7. One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer
2551 Words
Sofia and Leo were being so…good. They didn’t bother Emily for a response to their carefully worded proposition, but they still smiled and flirted like they always did. For a moment here, a second there, Emily thought she’d imagined the whole thing.
Only she knew she hadn’t imagined it. She had the proof.
Inside her purse, she’d found a piece of paper she hadn’t noticed earlier in the week. It had two phone numbers and a small scribbled note in Leo’s chicken scratch penmanship.
Send us a text or call us any time. Looking forward to hearing from you, love.
She’d fingered and creased the piece of paper until the words were almost unintelligible—thought about throwing it away many times, but in the end, she saved their phone numbers in her contact list and typed up a hundred different ways to say hi for the first time via text.
She’d chickened out from hitting send every time.
Emily: Hey, just wanted to say hello
Erased.
Emily: How’s your day been?
Trite. Like she was a teenager with her first cell phone.
Emily: So, what did you mean that you both wanted to date me? What would that entail, exactly? I think if I had more specifics, I might have an answer sooner, or at least something to think about when making my decision.
She almost had sent that one earlier, because it was the closest to what she was thinking. How? Not why. She got the whole idea of attraction and hormonal urges and lust and the carnal pull that specific people had on you, but just…how?
She brought out a bottle of the only booze she had left in her house from the last time she and Kiara had decided to get drunk at the studio. A small bottle of Peach Schnapps that had been vile from the first sip, but did the job when the two of them were bored and decided a drinking game might be fun.
She took the first burning sip of the liquor, let it warm its way down her throat until she forced another. And another. She’d drank a little more than three shots before she was fiddling with her phone again, pausing over the SEND button on that last, too-truthful text.
Then, she screamed and dropped her phone when the alarm on it went off. Though she joked about law being boring for the most part, she never missed an episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. She set her alarm every Friday so she didn’t miss it or forget to set her DVR if she was going to be out.
Picking up the phone, she went to grab the remote to the TV when she blanched.
Oh no.
No no no no no!
Either she had accidentally hit send when her alarm went off, of her carpet was out to humiliate her.
“Delete! Delete! Please don’t tell me I can’t f*****g delete a damn text!”
No, you can’t, honey. That genie’s so out of the bottle she’s hitting the road to Cocoa Beach to find herself a hunky astronaut to call Master.
“Oh, God!”
She shrieked when the phone vibrated, and she almost dropped the damn thing again.
Leo: What do you want to know, honey?
Oh, well—nothing, I suppose. Maybe how do I know if I like v****a? You know, before being faced with the prospect of tasting one and all. d**k I can get behind. One hundred percent sausage fan here, yes. v****a? I’m still on the fence about.
She groaned and took another swig of her Schnapps, this time the only thing she tasted was her nerves as they crawled up her throat in their own stomach-churning path to get to the truth—or at least to get it out there and onto her iPhone.
Emily: I don’t know what I want to know—if that makes any sense. I have no frame of reference for this.
She waited a few moments for the bubbles to start appearing to show he was texting her back. When they popped up, it seemed like ages before a reply came.
Leo: Well, we could always just sit down and chat. Sofia and I are home if you want to stop by, or we could come to you.
She looked down at her shorts and tank top thinking that she probably was already a little too tipsy to make it even to her dresser, much less find suitable shoes and walk the few blocks to Leo and Sofia’s apartment.
Emily: Well, I’m kind of in for the night, if you know what I mean.
Leo: ???
Emily: It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.
Leo: Ah. Understood. If you don’t mind, you could give us your address and we can stop by. We’re both still wide awake, and I know Sof is anxious to see you.
Emily thought of that for all of two seconds before texting, sure with her address attached.
Emily: Sorry. It’s a studio so it’s a little small.
Leo: No worries and no judgment. I’m sure it’s fine.
Emily wobbled over to the dresser to pick up her hairbrush so she could get the snarls from that afternoon’s wind out of her hair. Usually she wouldn’t make the extra effort when she was at home and comfy, but sloppy and drunk were not what she wanted to portray, even if she could admit to the latter.
After her hair was neat and falling in waves down her shoulders, shining in the dim glow of one measly lamp, she turned around to regard the space.
Neat. No laundry out on the floor, no underwear hanging from the corner of a dresser drawer. She’d even taken the garbage out to the trash compactor after coming home and getting comfortable. If there was anything amiss—besides the accusing scent of peach and the fact that she’d been drinking it straight from the bottle—she couldn’t see it.
She sat at the edge of her bed. Moved over to the small love seat.
No, not love seat. Two-seat sofa. No love. Just furniture.
She was about to get up and move back to the bed when a knock came from the front door.
Bracing herself, she took one courage-inducing swig from her bottle and placed it back into the freezer where it could stay for the rest of the night.
Probably.
Maybe.
Fuck it.
She thought better and left it out on the counter like it belonged there, next to a full bottle of diet cola that hadn’t made its way into the fridge yet.
“Coming!” she called.
Well, at least I’m not slurring.
Or babbling.
Yet.
She opened the door and realized her mistake immediately when both of her guests’ eyes drifted down to her threadbare tank top.
No bra.
She immediately went to cross her arms, but that would probably only bring more attention, so she just blushed, watching as Sofia and Leo stared back up at her, almost pulling their gazes from her chest. Like her mother, she was generously gifted up top, though she thought her ass could probably be a bit bigger to give her that coveted hourglass figure she admired so much in Kiara.
“Come on in.” She forced the smile, though Leo and Sofia’s were a bit more welcoming. “Like I said, it’s small, but I honestly couldn’t stand the idea of having roommates I never met before. I’d rather live in a small space with just me than force myself to try and like the people I was saddled with for however long the lease was for.”
She felt it. She was chattering, babbling, but they only smiled back like they enjoyed hearing the nerves scrape raw at the back of her throat. Emily was half-tempted to just break out the Schnapps again and drink the rest down like medicine. Maybe she’d pass out before she would have to say anything too embarrassing or incriminating.
Mostly something that sounded too naïve. Make her sound like she’d never seen a d**k, much less sucked one.
She wanted to groan, step back and take a hard look at her life, the f**k-up that it was, that it could be. A choice made in haste was always one that came with a f**k-ton of regret.
“Can I get you guys anything to drink? Cola? Water?” She stood there, her hands clasped together tight, her fingers writhing like spindly little worms as she flexed her toes into the deep carpet.
The f*****g carpet that started all this s**t. Now I feel like I’m going to heave up all that alcohol like a college coed at her first frat party.
“We’re good, but thanks,” Sofia assured her, patting the bed beside her as she sat down. “Hope you don’t mind if we sit on your bed. That couch looks a little too cozy if you don’t want us all sitting on top of each other.”
It was said with the innocence that the whole situation lacked, but her sobriety was waving the white flag of surrender as she stepped over to the counter and picked up the Schnapps before twisting the cap off. She grinned. “Then I hope you don’t mind. I think I need a little liquid courage before we get to chatting.”
Or anything else.
That thought didn’t make her shiver with revulsion like it should. Instead, the dimmer switch on her libido malfunctioned, desire roaring to life as she took a few bracing sips of alcohol before setting the bottle down and strolling over to the bed. She climbed on, facing the both of them before curling her legs under her.
“What did you want to know about this?” Leo pointed between the three of them, though his expression didn’t change. He wasn’t embarrassed, so why should she be? He didn’t make this feel as awkward as it should, with his white smile, the dimples in his cheeks, the three-day-old scruff on his jaw that she wanted to touch to see if it was as soft as it looked…
“I don’t know…anything, really.” She shrugged her shoulders, trying to soften the grin she felt pulling her face tight. She smiled a lot when she was nervous. “If this was a game like…I don’t know, say football, I would say I’ve had the touchdown experience, but never did the…the little dance they do in the endzone. I scored and then kept it moving. Didn’t spike the ball or wait for the teammates to show up to pat me on my back or anything. I just kept it plugging forward, I guess you could say.”
“You’ve lived, but never experienced,” Sofia stated accurately.
“Yeah, in a way. I guess I thought—okay, that was it. What’s next? And does jealousy get in the way with you two? Or three? How do you avoid it if it does? I mean, I can’t say I’m not intrigued, but I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
Leo shook his head. “You don’t think about it too much. You do what feels good. If everyone thought every action they made to death, nothing would ever get done. You touch and taste—” He lifted one shoulder before glancing back at Sofia briefly. “—if you like it, you take more of it.”
“What he’s saying is, talk is cheap,” Sofia offered. “We could talk about what we do or how we please the other—how we want to be pleased—but it’s just that. You run around in circles long enough and let doubt crawl in. Doubt is like hate in a way. It infects everything around it. It can keep you safe, but it doesn’t guarantee pleasure or happiness.”
Leo reached out, one hand barely touching Emily’s knee as his gaze landed on the skin of her thigh. “In order to just know something, sometimes you have to experience it. To let go of the notion you can’t do something is—”
“It opens the world up to you.” Sofia smirked. “It’s probably why people did so many hallucinogens back in the 60s. Yes, it opened their minds, made them think they think they could do anything, be anyone, but it was illusion, a mirage. In the right setting and with the right company, opening yourself up to more can be liberating.”
“It doesn’t work for everyone, though,” Leo admitted. “You either like it or you don’t but you won’t know if you don’t try.”
“Everyone makes broad statements before they take a leap of faith; they make assumptions based on their doubts or insecurities or their fears. I say if you’re on a plane to go skydiving, jump. That’s what you’re there for, to get your blood pumping, the adrenaline rushing through you. If you live inside a box all your life, all you’ll ever know is the inside of that box.”
“And who wants to see the same four walls every day?”
Leo laid a gentle hand on her, Emily’s eyes drifting down to where he touched her before looking between her two guests.
“I don’t, but I don’t know if I’m brave enough to jump either.”
The both shrugged in unison. “Then don’t just think that you’re brave. Tell yourself you’re brave and you will be,” Leo suggested.
“Then…you jump.” Sofia smiled at her, her hand reaching out to touch her as well.
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