Page 5 of Desperate Haste
“I slept with a groomsman.” I feel my lips pull back into an uncomfortable line. He simply stares at me and blinks a few times when I don’t continue.
“That’s it?” He almost sounds disappointed. “Why would I laugh at that?”
“I don’t know, because it’s a cliché?” I shrug my shoulders and can’t figure out why I have this dull sense of embarrassment around the man I went home with on Saturday. My night was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. There’s confidence and then there’s a downright knowing of just how good you are. And Malcolm knew exactly how good he was. I feel my cheeks flush at the thought of his name but I quickly push the feelings out of my mind and my heart.
“So what? They’ve made probably a hundred movies about the maid of honor shacking up with a groomsman, or worse, the best man. They normally hookup once, decide to be friends with benefits, and then end up getting married themselves by the end of the movie. Oh my gosh!” Dale gasps and brings both of his hands in front of his mouth, his eyes becoming two round circles. “Did you just become a horribly cheesy romcom?”
I sit up in my chair as my head falls back from laughing so hard. One thing I love most about Dale? His sense for the dramatics. “Not in your fucking life. I’m never getting married and Ineversleep with the same guy twice. It’s my rule. One and done.” I don’t explain the reason for the rule but after asking, and being shot down multiple times before, he knows not to try and get me to explain my severe aversion to all things marriage and commitment.
“Ugh, you and your little rules.” He rolls his eyes at me. “So, how was it? Give me all the gory details.” He crosses one leg over the other and leans over his knee, ready to take in every scrap of story I give him.
“Well, he has tattoos…everywhere.” I emphasize the last word for impact because Malcolm has more tattoos than my eyes could take in for the time I got to see him naked. In his dress shirt, I could see some of them etched into his hands and peeking out from the collar of his button-down, but I didn’t expect every inch with the exception of a few places to be inked.
“Everywhere, everywhere?” Dale’s eyes grow wider than before as he hints at the question he dare not ask.
“Everywhere except his face and the family jewels.” I snap my lips together in a satisfied smirk remembering how he was literally covered from head to toe in dark images and intricate tableaus with the exception of his face and a small area around his groin.A man would never.
“Damn. Was it good?”
The images of him pushing me against a wall behind the venue during the family toasts rage in my mind. The way we snuck off like two kids in the dark and started to feel each other up as if nothing else mattered. How, when we got back to his apartment, he lifted me up around him as if I weighed nothing and carried me to the bedroom. As a woman who proudly wears a size sixteen dress, I still can’t get over how effortless he made it seem. And then the sex—my mind can’t even go there without getting warm all over.
“Darling, let me tell you about how good it w—” I start but then stop. Dale never comes into my office in the middle of the afternoon unless something is wrong. The fact that he came in while I was on the phone makes it all the more suspicious. “Wait a minute, why did you come in here?”
“What do you mean?” His voice shrinks and gets noticeably smaller and the way he sinks into his chair tells me everything I needed to know.
“You never come in here when I’m on the phone.” I squint my eyes at him and lean over my desk on my elbows. He squeezes his lips together and clasps his hands together in his lap.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna talk about your sexy tattooed hookup instead?” he tries, lifting his chin to one side and shrugging his shoulders.
“Dale. What happened?” I ask sternly.
“The designers submitted a marketing campaign to a brand without final approval and it has the wrong copy on it and now the client is upset.” He shrinks into himself and winces, ready to brace for impact.
“Goddammit, Dale. You need to lead with these things.” I sigh angrily, not so much at him but at the universe in general.
“Well I’m sorry my plan on buttering you up before letting you know the bad news didn’t work. Next time I’ll do a little dance and try harder,” he shouts back. This is our thing. He will tell me something has gone wrong, I will get frustrated and make a comment which he then throws right back at me, and then we fix the issue at hand.
It works for us.
I set my feet on the floor and pull myself back into my desk, grabbing the phone to connect with our lead graphic designer, ready to have their ass. “Send me the contact for the brand,now.”
“Are you sure you don’t wanna talk about your sex life first?” he tries, standing from the chair like a student being dismissed from the principal’s office.
“No sex talk for you today. Next time, lead with the bad shit so we can fix it first and then we can talk about my sex life,” I huff, waiting for the line to be picked up.
“Fine,” he grumbles, walking out of my office like a dog with its tail between its legs.
As he goes, and the line rings, my brain shoots back to my night with Malcolm and the strange tingly feeling I got in my stomach when Dale asked about him returns. I try to think about what the feeling is or where it comes from when a voice cuts through on the other end of the phone. “Hello?”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing pulling a stunt like that?” I bark into the phone.
4
MALCOLM
The following Wednesday I’m wiping down the counters at Butcher and Block—the bar and restaurant I’ve worked at for the last five years. Another connection from my sponsor, Marshall, that helped save me when I needed it most. He actually owns the bar and when he isn’t at the training center, he can be found here.
Butcher and Block, while unbeknownst to its patrons, is a space for healing and detoxing. I’ll never forget the first time he brought me here in his 1970’s Ford Mustang after an N.A. meeting we’d attended. I’d just been released from the rehab program I’d checked into—with the not so gentle push of my friends, I might add—and part of my terms of release were to attend weekly meetings. When I walked into the old gymnasium with metal fold out chairs sitting in a circle, I couldn’t feel more out of place. But Marshall walked right up to me, introduced himself, and took me under his wing. He and I bonded instantly and when he offered to be my sponsor, I didn’t say no. After months of feeling like I was slipping beneath the surface, drowning in my own self destruction, it was as if he had extended a hand to pull me out of the raging water.
