Mauve (5)

I woke up with a post-it stuck to my forehead and a glaze over my eyes that you would not believe. I swam around in the bunched up sheets and pounding headache for about a full minute just to dislodge an arm. In Bobbi’s flowery handwriting over the neon pink, I gathered the information to take a few aspirin, drink lots of water, and call for Justine if I needed to throw up.

            In a wave of nausea, I crumpled it and ran a hand over my forehead. It was sweaty and the post-it adhesive had made a faint sticky stripe across it.

            Pulling down the blinds to darken the belligerent onslaught of sunlight, I flopped back down into the bed that was both my respite and tormentor.

            An hour and seventeen minutes later, I padded slowly into the kitchen. My size nine feet kept sticking to the tile and making that schlip, schlip sound as I walked which alerted Justine to my presence.

            My roommate was perched on the couch with the TV tuned to the Food Network at a barely decipherable volume. She had one of her four-inch, stuffed to the gills binder out in front of her and a yellow highlighter poised in her left hand. Grad school always kept her busy as hell.

            “Hey,” she said as I reached for a bowl out of the cabinet.

            I barely grumbled out a responsorial ‘hey’ back as I watched the Captain Crunch cascade from its packaging.

            “You okay?” she asked, shifting herself to face me more directly. I wished she hadn’t because I probably looked damn awful.

            “Fine,” I said. I wasn’t going to bother with the milk. Just collecting the combination of bowl, cereal, and spoon was enough activity for the present moment.

            “Okay well tell me if you need anything. I’ll be around.”

            I nodded but she didn’t see it because she was already absorbed once more into the world of advanced journalism and Paula Deen’s latest heart attack.

            I brought the bowl back to my room and sat on my bed once more, careful not to tip it and spill all over my daisy patterned comforter.

            Feeling a little better thanks to all the ‘essential nutrients’ I was spooning into myself, I reached up for the blinds to pull them back up now that I was slightly more normalized. As I meddled with the intricate dance that is handling classic blinds, I caught sight of ballpoint scrawlings across my forearm. Pulling it closer for further inspection I could see that it read Levi Brandt 3252878818. Still images of laughter and sidewalks and a parking lot full of Hondas began to emerge from my subconscious.

            As I held this newfound information up to the sunlight, I heard my phone jostle to life on the nightstand, cranking out the lyrics to my favorite Journey song as it vibrated violently. Reaching for it, I saw the screen flashing the same number that was inscribed on my skin.

            It took me a moment of staring at the inordinate number of eights on the screen to gather the courage to answer.

            “Hello?” I grogged.

            “Hey.”

            I bit my lip and tapped my fingers against my thigh.

            “I know it’s not cool to call a girl before a twenty-four hour period or whatever, but I’ve been feeling like hell for the last hour and couldn’t help but think that you probably were too.”

            “You’re probably right.”

            He sighed as if he were slightly disgusted with himself.

            “Look, I’m real sorry about that.”

            I tugged at the neckline of my tee shirt, suddenly aware of the fact that Bobbi probably had to dress me last night. It probably wasn’t the first time or anything, but it was still embarrassing.

            “Don’t be.” The words seemed to come out of my mouth with no mental intervention whatsoever. “I’m pretty sure it was more my fault than yours.”

            He groaned in pain through the phone connection. “Let’s call it a tie or else I might never forgive you.”

            I smiled into the receiver.

            “Hey,” I started, “Where’s your British accent?” I asked, noticing that there was a distinctive Americaness to his speech. He hadn’t called me ‘love’ once.

            “Oh god,” he said, “Did I have an accent? Really?”

            “You claimed to hail from ‘the great land of Essex.’ Your words not mine.”

            He gurgled incoherently.

            “Yeah… This is really embarrassing but I sometimes speak in accents after drinking to excess. It’s this inexplicable habit I have. I should be psychoanalyzed. Truly.”

            “Well I was completely convinced if that helps.” I was a little disappointed, I’ll admit it.

            He groaned again in pain.

            There was a throbbing ache in my brain stem. I flopped onto the covers with the phone still pressed to my ear.

            “Is this a thing that people do?” he asked, “Meet someone over a drink and then call them to share in the misery of their hangovers?”

            I chuckled, feeling a little loopy still. “It’s pretty funny when you think about it,” I said.

            We sat in silence for the next three minutes. I heard his breathing through the connection. It mixed with my own and the sound of a commercial for a new episode of Rachael Ray sifting through the walls.

            “Okay, this might be a weird thing to ask you,” he started.

            I shifted and pulled a pillow under my head. “What?”

            “Can I, I mean, Would you let me… paint you?”

            “Paint me?”

            “No, I don’t mean like paint you. Your portrait. A portrait of you.”

            No one had ever asked me anything like that.

            “I mean I know I just met you and everything but when I told you I though you were cute, I meant it. I could help but adore the shape of your face and how it complements your eyes and neck.”

            “My neck?”

            “Yes.”

            “I find it funny that you remember my face so well but you couldn’t even remember you spoke in an accent all night.”

            I heard sharp intake of air as he winced from his headache. “Call it an artist’s memory.”

            I paused, sifting through this new information.

            “I don’t want to sound pushy or anything, so you don’t have to do it of you don’t want to.”

            “Sure, I guess. I’ll let you paint me.”

            I could hear the smile in his voice. “Okay, just please don’t wear the pink dress.”

Mauve (4)

“He sounds like an ass,” says Levi, swishing the few, measly drops of alcohol we have left around the bottom of his flask.

            “He is.” I’m slurring, but only slightly. But I like it, it feels good to slur right now.

            “You know what I’d do if I saw him?” he asks.

            “What?”

            “I’d pop ‘im one. Right in the elbow.”

            “The elbow?”

            “’Cause folks say it’s the weakest part of your body… or is it the strongest?”

            He looks like he’s fallen into deep thought and I can’t help that I think it’s the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. I start laughing and soon I can’t stop the guffaws wracking my chest cavity.

            Levi doesn’t even ask, but starts laughing along with me.

            Disregarding all control of ourselves, we laugh, drunk as artists, on the steps of a funeral home.

            “Leah, what the hell?!” Bobbi’s voice behind me is a shrill jackhammer, only penetrating halfway into my soft drunkenness.

            I turn.

            “What are you doing?” she asks, her face contorting into that half-disgusted half-superior look I know she’s so fond of.

            I take a few seconds to collect myself after such an episode. Levi and I are still snickering when I wipe my eyes of the tears and face my oldest friend.

            “Sorry, Bob. I was just sitting here with my new friend. Levi, like the jeans,” I say.

            She obviously can tell I’m somewhat inebriated. She huffs and scurries forward to help me to my feet.

            As I steady myself in those stupid stiletto heels, she turns to Levi with her ‘don’t mess with me’ face.

            “You better not have tried anything, wise guy,” I hear her mutter.

            “Love, I don’t try at anything but jigsaw puzzles. Though I never have finished one of the damn things.”

            Bobbi leads me a couple steps away where I find Amanda and Tarah had been standing the entire time.

            “God, look at you,” Bobbi says, trying to pat down my hair, “We were just gearing up to go out for drinks, but it looks like you already beat us to it.”

            I tilt forward in my heels, feeling progressively more drunk by the second. Now that I think about it, Levi might have gone back inside to refill the flask, two, maybe three times.

            She sighs, “I’m taking you home,” she says, and loops an arm around my shoulders.

            “What about Lucky Sam’s, Bobbi?” asks Amanda.

            “Give me ten minutes,” Bobbi calls behind her as she leads me to the car.

            The slamming of the door is the last loud sound I remember hearing for hours.

            

Mauve. (3)

When I couldn’t stay in the bathroom any longer I grudgingly returned. I found it surprisingly sparse and realized that almost the entire crowd had migrated into the adjacent room for a tribute video and circulating hor’dourves.

            A young couple stood in the corner, ignoring me, and a group of old ladies shot me glances that painstakingly reminded me of high school.

            Fed up, I uncrossed my arms and walked across the room as confidently as I could. Apparently, it wasn’t such a huge success because I almost collided with the open casket trying to pull up my strapless bra.

            “Holy shit!” I muttered to myself, covering my heart as I just stopped myself short of toppling onto Trish Hurley’s worm-food grandfather. 

            As my heart returned to it’s normal pace, I found myself staring at the old  guy. He looked like he had been a nice guy, with tufts of shockingly white hair around the back of his head and deep laugh lines creasing his temples. His was the first friendly face I’d seen in an hour, the first face to hint to me that my idea to fashion a more modest dress out of toilet paper was the crazy notion that it was.

I found myself wondering about his life, he didn’t look like the type of guy to dump the love of his life because of a stupid misunderstanding.

            “Are you gonna cry? Because if you are you could use the toilet paper on your shoes to dry the tears,” said someone in a messy British accent about two centimeters away from my eardrum, sending me into my second mini panic attack within ten minutes.

            I turned quickly to see a guy in a dark green oxford, clutching a flask and staring at me. I looked down at my shoes and sure enough there was a trail of cotton squares attached to it like a train. I scuffed the floor furiously to dislodge it from my stiletto heel.

            “Might I ask, how did you know old chap Edgar here?” he asks, his breath searingly alcoholic.

            I stutter for a second, wondering who the hell this guy is and why he’s talking to me. “I didn’t,” I finally say.

            “Well that’s a bit odd, were you his hooker at least?” He smiles as if he’s said something dreadfully funny.

            I feel an indignant look of contempt contort my features, but after a second I let it fall away and wished I were anywhere in the world but in that funeral home.

            “No.”

            “I’m sorry, love,” he says, his eyes sparkling, he sways a bit, “But I’m afraid I’ve had one too many slugs of this stuff.” He holds up his flask and takes a sip, I hear the glug glug of the liquid as it scrambles to wherever gravity leads it.

            I lean my head back and feel a startlingly powerful wave of self-pity. “Why are you talking to me?” I ask, wishing he would go away.

            “Quite honestly it’s because you’re cute,” he says casually, smiling, “However, I hate the dress.”

            Bold. Flattering. But unnecessary.

            “Hey, you got enough of that stuff to share?” I ask him, motioning toward his flask.

            “Mi cerveza es su cerveza,” he says, sounding convincingly Mexican.

            “That’s beer?”

            “Nope.”

            He’s smiling still, like he’s just the funniest guy in the whole damn world.

            I grab it from him, fed up, and he follows me out the door. 

Mauve. (2)

            Bobbi pulled up next to Amanda’s BMW parked front row.

            “Hey!” she yelled, rolling down the window.

            Leaning up against her bumper, Amanda tipped her Starbucks cup back for one final swig and clomped over to stick her head through the opening. Her gray slacks and pinstripe oxford didn’t exactly scream ‘spur of the moment.’

            “Bobbi, hon, thank God you’re here,” she said running her glossy French tips through her hair. “Oh, hey Leah.”

            I nodded and offered her a weak smile.

            “So who else is here?” asked Bobbi, deadening the engine and wiggling out the key. Apparently, this was really happening.

            “Oh you know, Tarah, Lindsay, Megan, and Piper said she might come if she can get off work. But I just didn’t want to go in there without you.”

            Amanda sighed and made one of those faces that was supposed to look both sad and mildly desperate at the same time.

            The stench of her pumpkin spice mocha was filling up the cabin and setting me on edge.

            “Okay good, almost all the girls. We can all go get drinks at Lucky Sam’s afterwards, do you think Trish would be up for that?”

            “Hard to say.”

            “Well, I say we invite her anyways. Might make her feel better.”

            “Absolutely.”

            Bobbi looped her arm through her black leather Kate Spade sitting in the console and popped open the door.

            I hesitated to follow her as she stepped into the parking lot, suddenly feeling like I was seven again and scared shit to sit anywhere near a dentist’s chair.

            “Leah, you coming?” she asked, already beginning to match strides with Amanda who, so far, hadn’t looked my way any longer than necessary.

            I damned myself for not bringing a jacket and fell into step behind them, trying to pat down my hair from ‘sexy’ to ‘respectable’ in the mere seconds it took to cross the sidewalk.

           

            “Trish!” squealed Bobbi as soon as the grave-faced fifty-something showed us to the right room.

            There were old people galore and every pair of three-inch-thick, coke bottle eyeglasses was instantly trained on my ensemble the nanosecond of my entrance. It got me thinking that the whole ‘all eyes on me when I walk into a room’ phenomena wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

            My arms settled into a four across my torso and I tried to shove in between Amanda and the now embracing pair of Bobbi and Trish Hurley.

            “Aw, I’m so glad you guys came,” said Trish, pulling away. She smiled at Amanda and I and that smile started to fade as she took in the hot pink.

            I covered my mouth with my hand, looked away like it pained me to make eye contact, and mumbled something like, “I was unaware about the change of plans,” fully conscious of the fact that saying it probably made me look like a bitch.

            Trish smiled nervously, “It’s fine,” she said, before we were annexed by the gaggle that was Tarah, Lindsay, and Megan.

            I tried to explain the whole wardrobe thing while simultaneously trying to shove further into the sphere of flat ironed hair, perfume, and collarbones blessedly cut off from the prying eyes behind cataract glasses. I never really got through it though because Piper had blown us off again and how could she do that and who did she think she was? Same old Piper.

            It was only when the gossip had dried, withered, and disintegrated when perpetually on the prowl Megan spotted eye candy across the room.

            “Who’s that?” she asked, blue eyes sparkling as she pointed a slender finger at a 5’9 Timberlake wannabe.

            Trish angled her face to see through the crowd, “Oh! That’s my cousin Grayson.” She smiled at Megan.

            “Hello Grayson,” said Tarah, raising her eyebrows in innuendo.

            “You want me to call him over here? I’m sure he’d be more than happy to.”

            “Yes!”

            Lindsay rolled her eyes, “You two are pathetic.”

            “Hey now, just because your boyfriend is Mr. Perfection…”

            “Please, have you heard him snore?”

            “Doesn’t mean you can criticize those looking for their own.”

            “Hey, he’s looking over here!”

            “Trish, call him over!”

            I took it as my cue to make a break for sanctuary.