Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (10 page)

 "Was he violent?"

 He laughed. "God no. Sometimes I wish he fucking had been - that way my Mom would have given up sooner. He was the sweetest drunk you ever did meet. Funny, charming, a good guy. A good buddy. He always knew the words to all the dirty songs, always led the chorus. He always knew the jokes and how to tell 'em. Charmed the pants off of women. The kind of guy that when they come to put him in the ground the church is going to be crammed to the rafters with his drinking buddies. And they'll all cry and they'll all fight and they'll all drink to him and sing those awful fucking maudlin Irish songs. And us? The kids? The widow? We're afterthoughts. We were never part of the good old boy pose."

 "But he's sober now?"

 He sighed. "Yeah. For what it's worth. Still manages to make it all about him, though. When he writes it's all about how God wants him to get right with me. You know he has a personal relationship with Jesus now? But it's still him. Still the same selfish prick he always was. It's just kind of...I don't know...filtered, I guess. Like if I don't forgive him right away then I'm not only offending him but offending God too." He sighed again and sat up, scraping a hand through his messy hair. "But fuck him. And fuck his AA bullshit too."

 His smile was too tight and too brief, as if he was trying to reset his mood to normal. "So," he said. "You want to come meet my brother?"

 "Yes. Please," I said. "I always want to meet the people that you love."

 He leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. The warm salt smell of his sweat was turning sour, and when I lifted my arms to wrap them round his neck I saw his nose wrinkle. "Maybe shower first?" I said.

 Clayton exhaled and buried his face in my shoulder. "Yeah, I wasn't gonna say anything..."

 "You totally were. Is it bad?"

 "It's pretty terrible."

 We crammed into his tiny plastic shower cubicle. "Your brother is going to know exactly what's up if we both show up with wet hair," I said.

 "So? Let him."

 "You must have a hairdryer somewhere."

 He toweled his hair off. "Um...no? This is as dry as it gets."

 "Are we driving?"

 "Yep."

 "Fine," I said. "I'll just hang my head out of the window like a border collie."

 He laughed at that. "Keep your mouth closed if you do. Unless you like eating bugs."

 He exchanged a couple of text messages and said we'd meet Bryan 'at the track'. I didn't understand what he meant until we got there; I'd spent most of my high school and college career avoiding sports. We parked next to an oval. The markings on the field were as mysterious as the Nazca lines to me - I guessed they were markers for javelin throws or something. It figured that his war hero brother would be a jock.

 There were two people running around the track - a dark-haired girl and Bryan. It had to be Bryan - even from a distance I could see he was Clayton's mirror image. His hair was cut to military length but it was the same color as Clayton's, and while Bryan's shoulders were more muscled the angles of them were immediately familiar. Then as we passed the side of the bleachers I saw how they were different.

 It caught me off guard, so that a dumb little "Oh," escaped before I could stop myself. When I saw him full length I saw that Bryan was running not on his own two legs, but on a pair of springy prostheses.

 "You asshole," he said, as he approached us, a towel draped around his neck. "You didn't tell her, did you?"

 I wanted to cry, to run. So much for Clayton's theory about twin-sense. It seemed Bryan had spotted exactly where his brother had fallen short before we'd even been introduced. I was mortally ashamed that my shock must have shown on my face.

 "I did, right?" said Clayton, looking at me.

 I shook my head.

 "Don't sweat it," said Bryan, holding out a hand. "You have to excuse him. It's like he was raised by wolves."

 "I'm sorry," said Clayton. "Jesus - what was I supposed to say? 'Come and meet my brother. Oh, by the way, he has no feet.'"

 "That would be a start," said Bryan. He smiled at me but I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. I hated myself for the dumb, visceral reaction that had come over me when I saw he was an amputee.

 "This is Lacie," said Clayton. "Lacie, this is my brother, Bryan. Who would like you to know he has no feet."

 "I'm so sorry," I said.

 He held up a hand. "It's cool. I know it freaks some people out."

 I wanted to say I wasn't freaked out at all, but that would have been a lie so transparent and pathetic that they'd never forgive me. Luckily I was spared further embarrassment when the girl came jogging up. She was tan and athletic in a way I'd never be and when she smiled her teeth were blindingly white - West Coast white, as Courtney would say.

 "Heather," said Clayton, in a kind of 'oh shit' tone that made the bottom fall out of my gut.

 "You've met?" said Bryan.

 "Oh, we've met," said Heather, with a vindictive gleam in her eye.

 I turned to Clayton, but he stood braced as if waiting for a blow to fall. "I...um...didn't you knew Bryan," he said.

 "I didn't," she said. "I was sitting at a stoplight one day and there he was. I thought he was you."

 Bryan bit his lip. "Look, it was a misunderstanding..."

 "Yeah. I'll say," she said. "I started yelling at him because he never called me back. Or my Mom."

 Bryan exhaled slowly. "Oh boy."

 "Your Mom?" I said.

 Heather flashed me a tight-lipped smile. "Has he met your Mom yet?" she said, gesturing to Clayton. "Because FYI, you shouldn't leave them alone together, if you know what I'm saying."

 I didn't, not exactly, but I knew enough. He opened his mouth to speak but I shook my head. "Just take me home," I said. 

 Chapter Six

Clayton

I called her four times. The first time I called and said we needed to talk. She didn't call back.

 The second time I called and said we
really
needed to talk. She didn't call back.

 The third time I called and said I was sorry, even though deep down I felt like it was none of her goddamn business who I was seeing before I even met her. What did she want? Some guy who'd come fresh out of a monastery or something? That was the time I said she might do well to remember her manners and return my calls.

 Since she didn't call back I worried that I'd come off as an asshole, so the fourth time I called her back I called to mitigate the earlier asshole call. Unfortunately I kind of worked myself into a temper and on the fourth call I
definitely
came across as an asshole. The words 'Princess Fuckpants' were used.

 Probably goes without saying that she didn't call back.

 Instead I called Bryan, who was no help at all.

 "This is all your fault," I told him.

 "How?" he said.

 "I don't know. If you hadn't hooked up with Heather..."

 "Uh uh," he said. "Let me stop you right there. I did not 'hook up' with Heather. I'm a gentleman. I don't do that on first dates."

 "Whatever. If you'd just stayed the fuck away from her..."

 "So I'm supposed to avoid every single woman you've ever boned?"

 "No..."

 "...because I'm just saying, that wouldn't work. Not without me leaving the country, and even then..."

 "But Heather?" I said. "Fucking really?"

 "Fucking really, bro. When a woman I've never seen before rolls down her window at a stoplight and yells 'You are
literally
a motherfucker,' at me then what am I gonna do? On its own that's one hell of a slur on my Mom's honor. I didn't realize she meant her Mom. She thought I was you, asshole. How is this my fault? It's my fault because you look like me?"

 "I don't look like you. You look like me."

 "Bullshit. I'm older. I'm the original. You're just the copy."

 "Nuh uh. So you were first out the vagina..."

 "...okay, no," said Bryan. "This conversation has already had enough vaginas and Moms in the same thought..."

 "...my cells might have started dividing first. Have you ever thought about that? Just because you snagged the seat closest to the exit. I might have been the more advanced one in the uterus. My cells might have moved onto higher brain functions while yours were still working on forming your spleen."

 "Well, they didn't skimp on your nads," said Bryan. "That's for sure. Or maybe they got mixed up and grew you an extra pair where you should have a fucking brain."

 I sat back and sighed. "You're supposed to be on my side here."

 "I am on your side, moron. I'm just saying - how would you feel if you and whatsername..."

 "...Lacie. Her name's Lacie."

 "Lacie. Okay. How would you feel if you ran into some dude and it turned out she'd done them both family style?"

 "She's a modern woman," I said. "It's not the nineteenth century."

 "Bullshit. You're telling me you wouldn't even slightly freak?"

 I thought about it. "Okay," I admitted. "I probably would. A little."

 "A little?" 

 "Maybe more."

 "Damn right you would," said Bryan. "It's fucking weird. And slightly gross. How did you even do that anyway? Didn't you know it was her Mom?"

 "Nope," I said. "I didn't know. Because I am a massive skank. I don't even get their names most of the time."

 "But this one you did."

 "Yeah. And now she's not returning my calls."

 "So give her time," said Bryan. "It was like three hours ago."

 "Okay, but..."

 He groaned. "Oh my God. How many times did you call her in the last three hours?"

 "No more than normal," I said. "I just wanted to talk to..."

 "...Clay. How many?"

 "Four."

 "Ow."

 "Is that bad?"

 "Terrible. Now you look like a skank
and
a psycho."

 "Yeah," I said, reaching for the bong. "About that...I may have said some things that implied she was being oversensitive." 

 Bryan made a kind of strangled gurgling sound on the end of the line. "Go on," he said, after a short, painful pause.

 "Well, she can be kind of a Princess..."

 I heard him exhale.

 "Do you think there's any way she could take me calling her 'Princess Fuckpants' as a joke?" I said.

 "No, bro. No way."

 "Yeah. That's what I thought." Me and the bong had a hot date for tonight. Me, the bong and his friendly cousin Jack Daniels. Why not make it a full on carcinogenic, liver-rotting three-way? "You think she'll be mad?"

 "I think you'll be single."

 "Shit. Because I don't want to be. Single, that is. I kind of like her. She knows stuff."

 "You need the name of a good florist?" he asked.

 "I think maybe I do."

 I looked online but the prices of some of the bouquets were insane. Eventually, after four Jack Daniels' and a bongload of Psycho Bob's finest, I went looking at a bunch of websites about the meanings of flowers. Some were obvious, like roses for love and lilies for mourning, but apparently lime blossom was a symbol of fornication. Who knew limes were such perverts?

 Obviously I was not in the greatest shape the next morning. Worse, there was no sign of Lacie. Her dragon of an aunt was minding the front of the store. "Well, look what the cat dragged in," she said.

 I tried to hide behind my sunglasses.

 "Migraine?" she said. She drew closer and sniffed. "Oh. No. Hangover. My bad."

 "I'm really...um...sorry." It was an effort to make my lips work. I felt like my brain was filled with tiny pixies, all of them working pneumatic drills at once.

 "Whatever," she said. "No skin off my nose. Just make sure you drink some water. And eat something."

 "Thanks." Wow. What had got into her this morning? She was almost nice.

 "If your blood sugar bottoms out and you end up with a workplace injury the paperwork is gonna be a fucking bitch," she said. Ah, there was the Cassandra I knew and loved. "So try not to turn your dick on the lathe, okay sweetie?"

 The morning went by slowly. Still no sign of Lacie. I wondered if she was up in her room, sulking or making voodoo dollies of me. As time went on I began to feel like I didn't care where she was or if she ever came down again. Fuck her. Why should I have to account for every woman I ever stuck my dick in?

 Steve swung by at lunchtime. He took one look at my face and said "Oh boy. Cherchez la femme."

 "It's nothing," I said.

 He raised an eyebrow. "It's not nothing. I stopped by yours this morning and Bog pointed out the level on the Jack Daniels bottle that told me exactly
how
much nothing it was. Where is she?"

 "I don't know. And I don't give a shit. She's over-reacting."

 "Lunch," he said. "I want some. You're going to buy me some. In return I will solve all your romantic problems and wave as you ride off into the sunset with the woman of your dreams."

 "Can I get that in writing?"

 "Nope." He dragged me towards the door.

 "Wait." I stuck my head around the door to the storefront. I hadn't expected to see her there, so the shock of it was as hard and sharp as electricity. Lacie was bent over the counter, reading something on her laptop.

 "Um...I'm going for lunch," I managed to say.

 "Whatever," she said.

 "Nice," said Steve, probably before I was even out of earshot. "Very nice. What did you do to piss her off?"

 "Nothing."

 Steve shook his head and moved in the general direction of Jerry's diner. "No," I said.

 "What? You can't spring for lunch at a diner?"

 "The guy who owns it is like her fucking uncle or something."

 Steve was unmoved. "So?" he said. "I thought you didn't do anything?"

 It was hardly fair - I was hungover, in no shape to cope with the usual twists and turns of Steve-logic. Before I knew it he was through the door, into a booth and eyeing up the apple pie.

 "Okay, when I said nothing..." I began.

 Steve looked infuriatingly pleased with himself. "So there was something?"