Thank you all for the wonderful feedback. It's been fun writing about Callie and her mis-adventures in post-college prospects. If you have any comments, feel free to email me. I would like to make her a very fun character.
Chapter 8: The Cucumber of Truth
Watching Nolan make cannolis was like watching a really good porno. It included two of my favorite things. Nolan bending over with his distressed jeans hugging his ass, and cannolis. I wasn't sure which one I wanted to eat first.
Nolan was talking, but really I only heard my name and anything good he said about it, "Callie, you've been the best." If I had a cannoli every time I heard that, "but I think you need to go home. You look like you need some sleep."
Oh no, I'm fine. I'm just fantasizing about licking ricotta off your chest.
"Huh?"
"You've been sitting there with your hand propping you up for the past hour. The maddening crowd has passed, you can go home." But I won't be able to look at your butt. I had worked the grave yard shift for the fifth time this week. I am now a permanent barmaid at The Big Bang, the loveable sports bar where guys come to have douche offs. This meant, I worked from six p.m. till two a.m. then, like the masochist I am, trudging over to the bakery next door, which my boss also owned, to help Nolan dole out day old pastries because I have a mondo crush on him that neither I nor my will to sleep can control. My day job included masturbating in front of a camera so my sleazy ex-boyfriend and his bosum buddies could post it on a website. Gee, I just love my life. On top of that, I hadn't had sex in over two weeks. If there wasn't video footage of my cooter, I would have thought it had taken a hike.
"Ok." Please tell me you think I'm ugly, tell me you are secretly married to your cousin, so this stupid spell can be broken. Nolan wouldn't tell me that though. He would tell me I was an amazing employee, he'd tell me that if there was an employee of the month, I'd be on it every month. Nolan, unlike me, had purpose. He got from point A to point B every day and no matter how much extra help I put in, he'd never see me as a possible lost-in-the-moment fuck. I was just too love-sick to step aside and let him open his own damn shop by himself.
"Girl, you got it bad." Penny had told me while we were sweeping up the other night. I'd like to think I played it off. I wanted to believe that she was mildly interested in my reactions to Nolan tapping my back, or stroking my arm to tell me he was behind me with a keg and that I would need to move.
When approached with the truth, denial always comes in handy, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Yes you do, you would step in front of a moving train if he asked you to." Wrong, I would only do it if he bent over, looked over his shoulder, and said that I was awesome.
"I've got other opportunities. I almost made out with Cody two nights ago." Common sense prevailed. Cody was the substitute bartender when he wasn't modeling for the nude fireman's calendar. He was dumb as bricks, but he looked fantastic in a cowboy hat and plaid. Cody and I had gotten locked in the freezer by accident and he still looked smoldering in forty degree temperatures. Before any hanky panky got started, Nolan pried the door open with a crow bar. My hero.
"Haven't we all. Then we take a step back, assess the situation, and leave him hot and heavy with his dick at half mast." Sounds like Penny's been in the freezer with Cody too.
"I'll be more subtle about it. Do you think he knows?"
Penny rolled her eyes and bent low so that I could only hear the low raspy voice that is her trademark, "He knows. He's not stupid and he's not dead. So you either come onto him and get accepted, or let him drag you on till someone else takes up your daydreaming. Cody would be a good substitute if Cody had a brain."
I could spend just as much time fantasizing about Cody, but then he'd say something dumb mid-fantasy like, "I like to use Herb-al essence because it's got one serving of fruit in it." I can't, I just can't.
I slumped a messenger bag over my head and proceeded to do the walk of shame out of the back kitchen door and into the early morning twilight. Wearing the same clothes I had the night before, leaving with nothing more than a pat on the back. I couldn't keep this up for much longer, he could be Optimus Prime all he wanted, I was a human being with needs.
I felt a tug on my pony tail and a swift breeze of air up my back. I probably forgot my keys or forgot to pick up my paycheck. I turned, not so surprised to see Nolan, but there was something behind those dark brown eyes I hadn't seen before. Not lust, just a charm that had never been there before.
"I'm taking you out to dinner tomorrow. Where your hair down." I remember nodding OK, getting into my car and texting my entire contact list that I had a date. No one texted me back because it's five a.m. in the morning. My brain turned back on halfway home. Adrenaline was thumping through my veins and pushing the gas pedal a little harder. He asked me out. No, he'd told me out. Whatever, I'm in! When I got to the Brothel, the adopted name of the neighborhood I live in, I didn't even care that Kevin was slouched on my couch eating my food. I had a date with a respectable man! "I have a date!" I shoved Kevin a couple of times and hopped up and down on the couch next to him. Kevin buckled down into the crash landing position, curled up like a scared turtle.
"Why are you hitting me?" Kevin uncurled just in time to get smacked in the face with a throw pillow.
"I'm just so happy!"
"Do you normally abuse people when you're happy?" No, you also ate all of my blue corn chips and hummus. He ducked to avoid another playful punch and hit his shin on the coffee table sending Kevin into a giant shit-fest. That's when it occurred to me, Kevin wasn't supposed to be here until three.
"Kevin, what are you doing here?" Other than breaking and entering. I had a spare key under the door mat. That was getting moved the next time I thought about it.
"LeAnn broke up with me. She found out about the what we were doing and broke up with me." Kev shoved the coffee table, my coffee table, out of his way with a foot and plopped back on the couch. He had never mentioned a LeAnn. Must have been something new.
Shock and awe, "What?"
"We started going out last Wednesday. She works at the crazy craft place next door to the comic book store," there's Greek row, and then there's Geek row, "I was showing her around last night, she saw some of the clips on the computer while I was in the shower and she bailed. I didn't want to tell Machu about it because he wouldn't understand. Plus, there isn't food in my house."
Saint Callie, patron saint of emotional eaters.
"Awe, Kev, I'm sorry," not really, "You'll find someone who appreciates you." My mother, my best friends, and my brother Joe, have all given me this line. It's a load of crap. What if Nolan found out about me doing this? Gulp.
"S'okay. I'll be fine. I'm here about another thing, too. Jeff wanted me to warm you up to the idea before we asked you to do it." Wait for it. . .
"A lot of the comments on the site have requested you to give a hand-job to a guy." I knew it.
"No way, no fucking way. Are you kidding? Who would it be? You? Jeff? MP? I'm legitimately dating someone now, I can't be jerking another guy off, on camera, on the internet!"
"You're already jerking off on camera, on the internet. What difference does a dude's dick make?" Say that three times fast. Kevin was right though. I'm already through the looking glass, why not make the peanut gallery happy? Um, because it would involve touching either Kevin's or Jeff's dong.
For another five minutes the little angel and the little devil on my shoulder argued back and forth about pros and cons. Kevin, who had also pulled an all nighter, passed out with his arm around the Sunchips. I went to sleep, still debating, dreaming about jerking guys off with a canolli shell. Ugh!
"Where your hair down when you jerk me off." Nolan God of Pastries said, riding on his white horse. There was a distant tune playing behind him and I wanted to make it stop.
"Callie!" A voice clamored through my dream as the toga clad Nolan disappeared.
I woke up back in the real world. No white horses, no Nolan, just that incessant ringing.
A pillow aimed straight at my head, "Callie, wake the fuck up!"
It was Jeff. Always Jeff.
"Your phone's been ringing for a half an hour. It's three-thirty, get your ass out of bed!"
Let's see him walk a day in my shoes! I merged my body onto the floor and stood up. Everything went fuzzy. Something was still ringing.
"Get out of bed!" Jeff, who will be playing the part of my mother, came back in and shouted some more. Just go away. No one invited him over. Okay, maybe I gave him an open invitation, but what I giveth I can taketh away-eth.
Jeff is my ex-boyfriend/business partner. He is first and foremost an asshole. We agreed, though not amicably, to start a website where I would masturbate in front of a small Asian student named Machu Picchu, or MP. He designed the website, he handles the money, I get a cut. As does Kevin, that sack of potatoes on my couch. MP works for peanuts and the glory of getting to tape an American girl touch herself with a vibrator. Some would call it indentured servitude, but it has to be better than flipping burgers at Mickey D's.
A blackberry was shoved into my hands and it took a second to realize that it was mine, and the person on the other line was shouting my name to get attention.
"What!"
"So I got some very interesting news the other day," the voice on the other line said. It was one of my brothers, they all sound the same, but this one was Joe. Joe's the only one who: A; calls. B; calls multiple times till I pick up. And C; doesn't care if I'm in the middle of taking an LSAT, as long as I pick up the phone.
Oh God, he knows.
