My Soon-To-Be Sex Life (8 page)

Unfortunately, I'd have to give Owen's snooping-in-his-sister's-bedroom stealth moves a big fat thumbs down.

We caught him backing out of Roach's room on his tiptoes, his eyes wide with panic. Before he could bolt, Roach grabbed him by the scruff of the neck, her recently glossed nails digging into his flesh.

I hung back, waiting for the drama to unfold. Being an only child, sibling rivalry fascinated me. Mom and I squabbled, but not like this - it was never a true fight between equals.

“
Evil Dead
,” Owen panted. I felt a smidge of sympathy at his distress, but not too much, the morning's snowball ambush still fresh in my mind. “…Was looking for DVD…thought you had it. You didn't. I'm going now.”

Hmmm…maybe not so dumb after all. Whether Owen really was looking for the cult classic, or not, Roach was nice and distracted, and worried about the sanctity of her hidden collection.

“It's in my stash,” Roach said. “Right before
Evil Dead 2
and
Evil Dead 3
– and then there's Exorcist, Exorcist 2, etc. Hello, it's called alphabetical order, nimrod.”

“It isn't there.”

“It is so.”

Owen shrugged - as best he could while in his sister's talons.

Roach pursed her lips, released him and stalked into her room.

I blocked Owen's exit.

“You must be feeling lucky today, kid,” I said. “You know I will get my revenge for the ice ball face wash this morning, right?”

Owen nodded, staring at my feet.

“Hello?” I crouched and waved my hands, but his eyes did a weird little dance, never meeting mine, and then his gaze settled around my kneecaps. “Have you suddenly developed a foot or knee-cartilage fetish or something?”

Flushing a splotchy reddish color, he shook his head.

I took a step toward him, he took a step back.

I held up my hands. “Owen, what the hell, man, I'm just kidding…”

“I've got it!” Roach yelled, providing a distraction, and Owen rushed down the hall.

Roach came to stand beside me, proudly holding the DVD. “I knew he was lying. Little puke,” she said, watching her brother storm down the stairs.

“He wouldn't even look at me,” I said. “What's up with that?”

“He saw your boobs on a locker at school.” She pulled me into the bedroom. “I think he's got a crush on your tits.”

Yikes.

“Can you say awkward?” I entered the room and claimed a beanbag chair that wasn't as supportive as it used to be. Arranging my legs, I imagined Owen's reaction when he saw Ty's handiwork to be something akin to the time when we were playing hide and seek and Owen walked in on his parents – talk about
coitus interruptus
. His asthma attack was so bad he lived in a bubble at the hospital for a week.

Owen had the worst luck of any geek I knew.

“Did he tell you he saw it? Them?” I asked.

“That's a negative, but they burst out of his math textbook.”

“Ew!” I covered my mouth. “He kept a copy?”

“He snips boob shots from his
National Geographic
too, so don't think you're special. Those have full on nipple.” Roach tossed me a pillow, which I promptly tucked behind my back. Much better. “What are you going to do about Ty, anyway?” she asked. “You can't do nothing, that tells everyone you're running scared.”

“Yeah, but I can't retaliate either. That's what Ty wants. A nice public war.” One where I look like the idiot because I let Ty take that photo and actually believed him when he said he'd keep it just between us. “Well, I'm not falling into that trap. The less I react – the sooner everyone forgets it ever happened.” Why had I let Ty's lip lock with Jessica cut into me so hard? I knew what Ty was like. Had gone into things with him with my eyes wide-open, no emotional investment.

But we had been dating for a few weeks. Off and on. I'd gotten used to having him around. Then – wham – in spite of the list, my criteria for hooking up, I'd landed in a situation similar to Mom's after all.

Yeah, that was it. The reason I'd gone ballistic.

Ty had turned me into my freaking mother.

Roach nodded. “Okay, but your mono rumor is spreading, well, like mono at summer camp. Jessica told the girls on her team and they told two friends, and so on…you've essentially cock-blocked him for weeks. He'll want to see you hurting and if the boob photo didn't do the job…” Roach kneeled at her dresser. “Don't say I didn't warn you.” She filed the DVD with the others in the bottom drawer.

Lame hiding spot, I know, but Roach's parents were the trusting sort. Unlike Roach. Personally, I thought she was stressing for nothing.

“Ty has the attention span of a gnat. He'll get over it.” I slipped sideways as the stuffing shifted, my body sinking until I could almost feel the floor under my ass. “This chair sucks, by the way.”

“I know, I hate it. Mom saw one in a show home and had to get me one.” Roach sat on her bed, grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest. “I'm so pissed at her. She totally humiliated me in front of Brother Preston.”

I tilted my head.

“The singer from the band.”

“Oh, right. He helped you score the chocolate croissants.” I rubbed my hands together, looking around for the sweet confections. “Speaking of which, where are the yummies?”

Roach sighed and tossed her backpack my way. Inside were carefully wrapped delights. I ate as she gave me the scoop on her rocker and the band known as
Divine Wrath.
It was weird to hear Roach going on and on about a guy. Over the last few months that had been pretty much my role, but I settled back and enjoyed seeing my best friend sigh and fawn. From what I could discern when Roach occasionally used complete sentences, she and the good Brother Preston had just exchanged names and digits when her mom's voice cut through the PA system.

Roach raised her voice an octave as she mocked her mother's tone. “
Rachel Dunsmore?
It's Mommy, we're waiting for you by the side exit. Hurry, your brother's been sick in the lobby.”
Roach slapped a hand to her heart. “I wanted to die. Right. There.”

I threw my head back and laughed.

“It's not funny.”

“Oh, yeah, it really is.”

Roach rolled her eyes. “So then Brother Preston grinned at me and said,
Mommy's waiting, Sweatpea.
And then he left.”

“But he grinned.”

Roach smiled. “Yup.”

“And he has your number.”

She nodded.

“He's so getting into your pants.”

“He is not.” Roach sat upright, a frown folding across her forehead. “He's in a Christian rock band, Charlie.”

“So?”

“So…” Roach pushed off her bed in a huff. “He's obviously not like that.”

“Every guy is like that,” I said flatly. “He's hot. He's a musician. Why not go for it?” I put a finger to my lip. “Maybe that's where I went wrong. I should have added a band geek or two to the list.”

Before I could razz her further, Owen's voice screeched up the stairs, “Dinner's ready!”

For the second time in the entire history of Dumore Sunday dinners, the meal wasn't its usual
Little House on the Prairie
self. Oh, Alice Dunmore's cooking rocked my world, no question – but strange vibes floated around the table.

I understood Roach's ire. Supreme embarrassment does that to a person. Being hauled off by the ear and lectured within an inch of your life, during a ritualistic peer-group bonding experience like a concert, even a Christian rock concert, was an act of mother/daughter war.

There was nothing more indignant than a mad-as-shit bible-thumper.

“Pass the salt substitute, please,” Alice said. She'd been working on the tension between her and Roach ever since we came down for supper.

Roach fired the crystal shaker along the tabletop.

Alice caught the dispenser in a tight grip. “Thank you, dear.” When Roach resumed eating, she set it down near her plate, unused.

Cutlery scrapes filled the silence.

“Could you me get a spoon please, Rachel dear?” Alice asked.

Roach's chair legs carved lines into the linoleum as she pushed away from the table. She stomped into the kitchen and returned to present her mother with an old Sesame Street baby spoon.

Alice sighed, taking the utensil and giving Roach a pained look.

I choked on a stifled laugh.

Owen grinned at me over his potatoes.

I crossed my eyes at him in response.

He did the same, and one wonky eye drifted to my boobs. Immediately he jerked his head up and focused on the ginger ale bottle in the middle of the table like it was a vision of the Virgin Mary.

“It appears we're in for more snow, Charlie. What do you think about that?” Roach's father, John, asked me. His smile glowed thanks to regular whitening treatments.

“Well, Sir, I'm concerned,” I said, shooting Owen a deliberate glance. “The more snow, the more perilous our streets become for our seniors. Not only do they have to worry about slipping on the ice, since not all of them have my cat-like reflexes, but now I hear kids are using old folks as snowball target practice.”

Owen gasped.

“That's right, Owen,” I said, adding a hint of cheesy-infomercial to my voice, “it's awful. And they're kids about your age.”

“Really?” John looked at Owen. “I can't imagine what kind of home life these children have, growing up on the streets. They see an old person and think they'll never have the opportunity to live that long, to see and experience as much. So they attack, raging against the predictability of their future.” He looked at the ceiling in a brief I'm-praying-for-them-right-now moment.

Good God.

Don't get me wrong, I like John and Alice, I really do. I'm fairly certain that, even though they think I'm going to rot in hell as a non-believer, they don't mind my company. Why else would they invite me over? But we all knew this moment was coming, as it did every Sunday when John and I worked ourselves into our respective opinionated corners.

The gloves came off.

“Wow, John, you make it sound so hopeless. Didn't we have this conversation last week? Except then you were saying it was everyone's duty to take in a homeless soul and feed it and love it and show it the way. ‘If you have space in your home, there's space in your heart', right?”

“Yes, that's it, Charlie.” John nodded, looking excited that I'd quoted him, a zealous gleam in his eye like he thought – finally -- I might be saved. “But how many of us are willing to do what is required?” He took a bite of his steak. “Our numbers are few. There are many souls left to wander, many wayward sheep. Those are the ones I'm referring to.” He set a chunk of grizzle on the side of his plate.

“Okay, but I'm not sure you can count yourselves as the saviors yet, John-John. You can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” I raised an eyebrow. “I fully expect to be breaking bread with a whiskey-belching bum next week.” I laid my hand along the backrest of the empty chair beside me. “You've got room for one more.”

We stared each other down.

John broke first, and gave a forced smile. “I'll see what I can arrange.”

Alice choked on her coffee.

Owen and Roach groaned and leaned back in their chairs.

“Wonderful!” I clapped. “I can't wait for someone to be saved.” I snatched an extra potato wedge from Roach's plate, earning a glare. “I wonder, though, John, what makes you think the snowball gang is made up of street kids?” I asked, chewing away. “Maybe these kids live in perfectly decent homes. Maybe their parents are tyrants and this is the only way their kids can rebel.”

Owen squirmed in his chair. I figured he thought I was about to take my bit of revenge right there in the lull before desert, and out him for the snowball thrower he was.

I continued to vent, “Couldn't those kids be the indulged spawn of bored suburbanites?”

John took a long sip of his fruit punch. “
Indulged spawn
.” He laughed. “You've such a way with words, Charlie, but no. Kids like this, with no respect for themselves, or our elderly, they're not indulged, they're neglected. Wearing black eye-makeup, cutting themselves, listening to that noise. Neglected by their addict parents is what they are.”

At the mention of drugs, John officially stepped over the line of our usual dinner-table repartee. Not that I minded, but still. It was below the belt.

“Dad!” Roach hissed.

“Jonathan!” Alice gasped.

Owen peeked at my chest again.

“What?” John waved a hand. “Charlie knows I don't mean her mother's situation. I'm talking about kids who really have it bad. Who live in boxes because their parents can't afford the basics like food and shelter. Charlie's mom is a product of the medical system. Doctors gave her drugs and look what happened.” He waved his fork to punctuate his point. “That's why I don't take drugs, antibiotics or what have you. It's not our place to tamper with God's creation.”

No wonder Roach had issues. Other than homelessness, man's dependency on medicine was John's second favorite topic. And sorry, but I'm damn glad someone created Midol.

“Speaking of God's creation…” Alice took the segue, “…what on earth were they thinking when they built that industrial condo monstrosity on the Barnett property? The developers clear cut the entire section.”

“You're too soft for this business,” John said, complying with the conversation shift - real estate being his third favorite topic. “You get too worked up over the trees. You want to sell houses? Got to build them somewhere.”

“Here's where we differ,” Alice said. “Look at the Italian place,
Up-A-Chuck
, the new owners are wealthy. Could have built anywhere.”