ELIANA
fam·i·ly meal: /'fam(?)le mel/: noun
1: when restaurant staff gather to eat together before service begins.
2: the food and conversation shared amongst you, your best friend, and your boss’s best friend after you walk in on the latter two doing the Naked Frisky with each other. sometimes (but not always) accompanied by an unwanted glimpse of said boss’s best friend’s bare ass.
“Jesus Christ!” I yelp, slapping my hands over my eyes.
“Eliana!” Yasmin shrieks, scrambling for the sheets.
“What the fuck?!” Zeke roars, diving to cover himself.
I spin around so fast I nearly trip over my own feet. “I’m so sorry! I thought— Your phone— You didn’t?—!”
“Get out!” they both scream in unison.
I slam the door shut and press my back against it, heart going approximately a billion miles an hour. “I’m so, so sorry! I got worried when you didn’t answer and I thought maybe Brandon?—”
“Brandon isnot here!” Yasmin yells through the door.
“I can see that!” I yell back, then lower my voice to a frantic whisper. “Well, I can’tseethat anymore, thank God, because I’ve seen enough naked Zeke to last me a lifetime?—”
“Oh, screw you!” Zeke shouts.
“No thanks, you’re clearly busy in that department already!”
There’s muffled cursing and rustling from inside the bedroom. I hear drawers slamming, fabric swishing, and Yasmin repeatedly hissing something that sounds like “Where are my pants?”
I stare at the ceiling, click my heels three times like Dorothy in Oz, and try very hard to unsee what I just saw. It’s not working. My brain has evidently decided to immortalize the image.
“Okay,” Yasmin calls out, slightly breathless. “You can open the door now.”
I crack the door open cautiously. They’re both semi-clothed—Yasmin in an oversized Northwestern sweatshirt and leggings, Zeke in his jeans and nothing else, his chest still extremely bare.
I pointedly look at the ceiling. “So, um… Yeah.”
“Yeah,” says Yas.
“Yeah,” says Zeke.
I wince. “How long…?”
“First time—” he blurts at the same time that Yasmin says, “Since right after you left last weekend.”
“Wow,” I say.
“Wow,” Yas says.
“Wow,” Zeke says.
“I would very much like this moment to be over, please and thank you,” I mumble. “Maybe if we all just do everything we just did, but in reverse, time will sort of unwind itself?”
Zeke crosses his arms over his bare chest and leans against Yasmin’s dresser with a smirk that can only be described as obscenely smug. “I mean, if we’re rewinding, I should probably warn you, the first time was pretty vocal. You’re gonna wanna bring popcorn for the replay.”
“Zeke!” Yasmin throws a pillow at his head.
He catches it easily out of mid-air. “What? I’m just saying, if she’s gonna barge in and traumatize herself, she should at least know what she’s getting herself into. You invoked the names ofseveraldeities.”
