Fourth Comings_ A Jessica Darling Novel - Megan McCafferty [22]
“Sleeping.”
“She need comp’ny?”
“I doubt it,” I replied. I then watched as Shea scraped out what was left of the peanut butter with her forefinger. I was placing bets on how long it would take Manda to start licking it off.
“How’s Marcus?” Manda asked.
The sudden interest in my life was unprecedented. I hadn’t prepared an answer I’d be willing to share with Manda on this subject.
“Uh,” I replied.
“Shiiiiiiiiiiit. You buttplugs break up or what?”
“What?” I asked. “Why would you ask that?” I hadn’t given Shea or Manda any indication of, well, anything.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Manda said. “It just seems like you were having some troubles right before he left.”
“He has troubles with New York,” I said, repeating a familiar excuse. “Not with me.”
“All the more reason why I thought you might be having second thoughts about the long-distance thing,” Manda said as she overfilled her mug, spilling coffee over Mary Wollstonecraft’s ceramic portrait.
“Oh.”
“Sooooo?”
I didn’t want to get all touchy-feely in a figurative or literal way. So I figured the best strategy was nonchalance.
“Well, I was thinking that it might be easiest for both of us if we just do our own thing….”
“Break up,” Manda clarified.
I was still very suspicious. Manda and Shea were way too interested in my emotional life. “Well, I tried to break up with him, but he wasn’t convinced and…” I stopped there. Manda and Shea could not be the first to find out about your proposal, even if it was an elaborate inside joke.
“And…?” Manda asked.
“And I’m taking time to think.”
“So you’re technically still together?”
“Yes,” I said. “More than technically. We are—”
“Hellyeah!” Shea slammed down the peanut butter jar and leapt up from the chair to engage in an elaborate touchdown dance: her baggy pants thrust up and down, one hand flat on the floor and the other smacking an imaginary ass.
I asked the only logical question. “What the hell?”
“Hellyeah! Hellyeah! Hellyeah!” Now Shea simulated wild, rearentry copulation with an imaginary strap-on.
“We had a bet about your breakup,” Manda said. She beamed as she said this.
“You are so owned! You thought Marcus was breaking up with her! Ownage! Ownage! Ownage!” She was still thrusting her pelvis.
“Puh-leeze, I am so not owned!”
“Ownage! Ownage! Ownage!”
Living with Shea is like living with the zitty, Ritalin-tweaked little brother I never had. Only she’s twenty-three years old. And she has a vagina. Oops. There I go again, getting all caught up in the heteropatriarchal paradigm. Shame on me.
Manda squealed and positioned herself in front of her boifriend to complete the faux-porno tableau. “Give it to me! Give it to me! Give it to me!”
I retreated back down the hall before the simulated act could be authenticated.
seventeen
Hope was sitting straight up in the top bunk when I opened the door.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
“Are you kidding? People pay good money to watch what I just saw for free.”
“I meant about you and Marcus.” Her head hung low, but her curls still teased the decorative squares pressed into the tin ceiling.
“Oh, you must have heard wrong,” I said.
“Heard what wrong?”
“Marcus and I didn’t break up,” I explained.
Her head jolted with this news. “Really? I thought…”
“Manda and Shea had a bet about our breakup.”
“I know that,” she said. “They actually asked if I wanted in on it.”
“What were the stakes?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” Hope replied, a wry smile sneaking across her face. “But it involved something called a Jaguar Harness.”
“A what?!”
“I told you that you didn’t want to know!”
And then we both laughed. Joking about the sexual imprimaturs paying half our rent never gets old. The oppressive mood had been lifted, but I was still surprised by how rattled Hope seemed by the prospect of us breaking up. Perhaps she needs