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Rachel
Now…
The elevator doors closed behind me and JoJo’s shrieks filled the hallway of the downtown Dublin hotel. I hurried to my room and ducked inside before she summoned a pack of hounds. Or the hotel manager.
“Would you hush?” I laughed, cupping my hand over the phone’s speaker like it was her lips.
“Can’t a best friend be excited for a best friend?” JoJo shouted.
Her image on the screen jolted as she jumped in wild circles around her apartment back in New York City. It was apparently wine o’clock there given the massive glass of red wine she was most certainly spilling on her flea-market-find rug. I had fuck all idea what time it was there in Dublin. I just knew it was dark. And the hotel quiet. Or at least it was before I called JoJo and began telling her about all that had happened.
“I just don’t get what there is to be excited about,” I told her as I set up the phone on the dresser against the television. I added a pillow against the wall on second thought. My neighbour might not enjoy a 3 a.m. wakeup call from a hysterical American woman drunk on pinot and hot Irish gossip.
“Are you insane?” JoJo said, plopping back down in front of her phone. “Rachel, you’re telling me he laid there butt-ass, cock-ass naked right in front of you, an Irish god descended from the rainy heavens to grace you with his tattooed perfection, and you don’t think he still wants you?”
I rolled my eyes as I dug my suitcase out from the hotel closet.
I glanced over my shoulder. “No, I don’t. I think he wants exactly what he says he wants: to fuck in peace. And I’m just a pawn on his fuckboy chessboard.”
JoJo leaned in close to her phone and drawled, “No, you’re his queen.”
I stuck my tongue out at her before beginning to pack up my stuff from the dresser.
JoJo continued, “I mean, think about it, Rach. He is having you move in with him!”
“For ease of access,” I told her. “I mean, he might have to actually talk to one of these girls, these ‘Miss Last Nights’ as he calls them, if I have to cab it all the way across town. He might have to, I don’t know, fucking listen for once if I’m not right down the hall to wake up and push out of bed—”
“Oh, he pushed you off the bed?” JoJo interrupted, rubbing her hands excitedly together.
“No, no,” I said, wagging my finger at her. “Out of the bed, like a parent. Like a parole officer. Not off the bed, like—”
“Like a hot, sexy leprechaun sex god.”
I sighed and stuffed my socks into the suitcase.
“My point is,” I said, “this has nothing at all to do with me. Mason is just using the situation to his advantage.”
“So he won’t tell Tim about you two?” JoJo said. “About your time in Vegas? And whatever it was you did before coming to New York to become the wet kitten who needed a warm home?”
I flipped JoJo the bird and she laughed.
“You really think Tim would care?” JoJo asked.
I kept my eyes on the panties I was refolding and said, somewhat under my breath, “One, yes, I think he would care. It would shatter his perfect little image of me. And two, I kind of didn’t tell Mason about Tim…”
If JoJo’s shrieks out in the hallway were loud, they were nothing compared to what I heard then. I was grateful for the foresight to put up the pillow, concerned it was nowhere near thick enough to save my neighbours from startling awake in terror. I tried to get JoJo to be quiet, but she just went on and on.
I put her on mute.
I left her on mute as I continued packing, even as she jabbed her thumb at me through the camera.
After several minutes I said, “Are you ready to be calm about all of this?”
JoJo gave me a demure nod. I switched back on her volume.
I was rewarded with her shouting at the top of her lungs, “Oh my God, you want him too, you fucking bitch!”
“JoJo!” I hissed, hand again cupping the speaker. “It’s like the middle of the night here! Or at least I think it is. This jet lag has got me all kinds of fucked up.”
