Just A Small Town Girl: A New Adult Romantic Comedy (6 page)

 He stared at me for a moment and I wondered if I could brazen this out and pretend I hadn't recognized him. Or maybe he wouldn't recognize me; I'd been wearing a lot of make-up at the time and my hair had looked completely different.

 No. Didn't work. The arch of his eyebrows said it all. "Hel-lo," he said, stretching out the syllables and lending them the lilt of a playful question.

 "Hi," I said, and felt my face turn hot. The mouth/brain interface thing was clearly not getting any better because I heard the words "That is, I was. High, that is," come out of me without any intervention from my slipping sanity. "Very high. Blazed. Not that you're..."

 He held up a finger and winced. "Yeah. No. Please stop, because this is..."

 "Bad?" I said.

 "Horrible." He shook his head. In the cold light of day I saw his hair wasn't brown at all - rather a sort of dark auburn. His eyes were blue-green and although I didn't think he was much older than me I could already see how the fine laugh lines would one day deepen and set his expression to one of permanent gentle amusement. His smile was as wry as ever.

 "Lindsay, right?" he said.

 I nodded, but even that was unconvincing, so that I ended up resembling a goose with something stuck it its throat. "Lacie," I croaked. "My name's Lacie."

 "Right," he said. "Lacie. I'm here about the seasonal job, so um..." He stuck out a hand and I took it, my mouth hanging open like a carp's; it's always interesting when a woman meets a man who puts her in touch with her inner zoo.

 "Is this gonna be awkward?" he said. "Because I really need this job."

 "No, no," I said. "Not awkward at all. Fine."

 "Good. Because we may have gotten off on the wrong foot..."

 I studiously ignored the 'gotten off' part of the sentence. "Well, yeah," I said. "We didn't...you know...um. Not so much foot as feet - and my feet weren't even on the floor so..."

 He was wincing again.

 "I'm sorry," I said. "I'm doing it again, aren't I?"

 "You are," he said. "God. Wow. That is...terrible. Do you have that thing that makes you shout out inappropriate stuff?"

 "Tourette's Syndrome?" I shook my head. "No. I think it's a brain tumor, actually. Or it always is when I look it up on the internet."

 "You should probably stop looking it up on the internet then."

 "Yes. Everyone does say that, yes."

  The silence that followed was nothing short of a level of social hell that Dante Alighieri had definitely never experienced, otherwise it would have figured heavily in the
Inferno
- probably as part of the punishments for the lustful, the fornicators and adulterers, all those unwary, gland-driven types who would probably fuck a fire-hydrant if it put on a dress and the some lipstick. Here are the damned that engage crotch before mouth, doomed to uncomfortable silence for all eternity. I found myself wondering how that might translate into medieval Italian, and how best to fit it to terza rima, which was an odd line of thought for me but better than the one I was currently trying to avoid.

 There are some words that are almost impossible to say. The brain registers them and knows that they must be said, but when you go to say them it's as if your lips refuse to move, your tongue refuses to leave the floor of your mouth and your throat won't make the noises you need it to make. Everything above the neck puts up the maximum resistance, because you know that once you say those words the world won't be the same again. Currently 'I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name,' was riding high on the list of things I never wanted to have to say - not quite as high as 'I have cancer,' or 'In two weeks the human race will be extinct', but up there with 'Did you have a cat? Because I have some bad news'.

 I realized there was no way to admit that I didn't know his name without looking like the sluttiest slut that ever did slut. Forget Madame Bovary - Hester Prynne, c'est moi.

 For a brief, mad second I considered taking a wild guess. Paul? John? Ringo? Havelock Maximillian Kittenplan III? Fortunately Aunt Cassandra introduced me to the novel experience of being pleased to see her and delurked from behind the armoire she'd been pretending to dust.

 "Hiiii," she said, practically vibrating with glee. "You must be Clayton, right?"

 "Clayton," I said. "Yes. This is Clayton. Clayton, this is my Aunt Cassandra."

 He threw me a look of appalled pity. As soon as his back was turned I stuffed my fist in my mouth and sank down beneath my laptop.

 Cassandra took him into the back to talk to my Dad, while I stared vacantly at my laptop screen and wondered what were the odds that we'd hire the guy with whom I'd had a frenzied one night stand while stoned out of my apparently tiny mind. Actually the more I thought about it, it wasn't that unlikely. When your state capital only needs one high school and one elementary then you can officially call yourself a small-town state. And small towns have a way of bleeding into one another.

 He came back in looking sheepish.

 "You got the job, didn't you?" I said.

 He rubbed the nape of his neck. "Yeah. I did. Sorry."

 "It's fine," I said. "We're adults. We can deal with this, right?"

 "Absolutely." Even as he said it I saw his gaze drift down my top, but I couldn't very well complain because my mind was right back there in his car, his hands on my butt and his...oh dear. I could feel my face burn once more.

 "Don't look at me like that," I said, crossing my arms across my chest.

 "Looking at you like what? I wasn't looking at you like anything."

 "Give me a break. I know exactly where your mind was going."

 He grinned and I was glad of the counter between us. As parking-lot misdemeanors went, he was looking pretty damn good. "Oh wait, I know this one," he said. "This is what the shrinks call projection."

 "Projection?"

 He nodded. "You think I'm thinking naughty thoughts about you because your dirty little mind is running rampant trying to figure out the best way to plunder my virtue." He looked disgustingly pleased with himself. "Yeah, you see - you've got your four year degree on the history of dick jokes and I've got my friend Steve."

 I frowned for a moment. This kind of put a different complexion on things. "You call your penis Steve?" I asked, slowly.

 He looked as puzzled as I felt. "No. My actual friend Steve. He's really smart. Knows everything about everything. Psych, projection, you name it."

 "Yeah, okay. You got me," I said, holding my hands in the air. "Projecting like an IMAX here. I thought you were a stripper?"

 "I am," he said, and rapped his knuckles against a cabinet that had been gaudily painted in a Romany style. "If you wanted this stripped, I could strip it."

 I sighed. Oh God.

 "Look, is this gonna be a problem?" he said.

 "No. Like I said, we're adults."

 "Good. Because you need to show me where the keys are kept and the book for checking them in."

 "Right," I said, realizing for maybe the first time that he wasn't here purely for the purposes of pissing me off. "Come round. I'll show you."

 As soon as he was on the other side of the counter I knew I'd made a huge mistake, and that the odds of us dealing with this like sane, sensible adults were about as good as our current odds of turning into a pair of giant, bright pink weasels and dancing the Macarena. The walls of the tiny office suddenly drew in closer than ever before, and the air was close, warm, fragrant with the smell of him - not the cologne smell, but the one underneath it, the one that was skin and flesh and hair, the smell I'd tasted when I licked my palm before returning it to his dick.

 He was standing far too close. I got as far as "So...um..." before I felt his hand brush the small of my back. It was so quiet that I could hear him lick his lips, and then - just as he'd said - my dirty little mind went racing ahead of me, thinking of things we hadn't managed to do in his car.

 "The blue fob is the key to the garage door," I heard myself say. "Don't take that one, though. We'll get you one cut. The yellow is..."

 His hand was on my hip. I covered it with my own, meaning to remove it, but somehow I swayed back against him and the heat of his body was there to meet me. I swallowed as I felt his hand sweep my hair back; his lips were smooth and dry against the side of my neck. "The yellow one..." I started again, but already I could feel that needy, knowing tug between my legs as my hips stirred to life.

 "Come on," I said. "You want everyone to say you got the job because you were screwing the boss's daughter?"

 I reached behind me, perhaps to justify to myself that he wasn't only doing this because he needed a job. My hand found the fly of his jeans and set my mind at ease. His hand slithered up under my top and into the left cup of my bra.

 "Who's everyone?" he said, his voice soft and slurred, the way it had been on Saturday night.

 "Everyone is everyone. You can't be a stranger to small towns."

 "Fuck 'em," he said, and turned me around to face him.

 It seemed a convincing argument. He had just enough stubble to lend an edge to his kiss. His tongue was rough and agile and I made an embarrassingly needy sound in the back of my throat when it swept against mine. God only knows what would have happened if the doorbell hadn't rung. Customers.

 I smoothed down my top and hoped to God my hair didn't look too crazy. A young couple had wandered in - him in a sweater vest and her in one of those floaty print dresses that figure heavily in 'bohemian' themed photo shoots. Maybe I should have settled on Helvetica. Clayton came out after me. 

 "The ones on the left aren't priced yet," I said. "So if you see anything you like just ask."

 "No, it's fine," said the girl. "We're just browsing."

 Oh yeah. Story of my life. She looked at us and waved a finger back and forth between us. "Is this your...um..."

 "Family business?" said Clayton. "Oh yeah."

 "How sweet. You make such a perfect couple."

 "Oh, thank you," I said, with the widest, fakest smile I had ever faked. Under the counter I tenderly crushed my 'husband's toes with my boot.

 "Okay," I said, when they'd gone. "You’re not funny and I don’t like you.”

 He arched an eyebrow. “You’re a really bad liar.”

 I sighed and wondered how to make him go away. “All right,” I said. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to work here and I’m going to work here and we’re just going to be normal. Like nothing happened.”

 He nodded. “But afterwards we can get high and fuck in the back office, right?”

 “No,” I said. “We can’t get high and fuck in the back office.”

 “Why not?”

 “Because that would be complicated. And God knows people don’t have one-night-stands because they like ‘complicated.’”

 “Okay,” he said. “So...why don’t we make it another one-night-stand?”

 “What?” Maybe there was something wrong with him.

 “Last weekend,” he said. “I had a one-night-stand with a chick named Lindsay. You had a one-night-stand with a stranger. Now I’m not a stranger and your name isn’t Lindsay, so officially we have a clean slate.”

 “Go away,” I said, so he did.

 He came back about three hours later. Thirty minutes after that our so-called clean slate was thoroughly filthy once again; I’d never been much good at making resolutions.

 Chapter Four

Clayton

Of all the antique stores in all Vermont, I had to walk into hers. On the first full day of work she wasn't there. On the second she stuck her head around the workshop door, saw me and disappeared before I could head after her. The third day I ran her to ground in the backroom behind the counter, where the keys were kept.

 "I have a solution," I said.

 She ducked me and went back into the store. "Solution to what?" she said, entering something on her laptop.

 "This. Us. Awkwardness."

 She didn't take a beat. "You're moving to Tierra del Fuego?"

 "Ow."

 Lacie chewed her lip. "Okay," she said. "That was uncalled for. What do you suggest?"

 For some weird reason it was like being catapulted back in time to senior prom. I could actually feel my heart speed up as I prepared to speak. "We could...um...that is, if you wanted to...we could like, maybe...date?"

 She was biting her lip to hide her smile now. "Date?" she said.

 "Yeah. Like when you go out - eat food, drink beer. Usually together."

 "I know what a date is, dumbass." She pushed her hair back from her face and tied it back with a band from her wrist. No wonder her straightened hair had looked wrong on the night we met; its natural state was curly - really curly. I couldn't decide if it was dark blonde or light brown.

 "If I date you," she said. "I'll never hear the end of it. And neither will you. This town feeds on gossip."

 "So that's a no?" I asked. My stomach felt like I'd just plunged off the high part of a roller coaster.

 She shook her head. "More of a caveat."

 "A what now?"

 "A caveat. It's Latin."

 "What does it mean in English?" I said, conscious not for the first time that she was way smarter than me. It was lucky I'd been the one to bump into her that night; if Steve had got there first they'd probably already be picking out wedding china.

 "Beware," she said. "Warning. Caution. I'm just saying - if you want to then it comes with a catch. You can't keep anything secret in a town this small."

 I was sure she was making excuses. "Why? Does everyone know we had sex?"

 A pale rose blush sneaked up under her skin, making her freckles stand out all the darker. Now I knew exactly where her freckles stopped. "No," she said. "Of course not."

 "Then you managed to keep it a secret, didn't you? See? Was that so hard?"

 She sighed and leaned back against the counter. "If people see us on a date they'll assume we're having sex."

 "Well, we'll just to have sex then. I wouldn't want to disappoint anyone."

 She sighed again. "Were you always this annoying, or was I not paying attention?"