Page 6 of The Swiping Game
3
TARA
“Please,for the love of everything that is holy, let there be a bottle of wine in here.”
I close my eyes as I open the refrigerator, but when I open them, barren shelves mock me. They’re home to coffee creamer, a bottle of ketchup, and leftover spaghetti from a few days ago.
What’s not there is a bottle of pinot grigio, or any other chilled white that would help me forget this day.
“Damnit!” I yell, slamming the refrigerator door shut. Not only am I out of wine, but I had to see with my own eyes how little I have to eat, which means it’s time for a trip to the grocery store.
Groceries that cost money. The only silver lining is that the grocery store also sells wine. Cheap wine. I don’t think that’s by accident.
“Who are we damning tonight?” Tawny says as she shuts the front door to our two-bedroom apartment. “If it’s the male species, I’m here for it.”
“Please tell me you got more than just those two bags.”
“These two bags, might I inform you, can carry a lot.” Tawny lifts the bags onto the counter, and like the beautiful woman she is, she pulls out a bottle of our favorite cheap wine.
“I could kiss you right now,” I say as I grab the bottle and dig out the corkscrew. I pop it like a pro and don’t even bother getting out a glass before I take a hefty sip. “Did you buy a second bottle?”
“Do you think this is my first rodeo?” She pulls out a second bottle, and now I really am going to kiss her. “Don’t get me wrong, I love it when my sister lets loose and goes straight from the bottle, but what is the occasion for tonight? Are we celebrating or drinking away the day?”
“Can I drink away the next few weeks?” I ask as I take the bottle of wine and a bag of chips over to our used yet super comfortable couch. Sometimes I hate the fact that I’m thirty-two years old and am living in a cramped two-bedroom apartment with my sister and our mismatched furniture. Then I remember that I could still be living in a shitty marriage with a cheating asshole. I’ll take the mismatched furniture any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
“Why would you want to drink away the next three weeks? Something happen at work?”
Tawny takes a seat in a chair she found at Goodwill, which she’s convinced is the most comfortable thing she has ever sat in. It better be. It’s a hideous orange that screams late seventies.
“I was informed at work today that for at least the next two weeks I have to fill in as assistant to my former boss. His went into early labor. So I’ll be working for both Hunter and Neil.”
“Neil the eel?” Tawny says, giving a little shudder as she says it. “I thought you were done with him.”
“I thought I was too. But Hunter said there was no one else.”
Tawny raises her eyebrows, clearly not believing me. “And?”
“What do you mean ‘and’?”
“There’s more. I can tell.”
“I’m getting a bonus for it.”
Tawny leans in, studying me. “No, that’s not it—though you should be. But there’s more. Something you’re not telling me.”
I hate sister intuition. I also hate that I can’t lie to her. I tried once when I took a sweater of hers. I crumbled like a cookie when she asked if I had seen it.
“Fine. It’s very likely that during those three weeks I’ll be seeing a lot of Dean Braxton.”
Tawny’s eyebrows go up as soon as I say his name. “Is that the hottie sports agent?”
“If you mean hottie as in pain in the ass, then yes, that’s him.”
“He can be a pain in my ass whenever he wants. That man is fine with a capital F.”
“You don’t know him,” I say, trying to play it off. “If you knew him, you wouldn’t think that.”
“Oh, I bet I would,” Tawny says, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. “I bet I would think that and then some.”
