“Will you make an exception this one time? For me?” His smile is something filthy. “I’ll buy both shots.”
I can hear my vagina screaming at me. “Fine,” I say to him.Shhh, I say to my vagina. He orders us shots of what looks like the nicest tequila behind the bar.Rich, too?!
He looks deep into my eyes, well, as best he can, since a perfect curl falls in front of one of his. It’s a million dollar shot that has me looking around for movie cameras. “Cheers, Mia,” he says, downing his shot, and I take the opportunity to look at his sharp jaw covered with the perfect amount of dark stubble, watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows.
My nipples get hard when I see his tongue dart out to lick the salt on his elegant, deeply veined hand, likely tanned from a day on the beach.
“Are you going to take yours?” he asks me, smiling at me knowingly, and I snap out of it. I down my shot, forgo the salt, and slam the glass down onto the bar.
“So, are you from around here?” Mystery Emo Man tells me.
“What?” I snap, like a turtle.
“Are you from?—”
I’m grateful for the warmth of the tequila as it moves into my stomach. “I mean, I was, originally. Well, actually, no. I grew up in Princeton, but I live in Brooklyn now. I spend summers in Wildwood. My parents and their friends have had a vacation house here since we were kids. I’m staying here with them. And my brother Leo. And their son Elias. Who’s also my roommate. That guy over there.” I’m rambling through the domiciliary journey of my youth, the tequila making me a little too loose. Can’t fucking win.
He raises a perfect eyebrow. “I live in the city, too. West Village. Born and raised.”
Yessss, celebrates my vagina. I stop the frenetic rehashing of my verbal diarrhea and look at him. I’m in the middle of harvesting and gathering and mustering all of my womanly willpower to say something flirty, witty, sexy, or all of the above, when I am interrupted.
“I know you!” my brother Leo half-shouts, smacking the mystery man on the back, Elias following right behind him. They flank him on either side, and I remind myself to poison their next drinks. “I’ve seen you in my office building. What are you doing here?”
“What’s your name?” Elias chimes in dangerously from his other side. I notice he’s doing the thing where he makes himself look bigger. It’s an impressive task, since he’s already like six foot two, and his side gig outside of teaching is being a personal trainer, so he’s already ripped, working out after every session he has (“I have to be a walking billboard for my own business, Meems,” he explained once, while I poked at his biceps, disgusted.). It makes Hot Emo Man, who has more of a slender, elegant strength, look a teenage boy, especially standing between him and my over-six-feet-tall brother.
Mystery Emo Man looks at me when he answers. “My name’s Adam,” he tells me, and of course he has a hot, biblical name and not something like Larry or Doug.
“Well, Adam,” Leo says, placing an arm around Adam’s shoulders, and not in a friendly way. “This is my baby sister, Mia?—”
“—who is a consenting, twenty-nine-year-old woman and very available for a good fucking,” both my vagina and I tell Adam, his initial snub now entirely forgotten, my dignity gracefully dancing away.
Elias looks at me like I’ve sprouted a second head.
Leo, as usual, pretends I haven’t spoken at all. “So just in case you’re a serial killer or something,” he tells Adam warmly, as if he is thanking him for donating a kidney, “we’re all sleeping in the same house, and we will come find her if she doesn’t come home,” he winks. “Right, Elias?”
Elias is staring at my mouth like he’s never seen it before.
“Elias?” Leo tries again.
Elias exits his coma. He blinks, clearing his throat. “Right.” He pats Adam gently on the cheek. “Nice to meet you,” he says. “Hope to never see you again.”
They both wander away, and Adam and I look at one another.
“I’m so sorr?—”
“It’s okay,” he says gracefully. “I have a little sister. I get it.”
“I’m sure you don’t disrespect her by treating her like a child,” I grumble.
He thinks for a moment. “No, I don’t think I do.”
Wow, look, it’s my soulmate.
He sighs. “I’m leaving tonight, anyway. I’m headed back to the city.”
My vagina wails, not caring if it’s true or not.
“But…” he grabs a napkin and a pen that’s laying on the bar. “Here’s my number. Text me when you’re back. When you’re available,” he says, and my face heats at the reference. “This way we can avoid the serial killing,” he tacks on, standing up and getting ready to go.
