Page 32 of Badd Ass
“I just…I’m trying to apply it to Zane, and the whole thing between us.” I lapsed into silence for a moment, thinking. “It’s just…if you’d asked me last week if I thought the word ‘ineffable’ could be applied to a man in any capacity, much less this weird quasi-relationship we’ve got, I would have laughed in your face. But…it’s not so stupid now, somehow.”
She nodded seriously. “Believe me, poopsie, I understand more than you know.”
“Poopsie? Really? That sounds like something a minivan-driving soccer mom who shops exclusively at Whole Foods might call her potty training kid’s turd.”
Claire snorted in laughter, trying to keep in a mouthful of coffee. “Goddammit, I just scalded my sinuses,” she said, wiping coffee from her nose and chin. “Then what do you think I should call this guy in the heat of the moment?”
“What’s wrong with the classics like honey, baby, sweetie—things like that?”
She waved a hand in dismissal. “He deserves something original. He’s like no one I’ve ever met.”
“NowthatI understand,” I said.
“I just thought of something weird,” Claire said. “What are the chances of us both meeting hot, incredible guys who challenge the status quo of the way we live our lives and view relationships…in the same week, in the same city, both local guys, but at different times and in different places, without actually being together when we met them?”
I stared at her. “Now that you put it that way, it is kind of…”
“Statistically so improbable as to be laughable?”
I nodded. “Exactly. But then, we are the Gruesome Twosome.” My phone chimed in my purse, and I lifted it out to check it.
My boss had sent me an urgent email; I was on vacation, but my boss knew I checked my email religiously, so he was prone to sending me emails even when he knew I was home or gone, because he knew I’d check it and likely reply. Which I did, even though I hated that my boss used my cell phone addiction against me. When I finished the email, I looked up to see Claire typing on her own phone, but judging by the soft, amused, yet slightly horny expression on her face, she was texting her guy and not her boss.
I set my phone on the table and slid out of the booth. “I have to pee. Don’t pay the check without me.”
Claire snorted. “As if,” she muttered, not looking up.
I used the bathroom and returned to the booth…and found Claire with my phone in one hand, her other hand clapped to her mouth in shock, her eyes wide. Claire knew my passcode and I knew hers, and we’d always been open enough that we felt comfortable going through each other’s phones; this was the first time I felt weird about it in the years I’d known her.
“Holy mother of fucks, you weren’t kidding about an epic penis, Mara. Jesus. That thing is a monster.” She swiped a finger, touched the screen, and I heard a familiar sound, a low male groan of pleasure—“I wish it was you right now—”
“Oh…my…god.” She touched the screen and moved the slider back to start the video over, checking around her and then hunching over the screen, fending off my attempts to get my phone back. “That has got to be the hottest minute and a half of video in existence. Can you forward that to me?”
“No I can’t forward it to you!” I snatched the phone back, more angry with my best friend than I’d ever been. “God, Claire, I know we’ve always shared pretty much everything, but this is…” I wasn’t even sure what to say.
I was bubbling with anger I didn’t understand, and that itself was freaking me out. I’d shown her my dick pics before, and she’d shown me hers. Any other time in our friendship, if Claire had snooped through my phone and found a dick pic or whatever, I’d have laughed with her. I wouldn’t have gotten angry. It would have been totally fine. But this time….
Claire was eyeing me intently. “But this is different, isn’t it?” I nodded and she grabbed my hand, meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mare. I really am. I wasn’t snooping for anything like that—I was just…messing with your phone. I was gonna change your lock screen or something, just to be funny, and I happened to see the dick pic he sent you, and I couldn’t stop looking. That thingisgorgeous. Not just because of the size, though, like you said. It’s just…pretty.”
“Claire—”
She held up a hand. “I didn’t mean to see it, for real. But now that I have, we might as well talk about it, right?”
I sighed. “I guess. I’m sorry I overreacted; I’m just being weird about this. What’s funny is that I sent him a few photos and a video, too, and he was like ‘Obviously I’m not going to share this with anyone, just so you know,’ and I jokingly said I’d only ever show you, because that’s how we’ve always been, but then I thought about it later, and realized I wasn’t sure I wanted to share him with you in that sense. I mean, I’ve shown you photos before, but—”
“But that’s more because ninety-nine percent of the time when a guy sends a dick pic, it’s comical rather than hot.”
“Butthat’sa hot dick pick, though.”
“I’ll say,” Claire sighed. “Seriously hot. I think I’ll send my guy a few nudes and see what he does.”
“Tell him if he jerks off to the photos he should video it and send it to you.”
“I think I’ll do just that.” She grinned at me. “And I’ll send it to you when he does, because Mara, babe, my guy’s dick? Equally as epic, I must say.”
“Maybe we should agree to keep all dick pics and jerking-off videos to ourselves for the time being?”
She nodded. “I’ll agree to that. I can see how I might be a bit possessive if I had that video on my phone.”