“Stop talking and eat. Besides, you’re wasting your breath. I’m happy doing my thing.”
Asha swallows and wipes her mouth. “Which is what? Having substandard sex with a rotating roster of losers?”
“At least I’m getting laid.”
“Badly. My bedroom is next to yours. Do you think I don’t hear things? Call me old-fashioned, but it’s supposed to be at least seven minutes in heaven. Not three.”
“Yeah, but sex is kind of like pizza; even when it’s bad, it’s good.” I crunch down on my toast and give her a smile.
She scoffs and pulls a book from her bag, before holding it open on the counter and starting to read. Unsurprisingly, it’s a romance novel. I shake my head. As if she needs more fuel for her unrealistically romantic fire.
I’m taking my last bite of toast and washing it down with coffee when my bedroom door opens, and a shirtless man emerges.
Speaking of underwhelming sexual partners.
“Hey.” The half-naked man rubs his hair and saunters over in low-slung jeans. Then he leans in and gives me an awkward kiss on the cheek.
God, I hate the morning after.
“Uh, hi,” I say. “Want some coffee?”
“Sure.” He leans up against the counter as I pour an extra cup and hand it to him. Asha stares at me, then at him, then back at me.
“Oh,” I said. “Sorry. This is my sister, Asha. Ash, this is ...” Shit. What’s his name? “Tim?”
“Tony,” he corrects.
“Sorry. Tony.”
“Hey, there.” Tim/Tony waves at Asha and gives her an appraising look; the kind most men give my sister. If the two of us sit at a bar together, it’s Asha who always gets approached first. With her killer curves and crimson lips, she looks like a pinup girl, while I look like the pinup girl’s efficient-but-plain personal assistant.
Tony shoots me a quick glance, and I can tell he’s thinking he hooked up with the wrong sister. His douche-osity comes as no surprise. Apparently, I have a type.
What he doesn’t know is that my sister hardly ever hooks up, so he’s lucky he got any at all.
Asha gives him a weak smile. “Hey.”
Tony was the bad decision I made last night after Asha left me at our local watering hole, The Tar Bar, so she could go home and read. I’ve warned her before that I’m not to be trusted on my own after drinking tequila. It’s like I’m an iPhone, and tequila turns all my permissions to ON.
“So, Tony,” Asha says with more than a touch of disapproval. “Shouldn’t you be heading off to work?”
Tony chuckles. Yeah, ‘cause he looks like he has a job. “Band practice doesn’t start until one.”
Asha gives him what I’ve come to recognize as her judgey smile. The thing about having a workaholic single mother is that she instilled a kickass work ethic into me and my sister, and if someone has even a whiff of slacker about them, they immediately get demerits from the Tate sisters. Not enough demerits for me not to sleep with them, but still ...
“So great to see you have goals,” Asha says, with a pinched expression. And as Tony seems about to engage her in conversation, she studiously turns her back on him and sticks her nose in her book.
Tony must get the hint, because he puts down his coffee cup and retreats to the bedroom. A few minutes later, he reappears, fully dressed.
“Well, see ‘ya. Thanks.” I walk him to the front door and open it. He turns to me and says, “So ... uh ... did you want to give me your number, or ...?”
Why do men always feel the need to ask that? It’s clear as day this guy has zero intention of calling me, and yet he still blurts it out like he’s afraid if he doesn’t, I’ll cling to his leg until he agrees to get my digits tattooed onto his ass.
“No, I’m good,” I say.
The relief on his face is almost comical. “Okay, then. Cool. See ‘ya ’round.”
I close the door and head back into the kitchen.
Asha studies me as I clean up. I ignore her.
“Eden –”
“Don’t want to hear it.”
“You could do so much better.”
“Asha, stop.”
“You deserve so much better.”
“Do I?”
She slaps her book down on the counter. “Of course you do! You could get an amazing man if you just put in a little effort.”
I recognize her subtle dig at my lack of style. Every day I wear the same thing: jeans, boots, t-shirt, and some sort of jacket, usually leather. Ash, on the other hand has more flair than a whole salon of hairdressers. She has a way of turning her thrift-store clothing into cutting-edge fashion that looks way more expensive than it is. Also, even though we both have our mom’s fiery red hair, I’m content to let mine hang to my shoulders and embrace the natural curl, while Asha keeps hers short, funky, and dead straight. It goes perfectly with her horn-rimmed glasses that are more for show than actual vision correction.
She’s a quintessential hipster, and I’m the opposite of hip. Asha often tells me that I’m so unhip, it’s a wonder my butt doesn’t fall off.
Oh, did I forget to mention she’s an insufferable smart-ass?
“Edie, all I’m saying is that you don’t have to resort to banging the King of the Potheads to get sex. There’s a better quality of man out there. You just need to have slightly higher standards than breathing and has a penis.”
“Hey, that’s not fair. I also insist on him having all of his own teeth and less than five felony charges.”
“Wow. I had no idea you were so fussy.”
I smile while taking her empty coffee cup to the sink to wash it. As much as I love her, men is one topic upon which my darling sister and I will never agree.
“You should at least do a story on him,” Asha says as she shoves her book into her bag and grabs some fruit from the bowl on the bench.
I look over at her. “Who? Slacker pot-head Tim?”
“Tony. And God, no. I’m talking about Mister Romance. It’d make a great feature, right?”
I write for Pulse, a news and entertainment website with more than five-million subscribers. But even though I graduated top of my class in journalism from NYU, my boss has me doing inane click-bait pieces that make me ashamed to own a functioning brain. There are titles like, YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT KIM KARDASHIAN IS DOING WITH HER BUTT NOW! and 10 SIGNS YOUR CAT IS TRYING TO KILL YOU! NUMBER 3 WILL CHILL YOUR BLOOD!
I’m waiting for the day I put my four years of investigative journalism training to use, but with how inflexible my boss is about giving staff new opportunities, I have no idea when that will be.