“That’s not what I’m doing.”
“Really? Then what are you doing?”
“I don’t know the first thing about having kids.”
“Newsflash, buddy, no one does when they start off. You drop them a few times, pull their head out from between the stair balusters, and get scared when their poop turns hot pink to match the crayon they snuck and ate when you weren’t looking. But you figure it out.”
“Bridget has a kid. She knows what she’s doing.”
Calliope studied me for a moment. “Let me ask you something. What does Brendan want more than anything?”
I shrugged. “A new bike. Flat black with flames.” I wonder if they make one my size.
“And is he allergic to anything?”
“Latex. What’s your point?”
“Just go with it. How about his teacher? What’s her name?”
“Miss Santoro. Cute, but doesn’t hold a candle to Bridget.”
“Favorite subject?”
“Science.”
“And did you go to field day with him a few weeks ago where he smiled all that day and then for two more after?”
“Yes.”
“Seems like you know what you’re doing with Bridget’s kid, too, Simon. So what other excuse you got?”
“Well, there’s the little fact that my home is in England.”
Calliope shook her head. “What’s back there for you? A home isn’t a bunch of bricks. A home is your happy place.” She looked at the time on her watch. “I gotta get going. But think about it. If I told you to close your eyes right now and imagine being anywhere in the world you could, what would you see?”
I waited until my friend was out the door before I sat at the kitchen table and shut my eyes for a few minutes. I wanted to conjure up pictures of an oceanfront hut in the Indian Ocean, or the top of the beautiful mountains of Snowdonia in Wales as my happy place. But when I closed my eyes, the only thing I was able to see was Bridget. She was my happy place.
Fuck. I was even more screwed than I thought.I woke up in a cold sweat and with my hand down my pants.
Lucky for me, no one else was in the residents’ lounge. I’d finally fallen asleep for a bit, only to have the most intense dream I’d ever had in my entire life happen while at work. That was some serious shit. I sat up and blinked a few times. The vividness of it hadn’t been dulled by my consciousness.
Bridget and I were in the supply room here at the hospital. Everything was in black and white—our clothes, our skin, the supplies—everything except her mouth. Her fucking lips were painted blood red—gorgeous, full, glossy, blood red. And those lips were wrapped tight around my cock.
I’d woken up with a hard-on and my hand around my cock. That shit could have been embarrassing. Checking the time on my phone, I still had a half-hour before my shift started, so I decided to take a shower—an ice cold one. When I was done, and no longer at risk for being arrested for public indecency due to the outline of my cock straining through my pants, I still had a few minutes to kill, so I decided to run out for coffee.
On my way back, a poster of a woman hanging in the window of the CVS caught my eye, and I wandered in. The next thing I knew, I had eight different shades of red lipstick tested on my hand.
“Is there a certain shade you’re looking for?” The clerk smiled warmly.
“Actually—I like the one in the window. The brunette with the bright red lips, but I can’t seem to find the right shade.”
She ran her finger across a plastic dispenser full of at least a hundred different shades and tapped her nail on one. “Here it is. It’s new. It’s called Drama. The sample isn’t out on display yet, that’s why you couldn’t find it, but I can open this one for you to try it out.”
“Thanks.”
She looked up at me. “It will really look bold with your fair skin and blue eyes.”
What? “Uhhh…it’s not for me.”
“Oh. Okay.” She gave me a look that said bullshit, and continued to open the packaging.
“No, really. It’s not.”
“It doesn’t matter if it is. We all need things in life to make us feel beautiful.”
What has my life turned into? This whole situation might have been comical had I not been totally freaked out that I didn’t give a shit if anyone thought I wore lipstick or not, so long as I found that color. Packaging open, the clerk twisted the bottom of the tube and the reddest of reds color rose from the canister. It had a shimmery wet gloss to it that was almost exactly from my dream. Unfortunately, my body recognized it, too. Shit. “I’ll take it. Thank you.” I snatched it from her hands and began to walk toward the register before this got even more embarrassing.