Greasy D is back in town—sniffing around old stomping grounds.”
Greasy D—Don, is my mother’s ex-fiancé who just so happened to remember our address last week and planted his drunk self on our couch.
“That he is.” I blow out an exasperated breath because I’m not ready to go there. My mother has had a string of ex-boyfriends, husbands, significant other pretenders. You name the scoundrel, my mother has already teased him out from under a rock and brought him home. Most of my mother’s suitors think they can make their way into my pants when she’s not looking—one of them did. I shake the past out of my head easy as clearing an Etch A Sketch.
Jemma raps her knuckles over the table pulling me from my momentary trance. “Never mind all this bull. We need to get back to the topic at hand—you and Mr. Comfortable.” She snatches the pickle from her plate and holds its long, bulbous body up for display. “Now—I know his type—things are going to move quickly. He’s going to flick his zipper and expect you to know what comes next. You’re gonna want to pay careful attention, sweetie, because this is one pop quiz you’re not going to want to fail.” She plunges the poor defenseless pickled veggie into her mouth and proceeds to pull it in and out.
“Would you stop?” I do a quick sweep of the facility to see exactly how mortified I should be.
“No teeth,” she barks over at me as if I were getting intimate with a cucumber myself.
“You can quit the tutorial. I won’t be pleasuring vegetables anytime soon.”
“You’re not pleasuring anyone.” She takes a hard bite. “Tell me this—you pleasing yourself?”
“I’m not doing this with you.” I sink lower in my seat and clamp my hands over my ears.
“Come over some time. I’ve got a closet full of peckers that are guaranteed to make you blush for weeks. Of course, you’ll have to get your own batteries. I wouldn’t trust—”
“Jemma, I’m blushing now. Can we end this? I’m no more in the market for one of your closet peckers than I am for pickle tutorial. But, trust me, the next time I’m in a relationship with mildly-processed produce you’ll be the first to know.”
“No teeth.” She bites the air. “One day you’ll find yourself playing with Holt Edwards’ pickle, and you’ll remember this very conversation.”
“God.” I lean in hard. “You just said his name and the word pickle in the same sentence.” I glance over at him still ten skanks deep as he shakes a martini mixer over his head. “Do you know people are able to hear their names at freakishly low decibels? He’s going to think we’re perverts, when we both know the only pervert around here is you.”
“Guess I’ll be his favorite.” She smashes the butt of her cigarette into the table as if she were putting it out. “The things I could teach you if you only let me. Believe me, I’ve got a sexual IQ that would baffle the scientific community.”
“In that case, you should consider donating your brain to science. Right now. Go.”
Jemma and I enter a standoff, just staring one another down with nothing but a headless pickle between us to pass judgment.
A pair of pale arms wave from the bar, catching my attention. Laney smiles like a loon as she heads this way. My heart warms at the sight of my sweet baby sis. She’s been working here for almost a year, and, each time she talks about the place, she seems really happy as if she’s wanted to do this all along. But, then, everything always works out for Laney. She and her longtime boyfriend, Ryder, are getting married in a few short months, thus the spastic text to meet her at the Black Bear this afternoon. I don’t mind. It’s actually quiet here today. It’s officially June, so most of the people who live in this college town are gone for the summer.
“Bring Lila down to the studio.” I tap my fingers over the table to garner Jemma’s wandering attention. Every time Holt walks by, her eyes sway in his fitted-denim direction.
“Are you kidding? And reward the little brat? She turned the channel yesterday and forced her brothers to watch a horror movie.”
“That’s a new one for her.” Lila is Jem’s six-year-old daughter, and according to Jemma, she might be Satan’s spawn. “And where were you while the kids were subject to teen vampires in love?”
“Napping. Believe it or not,