The Reluctant Nude - Meg Maguire [44]
Fallon smiled tightly and fairly dragged her friend from the studio. “I’ll stop by tomorrow to check in,” she shouted through the screen door as it swung shut.
“She likes bass players!” Rachel added as they disappeared, then made a noise like she’d been pinched.
“Thanks a lot for that,” Fallon said once the door creaked closed behind them. She smiled, flustered but relieved to have gotten away with any dignity still intact.
“Oh my God, is he not the sexiest person you’ve ever been in a room with?”
“I think he is,” Fallon agreed, only half-reluctantly. “You should see him with his shirt off.”
“Damn. So have you…you know?” Rachel wiggled her eyebrows lewdly.
Fallon worked hard to suppress a smile. “What?”
“You know. Voulez-vous…couchez’d avec him?”
Fallon laughed. “No. I’d call you if that happened.”
“Yeah, you better. He obviously likes you, though. He likes you, likes you,” Rachel teased. “Have you done anything?”
“Not really. I mean, apart from him staring at my naked body all damn day. And we did sort of…spoon. But I was pretty drunk.”
“Ooh, Fallon. Drunken spooning counts. Hell, anything counts with a man who looks like that one.” Rachel pulled her phone out of her purse and took a snapshot of Fallon blushing. “Did he grab your boob or anything good?”
Fallon snorted, so happy to have her friend here, to be having this sort of ridiculous conversation again. “No, no boob-grabbage. He kind of kissed me, once. A while ago.”
“Kind of? And just once?”
“It was a bit inappropriate. Not super-sketchy or anything, just a little too pushy for me, at the time.”
“Damn. I’d let him push me onto just about any old thing he fancies. Good kisser?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Fallon said. “No tongue or anything.”
“Well, he is French, right? You should do a little cultural anthropology. Straight from the source. I’m telling you, Fal, you should sleep with him.”
“Technically, he’s Canadian now. And I don’t know if I even want to.”
“Why the frig not?”
“He’s too good-looking.”
Rachel pulled a skeptical face.
“Think about it this way,” Fallon said. “Firstly, where do I go from there? I can’t just go sleeping with some controversial French artist with a six-pack. What if it breaks me? What if I never meet anyone after who can…”
“Cleanse your palate?” Rachel offered.
“Yeah, pretty much. He might ruin me for normal guys. And secondly, he’s so out of my league it’s like he’s playing a different sport.”
“Oh, shut up. You’re gorgeous!”
“Yeah, thanks, Mom. But it seriously bothers me. I feel like some insecure junior high school kid around him sometimes. He reeks of sex like that guy from our ethics course reeked of Drakkar. He’s like some different species. He’s probably into things I can’t even pronounce.”
“That’s such bullshit,” Rachel said. “You need to think about it differently. I was just hypothesizing about this the other day, right? You need to fuck to the competition.”
“What on earth does that even mean?”
Rachel cleared her throat in a teacherly way. “So, you know that phrase people use when they’re talking about sports or darts or any sort of competitive thing—‘playing to the competition’? If they’re playing against someone lousy, they don’t try. They don’t need to. But if they’re playing against someone really good, or better than them, they play way better because they have nothing to lose, right? It like raises the bar?”
“Sure…”
“So you think he’s out of your league—and you’re wrong, obviously—but fuck him anyway, Fal, and I’m sure while you are you’ll feel like the only woman in the world who’s qualified for it. I bet it’d be great for your sexual self-esteem.”
“That is a weird-ass theory,” Fallon said as they reached the cottages.
“Whatever. I was up all night driving. Just send me the pictures.”
An hour later they sat down at a table in an Indian restaurant in Sydney.
“Wow, I never thought I’d miss being in a city,” Fallon said, staring out the window at the passing cars.
“If you can call this a city.” Rachel perused the menu.
“So. What have I been missing back in