The Cocktail Collection Read online

  CAROLINE: Ugh . . . I can’t believe Mimi knew I was sniffing the sweater. I wonder if Simon noticed.

  SIMON: She seems better. . . . She’s not sniffling anymore.

  MIMI: I need to text Sophia. She needs to know the Simon-Caroline situation is not getting any better. What the hell are we gonna do with these two? I mean, seriously . . . sometimes people just can’t see what’s right in front of them. Aawww . . . Ryan wants me to scratch his back. I adore him. . . . And damn, are his fingers long. . . .

  RYAN: Mmmm . . . back . . . scratch . . . back . . . scratch . . . Mmmm . . .

  CAROLINE: Okay, no more avoiding it in your own head, Reynolds. And now I’m serious because I’m using my last name. Now listen up, Reynolds . . . Heeheehee . . . I sound like such a badass!

  SIMON: So . . . she’s giggling? Inside joke, she says. So maybe she is okay with how this is going—oops, grabbed the wrong bag of Gardetto’s. Did she just growl at me?

  CAROLINE: Turn my tatas down and then try to steal my Gardetto’s? I don’t think so, buddy. Okay, Reynolds, no more giggling. You can’t avoid this forever, even in your own mind. Here are the questions on deck: One: Why did you throw yourself at Simon last night? And you’re not allowed to blame alcohol or music or vacation vibes or Nerves or Heart or anything. Two: Why did he turn you down? If he didn’t want to go there, why has he been flirting with you for weeks, and not just in the neighborly way? He’s got a harem, for God’s sake. He’s not a Puritan. Agh!! Three: Does being rejected by Simon have anything to do with the date you agreed to with James? Four: How the hell do Simon and I go back to being just friends when we know what the inside of each other’s mouths taste like? And his tastes very, very, very good. Okay, yes. You can sniff the sweater one more time—just don’t let anyone see you.

  SIMON: I have to figure out this shit with Caroline. She’s so great, and I mean so great. . . . Has there ever been a woman who’s possessed every single quality I’ve been looking for? Except for Natalie Portman, of course. But Caroline? I have to stop watching so much Lifetime—I mean what guy in his own mind even thinks in sentences like “Has there ever been a woman who’s possessed every single quality I’ve been looking for?” Wait, have I been looking for that woman? No, I haven’t. I don’t have time for that, space for that—and my girls don’t want the picket fence. They keep away the picket fencers. Caroline says she isn’t a picket fencer. . . . Katie found her picket fence, and I’m happy for her. When’s the last time I even talked to Nadia or Lizzie? Maybe they’re not right for me anymore. I don’t want them the way I might want . . . could want Caroline. You’re such a pussy, Parker. . . . Jesus, Caroline—she’s a fucking keeper. . . . Wait a minute. What the hell? Are you really entertaining the idea of a . . . gulp . . . relationship? And why the fuck did I actually think the word gulp? That was a little dramatic, Parker. Come on, think about this. . . . If I recall correctly, you invited her to Spain! Don’t run away from it. Dude, did she just sniff her sweater?

  RYAN: Mmmm . . . my girl likes beef jerky—could I be any luckier? She scratches my back and eats beef jerky. I have died and gone somewhere like heaven.

  MIMI: I can’t believe he ate all my beef jerky. What a jerky. Heehee.

  CAROLINE: Question one is too hard. I can’t start with that one. I’ll answer them in reverse order. Four: I don’t know if we can be friends, but I really want to be—and not in the fake way. I really like Simon, and even though what happened last night sucked major balls, I think we can figure this out. . . . And I would like to have some of whatever I’m smoking. Three: OF COURSE I AGREED TO GO OUT WITH JAMES BECAUSE OF WHAT HAPPENED WITH SIMON! It’s funny how that shows up in all caps even in my head. Two: If I knew why he turned me down, I’d be a fucking genius. Bad breath? No. Because I was drunk? Possibly. . . . But if it’s because we were drunk that’s the worst timing for chivalry in the history of the universe. He did keep saying “I can’t” and that it was a “mistake.” Now, mistake perhaps. But might have been worth it. . . . Maybe he was just being faithful to his harem? Which in an odd way is quite sweet. I know he really does care about them. Dammit, he’s even great when it comes to them! But I know “I can’t” wasn’t accurate. “Can’t” implies some kind of erectile dysfunction. And I felt that junk on my thigh. Sigh. Sigh for thigh. This sweater is doing things to my head. Sniff . . .

  SIMON: She just sniffed it again—why does she keep doing that? When I wore it I didn’t notice it smelling like anything other than wool. Girls are weird . . . weirdly wonderful . . . Pussy . . . Caroline’s pussy . . . Aaand I’m hard. Why the hell am I even pretending I’m not totally and completely over the moon for this girl? And it has nothing to do with her pussy . . . and now I’m harder.

  CAROLINE: Stop trying to get out of answering this question. Face it head-on! Why did you throw yourself at Simon, forgetting about the friendship and the harem and the O drought and all of the very good reasons you had for staying away from him and his ’banger voodoo??? Come on, Caroline. Suck it up and say it. What was it he said when you asked him why he kissed you that night you met? “Because I had to.” Jesus, even in my head he sounds amazing saying that. . . . There’s your answer, Caroline: because you had to. And now you have to figure out this shit.

  I kissed him, and he kissed me because we had to. And the choices we made were ours and ours alone. . . . And the fact that he stopped it and said he couldn’t? Even after all the ridiculous weeks of flirting? After he invited me to Spain? Motherfucking Spain! And I want to go to motherfucking Spa—Wait, do I want to go to Spain with him? Argh! Spain Schmain. Anyway, he better have a damn good reason because I am a fucking catch—O or no O—I am a fucking catch. Yeah, you are, Reynolds. Weird how you flip back and forth between first, second, and third person during your inner monologues, though. . . . Thank Christ, the Bay Bridge! Enough introspection . . .

  SIMON: Shit, the Bay Bridge. We’re almost home, and I have no idea how this is going to go with Caroline. We’ve barely said anything the entire way—although I’m glad to be almost home. I smell like beef jerky, and I need to jerk off like you wouldn’t believe. . . .

  MIMI: Yay! The Bay Bridge! I wonder if Ryan would mind spending the night at my place!

  RYAN: Thank fuck, the Bay Bridge. We’re almost home. I wonder if Mimi knows I’m spending the night at her place—and planning on making her call in sick tomorrow? Little girl, the things I plan to do to you. . . . But I’m never eating that much beef jerky again. This has been the quietest road trip ever.

  We dropped off the new couple at Mimi’s—not that they particularly noticed—they were in their own bubble gum world—and continued on to our apartments. Though we’d mostly just been lost in our thoughts, the tension had grown during the drive, and it was even more noticeable now that we were alone in the car. Simon and I had always had things to talk about, but now that we had so much to discuss, we were silent. I didn’t want things to be weird, and I knew I’d have to be the one to make sure he knew I was okay now. He’d already done his part to have a mature conversation, and once again my bull-in-a-china-shop delivery seemed to have taken care of that.

  A vision of me announcing on the deck, at full volume, that I’d made a pass at Simon flashed across my mind, and while my cheeks certainly heated in embarrassment, I also had a mental chuckle at how odd I must have looked, arms flailing, mouth set as though I could spit nails. And then barking at frightened Simon to follow me to the beach. He must have wondered if I was going to thrash him and dump his body in the lake.

  Looking at his hands on the steering wheel, the very hands that were on me in a pronounced way the night before, I marveled at his ability to stop himself, because I know for a fact he had been in to it. Or his body had been, at least, if not his head.

  The thing is, though, I did think his head was in it, at least until he thought about it too much. I glanced over at him once more, noticing we were pulling down our street. As we stopped at the curb, he looked over at me, biti
ng down on the same lower lip that less than twenty-four hours ago I’d had the good fortune to be biting on.

  He sprang from the car and ran around to my side before I even had my seat belt unbuckled.

  “Um, I’m just gonna . . . get the bags,” he stammered, and I studied him closely. He ran his left hand through his hair while his right drummed against the side of the car. Was he nervous?

  “So, yeah,” he stammered again, disappearing around the back.

  Yep, he was nervous, just as nervous as I was. He worried my bag out of the car, and we slogged up the three flights of stairs to our apartments. We were still not talking, so the only sound was our keys jangling in the locks. I couldn’t leave it like this. I had to square with him. I took a deep breath and turned. “Simon, I—”

  “Look, Caroline—”

  We both laughed a little.

  “You go.”

  “No, you go,” he said.

  “Nope. What were you gonna say?”

  “What were you gonna say?”

  “Hey, spit it out, bucko. I got a pussy to rescue from two queens downstairs,” I instructed, hearing Clive call to me from the apartment below.

  Simon snorted and leaned against his door. “I guess I just wanted to say I had a really great time this weekend.”

  “Until last night, right?” I leaned against my own door, watching him flinch as I addressed the elephant in the hot tub.

  “Caroline,” he breathed, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back.

  He looked like he was in actual pain as his face twisted. I took pity. I shouldn’t have, but I did.

  “Hey, can we just forget it happened?” I said. “I mean, I know we can’t, but can we pretend to forget it? I know people say things won’t get weird all the time, but then it always does. How can we make sure things don’t get weird?”

  He opened his eyes and looked hard at me. “I guess we just don’t let it. We make sure it doesn’t get weird. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I nodded and was rewarded with the first real smile I’d seen since I unwrapped my sweater back in Tahoe. He gathered up his bag.

  “Play me something good tonight, ’kay?” I asked as I headed inside.

  “You got it,” he answered, and we shut our doors.

  But he didn’t play me big band that night.

  And we didn’t speak again that week.

  “Who peed in your chili?”

  I looked up from my desk to see Jillian, composed as always with her casually elegant chignon, black pencil trousers, white silk blouse, and raspberry cashmere sweater wrap. How did I know it was cashmere from across the room? Because it was Jillian.

  I selected one of the five pencils currently stuck in my twisted hair bun and returned my attention to the mess that was my desk. It was Wednesday, and this week was both flying by and dragging simultaneously. No word from Simon. No texts from Simon. No songs from Simon.

  But I hadn’t reached out to him either.

  I was consumed with finishing the last few details on the Nicholson house, ordering expensive knickknacks for James’s condo, and starting the sketches for a commercial design project I had lined up for next month. It looked like chaos, but sometimes it was the only way I could get work done. There were days that I needed neat and orderly, and days when I needed the mess on my desk to reflect the mess in my head. This was that day.

  “What’s up, Jillian?” I barked, knocking over my cup of colored pencils as I grabbed for my coffee.

  “How much coffee have you had today, Ms. Caroline?” She laughed, taking the seat opposite me and handing me the pencils that had spilled on the floor.

  “Hard to say. . . . How many cups are in a pot and a half?” I answered, restacking some papers to clear a space for her teacup. The woman walked around drinking tea out of a bone china cup, but it worked for her.

  “Wow, I take it you aren’t seeing any clients today?” she asked, leaning over the desk and casually removing my coffee cup. I hissed at her, and she wisely put it back.

  “Nope, no clients,” I answered, shoving the new sketches into color-coordinated folders and stuffing them into their appropriate drawers.

  “Okay, sister, what’s up?”

  “What do you mean? I’m working—what you pay me to do, remember?” I snapped, grabbing for a ring of fabric swatches and knocking my flower vase over. I’d picked out dark purple, almost black, tulips for this week, and they were now all over the floor. I sighed heavily and forced myself to slow down. My hands shook from the caffeine surging through my system, and as I sat and surveyed the state of affairs in my office I felt two fat tears forming in my eyes.

  “Damn,” I muttered and covered my face with my hands. I sat for a minute, listening to the tick of the retro clock on the wall, and waited for Jillian to say something. When she didn’t, I peeked through my hands at her. She was standing by the door with my jacket and purse in her hands.

  “Are you throwing me out?” I whispered as the tears launched themselves down my face. She waved her arm and beckoned me toward the door. Grudgingly I stood, and she draped my sweater around my shoulders and handed me my purse.

  “Come on, dearie. You’re buying me lunch.” She winked and pulled me down the hallway.

  Twenty minutes later she had me ensconced in an ornate red booth hidden partially behind two gold curtains. She’d brought me to her favorite restaurant in Chinatown, ordered me chamomile tea, and waited in silence for me to explain my semi-breakdown. Actually, it was not entirely silent; we’d ordered the sizzling rice soup.

  “So, you must’ve had a helluva weekend in Tahoe, huh?” she finally asked.

  I laughed into my sizzle. “You could say that.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, Sophia and Neil finally got together and—”

  “Wait a minute, Sophia and Neil? I thought Sophia was with Ryan.”

  “She was, she was, but truthfully she was always meant to be with Neil, so it all worked out in the end.”

  “Poor Mimi and Ryan. That must’ve been weird for them.”

  “Ha! Oh yes, poor Mimi and Ryan. They got it on in the pool house, for God’s sake.” I snorted.

  Jillian’s eyes grew wide. “In the pool house . . . wow,” she breathed, and I nodded.

  We sizzled.

  “So, Simon went to Tahoe, right?” she asked a few minutes later, looking everywhere but at me. I cracked a small smile at her imagined stealth. Jillian was many, many things, but subtle was not one of them.

  “Yep, Simon was there.”

  “And how was that?”

  “It was great, and then it wasn’t, and now it’s weird,” I admitted, setting aside my soup to drink my tea. It was soothing and non-caffeinated, which Jillian had insisted on.

  “So, no pool house for you two?” she asked, still glancing around the restaurant as though she weren’t asking me anything of importance.

  “No, Jillian, no pool house. We hot-tubbed, but we did not pool house,” I said emphatically, and then I spilled my guts and told her the entire ridiculous story.

  She listened, she hmm-ed and groaned in the right places, and she got indignant in the right places too. By the time I was finished, I was in tears again, which was really pissing me off.

  “And the stink of it all, I shouldn’t have been doing it, but he is the one who stopped it, and I don’t really think he wanted to!” I huffed, angrily wiping tears away with my napkin.

  “So why do you think he did?”

  “He’s gay?” I offered, and she smiled. I took a deep breath and got control.

  Jillian looked at me thoughtfully and then finally leaned in. “You realize we are two smart women who are not acting very smart right now,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “We know better than to try to figure out what a man is up to. This’ll get worked out when it’s supposed to. And your tears? These are tension tears, frustration tears—nothing more. I’ll tell you one thing, though . . .”
>
  “What’s that?”

  “As long as I’ve known Simon, I’ve never heard of him inviting someone on a shoot with him, ever. I mean, inviting you to Spain? That’s very unlike Simon.”

  “Well, who knows if I’m even invited anymore.” I sighed dramatically.

  “You’re still friends, right?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at me. “Why don’t you just ask him?” When I didn’t respond she added, “Stick that in your pipe and suck it.”

  “I think it’s smoke it, Jillian. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.”

  “Ah, smoke it, suck it, whatever. Eat your fortune cookie, sweetie.” She smiled, nudging the cookie across the table. I cracked it open and removed the fortune.

  “What does yours say?” I asked.

  “Fire all employees who have more than one pencil in their hair,” she stated seriously. We laughed together, and I could feel some of the tension finally leaving my body.

  “What does yours say?” she asked.

  I opened it up, read the words, and rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “Stupid fortune cookie.” I sighed, and handed it to her.

  She read it and her eyes went wide again. “Oh, man, are you in for it! Come in, let’s go back to work.”

  She laughed, tugging my hand and leading me from the restaurant. She gave the fortune back to me, and I started to throw it away, but then slipped it into my purse:

  BE AWARE OF THE WALLS YOU BUILD

  AND WHAT COULD BE ON THE OTHER SIDE.

  Confucius, you kill me.

  Text from James to Caroline:

  Hey there.

  Hey to you.

  We still on for Friday night?

  Yep, I’m in. Where are we going for dinner?

  There’s a great new Vietnamese restaurant I’ve been wanting to try.

  Have you forgotten I’m not really big on Vietnamese food?

  Come on, you know it’s my favorite. You can get soup!

  Fine, Vietnamese it is. I’ll find something. BTW, the last of your furniture should be delivered Monday. I’ll be there to receive and place.

  How much longer until the project is finished?