He takes a gulp of his beer and leans back in his seat, wiping his mouth. He gives me a lazy smile that I know all too well. “Just last week you were telling me about that annoying hostess from Earls you slept with, the one who started talking about her doll collection the minute you finished fucking.”
“Yeah, and in order to get out of the rest of the date I had to pretend I was moving back to England the next day. Then I drove past her a few days later. I’m surprised Mr. Mean didn’t get egged.”
He points his glass at me. “You didn’t answer my question. Is she hot?”
“No,” I tell him, knowing that if I admit she’s hot in the slightest he’ll never listen to my plight. Oh, the fucking plight. So I decide to pull up the email and show it to him. “Anyway, I got paired with her for my last assignment and this is the email she sends me tonight.”
He squints as he reads it over. When he’s done, he looks almost impressed. “Thems some big words for a dummy like you,” he says in his best hick accent. “Seriously though, sounds like the rest of the semester is going to be rough. Good luck with that.”
“Nice to have your support.”
“Well, I don’t know. You going to answer her? You want me to write the email for you? I know this is the face of an innocent,” he says, stroking his jaw between his fingers, “but I’m pretty good at putting people in their place.”
“Heath, you can’t get her stoned through the computer,” I remind him, although I doubt she’d smile even if she was high. “It’s fine, I got this.”
And so that’s how we spend the rest of the night. Several pints later, the band is blaring shitty Celtic punk, we’re both sauced, Heath is high, and we’ve composed the world’s most ridiculous response to Amanda.
“Do I press send?” I ask him, my voice slurring a bit.
He doesn’t answer, just leans over and presses the send icon for me.
Whoops.
“Let’s get another round,” Heath says.
So we do.
CHAPTER THREE
Amanda
I wake up the next morning to Ana puttering around the kitchen and singing along to what sounds like an Estonian folk version of Mariah Carey’s “Butterfly.”
I groan and roll over, my head smarting a bit from the wine. It’s been a while since I’ve drank a whole bottle. That whole first two weeks after the breakup, a morning hangover, and puffy eyes were pretty much routine, along with waking up among discarded tissues and melted pints of Ben & Jerry’s, but I thought I was climbing out of the hole and finally getting used to being single. I guess not.
I check my phone, hoping to while away the time without getting up, but it’s dead. Somehow I manage to drag myself out of bed and slip on my plush robe (it says “Hollywood Tower of Terror” on it—Alan bought it for me on one of our annual trips to Disneyland, something that hits me low in the gut, that pinch of knowing something you loved won’t be a part of your life anymore). I sigh, trying to shake it off of me and then shuffle into the kitchen.
Ana is wearing my yellow apron and making pancakes, shaking her ample booty around to the song, which yes, is some weird foreign cover of “Butterfly.” Odd how Mariah in Estonian is still very much Mariah.
She spins around, spatula raised like a microphone, and beams at me with squinty eyes overdone with mascara and purple eyeliner, her puffy lips stretched across her teeth. “Good morning, sweet one!” she says, giving another shake of her hips. “I’m making pancakes!”
“I can see that,” I tell her, though when I walk over to the coffee maker and get a closer look at the frying pan, I’m not really sure what I’m looking at. “What are those lumps?”
“Oh, that is naeris and kaneel. Sorry, cinnamon. My grandmother’s recipe. It’s very good.” She waves the spatula at the table. “Sit down, it’s almost ready.”
“I was just going to have my shake,” I say, eyeing the cupboard where I keep my rice protein shake. It’s bland, but it does the trick. I usually don’t feel like eating a lot in the mornings.
“Sit,” she says again. “You need your strength to hear all about my wonderful date!”
Ah, that’s right. After I sent Blake the email last night, I ended up watching TV for a bit then passing out. I never got an email back from him before the phone died nor did I hear Ana come in last night.
“Okay, well, I’m going to need coffee for that,” I say. I pour nearly the entire contents of the carafe into a giant mug that says Jamie Fraser’s Sassenach on it, and sit down.
After a few sips, I start to perk up, and Ana slides one giant, fluffy yet somehow burnt pancake onto my plate. I poke it gingerly with my fork, a tiny puff of steam escaping like a bog of stench before smothering it in maple syrup.
“So how did it go?” I ask her, adjusting my ass on the seat to get comfortable. I’m going to be here for a long one. Good thing I don’t have class until this afternoon.
Ana practically prances to the fridge and back to get orange juice before sitting down across from me.
“He was a very nice man,” she starts off by saying. “Very nice. Not exactly what I thought he would look like but pretty close. Maybe three feet shorter.”
“Three feet? That’s a big difference.” Especially when Ana is like six feet tall.
“Yes, he could look my boobs in the eyes, no problem.” She pauses. “Also, he was bald. And Nigerian.”