Page 9 of Hot Mess Express
You’re my problem, you jack-off wagon.
“That’s great to hear,” I say, mostly to shut up the guy’svoice in my head, then paste a smile over my face. “I’m looking forward to some peace and quiet.”
Pete bursts in from the back door. “Guys, Bridge, after we eat, we’re hittin’ the town with Cody! Saturday night on the town, all four of us!”
Trey and I stare at him, Trey with his blank eyes, me wielding the knife, a slice of cucumber stuck to it, then slowly sliding off.
3
ANTHONY
“Fuckin’ just fuckin’ shoot me now, fuck,” I growl, barging in.
“That bad?” asks Juni through a yawn.
I kick my shoes off somewhere, throw my nasty tank top at the laundry basket—it misses, what a surprise—then cut through the apartment straight to the bathroom. “That asshole, that cocky asshole …fuck, I can’t catch a break.”
“You smell flammable.”
I stop at the bathroom door where I fight to get my pants off. “Some out-a’-towner dick tried to get me fired today.”
“That’s not nice.”
“I wasthis closeto knockin’ his teeth out. But two times in jail was enough for me, and I wasn’t about to sink to his level.”
“Jail is so unsanitary.”
These pants sure fell off easy at the gas station when I didn’t want them to. Now they’re super-glued to my thighs. “I’m so tired of these outsiders trottin’ through our town like they have a right. After that crazy pageant auction however long ago, with all those whackos showing up in town wanting in on it because of viral social media crap, I’m about up toherewith seeing new faces. I don’t want any new faces. Plenty happy with the old ones.”
“I’m an outsider.”
I squint. “But you’re different.”
“How so? Oh, did you take my phone charger? I can’t find it.”
I stop battling my pants. Juniper is a bombshell. That’s what everyone’s first impression is. Either that, or she’s Drunk Beauty Queen Barbie, because she talks like she’s wading through a dream with her every slow, bewildered thought. She’s originally from a trailer park in a small town outside Dallas, but after winning a small fortune several years ago in a local lottery, she left, and now she’s basically an aimless, refreshingly unpretentious tornado, and that’s about as poetic as I’ll get in describing her. I guess you can take the girl outta the trailer park, but that trailer park ain’t ever coming out of the girl. She’s my roommate. Actually, I’m hers. This is her place, impulsively moved in to when she decided to live in Spruce “for a lil’ bit, I guess, maybe, for now,” in her words. It’s a unit in a small, L-shaped, one-story complex off of Peach Street called Happy Trails—real name. We share the rent, but she might as well buy the building so we can stop getting noise complaints at 3 AM when we finally make it home after another night out, the inner party monster awakened fully in the twisted pair of us.
And yeah, alright, the apartment can use a bit of loving—bras and socks and a feather boa hanging over the back of the couch, raunchy laundry pile amassing by the TV, which itself is situated on the floor because no one’s gotten around to mounting it yet, a coffee table buried under stacks of mail, books, shoe boxes with some of them still containing actual heels and pumps she bought and never wore, some dead laptop that won’t charge anymore and needs a new battery, and an empty pastry box crusted with sugar. Juni has a bad habit of ordering random shit online—artwork, weird lighting, furniture, boxes of paints and an easel because she thought she might try to become a painter someday, a zillion cat-shaped throw pillows becauseshe loves cats but is allergic to real ones, tiaras and a plastic scepter because she has a weird princess fetish—and all this stuff gets piled around everywhere, none of the artwork put on the walls, none of the furniture built. Any odor in the room is overpowered by the flowery perfumes, powders, and whatever else she keeps stuffed in her three-mirror vanity in the corner by the window—it was put there and then never made it to the bedroom for whatever reason—all of it pink, pink, pink. It’s a mess in here, and once you misplace something, kiss it goodbye.
Though it’s technically Juniper’s place, I pretty much live here too. She was one of the auction winners. I was the lucky bachelor she won for $1,075—just a drop in the bucket of her fortune. But after our obligatory date, we found we made much better friends. She gets me. I get her. Everything sucks less when we’re together.
“I dunno where your charger is,” I say. “Check the bedroom, the drawer with all your sex toys you never use.” I finally get my stupid pants off, then perform a dance trying to get my boxers off as I hop awkwardly into the bathroom and twist on the shower. One thing I love about this place: perfect-ass water pressure. It sure beats the water at my parents’ house. I moan as I get under the stream and yank the curtain closed behind me.
The curtain sweeps right back open. “What did you mean I’m different?” she asks.
This is normal. We have no boundaries. “Dunno. You just are.”
“Different in a bad way?”
“Different in ayouway. Will you get my back?” I ask, handing her the bar of soap.
She takes it but does nothing with it. “I wonder sometimes if there’s something wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with Prom Night Barbie.”
“Maybe depends on the prom.”
Even washing my pits and chest vigorously, the gasoline smell cuts through the body wash. I’ll stink for days. “Stupid prick.”
