Gulliver Takes Five (2 page)

But a quick meet and greet with Grant Majors’s dick? THAT Christian might make time for.

Now it’s no joke. Before I can stop myself, I’m marching into the kitchen and digging under that pile of
Next
magazines, returning to the bedroom, and flinging the sealed canary-yellow envelope at him. “Happy FUCKING anniversary, asshole!”

“Anniversary?” He reaches down to pick up the card carefully, like there’s some delicate, valuable clue inside that will demystify the confusion between us. I’m simultaneously reaching up to the shelves in my closet, behind a stack of folded towels, and unearthing the plug he so dearly desires. Brighter, cleaner, crisper? My ass. I hurl it at him.

“Yes! We’ve been together for a month!”

He looks down at the card, and the plug, and I’m not sure he understands how either of them fit into what I’m saying yet, but then he looks back up and says, “You mean we MET a month ago...”

“And started dating. God, do you have to downplay everything?”

“Well, yeah, we’ve been seeing each other, but...anniversary? One month after meeting me? And you think that entitles you to go through my phone like we’re MARRIED? Sorry, but that is fucking crazy.”

There it is again. C-bomb.
Kapow!
My hands are around his throat, with a more violent effect than I’d like.
Oh, I’ll show you crazy
, I want to say, but fortunately have the presence of mind not to.

“People told me about your reputation. Going ape-shit on guys for no reason.”

“I have reasons,” I growl. “And just who, exactly, are these anonymous sources?”

“Doesn’t matter. The point is, I guess neither of us knows each other like we thought. If you can’t even trust me...” Christian hesitates, choosing his words carefully. “I don’t think we’re...um...on the same page. And we should end this, before somebody gets hurt.”

My face crumbles. My hands release. “END this? No. I’m sorry...”

But he’s putting on his pants, shoving his phone in his pocket. “Too many sorries, Brayden! I can’t be with someone who will go through my phone before just ASKING me if I’m sleeping with somebody! I don’t care who did what to you in the past, okay? That has nothing to do with me!”

“It has everything to do with you!” I shout at him, chasing him out of my bedroom to the living room, grabbing whatever isn’t nailed to the wall to chuck at his head. “How do you think it starts? With someone’s cock on your phone! If I’d started checking phones the first ten times it happened, I would have saved myself a lot of fucking trouble!”

“Yeah. I’m so glad you saved US that trouble.”

“Before you go, just tell me why his fucking cock is on your phone.”

“I don’t fucking know! Okay, Brayden? Jesus! Why don’t you ask HIM?”

I can barely hear the door slam because I am screeching, tearing my throat apart, throwing books from the living room bookshelf in the direction of the door. I do this for five minutes, until there are no more books to throw. Until I realize that he’s actually gone.

I am heaving, crying, when the door opens—it’s Shane, still dressed up from last night, a little more wrinkled than when I last saw him. He looks down at the pile of books at his feet, then back up at me.

“Anniversary surprise didn’t go as planned, huh?”

I can’t help but laugh as Shane stares at me: in Christian’s rush to get out of here, the asshole left his fucking phone charger. I am calming down, I am breathing easier, I am letting acceptance wash over me, all those other stages (bargaining and anger and whatever else) be damned. It was only one month, he is only one boy, I can handle this. I can overcome my pain and sadness and fury, because I have done it before. I’ve survived. I can cope like a mature, rational adult and not spin myself into that Tasmanian devil cyclone of destruction I’ve perfected like it’s an art. I have learned from past mistakes, grown wiser, become a stronger, more stable man. Shane is here, my best friend. I will tell him what happened and he’ll suggest we get a cocktail or two and then we’ll laugh it off through our tingly midafternoon buzz.

Yes. That’s exactly what I need right now.

For some reason, my body disagrees with this plan. Instead, I am still screaming, crying, flinging even more things at the door as Shane backs up cautiously in the direction of his room.

“I’ll let you chill out, boo. Don’t worry about the books, I’ll clean them up.”

He slips into his room and gently closes the door.

I grab the charger as Christian’s final few words bounce around in my skull:
I don’t fucking know! Okay, Brayden? Jesus! Why don’t you ask HIM?

I fling it at the door with one last scream.

FUCKING BITCH!

Hit the buzzer.

Wait.

Punch the buzzer.

Wait.

Kick the buzzer.

This FUCKING buzzer!

Buzz. Buzz. BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZ.

Police sirens wail in the distance like a sick baby crying into a megaphone. I want to punch the sirens. Shut them the fuck up. The buzzing and blaring in my head is goddamn noise enough. My life is all the emergency I can handle right now.

The rain has drenched my hair, which I just bleached this fucking morning an hour after Christian split. The color is Ultra Ivory. Like a ghost flying out of my brain.

Well, it WAS flying out of my brain. Now it’s dead, stringy, and pasted down on my itchy, wet forehead.

Answer answer answer!

No.

Buzzer buzzer buzzer!

STELLA! STELLA!

In my pockets are four of those little bottles of vodka they sell for five bucks a pop at any liquor store. All empty. On my phone is a text from Shane.
“Hope you’re feeling better? I’m worried, boo. Where did you go this morning? Answer my texts! Oh...Looks like maybe you were right about C and GM. Just saw them walking up 9th together toward his place. What a dick!”

Now I, too, am outside Grant’s apartment, with two plans: one to execute if Christian is still in the apartment, and one if he isn’t. I would’ve gotten here quicker, except I was drinking with some of my girlfriends downtown, pounding back shots to cleanse Christian out of my system.

Needless to say, it didn’t work. But the travel time back to Hell’s Kitchen gave me all the minutes I needed to scheme. It’s now almost 11 p.m. and the only thing NOT working in my favor is that Grant is NOT answering his fucking door.

The shit-eating, backstabbing, STD-infected ho bag!

A click, a beep, a voice. Oh, right—I have a purpose here, don’t I?

“Chill out!” Grant screams over the static. “I was in the shower! Who is it?”

What a great greeting. The cunt. What took you so long, you theater fag? Fucking my man? Did you have to wipe all his cum off your face before hitting the speaker button, in case I might hear it drip? Is he in the shower too, wiping your jizz out of his hole?

“It’s Brayden,” I say into the buzzer, straining so my voice is heard over the fucking police sirens now zooming by, smiling hard to make my voice sound friendlier so it’s not obvious that I’m about to bust inside and set the fucking apartment on fire.

“Brayden? Oh. Brayden. I’m kinda busy. Have to run in a few. I’ll catch you another time, okay?”

No. You’ll catch me right the fuck now. “Is Christian there?”

He’s silent. For a bit too long. Because I caught him. Would Christian try climbing out the window? No, Grant lives on the fourth floor. I check the fire escape anyway. Nothing but the corpse of a Christmas tree that’s eight months dead. The rain is pelting me now. My hair is in my face, itching like crazy. I want to yank it out. Instead, I shake my head, slick it back. It flops back onto my forehead. I am going to start screaming again. My shirt is sticking to my arms, itching too. I HATE getting wet. I must have been a fucking cat in a past life.

“Uh. No. Should he be? Brayden, I really don’t have the time to do this right now.”

Bullshit. Liar. Let me the fuck inside. I’ll check every fucking closet. Under your bed. In the bathroom. Behind every door. I’ll sniff him out like a fucking hunting dog.

“No, I guess not! But can I come in?”

“For fuck’s sake, girl, take a HINT!” His voice sounds like a million eyes rolling.

“It’s pouring out here, Grant!” I yell, dropping my faux-peaceful performance. “Let me in, please!”

“You have five minutes,” he says. The door buzzes and opens after I jam my shoulder into it, slamming it against the wall. I sprint up the stairs, three at a time, rocketing myself up the flights.

I am rage. I am fury. I will not be stopped. My fists are missiles and the crosshairs are flying this way and that. There will be blood. There will be crying. There will be sweet, sweet revenge. When I find him hiding in the bathroom or in a closet, I will pound Christian’s pretty face into a pile of rare roast beef. His nose into a mashed potato of veins and cartilage.

Floor 2.

Christian Robert Molson. Or “Christian Robert,” as he prefers to be called at the clubs. With his swoopy Justin Bieber hair—so fucking out-of-date! Not cute. Bullshit. When I’m done with him, his dental records won’t even be conclusive ID.

And I almost didn’t know! I almost had no fucking clue! Me! The guy who suspects everyone and doesn’t trust a single damn person in this world. ESPECIALLY a guy I’m sleeping with. That bitch snuck in under my radar. Tricked me. Even this morning, when he had the nerve to call ME crazy, I was ready to forgive him. I was thinking it was ME who was out of line. Maybe Grant just sent him the damn photo out of the blue, like he said. Maybe one month wasn’t enough time to get so bent out of shape about it.

But THEN. I hear they’re spotted together mere hours after his steadfast denial. The nerve. The fucking nerve, right? That’s how slutty this kid is. This kid, who claimed to be so pure and relationship oriented, who once told me sex does nothing for him without intimacy.

Floor 3.

Still sprinting. My chest, throat, and stomach all burn because I keep forgetting to breathe.

I knock a woman back into her room as she tries to walk into the hallway, her umbrella flying open and trapping her inside.

So funny. I would probably be sitting at home by myself right now, staring at my phone, wondering when the best time to apologize to Christian would be. Fuck! I’d be jerking off to something over-long and underlit on XTube. Well, XTube would be on, but I’d be thinking about Christian and his fucking pencil dick that—until tonight—I didn’t even mind. That I somehow found endearing. Now I won’t let that tiny thing anywhere near me.

Shit! I’d be writing his name over and over on the back of a take-out menu, like I’m some fucking fifth grade girl drawing hearts around a photo of Zac Efron. I’d wait until he came back to my place with the copy of keys I made him last month, then I’d jump into his arms, promising to never even look in the general direction of his phone ever, ever again. Really meaning it this time.

But that’s all changed. You DON’T use Brayden Jesse Castro.

An admission of sexting would earn him a less harsh sentence: a bitch slap and me screaming at him until he ran from Hell’s Kitchen back to his Upper East Side studio, making sure every fucking tourist and neighborhood whore knew to stay the fuck away from him, that he’s mine, and anyone who tried to take him from me would have his throat ripped out.

But then, a few days later, I’d take him back—after he came to my apartment with a bouquet of flowers (the expensive kind, not the bodega value shit) and begged me to give him another chance. I’d look at him like he’d broken my heart and shake my head until he was drowning in his own tears.

I might not have even been so pissed if it weren’t Grant Fucking Majors, a mutual buddy, who, I’ll admit, I was very attracted to at first. Probably even more than I was initially attracted to Christian. But Christian is the one I ended up going home with, and he’s the one who’s been in my bed almost every night since...

But now knowing that the corpse of our relationship hadn’t even gone cold before he swung by Grant’s bachelor pad? Oh, fuck no. Dumping him would be charity; I’d be a goddamn saint. No, I’m going to leave him like Nagasaki—burned-out craters everywhere, women and children mutilated and puking blood, running around screaming through chapped lips. He’ll wish he didn’t fuck up his shot at the one good guy he’ll EVER meet in his public bathroom floor of a life—ME. God, why doesn’t anyone I date ever recognize a good thing once they’ve found it?

Floor 4.

I am lightning shooting down the hall to Grant’s apartment. I calm my fist like I’m holstering a gun and gently tap on the door—because if I don’t, I’ll probably pound the fucking wood down into pulp.

The door opens.

Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!

I smile, sufficiently squelching the crazy. “Hey, Grant.”

“Fuck, you’re soaked!” he says, stepping away from me like I’m covered in bees. I take that as an unspoken invitation into his apartment, let myself in, and close the door.

Grant is fully dressed. Cute and all done up to leave for the night in tight designer clothes that show off his many musical muscles. I have to strain to keep from rolling my eyes at how labored it all is.