What is it about scars? It’s like they activate something in my DNA from my sixteenth-century ancestors when times were brash, fencing was all the rage, and scars were a sign of bravery—and hence something to get all hot and bothered about.
My silence speaks the kind of volume you get from a Harry Styles concert where fifty thousand hot and horny screaming fans sing along to every single word of every single song.
“He looked good,” I say, trying to cool my body down—it’s heated up a couple of degrees just thinking about him.
“That hot, huh?” Em says, reminding me that while I pulled off the performance of a lifetime as Xander’s girlfriend of eleven years, I cannot pull one over on my best friend. I ignore that comment as I make my way back to the change room. “Hey, why can’t you just wear your old UCLA T-shirt to bed like you usually do?”
“Because I don’t need to advertise our time together every time I see him,” I say, even though I’m the one with the memory of an elephant that not even drinking continuously through four years of university has managed to dull.
I go back to the dressing room and add the negligee to the growing “no way, get fucked, fuck off” pile. I turn to the next option. Lacy dusty-pink shorts and a cropped white T-shirt. “I don’t want him getting any ideas,” I say, trying try to get these shorts to sit straight on my hips and failing.
“And what about you?” she says as I give up and step out for my grading.
This time Em throws one hand over her mouth, not even bothering to cover up her true reaction. “You know I didn’t put that in your pile. It’s very … Forever 21?” she says, letting the laugh spill out.
I turn to face the mirror. She’s right. I look like I’m trying to avoid the inevitability of aging by wearing—or rather stuffing myself into—clothes that belong to a not quite legal teenager.
“Point taken,” I say. “One more.” I walk back to the change room, ignoring the camel toe that crept up in the five steps it took to get from the change room to the mirror. The things youths will wear to sacrifice comfort. I pick up the final item and inspect it. The summer flannel set with a red and white plaid pattern.
“Seriously, though. If I remember correctly, Xander wasn’t the one who cannonballed three pints of ice cream post-ghost. He did a number on you, Ash. How will you sleep next to him for an entire month straight?”
“You do not remember correctly,” I say, cutting in because the facts are always important. “I came home. We smoked. We got the munchies. We munched.”
“Really?” Em says dubiously.
“Well, I munched. You couldn’t stop laughing enough to put the spoon in your mouth,” I say, shaking my head at the lightweight that has and always will be Em. “Come on, it was eleven years ago. We’re not young anymore. Or dumb. We’re old. I’m poor. He can’t sleep. There’s nothing more to it.”
I throw on the flannel and inspect myself in the mirror. I mean, plaid is hanging off my body. This could work.
“So, you’re just going to …hang outwith him every night for four weeks?” she says, as I press the flannel against my chest, trying to create some sort of figure. Call it habit.
“Exactly,” I say, releasing the material and letting it return to swallowing me up whole.
“You know, that sounds a lot like dating someone,” Em says. “And as you never fail to remind me, you don’t date. Ever.”
“No, it sounds a like going to work with a coworker,” I say, concluding our conversation. But I’m not sure if even I’m convinced. It does sound a lot like dating someone without any of the benefits. Fucking hell.
I step out one final time.
“I wouldn’t bang you in that,” Em says at the sight of me.
“Perfect.”
CHAPTER SIX
I pull up to the Sleep Lab at five forty-fivePMon Friday and turn off the engine. I’m really doing this. I take off my sunglasses and am instantly hit with the glare of the sun on the horizon. Being smack-bang in the middle of summer, the sun won’t set for hours. It’s an absolute mystery to me why we’re here so early. I mean, no one is sleeping at sixPM,and they know it. What am I going to do with Xander for four hours in a 330 square-foot room until I finally fall asleep at the respectable time of tenPM?
Don’t answer that.
My phone pings with a missed call from my landlord. I delete the message, not needing the reminder that my rent is well past due.
Without the air conditioner on, the car immediately heats up, and that heat tries to convince me I shouldn’t be here. I should be in a beer garden at happy hour with Em nursing an ice-cold cider, beads of condensation rolling down the side of the glass as the warm air hits the cold surface, reaching its dewpoint, really demonstrating just how ice-cold and refreshing cider can be.
My bank account reminds me to unbuckle myself and get the fuck out of the car. I can drink cider anytime between the hours of 6:00AMand 6:00PM.
I didn’t message Xander during the week, though not from lack of trying. Every time I opened our message thread to send something, there he was. That photo of him at the Cardi B concert, hair all slicked back and sexy. Did I stare at this photo a little too long at times? Yes. For I am but a mere human woman, after all. It made me second-guess every message I could possibly send.
After opening the message thread this morning, you know, to refresh my memory as to who I’m getting back into bed with, a message popped up from him, checking to make sure I wasn’t bailing.
