Page 56 of Hot Mess Express
“So it isn’t true?”
I sigh and look away, not answering, as I shampoo again. She rummages through the drawers beneath the sink next, humming to herself. I’m no musician, but I know when her melody’s off, and she has no hope or desire to find it any more than I have a hope or desire to figure out what it is about Bridger that has me feeling like a mess no matter how hard I scrub myself with soap.
Next, I’m sitting in a fold-out chair on the gravel outside our apartment with the crickets, an opened bag of Doritos in my lap, and the door behind me cracked and spilling out whatever music Juni’s blasting—some girl-power indie band she discovered a week and a half ago and became obsessed with. Despite my hand being thrust halfway into the crinkly bag in my lap, I haven’t eaten a single chip. I’m just staring off into goddamned space.
Staring off and picturing Bridger’s face.
Hearing Bridger’s words—and hearing them differently.
It’s okay to want to be held, he said.Maybe this is … something you need more of.Being held.No shame, saying that.
I wish I could stop seeing his eyes. Stop hearing the patient, caring tone in his voice. I used to think he sounded like a superior douchebag talking down to me, but it was differenttonight. It felt less like putting me down.
More like lifting me up.
Does that even make sense?
What changed?
A balding, freckled head of a man pops out of the unit three doors down. “Please, I don’t want to be a broken record, but turn that racket down! I got a job interview in Fairview at eight in the morning and can’t even hear my own thoughts!”
It’s recently-divorced Mr. Joy whose head that is. “Fairview?” I snort back at him. “Must be scraping the bottom if you’re lookin’ for work in Fairview.”
“Speak for yourself, you bum!”
“You wanna say that to my face?” I shout lazily back with zero intention of getting out of this chair.
“Just turn down the music! I don’t wanna call the cops!”
“They have more important things to deal with,” I shout, “like speeding teenagers aiming for an innocent pedestrian just tryin’ to cross the street on his way home while bein’ pursued by a guy who acts way nicer to me than I deserve and has no dang business bein’ so handsome all the time.”
When my response is met with silence, I turn to find Mr. Joy staring back at me with a baffled expression.
“Is my music too loud?” comes Juni from behind.
Mr. Joy transforms from an outraged neighbor to a flustered schoolboy. “I, uh, I’m, it wasn’t, heh, sorry, I …”
She steps out of the apartment in nothing but an oversized t-shirt hanging off one shoulder barely long enough to cover the tops of her thighs. She caresses her favorite pink feather boa over her shoulders, her eyebrows lifted halfway up her forehead, her lips pouting with curiosity as she tilts her head, awaiting Mr. Joy’s attempt at an answer.
He finally manages to say, “Just forget it. I have earplugs. I can just use my … I can … put them in my … stuff my … inside ofmy …”
“You want to stuff your what? Into where?” asks Juni in the most excruciatingly innocent voice.
Mr. Joy lets out the strangest wheeze that reminds me of a balloon having its last breath of life squeezed out of it by an angry child. “Goodnight,” he finally squeaks before disappearing into his apartment, and that’s the last I think we’ll hear from him.
Juni sighs. “Why do men always run away from me?”
I look at her. “The heck are you wearing? He probably thinks you’re a teenager throwing a sleepover and it gave him a coronary seein’ you like that. Do you know his ex-wife runs the high school drama department and suspected he was cheating on her with one of her former students? Huge thing last year. Everyone was—”
“Now who’s the gossip?” sasses Juni, cutting me off.
I frown. “It’s not the same as—”
“All I want is a nice and decent man. That’s fair, isn’t it? A nice and decent man. With muscles. And a job.”
“Sounds like Mr. Joy’s outta luck.”
“Job’s optional,” she decides, changing her mind. “I could be someone’s sugar mama. I don’t mind, really. Someone can gold-dig me. I’d probably let them.” She crouches by my chair and hugs her knees. “Everything smells like poop out here.”
