I’m not sure how I feel about it. Is it possible that I’m wrong about Blake? Maybe my email made him realize how much I mean business. I might have intimidated congeniality into him.
What I do know is I need to read that email, and so even though my legs and lungs are protesting, I start running back home.
Luckily it doesn’t take long for my phone to boot up and for me to access my emails.
I click on Blake’s reply without much thought.
I wish I hadn’t.
Hey Sugar Tits,
I admit I didn’t understand most of your email since you used all them big words and all. But heck, I like a woman who knows her right from her left. I can’t promise I’ll be a brilliant writer but I will promise to annoy the ever living fuck out of you every opportunity that I get. Seeing that I’ll be monopolizing most of your time, because no I don’t believe we should work on this separately, you better get used to my handsome face real quick. I can’t promise you’ll love it, but I certainly will. Maybe you can start doing me a favor and bringing a roll of duct tape to our meetings. I know you’re probably too prudish to be tied up but it could come in real handy across your mouth when you start spewing all your high and mighty garbage. Then again, you are a girl and I’ve been programmed to tune most of your words out. We’ll see.
Anyway, no need to use your pretty little brain as I already have several story ideas that I’m working on that you might like.
Cum for the T-Rex (a zany story about dinosaur sex and the women who go back in time to seek them)
Death by Farts (people die by hiccupping all the time and it makes the news, so why not this? Could be an investigative journalism piece)
Ms. Know-it-all and Her Lonely Life (could be your autobiography but I won’t get presumptuous. Oh look, I know what that word means).
I’m sure you’ll find at least one of these suitable.
Look forward to seeing you, tomorrow at 7 p.m. at the library. Be there or be square.
Wait, too late.
Blake.
I’m floored.
And then angry.
So very fucking angry.
No wonder he was acting that way earlier, he was probably expecting me to punch him in the face, and fuck, I really should have! Maybe gone for his overused nuts right afterward.
With my pulse thudding in my throat, I go back and read over the email I sent. Again, it’s wordy, and yeah I was trying to make him feel like an idiot, so sue me. But it didn’t justify his response whatsoever. And now, now he thinks that I just took it, that I’m totally cool with being addressed as Sugar Tits. Who does he think he is, Mel Gibson?
“Aaaargh!” I roar, bursting into the living room where Ana is sitting on the couch, totally engrossed with a soap opera that’s been on since before I was born.
She cocks an eyebrow at me and it’s only now that I realize she’s at the “brow phase” of her beauty school, because it looks like two singed caterpillars have laid down on her forehead to die. I have a hard time staring at her eyes without my gaze drifting upward to the hairy, pencilled massacre.
“What’s wrong?” she asks idly.
She means aside from her eyebrows.
I flop down on the couch next to her. “You know that asshole from my writing class?”
“Yes, the British babe.”
I flinch, giving her a look of disgust. “Babe? What the hell are you on?”
“Percocet and vodka,” she says cheerily. “Remember I met you after your class one day and he was there. Tall. Nice smile. Thick hair. A butt you want to bite.” She clacks her teeth together.
My lip curls. “No.” I shake my head. “He’s not a babe or an anything except a fuckfart.”
“Fuckfart,” she repeats. “New word?”
I sigh. “Yes, but don’t use it, it’s patented. Anyway, I’m paired up with him for the final project in Marie’s class. I have to write a novella with him.”
I expect her to make a face but she’s still smiling. Must be the Percocet cocktail.
“Oh, this is going to be fun,” she says, wiggling her fingers, her prismatic gel nails catching the light.
“No,” I admonish her, twisting in my seat to see her better. “It’s not going to be fun, Ana. You know how important this class is to me. He’s some playboy who thinks he’s on an extended vacation. He doesn’t take anything seriously. His email is proof of that, and he’s going to sink my grade. On purpose now.”
She doesn’t look as worried as I feel she should. I mean, she does realize that if I fail, she’ll have to hear about it until she ends up moving in with the Nigerian. “Have you talked to your teacher? Or him?”
“Both. Kind of. I bumped into him on my run, but at the time I hadn’t read his email yet. I was actually nice to him. Nice!”
She turns back to the TV, the adventures of Eduardo the doctor enthralling her once again. “Maybe it’s good. Let you be the bigger character.”
“I don’t want to be the bigger character.”
Ana gives me an earnest look. “Do you want me to deal with him?” she asks in such a measured voice that I move back from her an inch.
“Uh no, that’s okay.” Whether she knows some old Soviet murder technique or just wants to yell at him while shoving her boobs in his face, I say hell no to her involvement.
“Suit yourself,” she says with a shrug.
I head to my room and think about texting Rio, but she’ll just tell me to pull up my big girl panties, put on some gangsta rap, and deal with it. I then think about writing the appropriate rebuttal to Blake, but I stop myself. He’ll get an earful tonight at the library, and if he refuses to apologize or budge an inch, then I’m taking it to Marie with that email as proof.