's always somewhere in my head, ready to step into my thoughts.”

Neither of us needs to explain ourselves any further. We both totally understand what the other means. I start kissing him again. I'm sleepy and sticky, but right now, I don't care. I just want to kiss him more. I never thought I could feel so relaxed and in control when it came to sex. My virginity was such an albatross for years, and then my first time with Eric was just the worst. But sex with Joe is just … it's
fucking great.

Joe pulls away. “Can I ask you a serious question?”

“Sure.”

“Will you marry me?”

“What?” I choke the word out, suddenly very awake.

“I need a Green Card to stay in the States. I don't want to go back to Ireland, but my visa ends in a few months, so I figured—”

I sit up so fast that I nearly fall off the bed. “No! I mean, I can't—”

“Relax, I'm just messing with you,” Joe says. “Maybe I'll go home to Ireland. I'll board the plane and be welcomed by the dulcet tones of the Irish air crew. I'll fall in love with the one named Colleen. We'll have eleven children and live happily ever after…” Joe sighs. “I'd rather stay in New York.”

“If Potstill Prom makes enough money, I bet Gary will get you a visa,” I say, lying back down. There's enough light coming in my attic window from the streetlamps outside that I can just make out the outline of his face

“Right. Like our little party is going to turn everything around,” says Joe, defeated. “Coco, face it. The bar is dead.”

“Don't be negative. The prom will be a huge success, Gary will rebrand the bar as a music venue, and he'll ask you to be the music venue guy—”

“I don't want to be the music venue guy, I just want to be a music guy.”

I smile, pulling him closer. Joe reaches out, tracing a line with his finger from my lips, along my jaw, down my neck, and then we start kissing, and …

I know what you're thinking, but Topher doesn't even cross my mind. Lust is different. Everyone always talks about your heart versus your head. With me it's more like my heart versus my, uh, vajayjay.

Maybe it's strange to crush on one guy and sleep with another, but I can't help myself.

I like being with Joe.

I'm having a good time.

And he is too. He's a big boy.

He knows the rules of this game: we're just using each other temporarily. Men like him are always using women, right? Like how Eric used me. It's just the way it is. So now we're just using each other. This way, no one gets hurt.

Just as things get, uh, intense, Pia crashes through my door.

“Coco? Oh, shit!” She immediately U-turns, cracking up. “Sorry! Coco, I need your help.”

“It's fine!” I immediately push Joe off of me, sit up, grab a T-shirt from the floor, and switch on my bedside lamp. “Just give me a minute to get dressed.”

Joe gasps at me in pretend outrage, mouths “what about this?” and points at his, uh, you know, erectile nondysfunction. I try not to laugh and mouth “later.” He mouths back “when?” and I start giggling uncontrollably.

“Are you two done?” says Pia.

She turns around. Joe grabs the sheet to cover himself just in time.

“Jesus. Do you always barge in here at one
A.M
.?”

“This is about Aidan, you guys. I need to win him back.” Pia is very dramatic when she wants to be.

“Why do you want him back?” asks Joe.

“Why? What do you mean,
why
?”

“Well, you cheated on him. That tends to be a sign that something is wrong.”

“Don't you dare judge me, Irish!” Pia's face is suddenly lit with fury. “I love Aidan. I made a mistake. I'm a dick. Okay? It will never happen again, ever. I need him to know that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Totally sure,” says Pia. “I've been crying almost nonstop ever since we broke up. I feel sick with grief about hurting him. He won't even answer my calls. I just want a second chance—”

“Second chances never work,” Joe interrupts. I look at him in surprise. I've never heard him sound so harsh. “I've been cheated on. I gave her a second chance. And she cheated on me again.”

Pia's voice cracks. “But that's not me. Hurting him is the worst thing I've ever done. Knowing that he's in pain because of something I did … I almost can't bear it. But he's in New York just for one night, for a work thing, and I want to ask him to forgive me. And I need everyone's help to do it. Angie and Madeleine are coming, and we're picking up Julia on the way. But I need you two too.”

Pia sounds so earnest. I nudge Joe with my shoulder. He glances at me, and I can read the message in his eyes. But she's my friend. And he should trust me.

Joe sighs and looks back at Pia. “We're in.”

Within half an hour, we're all in Pia's food truck, Toto, driving across the Brooklyn Bridge. It's a crappy old former ice cream truck, a sort of cartoon pig pink color, and these days she has far nicer food trucks to drive. But she still loves Toto best.

Joe and I are riding up front with Pia, and Madeleine and Angie are in the back.

“Is it safe to have them back there?” asks Joe. “Are there seat belts?”

“Oh, grow a pair.” Pia changes gears with a clunk, and steps on the accelerator. She's become extremely proficient at driving food trucks this past year and does it with a sort of Formula One laid-back aggression.

Joe changes tack. “Can we put the air on? It must be a hundred degrees.”

“Do you whine like a little bitch in bed too? Open the window.”

Joe gives me a mock scared look and winds the window down.

There's a thump on the wall behind us.

Pia changes gears again, pumping the clutch like she's stamping out a fire, and makes a sharp turn up, taking us up toward Midtown.

“Man, I want a cigarette,” Pia mutters. “I'm so fucking nervous.”

“Do you want me to get you one?” I say. “I can buy some. Stop at a bodega.”

“I can't smoke in the food truck! I'm a responsible adult and shit.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Joe smirk.

Pia pulls up to a corner, and Julia bounds toward us, still wearing her work clothes, complete with her building security pass around her neck. I calculate quickly: it's after midnight. That means she worked about eighteen hours today, at least. She opens the truck door and seems surprised to see Joe and me sitting in front.

Julia's face falls. “What is he doing here? I thought it was just us.”

“He is the cat's mother,” says Joe.

“He's with me,” I say protectively. Julia raises an eyebrow.

“So I have to sit in the
back
? In my
pantsuit
?”

“What, are you and your
pantsuit
too good for my food truck now?” Pia rolls her eyes.

“No…” Julia glances behind her. “I just don't want anyone I work with to see. They're brutal about shit like this.”

She does a quick 360, making sure no one is watching, and runs around the back of the truck. I hear the door opening and closing, and moments later, a double thump indicates we're good to go.

“Aidan is staying at the Ace Hotel,” says Pia. “It's on Twenty-ninth.”

“Are you going the right way?” Joe looks doubtful.

Pia arches an eyebrow. “Excuse me? I basically drive around Manhattan for a living. Evens go east.”

“Huh?”

“You drive east on Manhattan streets with even numbers—twenty-eight, thirty, thirty-two. And you drive west on Manhattan streets with odd numbers. With exceptions.” Pia shifts the truck into gear. “Pay attention, little man. You might just learn something.”

Joe shoots me an alarmed look, and I fight back the urge to giggle. I feel like Joe and I are in this together, somehow. Like he's my partner in this group adventure.

Once we get to the Ace Hotel, Pia reverse parks with skilled precision.

“Okay, team!” she shouts. “Let's move it.”

Joe and I get out of the food truck just in time to see Angie step out of the back, walk straight out to the middle of the street, stop, and put her hand out right in front of her.

A yellow cab screeches to a halt, stopping inches from her knees.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” The cabdriver is irate.

“Thank you so much!” Angie calls sweetly. “Can you help us out? I need someone big and strong to lift these speakers up on top of my friend's truck!”

Madeleine and Julia are pulling out a microphone and stand from the back of the truck.
Huh?

“Did we bring an extension lead?” Julia is saying.

“What the hell is going on?” asks Joe, just as Pia charges up to us. “I thought you were apologizing to him—”

Pia interrupts. “Joe. Coco. You need to go inside, get Aidan's room number, go to his room, and convince him to come downstairs. But don't just call him. He'll hang up. You have to convince him in person.”

“Why are we doing this in the middle of the night?” says Joe.

“Because I only thought of it an hour ago, and he leaves tomorrow.” Pia's face is serious. “Look, I know this seems stupid. But I have to try. He's ignoring my e-mails and my calls, and I couldn't turn up and just beg. I need to
show
him how sorry I am.”

Joe stares at her for a second and then nods. “I understand. We'll get him.”

“This reminds me of something,” I say, as we walk into the cavernous, dark lobby. “Oh! I know! Courtly love, you know, knights in shining armor writing sonnets and doing brave deeds to demonstrate their devotion. Only I guess that makes Pia the knight and Aidan her damsel…”

I am slightly out of breath. Joe has frog-marched me all the way to the concierge desk.

“Good evening to you both,” says Joe, his Irish charm out in full force. “My name is Aidan, and this is my brand-new fiancée, Coco.”

The hipster-model hybrids working the desk burst into applause.

“And we accidentally dropped our room key card in the Hudson. You see, I proposed on a boat.”

I smile ecstatically, trying to look drunk and engaged. “We just had so much champagne…”

“What room number are you?” asks the concierge, just as Joe pretends to answer his phone.

“Um … I can't remember, so much has happened today! The last name is Carr?” I try to smile with newly betrothed joy. “My new last name! Or maybe not. I mean, it's kind of old-fashioned to take your husband's last name, don't you think? Besides, I like my name. Plus, I have a career to think about.”

The concierge—already sick of us, just more annoying drunk people in his life—nods and takes out a key card for me. “Twelve twenty-four.”

Joe grabs the key card, dips me into a kiss, winks ostentatiously at the concierge, and whisks me away.

“‘Plus, I have a career to think about' is one of the most hilarious ad libs I've ever heard,” whispers Joe, as we wait for the elevator.

“Especially since I don't.” I sigh. “I have no career.”

“You will, my lovely wife-to-be,” says Joe, brushing some hair out of my face. “Just give it time.”

I grin up at him, and he winks.

A nervous flutter rushes up from deep in my tummy.

No.

No no no no
nooooo …

I know this feeling. It's that thing. That nervous fluttery thing. The thing that makes me think I like Joe, I mean, not just like him, but
like
like him.

As we walk into the elevator, my brain is suddenly in free fall.

Was our whole casual sex thing leading to something else, something bigger and better? I felt that strange
together
feeling in the truck. Is that what this is? Do I
like
like Joe? More than Topher?

Oh, shit.

I feel shy. I feel tongue-tied. I can't speak. I can't look at him.

Joe plugs the key card into the security slot and presses twelve.

“What's that?” I ask, my voice shy and whispery.

“Security,” Joe explains. “You can't get to your floor without your key card.”

The moment the elevator doors close, Joe grabs me with a little growl.

“Just in case they're watching on the closed-circuit camera.”

Joe pushes me against the side of the elevator, holding my hands against the wall, and kisses me very slowly and deliberately.

Wow. This is hot.

“I wonder how much it is to get a room here…” he mutters.

The elevator stops, Joe pulls himself away from me, and I nearly fall over.

He takes my hand as we walk down the hallway, and I suddenly wonder how it is I've never noticed his hands before. They are very large, with long fingers and a wide, flat palm. They are the sexiest hands I've ever seen in my entire life.… Oh, God, my palms are sweating, I wonder if he can tell.

We get to room 1224 and knock loudly a few times.

Aidan answers, wearing a T-shirt and pajama pants, squinting in the light.

“Coco?” he asks, confused. “What are you doing here?”

No wonder Pia wants him back. Even pale and sleepy, Aidan is tall and handsome and kind of perfect.

But next to Joe, he's almost
too
perfect. Joe is taller and bigger than Aidan, and significantly scruffier. Aidan never has a hair out of place. He's impeccably groomed. I can't imagine him ever losing control. But I prefer Joe's look. More real. My God, I think I like Joe, I really, really like him—

Pay attention, Coco, for Pete's sake.

“Hi, Aidan!” I say cheerfully, then realize I need to look serious. “Um, good evening. You need to come with us. Pia needs to see you. It's urgent.

Panic flashes across his face. “Pia? Is she okay? What happened?”