Page 57 of Back for Seconds

“He offered me a job, perv. On Christmas. I’m singing at the restaurant. Their usual lounge singer has laryngitis.” She held up her thumb and index finger and rubbed them together. “Bookoo bucks, baby.”

“That’s amazing.” I tried not to sound completely relieved. Sal and Mimi were like the Spider-Man meme—two identical heathens, pointing at each other. A love affair between them would result in nothing but emotional chaos, several migraines, and a trip to the ER. And that was just for me.

“Sure as shit is!” She pulled a hat out of her bag and pulled it onto her head, admiring her reflection in the blackened TV screen. “What about you?! You look fabulous. What the fuck has been going on?”

“Me?” I laughed, sinking down onto the floor and stretching out next to her many piles. “Well…ok, I’ll tell you the whole thing. But you’re never going to believe me.”

Mimi grinned down at me. “You met someone.”

I sunk my teeth into my bottom lip. “Uh huh.”

“Spill!”

“It’s…Joey—da vegan. Like, JoeyDaVegan.”

Her mouth dropped open. “No.”

“I promise.” And then I told her exactly how it all happened.

Chapter 19 June

Two days until Christmas

Twenty-four hours until Noche Buena

Hurricane Mimi had touched down full force last night, and after a long and much-needed catch-up over Thai food, I’d gone to bed. Meanwhile, Mimi had put on a fringy dress, six-inch pleasers, and had taken a cab into Atlantic City.

Today was December twenty-third—a day I had actively dreaded for the last three-hundred and sixty-five days.

It was the day Brian had proposed. A precious memory nestled within my favorite month, days away from my favorite holiday. Now, I would have paid someone to scramble the memories from my brain.

I wasn’t even sad—not after Brian’s stunt the other night and his ongoing campaign to slither back into the periphery of my life. Sure, I hated him. If I focused my thoughts in that direction, I would feel my nervous system flood anew with boiling hot indignation.

But I didn’t want to direct my thoughts over there.

I wanted to think about Joey.

Mimi had encouraged me over and over to just fuck him. Just do it. You need this. To get it all out of my system, to let loose—and then figure everything out after.

“Do you know how many of my friends I’ve fucked?” she’d asked, through a mouthful of pad see ew.

“Oh, believe me, I know.”

Women like Mimi could do things like that—pluck a partner out of a crowd, let the night unfold organically, shrug her way through the messy aftermath. Whatever special, snowflake-like-pattern trauma had imprinted on her brain had made Mimi fun. Meanwhile, I was in a daily battle to not merge forms with my mattress. Escapism to me looked like a five-hundred-thousand-word Firefly AU fanfic where Captain Reynolds is a tech executive with an insatiable horniness for big-booty Italian chicks.

My mind was safe. My imagination was safe. It was where all my favorite stuff lived.

Outside, with other humans, things got complicated.

But Joey wasn’t like other humans, was he?

Regardless, I needed to start getting ready for his family’s Noche Buena dinner. My first to-do of the day involved attempting to get Sal to call me back. I’d left him fifteen voicemails all with the same variation of: “Hey psychopath, I know what you did to Brian’s van. Call me back right-fucking-now.” Then I got to work putting together a batch of vegan blondies to bring to Joey’s. After that, I took one of those dastardly everything showers, which involved preparing my body like it was going to be oiled, spiced, and spit-roasted over a big open fire.

Once I was squeaky clean and shaved within an inch of my life, I slipped on my rain boots and my heavy jacket and snuck out the front door, careful to not rouse a snoring Mimi.

***

Of course, Evergreen Market was absolutely packed, because today was, internationally, the day when everyone needed something. My list was short and sweet—I needed a fresh roll of duct tape, some zip ties so I could better secure my new garlands on my front porch railing, and I needed a new pair of yellow gloves for washing dishes. Easy. I grabbed a basket and made a beeline for the household items aisle, maneuvering my way through the dense sea of jacketed bodies.