Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink (13 page)

It’s now around midnight, and I am lounging on a sofa/mattress at bar number four doing another quick round of texts with Jay:

So … going out with another man already? I’m hurt.

Not just another man—a ridiculously handsome one plying me with booze.

I guess in 21 hours, I am going to have to fight him for your honor.

Oooooohhhhh. I hope so.

Have you bought something in red lace yet?

No.

I immediately type this and send. Then I reconsider and type:

Maybe.

Ooohhhhh—send me a sexy pic when you get home.

I most certainly will not.

All right, I’ll just have to get one of you myself tomorrow.

The hell you …

I see Jeff snaking through the crowd, lightly pushing people out of the way as he carries a tray with six martini glasses in a rainbow of colors: green, purple, pink, blue, orange, and one that has layers of yellow and red. I quickly type:

I gotta go. Leave me a sexy voice mail before you go to bed.

Actual talking? I must really like you. Good night.

Good night.

xoxo

xoxo

I smile as I look at our conversation on my screen one more time.
Xoxo
. Life is good.

Jeff arrives at my couch and hands me the tray of martinis, which I place on the club’s version of a nightstand. Jeff is on the phone, calmly making a point to the person on the other end. “Because he’s an asshole.… Because he’s an asshole.… I don’t know.… Okay, did you sleep with him?… Well, there you go.…” I watch him shake his head and wince. “Because we’re men!” he says in a
Duh!
voice. “We are not only able to have sex with you even if we don’t like you, sometimes we prefer it that way.” He hands me the blue martini as he listens on the other end. “That is not sexist! There are scads of men I’d sleep with who I don’t like. Do I have to remind you about Schrödinger’s blow job?” Jeff looks up at me and puts up his index finger to tell me one more minute. He says into his phone, “Sweetie, I’m out with friends, and I have to go.… I love you too.… Okay, good-bye.” He hangs up the phone and shakes his head. “I swear, I wonder how any of you ever breed.” Then he breaks into a smile and motions to the blue drink. “What do you think?”

I make a face. “What is it this time?”

“Something with blue curaçao and ginger. We have a blue drink at Male ‘Ana, but I think I could improve on it.”

I take a sip and wince. “Blech! Too spicy.”

“Fair enough.” Jeff hops onto the mattress with me. “Speaking of spicy, who here is cute?”

“Everyone. But we’re too old to talk to any of them.”

“Well, that’s just limited thinking.” Jeff takes the yellow-and-red martini drink from the tray and samples a bit.

“Really? And what would you suggest we talk with them about?”

Jeff shrugs. “Prom, Chutes and Ladders, One Direction…”

I look around the room at all the beautiful twenty-two-year-old girls in miniskirts and sky-high heels, and I can’t help but whine, “This is depressing. Why aren’t we at a gay bar?”

“Because I know it doesn’t look like it, but I’m actually working.” Jeff hands me his drink to sample. “Besides, I’ll go to one tomorrow night, when you’re with your loo-oove-ah.”

I try to suppress an embarrassed smile as I take the cocktail. “He’s not my lover.”

“Did you make love to him?”

I shrug and turn away from Jeff sheepishly. “Maybe.”

“Then let’s hope he’s your lover. Otherwise, he’s a one-night stand, and you’re a slut.”

Jeff’s phone rings again. He answers without so much as a hello, saying instead, “I don’t even know how I got designated the gay best friend who can give advice in the first place. God knows, I can’t keep a man.” He listens to the voice on the other end for a good thirty seconds before putting his thumb and index finger to each eye, and squeezing his eyes shut. Another good thirty seconds pass before he pops his eyes back open. “Schrödinger’s blow job.” He repeats for the second time in less than five minutes. “Now go have fun.” Then he presses the button to hang up. Jeff points to an orange drink. “Taste that, and tell me what you think.”

I take a sip. “Ick. What is that? Gin?”

“I thought it was a misstep myself when I watched him make it.” Jeff picks up the glass and holds it up to examine the color. “Although maybe with a coconut rum…”

As Jeff takes a sip of the gin drink and swishes it around in his mouth, I say, “Okay, I have to ask—what is Schrödinger’s blow job? And what does it have to do with dating?”

Jeff reaches over to the nightstand to pick up a pink drink in a martini glass and hands it to me. “Do you know what Schrödinger’s cat is?”

“Of course I do,” I say, vaguely insulted. “In the 1930s, Erwin Schrödinger came up with his theorem—”

Jeff nearly does a spit-take. “Theorem? Good Lord. When you get drunk, you become even more of a geek. Okay, so you know there’s a cat in a box with a flask of poison that has been opened, and the cat might be dead from said poison. Or not. And until you open the box, you don’t know whether the cat is alive or dead. Which means until you open it, the cat is both and neither, all at once.”

“I fail to see what a dead cat has to do with sex.”

“Really? You’ve exhausted all the possibilities for the word
pussy
?”

Without wanting to, I begin racking my brain, trying to come up with different wordplays.

“I’m kidding,” Jeff says, then taps my forehead with his index finger and smiles. “But I love to watch that little mind race. Anyway, in the gay community, some of us, on occasion, have dated men who think they’re straight because there are certain things they won’t do with us. But no matter who the guy is or what his hang-ups are, he usually will be willing to get a blow job.”

“Do I want to hear the rest of this?” I take a sip of the pink drink.

“Knowledge is power. Anyway, basically the theory from some of these men goes like this: If a man puts on a blindfold and gets a blow job, it doesn’t really matter if he’s getting it from a man or a woman, because he can’t see who is giving him the blow job. Therefore, if he happens to be getting a blow job from a man, that doesn’t make him gay.”

“Meaning the blow job is like the cat in the box, in that it could be either from a man or a woman until you take off the blindfold.”

“Exactly.”

“First off, obviously, these men are gay.”

“Honey, you say ‘tomato’…”

“And second, so what does this have to do with dating?”

“Single, straight men, for the most part, will let any woman blow them or have sex with them. But they might as well have a blindfold on. Getting sex doesn’t mean they’re in a relationship with the woman. And just because the poison is out of the bottle doesn’t mean your pussy is dead yet. You have to open the box to know for sure.”

I glare at him. “A dead pussy being one that is in a relationship?”

“You look offended.”

“Why can’t you say the cat is still alive if you’re in the relationship?”

“Because the cat was alive, then is dead. You are single, then in a relationship. My point is, just because a woman is sleeping with a guy, that doesn’t mean he thinks they’re in a relationship. He needs to take off his blindfold first.”

I blink several times while I absorb Jeff’s theory. I take another sip of the pink drink, which seems to be mostly vodka. “That actually kind of makes sense,” I am forced to admit. Then I shake my head slowly. “I still can’t believe you killed yourself to get a PhD in theoretical physics only to wind up opening a bar.”

“The two are completely intertwined. I’m trying to solve the problem of cold fusion by using the ideal combination of ice, rum, and a blender.”

I furrow my brows at him. “Have you been working on that joke long?”

“Not too long. Oh, I got another joke for you. A neutron walks into my bar and orders a beer. When he asks for the check, I tell him, ‘For you, no charge.’”

I shake my head slightly and chuckle as I grab the green drink. “You are such a geek.”

“So the neutron says to me, ‘Are you sure?’ And I say, ‘I’m a proton—I’m positive.’” Jeff opens his mouth wide like Fozzie Bear right after a terrible joke.

I shake my head again. “I’ll admit, that’s kind of funny.”

“Thanks. I got a charge out of it myself.”

“Do you get a lot of men with these jokes?”

“No, but I screen a lot of men. If they don’t get it, they’re out.”

“Unless they can loan you a blindfold.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be a snob about it.”

The rest of the night was spent talking about men, about college, about everything from Hawaii to physics to backgammon. I was having a great time.

And I was really happy. Unlike the bevy of women who seemed to call Jeff every five minutes to ask him to translate what the men in their lives were doing, I did not ask him one question about Jay.

Because in the back of my mind, all I could think about was the
xoxo
I got.

I was one dead cat.

E
IGHTEEN

Thursday, Jeff had to spend the afternoon visiting family, so I had the whole day to get ready for my reunion with Jay.

I do all of the things an obsessed girl with too much time on her hands does to get ready: I buy new bubble bath and spend twenty minutes debating which scent to choose. What makes a guy want a girl more—if she smells like a rose or a cucumber? I also go to Bloomingdale’s to buy not one but two new matching bra-and-underwear sets. One in red lace, as requested. The other in black satin. (The satin one makes me look good, but not as if I were trying. Because God forbid a man knows you’re trying.) As long as I’m there, I buy a new set of sheets with a thread count so high, it resembles the winning numbers of this week’s lottery.

Which is fine—I feel as if maybe I won the lottery with Jay—we shall see.

That afternoon, I pick up Jay from the airport.

His look is casual, yet flawlessly put together. Wearing a dark blue, tailored suit, no tie, the top button of his shirt unbuttoned, he looks like a model in
Esquire
magazine.

Of course, he’s speaking (and laughing) in French with a gorgeous redhead in a low-cut dress, which makes him a little less appealing.

Cue the insecurity.…

Fortunately, his face lights up when he sees me. “Mel!” he says, beaming. He trots up to me quickly, kisses me hello on the lips, then pulls me into a hug.

Ahhhhhh … Life is perfect. My shoulders slump and I ooze into him, inhaling the scent of his hotel travel soap. I could stay in these arms forever.

I hear a woman’s lilting French behind me. I pull away and turn to see the woman he was speaking with waiting politely to be introduced.

All I catch from Jay is
excusez-moi
and some other French words and phrases (including the words
mon amour
? Or did I imagine that?) before he says, “Mel, this Colette, a friend of mine from a rival agency. Colette, c’est Melissa.”

Colette smiles (although it is not a warm smile) and puts out her hand. “Je suis très heureux de faire votre connaissance.”

Jay shakes his head. “Melissa ne parle français,” he says to Colette sweetly.

“It’s okay,” I begin quickly “I can parle. I took high school—”

“Oh, sorry,” Colette says in a thick accent. “A
plaisir
to meet you.”

I take her hand and shake it. “A pleasure to meet you as well.”

“So, someone has finally caught ze playboy.”

I turn to Jay to see his eyes bulge out slightly at her. Then he forces a smile.

She notices his reaction and apologizes to me. “Sorry. My English is bad.” But then she turns to Jay and almost smirks as she asks him, “Un play-boy jouisseur?”

“Colette…,” he begins rather tersely.

She ignores him, turning to me. “I have tried to entice Jay to spend ze evening with me, but he says he has a girlfriend he sees this weekend. She is his love. I assume that is you?”

Girlfriend? His love? Wait, what?
Je suis intrigued.

Jay emits a nervous laugh as he puts his arm around me. “Okay. Great to see you, Colette. We should do it again soon.” He kisses her once on each cheek, then drags me by the hand over to Baggage Claim.

“Isn’t she just going to follow us?” I ask, turning around to see Colette’s eyes darken as she watches us leave.

“No. She’s on the next plane back to Paris. She followed me out just to meet you. Now she’ll have to go through security again, which is going to take at least an hour.” Then he mutters something in French under his breath.

“You know I did take high school French. You can say stuff out loud.”

“Not what I just said.”

We quickly walk through the sliding glass doors and into Baggage Claim. The moment we are lost in the crowd and away from Colette, Jay turns me around and his smile returns. “I missed you,” he almost whispers, then pulls me into a long kiss.

After the kiss is over, I murmur, “I missed you too.” Then I kiss him again.

As much as I’m loving this kiss, that incident with Colette was weird. When we stop kissing long enough to come up for air, I ask, “Is she, like, an old girlfriend or something?”

Jay shakes his head and exhales a loud breath. “Or ‘something’—yes. I slept with her a few times a few years ago. Total bunny boiler. I don’t want to talk about it.”

I knew it! “Oh. Okay,” I say to him nonjudgmentally (or at least with as little judgment as I can muster). Then I try to casually ask, “So what happened?”

Jay looks confused. “I just said…”

I shrug. “Yeah, I know but … here’s the thing: we just started sleeping together. So when you say, ‘I don’t want to talk about’ what happened with a girl, I cannot help but get obsessed. So you might as well just tell me now before I start getting all girlie and tense while you’re trying to be all cute with me later this evening.”

Jay leans in. “So you think I’m cute?”