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“Only if you fill it with beer. Please.”
8
faye
“I can hearyour brain whirling across town.” Zeke’s voice is deep and vibrates from my eardrum all the way to the apex of my thighs. And it’s certainly not helped by the memory of my recent deep dive into his social media. Not that he’d posted much more than photos of him playing hockey, drinking beer, and watching weird sports, but he’d been tagged in a slew of others. Frequently looking incredibly h-a-w-t, as Caro would say. And usually with women who looked nothing like me.
He hums into the phone and I shiver from head to toe. Then I pull my peach comforter tighter.
In the background, I hear a woman’s voice and my stomach tightens. Then there’s the sound of a door closing and it’s quieter.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Pasha’s. We were going to the Matador, but then his fan club arrived and we stalled out. Now I have a perfume headache and I still don’t have queso fundido.”
I can imagine Zeke hiding from the international women and men who form Pasha’s entourage on the sweeping veranda that spans the length of Pasha’s twelfth floor Pearl District condo.
“Isn’t it cold?”
“As balls. But there’s an overhead heater.”
“Pasha’s so fancy.”
A breeze vibrates across the speaker on his phone and I roll onto my back, pulling my blankets up to my chin.
“What happened, Faye?” he asks. His voice is soft and inquisitive. As if he has all the time in the world and nowhere he’d rather be than on a freezing balcony, calling me because he has a sense that something is wrong.
“Just a bad day.”
I wait for him to push for details, but he doesn’t. And yet I know he’s listening. So I continue.
“Do you ever feel like you’re not where you’re supposed to be?”
“Honestly? No.”
“So, what? You’ve always been exactly where you felt you were meant to be? You’ve never felt out of place?”
“I didn’t say that. I’ve been the odd man out before and felt like I didn’t belong. I get that. But that’s different.”
“How so?”
“I never felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there. I was just different from everyone else.”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“What happened this morning, Faye?” His voice is a touch more insistent.
I sigh. “Same shit, different day.”
“Whatever it is, I’d be happy to introduce them to Phineas and Ferb.”
I can picture him holding up his fists and I chuckle at his names for them. He’s quiet for a long beat, but I hear something rustling in the background.
“What are you wearing?”
My chest flushes as I sit upright.
“What?”
