The Good Life (18 page)

“Jake?” I asked quietly. I wasn’t sure if he was still awake or not. He was lying on his back beside me on his bed. I had been lying toward him with my head resting comfortably in the crook of his arm. It felt like the spot was made just for me. And it was so hard to pull myself away. But I did. I rolled over onto my back as well.

He sighed loudly like he knew what was coming. “Yeah.”

“Not that I don’t want to, but I don’t think we should do this again.”

“No?”

“I had a lot of fun. I love being with you. It’s just, you know.”

“No, I don’t know. What is it?”

“You know I’m still married.”

He turned his head toward me. “So you’re saying once your divorce is finalized, it’s okay for you to be with me?” The tone of his voice sounded like he was challenging me, like he knew the answer to the question already.

I sat up and leaned back on my hands. “I can’t say that. But I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was entirely my fault, and I take the blame. Can we pretend this day never happened?”

“I think we can handle it. We’ve had a lot of practice pretending things don’t happen.”

I stood up. “I’m gonna go back to my room then.”

“No. Stay. You can go back to your room tomorrow.”

“Fine.” I lied back down and snuggled up against him. “I’ll go back tomorrow.”

Jake was right. We did have a lot of practice “pretending things don’t happen” and that’s probably why we managed to fall right back into our normal roommate routine without any glitches. He had a busier schedule than usual thanks to his blossoming boudoir business. He continued to give me $100 for every photo session like he had promised, and I was making quite a bit of money from them. I figured it was making up for my month of slacking.

I also stayed busy myself. The Good Life List Challenge #26 was to host a party where I made at least ten new recipes and The Fourth of July was scheduled to be the big day. When I wasn’t designing invites and scouring Pinterest for patriotic recipes and creative decor, I was going over the remaining GLL Challenges and trying to figure out how I was going to complete some of the most difficult ones. Like #4 – Go skinny dipping in someone else’s pool without their permission. How was a good girl like me going to pull off something like that?

Adam had miraculously been given the whole afternoon of the fourth off, so we invited over Allison and her family, some of the girls who had come to my divorce party, a few of Jake’s coworkers from The Bar and a couple of people Adam knew from the hospital.

We had a piñata for the kids, red, white & blue martinis for the adults, a bonfire and a whole lot of fantastic food made by yours truly. I even built a make-shift tiki bar for the occasion. Jake joked around and told me I could forget social work and go into party planning or catering instead.

It was about an hour before the guests were to arrive. I was in the kitchen dipping strawberries into white chocolate and blue sugar when Jake came in and snatched one of the freshly dipped strawberries and shoved it into his mouth before I could protest.

“Hey!” I yelled. I tried to swat his hand but I was too late. “No eating until the guests arrive!”

“I needed to make sure they were good before you tried to serve them,” he said with a smirk.

He didn’t know it, but he was messing with the wrong person. GLL Challenge #16 was to start a food fight, and I just so happened to have a great weapon sitting on the counter right next to me: a bowl of white fluff salad that was going to go over the red and blue Jell-O. He was still chewing the strawberry and smirking at me when I picked up a spoonful of fluff and flung it at him like a slingshot. I had better aim than I thought and hit him right on his chin. Go me!

He looked startled at first, then surprised, but then his expression turned mischievous as he grabbed the spoon from my hand. I backed away from the fluff bowl in fear.

“Jake,” I begged. “I spent an hour on my hair and makeup. Please don’t.”

He aimed it for my chest and a big glob of white fluff landed right in the middle of my cleavage and sunk down into my tank top.

“That was a three-pointer!” he yelled. “And the crowd roars.”

“Okay, you got me. But let’s play nice now. I really did spend a long time on my hair.”

“Oh no,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t start a food fight and wimp out on me.”

He slung another spoonful and this time caught my shoulder, missing my hair by less than an inch.

“Seriously, Jake! Watch the hair!”

Before I could even clean up my shoulder, he hit me on my chest again. That was when I got pissed. I took the ponytail holder off my wrist and, very carefully, pulled my hair up, not taking my eyes off Jake for a second. I lunged for the spoon but I slipped on a bit of fluff and, like a total chick-flick cliché, went crashing into him, knocking us both to the floor. Jennifer Lopez would have been proud.

“Omigod!” I squealed, scanning his face and head for injuries. “Are you okay? Are you hurt? I’m so sorry!” I sat up, which was a bad move because it meant I was sitting right on top of him. And in my thin yoga pants I could feel
everything
. Damn!

Adam walked in the back door and saw us on the floor.

“What the hell?” he asked.

If my face wasn’t already red from the food fight, it was definitely red after being caught in a compromising position by my brother. I was mortified, but Jake just laughed.

“Your sister started it,” he said.

“Whatever,” Adam said looking annoyed. “Just clean it up and get your shit together. People are going to be here soon.”

When Adam walked out of the kitchen, Jake grinned at me. I tried to get up, but he put a hand on each of my hips to keep me in place. He pulled me down even closer to him and I could tell he was having as hard a time being in this position as I was. Pun intended.

“Your face is so red right now,” he said with a grin. “Are you sure you want to get off me? Or would you rather get off
on
me?”

I gasped at his nerve. Then I bit my lip. He had a point. I did not want to get up.

“Since you’re the one who doesn’t want this,” he said, “I’d really appreciate it if you stopped throwing yourself at me. Or on me.”

I laughed, knowing he was only messing with me, and he smiled back.

I tried to get up again and this time he let me.

“Rain check?” he called out as I walked out of the kitchen.

Jake spent a lot of time at the party behind the bar making the martinis. You’d think he’d hate making drinks when he wasn’t at work, but he loved it. I could tell he had a lot of fun. I could also tell things hadn’t changed much since I’d worked at The Bar. A few girls he worked with showed up, and every single one of them flirted shamelessly with him. What is it about someone else wanting something that made me want it even more?

Allison’s in-laws picked up the kids at about nine. That was when the real party started. Jake’s martinis were a bit too tasty because I’m pretty sure I had at least two too many. By the time everyone left around 2am, I had enough liquid courage in me to do something I’d been meaning to do for a while.

“Jake,” I whispered.

He was gathering the alcohol from the bar to bring back in the house. “Yeah?” he whispered back.

“I have a really good idea.”

“What’s that?”

“We should go skinny-dipping in someone else’s pool.”

“Why can’t we just skinny-dip in our own pool?”

“Because that’s boring.”

“Whose pool should we use?”

“I was thinking the neighbor with the two boys would be a good one. You know how much she loves skinny-dipping.”

He smiled and nodded. “You’re right. That does sound like a great idea.”

“I’ll go get us some towels.”

Jake and I walked next door in nothing but our towels. In my head, I had imagined a quiet, romantic game of cat and mouse, with steam coming from the water and maybe a kiss or two. But Jake ran into their backyard, threw his towel to the wind and did a cannonball into the deep end. I laughed hysterically as I tended to do when I was drunk. I barely had time to jump in before I saw a light come on in one of the second floor windows. We both scrambled to get out of the pool and grabbed our towels before we took off running.

We didn’t get busted by the neighbor, but were not so lucky when it came to being busted by Adam. He was putting food away in the kitchen when we came barging in, dripping from head to toe and wearing nothing but towels.

“Seriously?” he said. “What is with you two? You’re acting like teenagers!”

That made us laugh even harder.

It was approaching three, but I didn’t feel tired yet. I was on a roll with my GLL Challenges and didn’t feel like stopping.

“I think I’m gonna go dry off, put on my pajamas and sleep outside tonight,” I told them (GLL Challenge #19 – Sleep outside overnight). “It’s so nice out. You guys wanna come with me? The fire is still going and we could make s’mores.”

“I have to get some sleep,” Adam said. “I have to be back at work by ten.”

I looked at Jake. A sober me would have known that inviting Jake to spend the night with me wasn’t a good idea, but the non-sober me was very naughty and had a habit of putting her hands up in the air and saying, “I just don’t give a fuck.” It’s the reason I didn’t drink often.

“I don’t know if I want to sleep outside,” he said. “But I’ll make s’mores with you.”

I’m not sure what all happened after that, but I woke up to the sound of the alarm on my cell phone going off at 6am. I must have set it to wake me up in time to watch the sunrise, GLL Challenge #14.

I was on one of the chaise lounges by the pool. I didn’t know who did it, either me or Jake, but one of us had pulled another chair right up against mine and that was where Jake was starting to wake up from the sound of my alarm. We were both covered up by a quilt my mom had made years ago.

“What happened?” I asked him. I felt very groggy after only two hours of sleep and I thought I might still be a little drunk, too. I noticed a bottle of water and a bottle of Tylenol sitting on the plastic end table next to my chair.
Thank you, Magic Hangover Genie
. I swallowed two pills and handed both bottles to Jake, who gladly accepted them.

“Nothing,” he told me. “You passed out as soon as you sat down.” He took two pills and then stretched his arms and neck.

“I thought you didn’t want to sleep outside.”

“I wasn’t gonna leave you out here by yourself.”

“Did you bring the blanket?”

He nodded.

“And the water and pills?”

He nodded again.

“Oh,” was all I said. Sometimes it was hard to believe anyone could be as nice as Jake. I knew bringing a blanket to a sleeping person was something a lot of people would have done, but having been with a man who wasn’t very nice to me for so long, I just wasn’t used to it. But I could definitely
get
used to it. “Thanks.”

“No big deal.”

“Want to watch the sunrise with me before we go inside?” I asked.

“I know a place where can get a better view,” he said. “Let’s go for a ride.”

We grabbed the blanket and got into his Jeep. I knew where we were going, but I acted surprised when he pulled into my lot,
our
lot, with not a minute to spare.

I tucked my legs under me, covered us both up with the quilt, and leaned my head on his shoulder from the passenger seat. As we watched the stars vanish and the pink sun light up the sky, I truly realized how deeply I’d missed him these last few years. It felt more important than ever that I didn’t lose him as my friend. I wanted to tell him then how much I’d missed him and how glad I was that he was a part of my life again. I should have. But I didn’t.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A few days later I slept until 11am like the slacker I was. I did what I did every morning (or afternoon) when I woke up. I went downstairs for coffee. But when I walked into the kitchen I nearly screamed out loud.

There was a girl in the kitchen. She had her back to me and was standing on her tiptoes on one of our barstools, reaching into the top shelf of a cupboard. She had long, dark, wavy hair and was wearing what looked like a men’s light blue button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows and no pants. Either she was wearing no underwear at all, or she had on a thong because her bare butt cheeks were sticking out from under the shirt. From the back she was perfection. It was as if a Dallas Cowboys cheerleader was standing in my kitchen.