One Wicked Lick from the Drummer (The One 3)

Grip almost laughed at her choice of swearword. Hospital, did she need a hospital? While Mena helped Caroline stand, he went to the window. By some miracle, his truck was still in the loading zone. “Do you need a ride?”

“I need to get to a spa, fuck it,” Caroline snapped. “I’m supposed to get a week at a spa. My babies always come late. I’ve got an induction scheduled. But thank you, Mark, you don’t need to worry. Uhhh. Right, that was, ahh, that was. Oh.” She looked down at her lap. “Yes, yes. A ride would be good.”

No prizes for guessing it’s not easy for a woman in the early stages of labor and a fitted dress, wearing stilettos, to climb into a truck. There’s another reason he had to get rid of it. The ways in which it was impractical, if crazy fun, were endless. It took the tow-truck driver who’d arrived and Mena to help him get Caroline into the back seat, but after that it was smooth sailing through city traffic. Not even Uber drivers messed with a monster truck.

From the back Caroline cursed her husband, thanked Grip for the ride, laughing about how they’d all panicked, and said she probably could’ve driven herself. Then she worked her phone, rearranging her calendar with her assistant and calling her doctor, her “shithead” of a husband, her mother and God knows who else.

From beside him in the front seat, Mena said quietly, “Wanker.”

Hmm. He’d figured in all the fuss with the towie and getting Caroline into the back seat, Mena might not have seen his number plates. He’d never envisaged showing anyone his bad investments, only talking about them on paper. He shrugged. If Mena had any illusion he was a sophisticated guy under the bad language, and the tatts, and the sexual harassment, they were fucked now. “What else would you call a guy who drives wheels like this?”

The light ahead went red and he had to stop. He turned to look at Mena, curious about whether what came out of her mouth and her expression would be in sync.

She kept looking out the windscreen at the traffic jammed in the intersection. Cool blondes with untouchable vibes were never his thing. The fact a dirtbag like him made her blush must’ve messed with her head.

“Ahh. I hate my husband,” Caroline said. “I hate his stupid penis so much.”

When Grip had decided to play ambulance, he hadn’t thought through the fact he might need to help deliver a baby in the back seat. He gunned it on the green.

He didn’t have to work with Mena. He liked Caroline a lot. She could swear like a trouper and was focused even while in obvious discomfort, getting him to sign a shirt for her stepson before they’d pulled away from S&Y. There was nothing stopping him from waiting until she was back in the office. It was only three months. He was the one in control here. He could tell Mena he’d wait, that she didn’t need to worry about crafting his investment profile and assessing his opportunity costs, whatever that meant.

He could try to curb his spending habits in the meantime. So what if he made another bad investment with the escape room experience, it wouldn’t be the first lemon he’d bought into. That honor went to a horse called Ignite the Sky who’d finished last in every start. The only thing ignitable about that horse was his farts.

Since nothing had come out of Mena’s mouth other than concern for Caroline, he said, “I see,” as he maneuvered around a delivery van, and then stopped on an orange light. “It’s that bad.” As soon as Caroline was being taken care of, he’d tell Mena thanks but no thanks. If he was going to get through this, it had to be with someone who had a sense of humor.

Mena whipped her head around. “I can’t tell whether it’s hilariously ironic and a comment on society or just the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time.” She laughed and this time he could see it was genuine amusement that made her eyes shine. “Whatever that number plate cost you, it was worth it.”

Turns out when a smart, put-together, cool blonde in the front seat of your monster truck is honestly amused by your weird-arse social commentary she was, after all, his thing.

THREE

“Caroline had another girl,” Mena told Vera over sidecars at Hubert’s, the city’s new hip bar and restaurant on Friday night. “She’s making Rod get a vasectomy.”

“I’d make a joke about having five kids to a man called Rod,” Vera said, waving the bartender over, “but I’ve been styling a Vogue shoot all week and it’s sapped my ability to be crude unless it’s about fashion assistants who think they can rearrange my look book. The only thing I want to hear about is whether you have a grip on, you know—Mark, the drummer god, Grippen.”

Mena didn’t know what to say about Grip. She’d done nothing productive over the last two days but wait for news from Caroline, think about Grip and flatten the battery of her favorite vibrator. Her date was a bust and that was her fault. She was too busy living in another moment. One where all her wild adolescent fantasies had come true. “Tell me about the shoot.”

Her oldest friend gave her a look that likely scared the pants off every model and photographer in the city. It was the same look she’d perfected when they were groupies and fresh meat tried to muscle in on their strategy to get backstage or onto a tour bus. It’d been effective then and it was devastating now. Likely the reason Vera now had her own groupies in the fashion industry, a harbor-front mansion, a devoted husband and a lover who liked each other, and the grudging respect of her parents who had prayed for their only daughter to stop being a slut and become a doctor like a good Chinese girl was supposed to.

“I’m not scared of you,” Mena tipped her chin to the bartender who’d backed up, “but he is.”

“You with the cute arse, get back over here and pour me another sidecar,” Vera muttered. “Just tell me what Grip’s like now. Assume he still has the superhero hands and the stop-a-heart smile. I could google him but that would make it like a work thing and I feel the need for a good story to go along with my reminiscing. Please tell me he’s still worth objectifying?”

“That’s my problem,” Mena said. She waved at the bartender. He pantomimed a who me, pointing at his chest, which made Mena roll her eyes. “Cute arse thinks he’s a comedian.”

“Ugh, try-hard men. If you tell me Grip is one of those I might cry into my next drink, if I ever get one.”

“He’s not. He stayed real and he’s funny and the whole reason he needs advice is because he’s conscious that he could blow it all.”

“Funny, how?” Vera gestured to the bartender who was flirting with two women further along the bar.

“Not like that. He might’ve looked down my top, but he wasn’t sleazy or self-aggrandizing or in any way demanding like a regular client. It was almost like he was nervous, until Caroline’s water broke and then he was all action. Beyond that I don’t know anything about him anymore other than that he makes my girl parts sit up and pay close attention.”

Vera spun on her stool to look Mena up and down. “What were you wearing that he could look down your top? Not this corporate frump thing you’re doing now?”

Mena ran a hand over the front of her suit. She wore a navy sheath dress and its matching coat. The neckline skimmed her collarbones. “I like this dress. It’s not frumpy.” It was classy, work appropriate. Just because Vera’s work was fashion didn’t mean everyone could wear a lime-green jumpsuit with leopard-print trim and look fabulous.

“It’s everywoman and unmemorable,” Vera pronounced, directing Mena’s attention to two other women in the bar wearing the same coat-dress style.