Page 6 of You Again
“Karma’s not working fast enough for me, I suppose,” I told her. After the walk of shame, I had gone home and used the time off I had taken to surprise Arnold to move out of our apartment. I had put all my stuff in storage and had gone to a hotel. It had taken me two weeks to find a place to live that was reasonable, but the part that really sucked? Arnold had stayed in Austin, landed his client, and, by all accounts, has been leading a charmed life since then.
“Henley, Arnold has a small dick,” she reminded me. “Karma got him a long time ago.
I winced.
Once night, when I was in my feelings, I had confessed to Ellie that Arnold had been lacking a bit in the man-package department. But I had been in love and had professed that sex wasn’t everything. Turns out, neither was fidelity.
“I just hate that he got away with his cheating unscathed,” I replied. “I feel like he got off easy.” I was scorned enough to flip my middle finger at the high road.
“Happiness is the best revenge,” Ellie replied sagely.
“Yeah, I read that in a fortune cookie once and it was shit then, too.” I said sourly. “Why can’t you just let me be miserable? What kind of sister are you?’
“The kind that’s not going to let you wallow over a small dick,” she snorted. “Personally, if you’re going to be miserable, be miserable over that eight-inch cock you rode for six hours.”
“I’m never telling you anything ever again,” I lied.
“Sure, you are,” she came right back. “You don’t have any other friends.”
I groaned.
Ellie wasn’t wrong. While she was a stay-at-home wife, working on getting pregnant, so she could rock the stay-at-home mom gig, Ellie was a people-person. She knew all her neighbors and the names of every cashier and bagboy at the supermarket. She made friends wherever she went, and she was genuinely interested in the people she befriended.
Me?
Ellie was my best and only real friend. Sure, I had co-workers I gossiped with and a couple of neighborly acquaintances in my apartment building, but no real friends to speak of. It wasn’t that I was anti-people, more as I was pro-self. I liked my time free and I liked doing what I wanted with it.
“Oh, and Mom and Dad are threatening to come visit if you don’t call them soon,” she said, making me cringe.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved my parents. Donald and Marianne Everhart were wonderful people. However, they were retired and living the life in Cayucos. With no jobs or business, calling to their attentions, they had plenty of time to stay for weeks on end if they decided to visit me or Ellie in Ferndale. I prayed for Ellie’s fertility quest constantly. The sooner Max got her pregnant, the better.
“I’ll call them after work,” I promised.
“You better. If they make the trip up here, fuck paper, rocks, and scissor. They’ll be staying with you since your neglect will be the reason for their trip,” she threatened.
“Geesh. A little aggressive, are we?”
“Henley, the last time they stayed with us, Max almost left me,” she reminded me.
“Hey! We’re family,” I reminded her. “If Max can’t handle some innocent questions about his sperm count, maybe he needs to dial down the sensitivity notch a bit.”
“Mom asked him if he felt his size was adequate enough to make sure his swimmers were within reaching distance of my womb, Henley,” she said, recounting the horror that were our parents.
“I’ll call tonight,” I said again. “I promise.”
“Call them. Quit worrying about Arnold. And, for the love of God, go back to that bar, pray Hotel Guy is there, and get laid again, because your negative vibes are killing me.” She hung up before I could say anything more.
Today fucking sucked.
