I put up one hand and shook my head. “Blame nature, not me. Lips are so sexual. Why do you think women wear lipstick? We want men — or women, if you swing that way — to notice our mouths, but we don’t really give their lips the consideration they deserve. Blondie’s lips are soft and smooth, and I bet his dick is too. I bet he kisses like a god and fucks like a porn star.”
Veronica laughed and stood. “All right, that’s enough out of you. Let’s go. If we stay any longer, you’re going to face-rape that poor, unsuspecting man you’ve been taunting with your sexual salted caramel.”
“Sexual a-salt.” As she pulled me out of my chair, I licked my lips, my eyes still on Blondie. “I wonder what he’d look like under a little salted caramel.”
Ramona playfully pushed me in the shoulder, and I followed the girls, twiddling my fingers at Blondie as we walked away from the shop, laughing.
* * *
Bodie
Her hips swung as she walked away, and I sat there like an idiot with ice cream dripping down my hand.
“Dude.” My twin brother, Jude, slapped me in the arm, sending my cone teetering.
I scowled at him. “What the fuck, man?”
“You weren’t even listening.”
“You’re right. I was too busy watching one of the hottest girls I’ve ever seen lick her ice cream like it was her job.”
He looked around. “Where?”
“She’s gone.”
“Man, why didn’t you tell me?”
I smirked. “Because I saw her first.”
Phil rolled his eyes from across the table. “You guys argue like sisters.”
“That’s what happens when you share a womb for nine months.” I took a bite of my waffle cone, still thinking about her.
Her hair was a soft shade of purple, tied up in a bun, and her face was framed by a blue bandana, tied on top. She looked like a pinup girl, and when she’d stood and walked away, I’d caught sight of the sweetest heart-shaped ass. I couldn’t help but imagine my hands around it and my face buried in her—
Jude slapped my arm again. “You’re drooling, asshole.”
I punched him in the bicep. “Lay off.”
He rubbed the spot where I’d hit him and frowned.
Phil shook his head and propped his skinny forearms on the table. “I miss the days when you guys were more worried about your Magic: The Gathering deck and binging on Snickers bars than girls.”
Jude smirked. “Ah, the great sexual drought of our teenage years.”
Phil made a face and pushed his glasses up his long nose. “Easy, guys. Some of us never outgrow that curse.”
“Aw, come on, Phil. You’ve got Angie.”
“True, and I love her. And, beyond all reason, she loves me too. Fortunately, Ang doesn’t give a shit that I’ll never be a blond, buff Bobbsey twin.”
I shook my head. “You should have gotten into surfing with us, Philly.”
He gave me a flat look. “First off, there’s no real surfing in Berkeley. Second, sharks.”
Jude laughed. “I get it, man. If Dad hadn’t guilted us into learning before we left for college, we wouldn’t have either. But even if we hadn’t, you don’t live in Santa Monica without becoming a surfer.”
I nodded. “It’s true. I mean, I hated surfing the pier, but the sound of panties hitting the ground when we came in from a session made it all worthwhile.”
Jude sighed. “Ah, the good old days. It was so easy to get chicks. But I swear, when we started surfing, I thought I was gonna die. I could barely even paddle out past the breaks without having a coronary.”
“Too many donuts.” I took another bite of my cone.
“I think I lost thirty pounds in two months. And then came the girls,” Jude said, his eyes all dreamy.
“So many girls,” I added.
Phil made a face. “I hate this story.”
“If you’d gotten into USC, you could have paddled through pussy with us,” Jude said matter-of-factly.
“Please, UCLA would have been better,” I shot.
“Whatever, dicks. Berkeley is better on all counts.”
“Anyway,” Jude started, “New York is a totally different game. In LA, if you have a BMW and surf, you can bag pretty much anybody on the West side. Here, the bar is high. New York chicks don’t give a shit about any of that.”
I frowned. “Sounds like a lot of work.”
“Yeah, but it’s worth it,” Jude said with a smile. “You’ll see tonight. We’ll hit a couple of bars, see what there is to see. I’m so ready to get back into the game after wasting all that time with Julie.”
He sounded flippant, but I knew just how much she’d hurt him. They’d moved out here together years ago, and just before I’d moved from LA a week ago, she’d dumped him.
I clapped him on the shoulder, hoping he could find a distraction at whatever bar we were going to that night. “Tonight, you get in where you fit in.”
He smiled. “Hell yeah. And you’ll see what New York is really like. We need a break. We’ve been locked up in the loft coding ever since you got here.”
I shrugged. “We’ve been talking about this game since we were in middle school, and now that we have the tools and the degrees and we’re in the same place, it’s been good. We’ve been coding it for eight fucking years, and now we can really do it instead of just dicking around with it in our spare time.”
Phil nodded. “Thank God you lost your job.”
“Thank God for my severance and savings,” I added. “And that your parents are Silicon Valley yuppies and pay for the loft.”
He laughed at that. “Otherwise, us quitting to go all in on the game wouldn’t have been an option.”
“No pressure, right?” I joked, skirting the magnitude of the situation by pretending the risk we were taking wasn’t a big deal.
Jude’s face softened until he looked all sappy and sentimental. “Really, man, I’m glad you’re here. I don’t like being split up. It’s been a shitty four years without you.”
“It has,” I agreed. “But we’re back together now. And even though I hate being stuck in the city with the beach an hour away and no surf to be had—”
Jude’s sappy face turned into a frown.
“—I’m glad I’m here. Now, show me this high-class ass before I head back to the land of a thousand bikinis.”
After we finished our ice cream, we headed back to the loft, and I found myself thinking about the pinup girl, wondering if I’d ever see her again. I’d been a fool for not chasing after her, stunned stupid by her blatancy, knocked out by the boldness of her. She’d seemed like a girl who knew what she wanted, and that confidence, that forwardness of her actions, had lit a fire in me that no amount of mint chocolate could cool down.
2
SIDESHOW
Penny
Courtney Love wailed about waking up in her makeup as I sat with my roommates in front of the long mirror hanging on my bedroom wall. I’d hung it sideways a couple of years before, low enough on the wall that we could sit at it, and framed it with lights, just like I’d seen on Pinterest, and I’d even used a drill, and nearly drilling a hole in my leg was so worth it. No one put makeup on anywhere else in the apartment.
The light was perfect, the music was perfect, and the company was perfect. I sat between Veronica and Ramona, singing along with Courtney, as I uncapped my lipstick, a dark red matte called Heartbreaker. It couldn’t have been more accurate of a shade for me and not just because of my skin tone.