Page 17 of Truly, Madly, Deeply

“Shut up,” Truly said without any real heat. “It’s not sad, it’s solo.”

“Hence the Booty Bling Wearable Silicone Beads.” Lulu wrinkled her nose. “A terrible name, but the reviews are great. You’re welcome.”

Truly set the box aside. “I’d rather not talk about my sex life at all.”

“No, apparently you’d rather bitch about Colin McCrory.”

“Am I not allowed to vent anymore?”

Lulu held up her hands. “All I’m saying is you’ve spent more time complaining about Colin McCrory, a dude you spent less than an hour with, than Justin, a guy you dated for six years. Don’t you think that says something?”

It said that Justin wasn’t worth talking about. “I’ve said everything there is to say about Justin.”

“And your parents?” Lulu frowned. “Do you, I don’t know, maybe want to talk about them?”

And say what that she hadn’t already said?

Not even two weeks had passed since her parents had flipped her whole world upside down and it was already starting to look like this... trial separation? Might not be as temporary as they had led her to think.

Dad had moved into a short-term rental across town that was closer to the theater where he worked. A fact of which Truly had only been made aware when she’d beaten him home for their regularly scheduled Sunday brunch. A Sunday brunch Mom and Dad were adamant that they not cancel because, according to them, they were still a family and nothing among the three of them had to change.

Wishful thinking had to run in the family because everything felt different. Badwrong in a way she could barely put her finger on but made her feel like her skin didn’t fit right.

Mom’s and Dad’s hands didn’t brush when he dished out plates of delicious-smelling apricot and pancetta strata and they sat farther apart on the couch than they usually did and they were so polite, so careful, acting more like strangers than a married couple. Truly had wanted to rip her skin off and go running out the front door, but she’d stayed longer than usual, desperately hoping she’d blink, and everything would right itself.

Of course, it hadn’t. She’d gone home and thrown herself into work, hammering out a new chapter in her book. Only that hadn’t worked out for her, either.

It was hard to write a convincing happily ever after when her own faith in those was turbulent at the moment.

If she didn’t get her shit together, she was going to have to beg her editor for an extension, something she hadn’t had to do in years.

“I’d rather not talk about the nightmare my life has turned into, thanks. Been there, done that, already went through half a box of Kleenex sobbing my soul out to you on the phone.” She grabbed the Booty Bling Wearable Silicone Beads box and turned it over in her hands, just for something to do. “Anyway, do you think he’s using a fake email address? Like, I get not using his work address for personal shit, but do you think he—”

“Do I think a guy you met once crafted a burner account just to email you?” Lulu stared at her. “Truly. Babe. Honey bun. This is getting ridiculous. Just call the dude up and set up a time and a place to hate-fuck him. No one, and I mean no one, deserves to be living rent free inside your head if they aren’t making you come so hard your brain leaks out your ears.”

No one had ever made her come so hard her brain had leaked out her ears. But the idea of her and Colin— “Don’t be gross.”

“Just saying. Sounds like a textbook case of unresolved sexual tension, to me.”

“You’re terrible,” Truly complained, halfhearted at best.

“And yet you love me anyway.” Lulu brightened. “Hey, I know what’ll cheer you up. You want to hear about the gallon of lube I had to clean up with a push broom on Friday?”

That sentence made very little sense and yet she was intrigued. “They make gallon-size lube?”

“Well, sure.” Lulu swept her long, glossy black hair up in a bun. “Some folks like to buy in bulk.”

Truly couldn’t fathom what someone had to be doing to go through enough lube on the regular that buying a gallon was economical. “Tell me everything.”

Lulu was in the middle of regaling her with the tale of three inebriated college students, a gallon drum of silicone-based lube, one pair of vintage Heelys on the fritz, and a leather crop—whose role in this whole charade Truly still didn’t quite understand—when the bell above the door chimed.

“Hello and welcome to Come as You Are, the one-stop shop for all your sexual healing needs. Don’t procrastinate; let us help you masturbate,” Lulu recited the god-awful greeting that Benny, the shop’s owner, had written himself. Truly had offered to help him retool the greeting but upon hearing retool, he’d fallen into a fit of giggles, rendering her offer useless. “My name’s Lulu. What can I help you find on this glorious hump day?”

“Truly?”

“Colin?”

There, in all his Bambi-eyed glory, was Colin McCrory. As if she’d manifested him, conjured him through sheer... bitching.

---