Sunday, June 22, 2008
I COULDN'T KEEP PRETENDING I didn't have her number. It had been almost a month and she was all I thought about. If she didn't reply, or told me to f*ck off, I would have left her alone. Probably. But what I couldn't do was have her number in my phone and act like I didn't skate past it ten times a day anymore.
Honeybee: Thanks. How did you know about that?
Me: Micah. I overheard her talking to Cory about it. She said that she'd wanted it, but didn't want to travel. So she recommended you. Do you want to be away from home that much?
Honeybee: I like to travel.
ME: Me too. I've been doing a lot more of it for my job. I'm in Phoenix now.
There was radio silence for a while. This wasn't as easy as it was when we were together. Maybe, hopefully, this will work her out of my system and I wouldn't have to jerk thoughts of her out of my dick in the shower every morning.
Probably ten minutes went by before another message came through.
Honeybee: Well, thanks for the well wishes.
Me: I can't stop thinking about you.
Delete.
Me: It's nothing.
Honeybee: It's something. I almost erased your number. Like every day.
Now, that was something. These past few weeks I'd been going to trade shows, trying to get Bay's brand and name out there and into restaurants and bars outside San Francisco. It was nice being away. But every night I stood outside of my hotel room imagining what it would be like if she was on the other side of the door again. Wishing that she'd be there. It was getting pathetic.
Me: Why didn't you?
Honeybee: I don't know.
Me: I know the feeling.
And, f*ck, did I. Every time my phone rang I wanted it to be her. It never was.
Me: So are you married yet?
Delete.
Me: How are things going with the guy?
Another long pause. I should have stopped while I was ahead.
Honeybee: Fine.
Fine? That sounds really f*cking fun.
Her response didn't really convince me that she was all too ga-ga over the dude. Not that I thought we had a shot. We lived nowhere close to what would be deemed remotely proximal to one another, but morbidly, I liked the idea of her out there being just fine with him when she was way more than that with me.
Me: So you think about me every day, huh?
Honeybee: The truth?
I had been joking. Okay. Maybe not. Maybe I wanted to know if she was thinking about me. I sure as hell was thinking about her. It was getting tiresome and I needed to either make a move or let it go.
Ah, let it go. I love when people tell you to, “Let it go.” What bullshit. It's usually them who bring up the sensitive topic anyway. And you of all people know how bad you should just let it go, and you're trying your damnedest. Then, some know-it-all prick reminds you that you should, in fact, forget about it.
Let it go. Bullshit.
I say do the opposite. If someone can tell that you're thinking about something so much that they tell you to let it go. That's the f*cking thing you shouldn't. That's what's got you worked up.
That's the girl you should chase...hypothetically.
It's just, if one gets one's self in such a position where something is commandeering every waking thought that skirts around one's poor lonesome head, then you aren't working hard enough. Go get it.
Don't. Let. It. Go.
I realized this, about three minutes before I sent Blake that first message. I realized I had two options: Either be a chump and think about a girl who is with another man or be the other f*cking man.
Me: Good or bad. The truth.
Honeybee: I don't know why, but I can't let it go.
If I had been a person waiting for a sign, I would have just got it.
The bait.
I'd fight. I might lose. I might wish I'd let it go. But I wasn't going to be the old man with the regrets. I'd definitely be the old man. Maybe I'd even be alone. Maybe I'd be with someone else, but maybe, just maybe, I'd be with her a little more first.
Honeybee: You left before I woke up. You should have stayed.
Me: Nah. If you think it's rough now, think about how bad it would be if I had stayed.
There would have been no leaving. Not me. And there was no way in hell I'd let her leave either. I had to go that night. My sanity could only take so much.
What am I getting myself into? This is going to get way worse.
Honeybee: Guess you're right.
Me: I think we should be friends. Real friends.
I knew my terminology was all wrong; by friends I meant lovers. I wanted to be more, but I had to see where her head was. I couldn't go balls-in if she was only looking for a fling on the side. My gut said that wasn’t it, but I barely knew her. She had a boyfriend.
Still did.
Honeybee: I don't know.
Me: Well you can't stop me. You're my friend now. You'll have to block my number or something. I'm hanging around.
I thought while the silence screamed at me how big of a fool I was being. I sounded like some lame fifteen-year-old sending letters through neighboring classmates in homeroom. Do you like me? Yes or no. It felt like my only in. My only way to be near her. For now.
Me: Let's go back to where you couldn't stop thinking about me.
Honeybee: See!!! Friends don't say that.
Me: What do they say?
Honeybee: They say pleasant things like. Have a good day. What did you have for lunch? Things like that.
Me: It would have been a real good day if I'd had you for lunch.
I sent that one before I had the better sense to delete it. It was too easy and fun riling her up.
Honeybee: I might block you.
Me: No you won't. You can't get enough of me
Honeybee: Neither can what's her name.
She sounded jealous. A rational person would pacify her. A rational person would want to make her feel better and reassure her. But her having a boyfriend made me irrational and misery loves company.
Me: Who? Aly? I know. She's called twice already in the past twenty minutes.
Honeybee: I'm sure she has. Listen, friend, I have to get up early. I'll let you know how it goes. Tell Aly hi for me. Goodnight.
For a girl with a steady boyfriend, she sure did like the chase. Maybe I'd let her chase me for a little while. It was my best option. After all, I opened the door by texting her. And as much fun as it sounds grabbing her by the hair and dragging her through it, it would feel much more rewarding when she crawled through on her own. I just had to play the game she wanted to play.
Being forward didn't get her attention, but being cool did.
I'd be the coolest motherf*cker around.
Me: Nite, Betty.
She didn't respond after that, I didn't think she would. I hoped she was stewing over it. I hoped she was uncomfortable and irritated. That's how I felt.
I put my phone on the charger and turned it off, ensuring I wouldn't keep stoking a fire I hoped I'd set. I didn’t want to be a flash flame. I wanted to be a slow burn. I wanted to heat her from the inside out. And as I stood there alone in my hotel room, I thought about that night.
With my hands on the bathroom counter and my head hanging, I closed my eyes and remembered what it was like being between her legs. The way she smelled like jasmine and a fresh shower. Her lips were minty, but I could still taste the lingering bourbon on her silky tongue.
I didn't have to look. I knew I was as hard as the granite holding me up. So, I did what I did nearly every night since the one at Hook Line and Sinker, ripped off my clothes, set the shower to cold and climbed in.
I wasn't proud of the fact that I'd had plenty of opportunities to get laid and passed them up for yanking myself in a cold shower. But there I was. Again. One arm up on the wall and a fist around my stupid cock. Every pull I fought for the feeling of her wrapped around me. With every flex of my grip, I pictured her head thrown back against the pillow. I could hear her moans; I could see the flash of honest passion in her eyes.
Then I'd come and felt no better for having done it. Sometimes I'd go at myself again and others, like that night, I'd let my dick suffer for making me victim to reliving the night I couldn't forget.
My flight home was early the next morning, I didn't sleep well but that was nothing new. I decided that since my mom lived so close to the airport it would be a good time to pop in and say hello. Yeah, I was a momma's boy.
My feet shuffled up her driveway after stopping at her mailbox and getting her mail. I read her name, Deb Moore, and wondered why she never changed it after my father and her divorced. If I were a woman, the second my marital status changed my name would, too. Especially if the jerk ran off with a woman ten years younger, like my dad had.
Don't get me wrong, I was well past over that by then. People get divorced and remarry. But he did it in a hurry. My dad and Carmen married after a three-month engagement, then they gave Cory and me a little sister, Audrey, about eleven months later. They gave us two actually, Audrey and Morgan. Audrey was seventeen and wild, where Morgan was sixteen, shy and quiet. They were both good girls and I loved them as much as I loved Cory, even if we didn't share the same mom. It's funny how things like that work out.
I opened the door to my mom's house with the key I'd never part with and yelled, “Mom!? It's your favorite son and I'm hungry.”
“Cory is that you?” she yelled back as I saw her round the hall into the foyer where I was standing. We're twins, but she knew my voice. She just liked teasing me. “Cory, you look like hell,” she said sheepishly, laughed, then complimented herself. “That was a good one.”
“How long have you been waiting to use that?” I pretended to be wounded and placed my hand over my heart. “That hurts, Mom.”
“Oh you poor baby. If you visited your old mom more, I wouldn't forget what you looked like. Come here.” My mom was the picture of graceful aging. She was about five foot five and in great shape. That day, she wore cargo shorts and a tank top covered in dirt. Her tan made her long, wavy, silver hair seem even more polished. Her blue eyes sparkled as she leaned up to kiss me on the cheek. “I'd hug you but I'm mucky. I've been out back harassing the plants.”
I wrapped both of my arms around her anyway and picked her up. She protested and hit my shoulders telling me to put her down. “Casey, you'll get dirty. Knock it off,” she scolded through her contradicting giggles. I placed a kiss on her head when I put her back on her feet. She was the mom to twin boys and used to being manhandled by us.
“I flew in this morning and decided to stop by before I headed home,” I told her as we walked into the kitchen where she immediately started washing her hands to make me something to eat. I didn't expect her to, but telling her not to was a losing battle.
“Well, I'm glad you did. I've missed you. You're a busy man these days. I'll probably never get that shed painted now.” She opened the fridge, knowing exactly what I was after. She didn't like pastrami, but it was always in there. I wondered how much she threw away when I didn't show up for a few weeks. “Provolone and mustard? You want me to slice a tomato?”
“No tomato. That's fine.”
“I just brought one in. It's no trouble.” She looked expectantly at me, proud of her garden and wanting me to eat something she'd harvested. I was like that with my brews. The look in her eyes was easy to read. It said, “Eat the tomato, I grew it just for you.”
“Actually, that sounds really good.” She smiled, prideful.
“So what’s new, baby boy? Where did you fly in from again?” She busied herself with making the sandwich and I waited patiently on the barstool opposite her.
“Phoenix. Marc has me traveling a lot more since we've been so busy. We're actually buying the warehouse across from our building now. It's crazy.”
“How exciting.”
“Yeah, it's pretty awesome. He said that we're hiring a few more people, too. Ten, I think, for now.” She nodded, listening.
Marc's dad started Bay Beer Brewing Co. about fifteen years earlier, and had been slowly gaining clout. I didn't know what would happen to it if—when—Marc decided to retire. I was sure he'd leave it to Aly, but she wouldn't know what to do with it. I'd been thinking of talking to him about possibly buying into it somehow. I just needed to do it the right way since I wasn't family, and wasn't planning on becoming family either. Marc and I were pretty close, though, and he knew how much I loved it.
“That's great news,” she said and took a plate from the cupboard and sliced the sandwich in half, then passed it across the bar.
“So, I've been doing a lot of the traveling over the past couple of weeks. I'm actually doing a pretty good job selling.”
“Of course you are. Look at you. That face. Your charisma. You know everything there is to know about that brewery. I'm excited for you.”
“I kind of want to own it. Or part of it. Someday. I don't know. I need to talk to him about it more.” I bit into the pastrami sandwich and closed my eyes. There's nothing like a sandwich made by your mom. She had a secret to making them taste better than I did and we used the same shit. Moms.
“You should do it. You've worked your way up this far.”
It was true. I'd worked in the brewery, the docks, and recently moved into sales. I loved hearing her say she thought I could manage it. It was reassuring, even though she was my mom and she thought I could do anything.
“We'll see,” I told her while chewing. My phone beeped and I pulled it out hoping it was Blake. She must have seen my face change from excited to something else.
“Not who you were hoping for?” she asked.
I said, “Not really.” It was Aly. Again. Yeah, I'd broken up with her a month earlier, but working for her father's company sort of kept us in close proximity. Especially that she was doing a lot more in the office. She knew where I was almost every f*cking hour of the day. Don't get me wrong. I cared about her, but f*ck. The spark—the bait—wasn’t there with us. Not like it was with Blake.
“Hey, I was thinking,” she said. “You know how you have all of that brewing stuff in the basement?” she asked tentatively as she cleaned up the mess from sandwich making. “Can you show me how to use it? I think I want to make my own.”
I laughed and almost choked on my last bite. “You want to make beer?”
“Ale, Casey. I want to make ale. Will the stuff you have downstairs work for that?” She looked hopeful, like she'd already thought it through.
“It will. What kind of ale, Momma? Are you trying to run me out of business?” I joked.
She sat beside me on the barstool to my left and slapped my arm with the wet rag she was had. “No, don't be stupid. I just want to see if I can make it. I have lots of things I can use in the garden and I thought it would be fun for you to show me how.” She nudged me. “You'd have to come over a little more than you do, and I know you're busy now, but I think if you showed me I could do it.”
She was the coolest mom in the world. Not that Carmen was awful or anything, but I wish my mom were Audrey and Morgan's mom, too. They were totally missing out.
“You're damn right you could. You have a brewing prodigy for a son.”
After we talked a little more, she prodded for more information on the person who I wanted to be calling me.
We went downstairs and I showed her how to set up the siphons, fermenters and carboys. She wrote everything down.
I had fun and she said it sounded easy enough. I told her to stop by Bay the next day and I'd make her up a little starter kit with a few other things she'd need. She agreed and told me she'd buy me lunch for my help and instruction.
To be honest, it made me proud to see her interested in doing it. That was the first brewing kit I'd used and it was how I made beer for all of my friends back in high school. I couldn't buy beer when I was underage, but I made a shit ton of money making it. My dad had left that set up when he left my mom. Cory and I found it in the storage room down there when we were about fourteen. It was amazing what a little research and juvenile mischief led to.
She'd immediately caught me on my first batch, but she'd just laughed and said that at least I was smart enough to get around the system. She'd stored my yields in a refrigerator that she locked so that I couldn't get into it whenever I wanted. I eventually found the key, but was quick to replace what I took. I think she drank more of it than we did, so she never got on our asses about it.
Being there with my mom that day took my mind off Blake for a while, but it all came back when I got to the apartment and heard Micah on the phone with her.
Micah said, “That's great, I knew you'd get the job. Congratulations!” Then she covered the receiver, which never fooled anyone, and said “Hi, Casey,” to me as she watched me walk in. There was no way for her to know that I'd sent Blake a text the day before, so I didn't let my true excitement show.
But she got the job.
She'd be traveling.
She'd be away from her boyfriend and he might not like that. They, sadly, might not work out. What a shame.
And I'd be traveling too. She might not text me that day, but she would soon. I’d wait.
The possibilities were endless.