“Yes, there’s always food.”
“Is it free?” What can I say? I’m cheap and love a handout.
“Yes.” She laughs. “I mean, the company has to pay for it, but yes, it’s free.” She makes air quotes around the word free and pads to my kitchen with bare feet. Sets her bottle of wine on the counter and pops open the fridge, digging around, finally settling on a container of cottage cheese (so random) that’s probably expired and a half-eaten jar of peaches—also probably expired. “You don’t have shit for food in here.”
“I know. That’s why I need your free food. Also, be careful—you’ll most likely get salmonella from what you’re about to eat. This is your fair warning in case you get it in your head to sue me for food poisoning.”
“Har har.” Abbott moves to the living room, makes herself at home on the couch, even going as far as covering herself with one of the few throw blankets I have lying around.
“Make yourself at home.”
“Aw, thanks.” My remote control is in her hand and she’s pointing it at the television, about to change the station. What the hell!
“When I said make yourself at home, I didn’t say change the damn station.” In three strides, I’m taking the remote back, burying it beneath a couch cushion like a squirrel stashing a nut; I’ll probably regret the move later when I have no fucking idea where it disappeared to, but for now, it works. “How was dinner?”
“Long and boring.” She yawns and stretches, the motion pulling the fabric of her top taut across her breasts. “You know how those things go—everyone older talks over you, and everyone else just pretends to know what the hell they’re talking about. That whole fake it till you make it bullshit the company is filled with.” She stretches again, arms lifted above her head.
Avert your eyes, asshole.
“So I’m stuck in between these blowhards—one called me Kid four times—and the other…” She shrugs, peeling back the foil top of the cottage cheese, then licks her fingers. “The other one kept elbowing me in the boob.”
I eye up her boobs.
“Stop looking!” The blanket gets pulled up further, a shield against my suddenly perverted eyes. Guess nothing is safe when you haven’t had sex in ages. “Jesus, this is my safe place.”
Her safe place? I don’t even know what that means. “What the heck does that mean?”
“It means I came over here because I wanted company and I know I don’t have to worry about you hitting on me because we’re just friends.”
Well fuck.
Friend-zoned?
I already decided to friend-zone her—where does she get the audacity to friend-zone me? Doesn’t she realize the pecking order here? It starts with me. Me, at the top, hen-pecking away and deciding who gets what.
I do the zoning in my relationships. Me.
Not her.
I open my mouth to argue but am immediately silenced because a spoon is jammed into my mouth, laden with cottage cheese and peaches, and I sputter, caught off guard.
“Taste this—isn’t it good?” I have no choice but to chew and swallow, choking down the combination of mealy and fruity with a grimace on my face.
“What the fuck, Abbott? Warn a guy before you jam something down his throat.”
“Why? Guys never warn you before they try jamming their business all the way down your throat during a blow job.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa—holy fuck now. What?
Abbott doesn’t see my shocked expression because her gaze is fixated on the game that’s playing on television. First she friend-zones me, and now she’s casually bringing up blowies after ramming food into my gullet?
Who is this chick?
Her cute little feet go up on my coffee table, the fuzzy slippers she just slid on winking at me.
She wiggles her toes.
“So what about you—why are you still home?” Her question is half-assed, arbitrary, just making conversation. “Don’t you ever go out?”
When I don’t respond, she glances at me across the silence.
“Of course I do. Don’t you?”
“I went out tonight.”
“Yeah, with work people. I bet the average age was 35 to 40, and don’t lie and say it wasn’t.”
“Fine. I won’t lie and say it wasn’t. Besides, I already told you everyone there was way older. But it still counts because I went out and I didn’t want to.”
“So that doesn’t count.”
“How does that not count as going out? It was a bar! We had drinks! I am half-baked!” She holds up the cottage cheese, giving the container a little shake, as if her bad choice in snacks has anything to do with her sobriety. She lowers it. “Why is it such a big deal that I like staying home? I have all my crap here.” She spreads her arms wide to emphasize her point.
“This is my apartment,” I remind her.
“Mi casa es su casa.”
“My house is not your house.”
“Mi stuff es su stuff.”
“Knock it off—my stuff isn’t your stuff, either.”
“Eh.” She readjusts her feet. “We’re franz now. This is how we roll.”
“This is not how we roll. Leave my shit alone.” Now I’m irritated. “Take your feet off the coffee table, and stop saying we’re friends.”
“I’m wearing slippers. Stop being weird.”
“You can’t take my shit, and you can get your feet off my table. Have some manners.”
She pulls her feet off the furniture. “Why are you being such a baby all of a sudden?” Her food gets set on the table and she turns to face me on the couch with a pouty huff. “You don’t have any shit I want anyway. It’s all boring guy junk.”
“Good.” Jeez, if this chick makes me roll my eyes any more than I already have, my eyes are going to get stuck upside down in their sockets.
Abbott folds herself up on the couch like a pretzel, holding her knees, snuggling under the blanket. “So, what about you?”
“What about me, what?”
“Don’t you, I don’t know, date and stuff?”
The way she says and stuff… “Yes, I date and stuff.”
“Oh.” She fidgets with the ends of the blanket, pulling at the strings one by one, rubbing the soft fleece between her forefinger and thumb. “When’s the last date you were on?”
“I don’t remember.”
“If Brooks Benny was going on a date, where would he take her?” She shortens my last name from Bennett to Benny and it’s kind of cute. Kind of.
“Just for drinks. Nothing fancy.”
“Why?”
“Because if it doesn’t work out, I haven’t blown a wad of cash on dinner. That’s guy code.”
“That’s…terrible. If I’m going out with someone, I want them to make an effort.”
“Yeah, well—we’re probably not running with the same caliber of people.”
She pulls back, confused. “What does that mean?”
“We pull from a different pool of people.” I reword the sentence, as if the point I was trying to make was obvious.