“Why are you talking about anal sex when Shannon’s date will be here in twenty-three minutes?” Amy asks.
Dad turns a shade of red that perfectly matches his beard. Whoa. Didn’t know that vasodilation could produce that color.
“I wasn’t talking about it! You started it!” he sputters.
Mom approaches me with a mascara wand that looks like she used it as a dipstick in a sixty-year-old tractor on a farm. “We need to do those eyes!” She sniffs the air around my neck. “Did you shower this morning?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmph. You wouldn’t know it.” She glances at the clock. “No time for a shower. Maybe you should just douche.”
All of the color drains out of Dad’s face. Now he looks like he has Ronald McDonald’s hair plastered on his chin, like he just experienced the McDonald’s version of the Donner Party.
“Nobody douches nowadays, Mom!” Amy protests. “What guy wants a mouthful of petrochemicals and perfume?”
Dad turns the color of cheap photocopy paper.
“You need a chair, Dad?” I’m worried he’s about to faint, and I cannot have anyone fainting in my apartment a mere nineteen minutes before I need to sprint out the door and engage in professionally inappropriate groping with my client.
“Actually, yes,” Dad mutters.
He sits down right on top of Chuckles’ mouse victim.
“You ever have that ‘not so fresh feeling’?” Amy asks Dad.
“Oh, God,” he groans. His brows connect again and he places his hands on the arms of the chair. My eye catches the glint of sunlight off his gold watch and a second of unreality pours through me. Watch. What’s it like to wear a watch?
He pushes up and hovers, frozen in place, his butt in the air.
I don’t like to think about my father’s butt.
“JASON!” Mom screams. “I can’t believe you sat on a dead mouse!”
Tap tap tap.
All four of us spin toward the sound. I look at the clock—5:53—before turning toward the inevitable.
Declan McCormick is the kind of guy who shows up just a little early.
A little too early.
Dad stands up all the way. Mom bum-rushes me and bodily forces me into my bedroom. Amy runs her fingers through her hair and I see her checking herself in the steely reflection of the stove’s backsplash. A flash of jealousy roars up in me, like it did with Jessica back at the restaurant.
“You need to clean yourself up now! Jason will keep him occupied and Amy can keep him happy.”
Now I’m seeing green. “Amy will most certainly NOT keep Declan happy!” I say in a sound that can only be described as slightly panther-like, including the baring of fangs I did not know I possess.
Mom is ripping a vent brush through my hair and shoving a pair of clear, red-thing underwear my way. “Here.”
“What’s this? A scrunchie?”
“No. Your sister’s underpants.”
“You want me to wear Amy’s thong?”
“Shannon,” she says, exasperated as she pulls my hair into a braid, “fashion designers do make underwear smaller than a semaphore flag, you know? Men love butt floss.”
She snaps my braid against my back and the screech screech of metal hangers against the closet bar tell me she’s in my wardrobe, trying to find something perfect. I can’t see her because I’m pulling off my shirt, but then I stop when I realize my bedroom door is still open.
I peek out. Dad is crossing the room and now he’s shaking Declan’s hand. The back of Dad’s jeans are disgusting. The half-dead mouse is stuck to the mess.
And then—plop.
It falls to the ground and bounces between his legs, right into the space between him and Declan.
Mom mercifully closes the door as I whimper.
“It will be fine,” she soothes, pulling my shirt over my head. Her threaded brows nearly cross. “My God, Shannon, when did you last buy a new bra? Before iPhones were invented?”
“Nothing wrong with it. It’s comfortable.”
She laughs. “Comfort has nothing to do with dating!” I look on my bed. She’s laid out a hot-pink spaghetti-strap top, a short tan skirt, and a pashmina. Plus heels that have to be Amy’s, because if I walk on those I’ll look like one of the misfit toys from Toy Story.
“We’re going on a picnic. In the woods. On a hiking trail,” I say slowly.
“I know. I aimed for a practical look.”
“You missed. It’s like you aimed for New York City and hit Hawaii instead.”
“I have impeccable fashion taste!”
“For decorating Russian email order brides.” Red g-string, hot-pink top, tan miniskirt that shows whether I used a hedge trimmer or not, and come-hump-me-and-give-my-mom-billionaire-grandbabies pumps.
“Shannon!” Desperation shines in her eyes. Or maybe that’s just the new colored contacts she got to add some mystery. They’re a shade of violet that could only be made in a New Jersey chemical plant.
“I am wearing hiking boots, jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, and very little makeup.”
Mom reaches for her heart like she’s having palpitations. “You can’t!” She looks like that old dude from the ’70s sitcom Mom and Dad watch on cable. The guy who works at a junkyard and shouts, “I’m coming, Elizabeth!” and fakes a heart attack whenever he doesn’t like something his son says.
I think those TV writers knew my mom.
“I will!” I really won’t, but right now I have a really amazing guy I’d like to have ask me out again, but my dad is offering up half-digested rodents from his ass. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to get second-hand email forwards from Declan’s assistant.
“Why would you do that?” she cries, trying to block me from my own dresser and closet.
In full panic mode as the swirl of everything threatens to take over, I reach into my top drawer and pull out a pair of faded light blue underpants. They’re so old the cloth has worn away in parts, leaving bare elastic.
“Step away from my closet or I’ll wear these!”
“Noooooo!” she screams. It’s loud. So loud my dad bursts through the door two seconds later.
I’m standing in my ancient bra and work pants, holding a pair of underwear that really shouldn’t be allowed to be used as rags for washing the car. My hair is in a gorgeous braid, but Mom is holding a giant can of Aqua Net now and the nozzle is pointed right at me.