Another damn dream.
Third one in three days.
All my pink bits are hot and wet, all my other bits are cold and tingly, and my brain bits are embarrassed as hell that I can have the female equivalent of wet dreams against my will by thinking about a man who will never touch me again.
Never.
There’s that word again.
I am covered in a sheen of sweat, and oh, if only you could sweat disappointment and unrequited love out of your pores. I’d live in a sauna for a month if it could exorcise the demon of heartbreak that lives inside me, teasing me with subconscious fantasies of reunion, of unconscious motives that make me google Declan, follow him on Twitter, wish for one brush with him so we can talk it out and reunite.
I’d take a drug to make the pain go away. So far, copious amounts of chocolate have done nothing but make the pudge around my waist a little softer. If only I could drive the pain out with a master cleanse. Someone should make a protein shake and market it.
The Breakup Smoothie.
Declan’s taste is in my mouth. The touch of his lips is between my br**sts, so real I reach up my shirt to chase his fingers. The lingering sense that he really was here, that he really did travel across my skin and give himself to me in my curves and hollows, makes me feel haunted.
Haunted.
As the cool morning air fills in the space between dream and reality, it chases all the vestiges of my Dream Declan away, leaving me bereft.
Chilled.
Unmoored.
I grab my phone and shut off the alarm, then check my calendar. I have a mystery shop today, one in person about two hours away.
Two hours? That’s a rare one. Why would I—
Oh.
Yeah.
That one.
The sex toy shop. We’re being paid travel time plus our mileage to handle a series of sex toy shops, to make sure they’re not selling p**n ographic materials to minors. And if they have a tobacco license, we’re checking on cigarette sales to minors, too.
As my lady parts stop their Gangnam Style dance imitation and I catch my breath, I remember the worst part:
Mom is my partner on these.
Thoughts of Mom and a na**d Declan doing unmentionably delightful things to me do not mix. It’s like Baileys Irish Cream and sloe gin: warning! Warning, Will Robinson!
You throw up when you combine the two.
Chuckles climbs on my bed, sniffs my crotch, and gives me a mildly disgusted look. It’s not rivetingly disgusted, though, which is alarming.
That means he’s come to expect to be disappointed in me.
Or I need a shower.
Either way, even my cat thinks that my dreams are deviant.
And you can’t sink much lower than that.
Or so I thought.
* * *
“I thought Amanda was doing this shop with me. Not you!” Mom grouses as we pull into the parking garage in downtown Northampton. I love the rare mystery shop that brings me into this college town, where the coffee shops are fabulous, you can find the best smoothies anywhere, and street buskers are as conversant about American foreign policy as they are about the best pad Thai in town.
But I don’t relish the idea of comparison shopping vibrators with my mother. That’s up there with looking forward to getting a pap smear, a root canal, and a colonoscopy at the same time.
Which I’d prefer over this.
“Me too, but she tricked me.” Tricked is a tiny confabulation. Okay, a huge one. She offered to spend a few hours snooping on my behalf and getting some dirt on Declan if I took Mom on this sex toy mystery shop.
No bleeping way.
“Fine, then,” Amanda had said. “If you don’t take the sex toy shop with Marie, I’ll tell her you the truth about that taping of Rachael Ray.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“Try me.”
My mother is the biggest Rachael Ray fan EVER. I had a chance to go for a customer service evaluation last year, and Mom had begged, pleaded, and cajoled, but I’d stood firm. Being embarrassed is one thing, but on television?
I have to draw a line somewhere.
And that line brought me here to Northampton to a nearby sex toy store with my mother.
Being humiliated on the Rachael Ray show suddenly looks so much more appealing. Amanda stood her ground, and here I am...
“I can’t believe they put a sex toy shop here,” Mom says as we get out of the car.
“Here?” I look around at the quaint brick buildings, eyes catching the glint of sunlight off the large display window for an art gallery. “Oh, no. Not here. We’re just in the parking lot to grab a good cup of coffee.”
She rolls her eyes but smiles and links her arm through mine as we walk across the bridge from the car park to the shopping mall building. “You and your coffee. Why not just stop and get an iced coffee from—”
I stop her before she names a ubiquitous coffee and donut shop. I also shudder. “That’s what you drink when you have no choice.”
“No, Shannon—that’s what you drink when you mystery shop for a living.”
Twenty minutes later, good lattes secured, we pull out of the lot and head toward Smith College along Route 9, a slightly scenic route to our destination. I’m driving slowly, as traffic is thicker than usual, when the long, slim, swanlike body of a tall blonde catches the corner of my eye. I slow the Turdmobile down, and a guy hauling trash on a bike—a trailer full of actual garbage cans, five or so in a straight line—makes his way past me with effort.
“Nice piece of crap,” he calls out in a jocular tone. Mom waves and says something friendly.
My eyes are locked on Jessica Coffin. “Yep. She sure is,” I say.
A group of pedestrians clogs a zebra-striped crosswalk and I’m forced to stop, my eyes eating up the scene. It’s definitely her. Without a doubt. She looks over and her eyes fix on a spot above my head, her nose wrinkling in distaste. She’s seen the coffee bean on the hood of my car and correctly determined it looks more like a piece of—
Her.
My impulse to give her the finger remains firmly suppressed, though what’s the harm? She can’t possibly realize it’s me, right?
“What are you staring at?” Mom asks.
“Jessica Coffin.”
“JESSICA COFFIN?” Mom screams. And by “scream,” I mean bellows like a foghorn being amplified by a Gillette Stadium sound system.
Blonde hair down in a white curtain around h*ps slimmer than my thigh, she shimmers as she turns and her eyes narrow. Eyes on me (or my car, or maybe my mother, who is wildly waving her arms and screaming, “Jessica! I love your tweets!”), Jessica slips her hand through the kinked elbow of a man standing with his back to the road. She leans in to his ear, whispers something, and then clings to him like a lover with casual access to her man.