How The Cookie Crumbles (38 page)

“Their loss,” she pouted.

They started dancing with each other in a kind of hot way, which gave me an idea.

“Y’know, it’s my birthday.”

“Really?” shrieked the brunette, and she leaned over to give me a big wet one. “Happy birthday!” Not to be outdone, the blonde hugged me and gave me a kiss too.

“Yeah, and so for my birthday, maybe the two of you could give me a special present….” I didn’t finish the sentence, and it took them a minute to get it.

“Oh my God! Jen, do you get what he’s saying?” the brunette asked her friend.

“I do,” Jen said, and she gave me a look with her eyes half-closed. She put her arm around her friend, and hugged her so their tits were mashed up together. Then she kissed her, with a little tongue, watching me the whole time.

Okay, that was hot. “Time to go,” I told them. “But I don’t think I can drive, have you ladies got a car?” The brunette nodded. “’Kay, I’ll just let my roommate know I’m going.”

“Domer, I’m off,” I called out to him, grabbing my suit jacket.

“Jakester, no! Tell me you’re not going back to our place.” He looked pained, and D.J. was standing beside him, shaking his head.

“I’ve got to, man, I don’t have enough rubbers in my wallet for what’s gonna happen tonight.”

“I’d wear a full body condom for those two,” D.J. suggested.

“Cookie, you’re the man. Happy fucking birthday!” a drunken Duper called out from the bar.

So I left, with an arm around each girl.

And I was free to do that whenever I wanted.

As the season went on, hockey was not going that great for me. I mean I was playing okay, but there were some stupid things bugging me that I felt like talking to someone about. And for some reason, I felt like talking to Frankie. I figured that was dumb, because she didn’t even know that much about hockey. I guess it was more because she was easy to talk to. It’s funny how when things are going great, you’re on top of the world, but when things are not perfect, you feel more like you want to have someone around who’s in your corner. But I didn’t want to call her, because then we’d be right where we were, into the whole relationship thing, and I just wasn’t ready for all that shit.

46. Reunion Days

Chloë came home in mid-December, and she was delighted to be in rainy Vancouver instead of snowy Kingston. She had some family stuff to do, but on her second night home she came to our place for dinner and a sleepover, just like old times. It was the Three Musketeers, reunited once again. I invited Lauren to hang with us, but she still had exams so she had a date with the library.

“Oh Chlo, it’s so great to see you!” Hugs all around, and then we went to the living room. I had drinks and hors d’oeuvres ready.

“Wow, Frankie, this is so nice! What are these yummy drinks?”

“Moscow Mules! And to go with them: caviar and cream cheese on cucumber slices or rye toasts. I’m doing a Russian-themed dinner tonight,” I explained.

“Wow, caviar, isn’t that super-expensive?” Chloë wondered.

“No, I got the cheap kind,” I explained. The whole dinner was quite inexpensive, since I was cooking things like kasha, cabbage and beets. I loved doing themed dinner parties.

“I helped with the cabbage rolls,” Bianca pointed out. Bee was no cook, but she was great at cleaning up the kitchen and keeping me company.

After one and a half drinks and some catching up, we started to get to the good stuff.

“So,” Bianca began, “are you still seeing this Andrew guy?”

“Yes! It’s going really well, he’s so sweet. Oh look, here’s my Christmas present. He made me open it before I left.” She held out her wrist, where she was wearing a beautiful silver cuff. It was simple with an asymmetrical shape and a hammered finish.

“Chlo, wow. That’s perfect for you, it’s your style and everything!” I said. A gift like that showed how much Andrew really got her.

“I know, and it’s not like he has a sister to help him shop or anything.” Chloë looked fondly at her bracelet.

“Impressive. So what did you get him?”

“Oh,
Cowboy Bebop: Remix, The Complete Collection
,” she replied with satisfaction.

“Nice,” Bianca replied, but I was still in the dark.

“He gets you a silver bracelet, and all you give him is a DVD?” I wondered.

“It’s a anime cult thing,” Bee informed me. “And a set like that would set you back around $200.”

“Wow, you guys are serious,” I concluded. I still didn’t understand her gift, but I understood the monetary value of the gift. Big gifts meant you were ready to put yourself out there. I had worried a lot about whether to get Jake anything and ended up getting a book. Maybe it was boring, but nobody would think a book was a big deal. It was casual enough that you didn’t expect something back, yet showed you were thinking of him.

Chloë explained, “It’s crazy, we’ve only been going out for seven months, but I already can’t imagine life without him. It’s not like everything is perfect, but when something happens, like big news or even a funny little incident, I can’t wait to share it with Andrew. I feel like I get to enjoy things twice, when they happen, and when I tell him about it!”

“Wow, Chlo,” I said. “That’s so beautiful.”

Bianca nodded. Things were shifting a little. Chloë was always a little backwards when it came to guys; she was the one having unattainable crushes or being too awkward to make a good first impression. But now it was like she had leapfrogged over us and was truly in love: a real, committed relationship. Her certainty made me realize that thinking Matt and I would get married had been ridiculous; our relationship had never reached that degree of serene contentment on Chloë’s expressive face.

“Enough about me, what about you guys?”

“Bee’s got a new boyfriend, just in time for the holiday season!” I tattled.

“You make it sound like clothes shopping,” Bianca protested.

“Isn’t it? You have one boyfriend one week and a different one the next.”

Bee made a face at me. “It’s not my fault that engineering is full of guys who are desperate and dateless. And by the way, every one of my engineering buddies who sees you wants me to fix him up with you. Well, the confident ones anyway. You’re a little too daunting for the socially-challenged ones.”

“Sorry, I still haven’t recovered from the date you set me up with in first year. Remember the X-date?” I retorted. The guy had planned this whole theme date. First he took me see
The X Files: I Want to Believe
which should have been retitled,
The X Files: I Want to Leave
, and then he had this plan to go to actual locations around the Lower Mainland where The X Files series was filmed. Which would have been oodles of fun for someone who had actually watched the show more than once or twice. I couldn’t even remember his name anymore – something about squirrels.

“Okay, Alvin was a mistake, but he was the best looking guy in the class, and I knew that’s what you liked,” Bianca explained.

“I’m pretty sure everyone in engineering has their hotness level go down the minute they issue those pocket protectors,” I replied.

Chloë cleared her throat to interrupt. “Can I just ask: what about Jake? Didn’t you go to L.A. to visit him?” She was clearly behind the times.

“Twice, actually,” Bianca offered helpfully.

“Really? Oh, that’s great! What happened? In Kingston, you were so uninterested.”

“What do you mean, uninterested?” Bianca asked. Apparently I wasn’t going to have to say anything here, which given the undefined state of our relationship, was fine with me.

“Well, you know,” Chloë began to blush, “Frankie got along so well with Jake, but she wasn’t, er, attracted to him.”

“Are you insane? That’s the opposite of what I saw! She could barely say a word to him, but it was clear they could hardly wait to be alone. When he came over, they were generating so much heat, our hydro bill went down,” Bianca declared.

“What! You slept with Jake and didn’t tell me?” Chloë’s eyes were big to begin with, and now she resembled those Photoshopped cats on greeting cards.

“They didn’t do any sleeping that night,” Bianca corrected her. I really hated it when they started joining forces like this. They both turned x-ray eyes on me.

“So Frankie, what’s going on with you and Jake?” Bee smirked, she had been trying to pin me down on this matter for weeks, and now armed with Chloë, it was her chance.

“Um, I don’t know….” I faltered.

“Really? Frankie Taylor, whose life is more organized than Martha Stewart’s, doesn’t know the state of her relationship? Does Chloë know you’re going to be living with him?”

“What?” Chloë fell back onto the couch pillows in a mock faint. “How did I not know this?”

“It’s not like that! I’m going to have my own bedroom, I’m not living with him, I’m just staying at his place for three months while I do my internship.”

“Same diff,” Bianca snorted.

“No, there is a difference. It’s a fine point of distinction that I have to practice before I explain everything to my parents.”

“Please, back up here!” Chloë demanded. “Let’s start with the most important part, are you going out with Jake now?”

I sighed. “Well, no. I know I wasn’t attracted to him in the summer, but I when I went to his hockey game here, and he was so different: so intense and into the game. It gave me a whole new impression of him.”

Bianca snickered. “Yeah, you finally saw him as a hockey superstar and billionaire.”

“It’s not like that! I finally got to see that he could care about something and really be into it. During the summer, he always seemed like such a slacker, and that’s not attractive to me.” I shook my head; it was tough for me to even get my mind around this. I guess I had liked Jake, but seeing that he could be so accomplished and hardworking was a revelation.

“So, you’ve been seeing him ever since?”

“Well, not really. I went to L.A. for a long weekend,” I smiled, remembering what a good time we had had. “Then I found out about this cool internship at the LACMA, and applied. And I got it.”

“Really?” echoed Chloë, “Um, what is the LACMA, is it like the lactating mothers’ association?”

“Gross. No, it’s the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.”

“You forgot the part where you went back to L.A. and lovingly nursed him back to health after his concussion,” Bianca added helpfully.

“I didn’t realize I had to give a blow-by-blow description of every moment of our relationship,” I retorted.

“Oh, dirty!” Bianca said, and we all started giggling helplessly. The Mules were working their magic.

Chloë clapped her hands together, and I remembered that Me + Jake = her dream come true. “Gosh, Frankie, I have to say, this sounds pretty serious. From what Andrew has said about Jake, I don’t think he’s ever had a girl visit him in L.A., and now you’re going to live together.”

That note of reinforcement made me feel all warm and fuzzy, but only for a moment. “Look, I was a complete idiot when it came to Matt. I thought we were all serious, and the day he broke up with me I thought he was going to propose.”

“Oh no, Frankie! Really?” Chloë was all sympathy, and looked like she was ready to give me a hug. Bianca looked more like she wanted to kick me in the butt for being such an idiot.

“Yeah, so given my tendency to jump to emotional conclusions, I’m really trying to take things one step at a time here. Anyway, Jake insisted that we are not in a relationship, so that pretty much settles it.”

“What? He said that to you?” Bianca demanded.

“Um, yes. When we talked about my living there, he said he wasn’t ‘into relationships.’”

Bianca frowned. “That’s pretty conceited. But he’s still into having sex with you?”

Trust Bee to get right to the point. I tried to explain, to myself as well as to my friends, “I know it sounds ridiculous, but I have to say I think he’s scared. I think that he really does like me but he doesn’t want things to change, in case that screws everything up. It’s not anything he says, but how it is when we’re together.” This was the comforting idea that I had been nursing for the last month.

Chloë smiled, but Bianca rolled her eyes. “Frankie! You just finished saying that you weren’t going to jump to romantic conclusions and then you’re all, ’
Oh he tells me to get lost, but I don’t think he really means it!
’ Don’t be a sap.”

“Am I being a sap?”

“Yes! He wants to have sex with you, but no commitments. That means he’s out screwing other women too. I told you he was a player. Have you never Googled him?”

“I did. But it was so negative! People making fun of his play and his weight. He’s not fat!” I had been horrified at the remarks, and I was on an L.A. Kings fan site!

“Not the hockey part, I mean Jake and women. He’s supposed to be a pump-and-dumper. Puck bunnies don’t care, but you’re different. You get so emotionally involved.”

“Like nobody’s ever lied on the internet?” I scoffed.

“Where there’s smoke….” Bianca answered.

“I think Frankie’s right,” Chloë chimed in, and we both looked at her in surprise. “I only know what I saw in Kingston, and I saw a guy who was really into her. Why would that be different now?”

“Well, for starters, he’s back playing hockey. Back in a situation where girls are throwing themselves at him 24/7,” Bianca said.

“Well, does he act like a guy who’s interested? Do you guys keep in touch?” Chloë wondered.

“A little. He texts me once in a while. I text him when I have news or questions about my coming to L.A., but he’s not really good at keeping up.”

“Strike one,” Bianca said.

“No, it’s not like he’s ignoring her,” Chlo argued.

“Okay, let’s start with what we do know. How do you feel about him?” Bianca was funny; she never asked me half this stuff when we were alone, but being with Chloë seemed to make her bolder.

“I uh, well, I really like him. He’s so much fun and… stuff.”

“Yes, stuff. Well, we all know what that means. In fact, those of us who live in this apartment got to hear what ‘stuff’ means.” She smirked, and Chloë blushed.

“It’s more than that though. I mean, you could get sex anywhere,” I hypothesized. Possibly not the kind of otherworldly sex we had, but it wasn’t like I was a sexpert. “I like being with him. He makes me laugh, and I don’t know, I guess he’s unpredictable. I don’t know exactly what he’s going to do or say next. Not in a weird way, in a fun way.” I felt dumb, I kept repeating that he was fun in different ways. But maybe it had to do more with me: I was kind of intense and on-task, so being with someone like Jake was relaxing for me.