“Since we’re doing big apologies, is now a good time to talk about the rest of high school?” It’s mostly a joke, but I’m currently brainless.
Clang. Wrong move, buddy. Her steel reinforcements slam down. She sighs deeply and opens her door. “Let’s end today on a positive note,” she says, then shuts the door. She walks aroundto the trunk and gets her own luggage, starts rolling it up to the pool house. “Have fun tonight. Later.”
I rub my neck to help alleviate some of the whiplash and bang my head on the steering wheel a few times. Get out of the car, load all my shit into the house, then get back in and start driving.
I’m almost to the restaurant when I realize I unpacked the Pacojet that was meant for them. Sometimes our lab gets random kitchen tools, and we promised this Durham restaurant this extra Pacojet we had lying around. The thing purees deep-frozen ingredients into super smooth textures without needing to thaw them, so the head chef wants to give it a try with sorbets.
Thirty minutes later, I’m aggravated as hell and pulling back into the driveway. I jump out of the car, don’t even bother to close the door, run in the house, and grab the damn thing.
On my way back out, I glance over at the pool house, wondering what Annie’s up to and if she’s gonna be all set for dinner. Maybe I could ask the kitchen to whip her up a little something and I can take it back for her. I’m here already, so I may as well go ask her.
The pool house is angled away from me, so I gotta round the side to get to the front door.
I peek in through one of the windows as I walk by.
And then I die.
Once I’m resurrected, I sit on the ground. Sit right there on the ground, crisscross fuckin’ applesauce, because my blood andsoul and dignity have drained out of the top of my body at lightning speed and are promptly replaced by adrenaline and now I am dizzy and a little bit nauseous.
Am I fucked?
Because Annie “My Worst Fuckin’ Nightmare” Li is sitting on the couch with her back to the window. And Annie Li’s laptop is open on the coffee table in front of her.
And Annie Li is watching me cook bacon and eggs in the nude.
FOURTEEN
Nico
Fuuuuuck.
Does she know? Is she fucking with me? Has she known this whole time? Did she put two and two together that food chemistry is really freakin’ niche? Is that where the “own your choices” shpiel came from?
There’s no way, though. No fuckin’ way! If I know anything about Annie from the four fuckin’ days we’ve been trapped together, it’s that there is no version of Annie—grouchy, gentle, friendly, crying, or otherwise—that would give up an opportunity to fuckin’ shit all over me for having a paywalled dick.
I gotta know.
How do I find out?
Because I have a death wish, I crawl closer to the window.
I hear myself through the wall, hear my academic fancy-pants voice talking about the coagulation of egg proteins.She doesn’t recognize that voice. She’s never heard it before.
“There’s just something about his dick that makes me want to put it in my mouth,” Annie suddenly declares, and I lie downright there in the dirt under the window, fully fuckin’ horizontal, and I perish.
“Glad to see he’s all healed!” a voice says. Who?
I cover my face with both hands and take deep breaths.
“Someone needs to make a cast of this man’s cock and put it in the Louvre,” someone else says. Someone old. Someone who sounds like a grandma. Yuck. I mean, I’m flattered but… yuck.
“There’s still a little blotch on his weird surprised duck tattoo,” another voice says. I rub it. That splatter messed with the color a little bit ‘cause it healed and scabbed all weird. Poor little mallard.
Someone shrieks dramatically. “I swear my blood pressure goes through the roof every time he turns around,” someone else says. Also someone old.
What in the messed up, Golden Girls pornography watch party is this?
There is a lot fuckin’ goin’ on right now. Too fuckin’ much. I’m currently feeling a hundred different feelings, lying in the dirt under Annie’s window, listening to her and her elderly girl band salivate over my naked body and wax poetic about my dick.
