“Engaged?” she said as soon as we were inside the house.
I was right! Unfortunately, I was also in trouble.
“Ugh. Famous people can’t get away with shit, can they? Ha ha. It’s funny because I’m pretending I’m famous. But I’m not.”
“Does Adrian know?” she asked.
“Strangely enough, yes.”
She uncrossed her arms, her whole demeanor relaxing. “Oh. Then I guess I’m not that pissed after all.” She sat on the couch and patted the seat next to her. “Tell me everything.”
I told her to hang on while I ran upstairs for a pee, then I came back down, sat on the couch, and told her everything. And by everything, I mean that I sorta fibbed and told her some of the details, but not all of them.
She was confused, not quite understanding why Dalton and I were getting married, but I was still seeing Adrian. Part of the NDA was that I couldn’t talk about the terms of the NDA with anyone. I made it seem like I was engaged to Dalton because we were friendly, and I wanted to help. It was true, even if it wasn’t the whole truth.
When I looked over at the clock on the TV equipment, it was nearly one in the morning.
Shayla blinked at me, her expression incredulous.
Speaking slowly, she said, “So, this fluid just comes shooting out of your vagina?”
“Seriously, that is the particular detail of my story that you’re focusing on?”
“Your pu**y has superpowers.” She tilted her head to the side, her eyes lighting up. “Maybe it’s a Monroe family trait! Maybe I can shoot stuff out of mine.”
“My pu**y isn’t Spider-Man.”
She pulled out her phone. “I gotta look this up. Hmm. Squirting. Is that female ejaculation? Ew. I don’t like that word at all.”
I swatted the phone out of her hand and stuffed it between the couch cushions. “Focus, Shayla. What should I do? Keep dating Adrian, or try to have a normal relationship with Dalton?”
She laughed. “Normal? Not with p**n o boy.”
“Don’t call him that.”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at the ceiling, her brow wrinkled. “If you do this thing with Dalton, you’ll be in LA a lot, and you won’t be able to spend as much time with me. Do you think I’ve been anti-Dalton just because I love you so f**king much and don’t want to lose you?”
I swallowed hard. Damn my period hormones for making me feel like I was on the verge of tears all day.
She continued, “Or, deep down, am I envious of all the good things happening for you, because even though I love you, I am still a petty monster at times? I mean… how can I possibly think I’m a good judge of character? I was f**king my no-good cheating boss for how many months? It’s not like I’m the queen of great decisions. Wow, I can’t believe how self-aware I’m sounding right now. There you have it, though. I’m a disaster, so any advice I might have about your love life should come with one of those warnings. You know, like they run on those advertisements for the phone numbers you call to get a psychic to tell your fortune. Entertainment purposes only. That’s me. Entertainment purposes only.”
And with that, she withdrew a box of cigarettes from somewhere and started for the front door.
I followed her out to the porch and sat beside her on the bench as she smoked. We stayed there for twenty minutes, with nothing but the sound of the moths overhead, banging themselves into the porch light, mistaking it for the moon.
~
Eventually, Shayla and I got chilly enough and went back into the house.
Upstairs in the bathroom, as we were brushing our teeth for bed, I asked, “How are things going with… um…”
“Troy?” Shayla’s golden brown eyes burned like the embers in a fire.
We were both framed in the mirror over the sink, two cousins with similar body and face shapes, except she wears a size or two smaller than me on the bottom, and bigger on the top. She got the bigger boobs and I got the junk for the trunk, but together we’re the perfect woman, part blonde and part brunette.
“You tell me how things are going with Troy,” she said, her eyebrow quirking up dramatically. “He gave me seven orgasms on Saturday.”
“Beats the hell out of chocolates or flowers.”
“And now he’s going.” She spat her toothpaste in the sink and rinsed her mouth. “His mommy and daddy rented a house off campus, for him and a friend. A nice house. He said I could visit, but I knew he didn’t mean it. He’ll be knee deep in college-girl pu**y before Thanksgiving.”
“So, now what?”
“Living vicariously through you, plus maybe a new set of batteries for the Assassin.”
“I thought the Assassin came with a charger?”
“New batteries is just an expression.”
I rolled out some dental floss and started on my back molars. After a moment, I asked, “Do you think anything weird would happen if you didn’t orgasm for, like, a long time? Do you think all that energy would go into other things?”
“Yes. The energy goes into eating Bugles from the box and cackling like a witch as you stick them on your fingertips like pointy little claws. That’s what I was doing before you got home tonight.”
“You ate all the Bugles?”
“I put them on the grocery list.”
“We should eat more kale.”
She stared at me in the mirror until we both cracked up laughing.
When she finished laughing, Shayla said, “But seriously, what are you going to do about this Adrian-Dalton love triangle thing?”
“Ignore the problem and hope it goes away?”
“You’re not going to like my advice. In fact, you’re going to hate it.”
“Break up with Dalton?”
She pointed her finger at me, via the mirror, then turned to face me and point directly at me.
“I totally got you,” she squealed. “I was bluffing. I said you’d hate my advice, then you revealed that the guy you really want is Dalton. Reverse psychology, boo-yah! I knew those college psych courses would pay off some day.”
“Or maybe I was just guessing what you’d say, given you’re Team Adrian. Reverse-reversed, boo-yah yourself.”
“My work here is done.” She clapped her hands together in a dusting-off motion and left the bathroom for bed.
My phone buzzed with an incoming message, but I don’t ever take my phone out inside the bathroom, because of my irrational fear* that if I check messages while sitting on the toilet, the camera feature will suddenly switch on and send a video feed to everyone on my contacts list.