* * *
—
TWELVE HOURS, TWENTY-SEVEN UNANSWERED TEXTS, and two hundred passed canapés later, Ari hears Gabe’s laughter outside the comedy club, where he’s standing in the center of a cluster of smokers, his laugh bellowing a decibel louder than anyone else’s.
“Why do you smell like ham?” he asks when she forcibly inserts herself into the circle.
“Four hours of serving pancetta-wrapped peach slices.” Ari musters up the simmering anger that she hadn’t gotten the chance to unleash at Radhya’s pop-up. “And what got into you yesterday?”
“Funny. I was about to ask you the same thing.” He exhales a smoke ring. “Let’s have a drink. I’m not up for another half hour.”
Gabe claps her on the shoulder and leads/shoves her through the door to the bored host, scrolling her phone behind the podium. The woman barely looks up as she collects Ari’s $23 cover, heaving a little sigh.
There’s no one onstage yet inside the club’s “Rising Star Room,” which, frankly, resembles a community center basement where one might attend an AA meeting. Accordingly, Ari heads immediately to the bar for a Long Island Iced Tea.
“That kinda day, huh?” Gabe observes.
Ari answers by flaring her nostrils, determined to give him nothing. She sips from the plastic cup, scanning the room, squinting into the darkness at a tall woman with heavy bangs lying perfectly over her forehead.
“Is that…Briar?” Instinctively, Ari stumbles two steps back, moving out of her line of sight.
“It’s a bringer. I blasted out invites to everyone I’ve ever hooked up with.” He shrugs and does something weirdly seductive with his left eyebrow. “She likes me.”
Ari leans forward. “Did you—”
“We made out in the bathroom of the beer garden.” He pauses. There’s a threat of mischief in his eye. “It’s not like I said ‘I love you’ or anything.”
If he follows that up with another punch line, Ari doesn’t hear it over her internal screaming.
“Why does everyone know about this?”
“Probably because you sprinted out of his apartment this morning and he immediately started spiraling and you haven’t talked to each other all day?”
“I’ve been…processing.” Yes. Processing. Processing and avoiding.
“You sound a little hoarse. Is it from all the screaming?” Ari is certain cartoon daggers shoot out of her eyes, puncturing Gabe’s perfect, waxed chest. “Okay, look. It was less of a frat-boy-bragging-about-banging-a-girl-on-Reddit recounting of the mechanics and more of an ‘all my dreams came true last night so how do we avoid fucking this up’ thing.”
“I don’t want to be anyone’s dream.” Josh couldn’t even casually gloat, like a normal douchebag?
Gabe moves a little closer, creating the illusion of intimacy. “How was it?”
“It was…” Ari chews the inside of her cheek. “You know that old song lyric, ‘we make love and then we fuck’？”
Gabe barely stifles an impressed sort of chuckle. “No, but it sounds like you each got what you wanted.”
Ari downs the rest of the drink, tossing the cup in the trash can by the exit. “I need to leave. I can’t do this right now.”
Gabe grabs her biceps and walks her back to the bar. “You already paid the cover and I need you to laugh incredibly loud at my set and sit there stone-faced for everyone else.” He flags down the bartender. “Seriously. I invited a casting assistant.”
Ari orders a double as she looks at the back of Briar’s head. “Were you and Briar sitting here, discussing it?”
“Of course not,” he says, checking the time on his phone. “We discussed it over text first thing this morning.”
“See, you’re the ones making it into something more than it is.”
Gabe puts his phone in his pocket and puts his hands on Ari’s shoulders. “There’s a window. You waited too long. The window for a nostrings hookup closed on the two of you months ago.”
“That’s not true. I always leave the window open a crack.”
“Say whatever you want, but it’s gonna be one hell of an awkward DTR conversation,” he adds. “He has heart-eyes.”
“I think we can just…walk it back.” Even as the words leave her mouth it feels hopeless.
Gabe gives her a patronizing “sure you can” nod. “I have to ask…what the hell was he doing to you that made you say the phrase that shall not be named?”