Mel
On the way home from work, I called my best friend Kate from the car. She picked up on the third ring.
“Hey boo, what’s up?” Normally there would be a fairly easy answer to that question. Today, not so much.
“Pretty much everything in my entire life, not to put too fine a point on it.” Okay, so that was perhaps a little melodramatic, but it actually wasn’t too far from the truth.
“What? Elaborate. Pronto.” She was right to be shocked, and she hadn’t even heard what the issue was. She was going to flip her lid when she did hear. Hell, I was still flipping my lid, and I’d had a few hours to digest recent events.
“Are you sitting down?”
“No. Why?” The trepidation in her voice was absolutely warranted.
“Because you need to. Otherwise, after what I’m about to tell you, you’ll fall down.”
“Oh my God.You’re freaking me out over here. What the fuck has happened?” I felt bad that she was clearly worried that something truly awful had occurred. It had, but not of the nature she was probably conjuring in her mind.
“Nobody’s hurt. There’s no emergency. I’m sorry I alarmed you.”
“Oh thank God! What is it then?”
“You’re never going to fucking guess, so I might as well just come right out and tell you….I bumped into Tyler today.” Bumped into him, on him, and all over his hand, to be exact. I waited. Staticky silence was the only sound to be heard in the car.
“Hello…? Are you there?” Maybe she’d hung up, or fainted, or even had a heart attack from the shock. That was certainly how I’d felt when I’d seen him this afternoon. If I hadn’t been working at the time, my reaction would have been more dramatic than it was.
“Yeah… I’m here. But, I thought I heard you say that you ran into Tyler. So then I was assuming that I had fallen into some kind of dream state, or coma, or that I was actually just dead.”
Of her many amazing qualities—loyalty, trustworthiness, kindheartedness, patience, cray-cray baking skills—one of the things I loved most about Mel was her wicked sense of humor. She was funny as fuck, and I could always use more funny in my life. Also cookies. And brownies.
“You heard me right, I’m afraid, my friend. I ran into Tyler. Almost literally ran into…”
“Oh my God, what? Dude, don’t leave me hanging. What the actual mother of Mary happened?” I stifled my laughter. I was already starting to feel slightly better. It was definitely true what they said about the healing power of laughter. So often in life, if I didn’t laugh I’d cry, and as much crying as I’d done over the years, these days, I’d far rather laugh than cry.
“I mean, you literally would not believe it. Very long story made very short: disaster at Beyner HQ, last-minute meeting with an advertising agency as a result. One of the partners of said agency—completely unbeknown to me until I walked into the meeting with him—is none other than Tyler Beckett.”
“Oh. My. God. Shit shit, fuck!”
“Yeah, that about sums up my internal reaction at the time,” I laughed.
“What did you do?” The shock was still evident in her voice.
“What could I do? It was a work thing, Martin was there, and all of Tyler’s business partners. I had no choice, and neither did he. We just had to try to act like the past had never happened. Talk about the most awkward two hours of my entire life—they dragged on like twenty fucking years. I couldn’t wait to get out of there.”
“Oh Boo, I’m so sorry you had to go through this. Really.”
“Thanks sweets, and I really wish that was all there was to it. It would have been bad, but survivable.”
Wait. So you mean that wasn’t all?” She spoke slowly, and I could just about hear the cogs of her mind whirring.
“No, and instead of sugar coating this or dragging it out, I’m just going to say it. I ended up making out with Tyler in the hall by their reception area, and I let him finger fuck me until I came all over his hand.”
I had to turn the volume down on the entertainment system so that my eardrums weren’t shattered by her extremely loud screech. When that was over there was a gurgling sound, and a lot of coughing. What the?
“Hey, are you okay?” I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
More spluttering and coughing. She really wasn’t okay.
“No! Far from it. How can you break news like that to me when I have mouthful of smoothie? I’m now going to have to find a way to clean it off of everything within a three-foot radius, including my computer.” Ooops.
“What? How was I supposed to know you were drinking a smoothie? You didn’t say anything.”
“Well no, but you should have asked. As well as whether I was sitting down, you should have checked if I was eating, drinking, or operating heavy machinery.”
“What? What the fuck does heavy machinery have to do with anything?”
“Nothing. It’s just a common safety precaution—like on prescription meds and stuff, and entirely not the point. You need to tell me about you going all uninhibited and exhibitionist on me, and fucking your old flame of twenty years in a public place.”
“That’s not what went down.” Kate laughed. “I mean…not what happened,” I corrected hastily.
“We didn’t actually have sex. He finger fucked me.”
“Splitting hairs. Same-same. Now I need all the details.”
And who was I to disappoint? I filled updated her, not missing a thing.
“To add insult to injury, I had to share the ride back to the office with Martin, so I couldn’t even fall apart once I left the building. I just had to act normal, but all I could do was think about Ty, and worry about what the fuck I was going to do.” I exhaled the huge breath I’d been holding.
“Then when I got back to my desk, things went from bad to worse. Tyler—who now goes by Beck, by the way— called me and strong-armed me into meeting him tomorrow.”
“What the fuck Mel? How the hell did you let that happen?”
“I know, but it’s not like I just rolled over and did whatever he said. I left my iPad there, like Cinder-fucking-rella. Now he’s refusing to return it unless we meet in person. I might have been inclined to tell him to just keep the fucking thing, were it not for the fact that he knows the pass code, and although I don’t think he would snoop, I’d rather not leave that to chance, for obvious reasons.” There was a long pause.
“How does someone you haven’t seen since you were basically a kid get ahold of your passcode? Is he some kind of hacker?” She was right to be incredulous.
“It’s his birthday.”
“Today? So you gave him the code as a present? I don’t understand.”
“No the passcode. It’s his date of birth. It’s been the same since we were together, so he just guessed it.”
“Oh. Shit.”
“Quite. Because nothing says weirdo ex like typing someone’s birthday into your tablet several times a day.”
“Yeah dude, that is kind of weird. What’s with that?”