Joy of Sex With Your Ex
Lex
Aweek ambles by,and it’s all I can do to stave off Axel and that date I promised. But it’s Friday. He’s scheduled me off for the night and booked a table at Enigma—only the finest dining experience in the tri-city area. So, of course, I couldn’t say no. I’ve already selected my navy dress and matching heels with the straps that lace up past my ankles. It will be cold in the dining hall, so I’ll bring my leather jacket, the one with the spikes running up and down my chest which will also provide a decent barrier if he decides that treating me to a meal entitles him to get frisky. And seeing that he’s a man, itwill.
I’m just about to get ready for my culinary rendezvous with a vegetable ratatouille crepe brimming with goat cheese, but before I do so, I feed Strudel two heaping scoops of his favorite lamb kibble. On nights that I eat well, I make sure Strudel does, too. Sure, the world might say Axel is my date, but he’s more of a transportation system, a conduit between me and one of my favorite meals. He’s nothing more than the middleman in this scenario. It’s not a real date. I would never date Axel Collins. I swore I would never go out with him again, and I’m not breaking a single vow I might have made to myself way back when. This is just sort of a—I step into the living room and groan—mess.
Just the sight of my poor disheveled home makes me grunt with discontent. That horrid bridal shower I inadvertently threw Low a few weeks back may have ended, but I still have one party guest who refuses to find the door. After Raven confessed that her things were in her car and that she was essentially homeless, she’s been holed up here ever since. Suddenly homeless? Living out of her crappy car? She has so much in common with Low it’s scary. I can see why they’ve christened one another “besties”. God, I hate that word. It’s perky and annoying and it belongs solely within the confines of a sorority. Nevertheless, Raven has magically transformed my neat as a pin home into a hoarder’splayground.
It turns out Raven isn’t so much a neat freak after all. She’s a master manipulator is what she is. She’s an Oscar to my Felix. In a single week, she transformed my Zen little paradise painted in calming hues of blues and greens and deconstructed it into an ode to a frat house complete with odd splatters of color dotting the floor as her clothes slowly migrate toward the laundryroom.
She’s curled up in a ball on the couch, clad in gray sweats, glasses that keep sliding down her nose, an ice cream bar pinned between her lips and a slice of pizza in her other hand. She’s so engrossed in that silly rom-com she keeps playing on a loop she doesn’t even know I’m in the sameairspace.
A tower of pizza boxes stacked near the sofa catches my eye. “You’re insane,” I belt out the words indisbelief.
“I’m insane? I don’t have an entire army of people protesting my actions. I’m not the one with protesters on mylawn.”
I glare at both her and the leaning tower of pizza boxes. “Please tell me this is some sort of performance piece you’re pulling. Or that the pizza recycling bin waiting to happen is installation art because God and I both know you mentioned your specialty was making my tiny home lookunlivedin.”
Raven doesn’t take her eyes off the screen. “It was. It is. I mean the art, and the unlived in part.” She says so many nonsensical words at once, and the urge to smack her over the head with one of those pizza boxes comes on strong. She shrugs it off with her crooked ponytail lopping to the side, her slacked sweats pulled high on her waist as she wilts on the couch, craning her neck past me to see the televisionscreen.
“But I can’t seem to get another job. I can’t even get aninterview,” she whines. “Something tells me if I ran naked through the Arctic tundra I couldn’t catch acold.”
“Oh, boo-hoo. Cry me an icy river. Quit feeling sorry for yourself and get a paycheck already. Flap your wings down to The Pelican with me. I’m sure Axel will have you bussing tables before dinner rush.” I cringe at the thought of yet another waitress eating my lunch or dinner as it were. It’s bad enough that nutcase yippy-yappy puppy that I’m sure belongs in a sorority house somewhereAbby Wilcoxkeeps weaseling her way into my piggy bank. Twice last week she snaked two of my tables. Just snatched them from under me, claiming she didn’t realize I had that section. It’s odd how she gets her sectional wires crossed when there’s a party of ten or more—leaving me with her lousy date night couples with the sleazy male quasi-flirting with me while he’s too cheap to spring for two entire meals. Split an appetizer for dinner, my ass. I hope the losers never get laidagain.
“I can’t work at The Pelican.” Raven takes a healthy bite of her waxy looking pizza. Bleh. You couldn’t pay me to wipe my bottom with it, let alone push it past my lips. “My brother owns the place. It’d beweird.”
“What you call weird others refer to as employment. The tips alone will keep you in cardboard pizza for a month.” My heart wrenches at the thought of losing my new moneymaking gig. I certainly don’t plan on working there forever. Myexowns the place. Itisweird. Let’s get real. The only other way I can get this kind of money is if I steal it, and I’m too harebrained and terrified not to getcaught.
“My pizza funds are secure. An old frat boy I used to date gives me his employee discount. Believe you me, I’ve earnedit.”
“I’m afraid to ask how, so I won’t. Something tells me getting on all fours was involved.” I snap up a trail of rainbow colored tank tops and dump them onto her lap. “And feel free to tidy up any time you want. Be sure to have this place looking as if you never set foot in it by the time I get home tonight from mydate.”
“Date?” She balks at the idea through a mouthful of cheese wax. “Who the hell would want to date you? The only one off his rocker enough to even contemplate such a ball-busting move is—” She looks up at me and gasps so loud I’m half-hoping she’s inhaled the bolus churning in her mouth. Surely a lungful of crappy Italian food should qualify her for more hygienic quarters—say, thehospital?
“Are you kidding?” Her limbs scatter as if they were trying to find the quickest exit off herbody.
A knock erupts at the door before I can electrocute her with anotherword.
I head over and open it to find Low with her hair in a bouncy ponytail, a buoyant smile on her lips. “Long time no see, bestie!” She rings her arms around me in a strangulating hug. “Oh my God, I missed you likecrazy!”
“Relax.” I pluck her off me as she saunters on in and I entomb us inside lest the protesters meander up the walk as they’re prone to do. My God, don’t they have a home? Jobs? Children? Parole officers to check in with? “I’m just a girl you barely know, not a child you lost at themall.”
Low honks out a laugh before getting settled on the sofa next to Raven. “I know you all toowell.”
“Get this.” Raven gives Low a violent shove that nearly sends her flying off the couch. Nice. Break her arm before her wedding. Now that’s a bestie for you. “She’s going out with Axeltonight.”
Low looks up at me as if I just plunged a knife into her belly, and believe me, I’mtempted.
“With the Ax? As in Axel Collins, the ex who we were given strict instructions not to speak of? Axel Collins who not only had me arrested but was the ironic reason for that arrest Axel Collins? Are you off your medsagain?”
“As if I needed a single chemical to hold down the fort.” I smirk at the two of them all huddled together, ready for a night in with their plethora of soft porn. “Yes, Axel Collins. The jack-in-the-box that broke my heart.” I check my face in the mirror above the couch and note I’ll need a touch more blusher. I abhor looking pale in decent lighting, and Enigma not only has the best food, they have impeccable lighting capable of erasing decades off even the prunish offaces.
“Jack-in-the-box?” Raven looks to Low forexplanation.
“Read jackass.” She wrinkles her nose. “Lex hates expletives more than she hates poor Ax theex.”
“Not true,” I offer quickly. “It’s about an evensplit.”
