Courtship is book three in my Love Where You Work rom-com series. Coming soon!

The night was a sinkhole, and Reaux had fallen through it. Again. It happened sometimes, the blackouts. More and more lately. Reaux was never sure how many drinks would do the trick, how many it would take before her consciousness separated from her memory and turned her into a goldfish waking up and wondering why she was in this glass bowl. 

She’d been careless last night, that much she remembered. 

As the evening wore on, her awareness bourboned down and down until nothing was left but blackness, nothing but blips and potholes on a road she’d been stumbling down.

When the veil shrouding her short-term memory lifted to reveal something other than utter darkness, what Reaux saw was this:

She was in a bed. Gray sheets bunched at her feet and ankles. She was sweating. The lighting was dim, save for a desk lamp aimed at the wall, which created a tiny, vacant spotlight. Beneath her was a woman, and Reaux was fucking her. 

Her conscious mind had long gone absent, but her body—that obedient animal—had soldiered on. The booze came out of her pores. She could smell it mingling with the perfume of their bodies as she thrust in and out of the woman. The straps of the leather harness she wore chafed her left hip bone. Reaux couldn’t feel the pain exactly. She couldn’t feel anything really but recognized the sensation well enough to know the spot would be rubbed raw in the morning. 

Oh well. 

The woman threw her head back and let out a guttural moan. She seemed to be enjoying herself, at least. Her cheeks were red, and her eyes clenched shut. Their sweat-slicked torsos made a sucking sound as she drove in and out of her. 

“Oh, Reaux,” the woman cooed. It didn’t seem fair to Reaux that this woman knew who she was when Reaux had no idea who she was. She put her fingers in the woman’s mouth, who sucked the salt from them eagerly.

Reaux leaned back on her heels, grabbing the woman by the ankles and slinging them over her shoulders. In this position, she could feel a small semblance of pleasure. The base of the dildo rubbed against her clit in the harness. She pumped harder and faster until the woman’s moans intensified, her ankles bouncing softly against Reaux’s shoulders. 

And then the veil closed once again, plunging the scene back into the darkness from which it came.

In the morning, Reaux’s eyes felt crusted over. It hurt to open them. She squinted to keep as much of the world out as possible while still registering the day. As her mind swam up to the shallow depths of consciousness, she was relieved to find that she was in her own bed. A California king with 600-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets. The sheets were still slightly damp from the night before. 

Reaux’s bed took up most of the space of her small bedroom. The average person spent a third of their life in bed, Reaux had heard on a podcast, but for her, it was more like half, so most of her meager wages went to making sure her bed was as kingly as possible. The rest of her bedroom was sparsely and hastily furnished, with a few bricks stacked between a wooden board serving as a sort-of bookshelf, crates of records, a velvet Elvis painting (from his Vegas years), and a bar cart that she used as a seduction tactic and nightstand.

She yawned, inhaling the sweat and sour smell of the room and of herself. She loved that smell. The lamp she’d turned on last night was still on, casting its lonely spotlight on nothing. 

Her right arm hurt. It often did in the mornings. The doctors even had a name for it, phantom limb pain. But this morning was…different. Reaux’s arm hurt because it was partially trapped under the woman she’d had sex with, who was still here. They were sort of spooning, except facing each other. Forking? They were also naked.

Reaux rubbed her eyes with her free hand and tried to piece together the events of the night before. She’d definitely gone to a show at the Wolf Den downtown—to see a punk band called The Mosh Armpits. (They killed). And after that, she’d been invited to a house party in Temescal. She remembered someone mocking the host for all the hard seltzers. (The hot bassist?). She remembered someone asking her to juggle clementines in the kitchen. (She had obliged. No one ever believed she could juggle. It was annoying). She remembered that someone with a septum piercing had made vegan cheesecake and offered Reaux a piece. No silverware. No plate. Just a hunk of it resting in her palm. Reaux ate it, licking the creamy bits off the woman’s fingers until the blush rose from her ample cleavage to her neck. (The woman next to her?).

No, this woman had no facial piercings. But she did have one piratical hoop earring and wide nostrils that gently flared as she breathed.

As the room came into focus, Reaux glimpsed her harness at the foot of the bed, along with her favorite dildo, a frosted silicone seven-incher with a rainbow confetti design. She’d named it Lady Waffles, after the cat that never came to be. The shelter had denied her adoption application due to her “precarious financial situation and unpredictable hours.” Please. You know who else had no money and kept strange hours? Cats.

Reaux further examined the front and side of the woman sleeping next to her, hoping it might reveal clues about her. Alas, the woman’s name was not tattooed on her face or chest. Though a swirling sun rested near her shoulder, as well as a butch stallion galloping down her arm. What did it mean? She felt like she was in a terrifically boring detective show.

Reaux pondered a way to free herself from underneath the stranger. She glanced upward toward the accent wall she’d painted a candy red. With the scant natural lighting, the red gave the whole room a bordello feel, which she enjoyed. 

A knock interrupted her meandering thoughts. 

“Reaux!” Paula, her roommate, shouted through the closed door. “It’s eleven fifty-five.”

She shouted back, “Thanks for the heads up.”

Was she too old for such late mornings? At thirty, she wasn’t sure. Plus, the sun barely penetrated her west-facing bedroom window. Each day she awoke to a dark, blustery gray that matched her sheets. Trying to tell the time from here was as challenging as getting the last bit of peanut butter out of the jar. 

If she’d been a proper rock star, she might be able to justify such late, bed-bound mornings, but as it was, well. She hadn’t been in a band in months, and her other forays into capitalism didn’t necessitate early rising. If one could call reselling kitchen gadgets she’d found at Goodwill a “job,” that is, or the occasional music lesson she taught, or the bimonthly newsletter, Nihilist Tweets, she wrote for twenty-eight eager subscribers. (Just think, she’d written in last month’s screed, everything bad that happened to you today was because you got out of bed). 

Another voice boomed beyond the door. It must’ve been Nita, Paula’s fiancée, and technically also Reaux’s roommate. Paula and Nita spent most of the year traveling with their fancy ice capades show, so they weren’t around much, usually stopping by the house for a week or two every six. When they were around, their full-time job appeared to be hounding Reaux about bills and taking out the compost. (In her defense, the fruit flies weren’t much of a problem in winter). Besides, the gas company had only shut off their heat once, and thankfully, Reaux had been able to sweet-talk the PG&E rep into waiving the late fees that time. 

What with Paula and Nita’s wedding fast approaching, they’d been around a lot more often and evidently served as Reaux’s unofficial wake-up call.

Shit.

The wedding. Paula and Nita were getting married in two weeks.

“Reaux! Get up!” Nita shouted. “We can’t exactly start without you.”

Shit, shit, shit. She’d forgotten that she agreed to meet with them today to go over some DJing logistics and get their final song list. 

“Okay, okay,” Reaux said. “I’m coming. Gimme a sec.” 

She peeled her arm out from under the sleeping woman, who miraculously hadn’t stirred at all, despite the shouting. Then again, a ride on Lady Waffles did tend to tucker a person out. Not that Reaux remembered the details. But then, a flash of their evening appeared—the woman straddling Reaux’s hips, the creamy feel of the woman’s skin in her hands, her teeth scraping at Reaux’s neck.

She smiled as she threw on a pair of pink alligator briefs and her favorite dark gray hoodie, whose sleeves she’d cut off, and headed for the bathroom. After she relieved herself, she examined the bruises on her neck. Reaux hadn’t realized the woman had bit her quite this hard but was impressed, nevertheless, by her commitment. 

When she got to the dining room, she squinted in the bright light of the late morning. Tinsel lined the window ledges, along with a dusting of fake snow that looked like smiley faces without eyes. Paula and Nita sat next to each other at the large round table, smiling that goofy way that lovers do, as if the whole world was on their side as if everything was an inside joke tailored just for them.

Reaux sat at an empty chair across from them and stared. She was happy for her friends. Of course she was. Still, a part of her wondered what all the fuss was about. The last person to look at her like that was, well, she didn’t want to remember.

“We made coffee,” Paula said far too cheerily for such an early hour and slid a red mug in her direction. It was shaped like a stocking and said Jolly AF. 

Reaux took it gratefully, pressing its warmth between her palms. “Thanks, Roomeo, and Roomeo Two…meo.”

Nita’s eyes widened when they landed on Reaux’s hickey. “Wild night?” she asked, nudging Reaux in the elbow. “That’s quite a shiner you got there.”

“This?” she said, grazing the hickey on her neck. “It’s nothing. You should see the other guy.”

And then, as if on cue, Reaux’s bedroom door opened, and the woman padded out, her black curly hair in a snarl. She was holding a pile of clothing items in her hand. “I can’t find my thong,” she said, her voice slow and groggy and without an ounce of self-consciousness. “Do you know where it went?”

“Uhh.” Reaux made a half-hearted attempt to look under the table. When the thong wasn’t there, she shrugged.

The woman walked past them into the living room toward a pair of knee-high leather boots that looked as if they’d been kicked across the room. Was that a scuff mark on the wall? She’d have to clean it before her roommates noticed. 

The woman slid one of her shoes on. She searched for the other, first by the large bay window decorated with multicolored twinkle lights. A Christmas tree stood proudly in the middle of its frame, looking out upon their quiet West Oakland street. The woman ambled over to the tree and found her other shoe wedged between presents wrapped in East Bay Weekly newspapers. She held up the shoe triumphantly, like the present that it was, and slid it on. “Text me when you find it.”

“Sure thing, uh…Jen.” Reaux took a guess at her name.

The woman narrowed her eyes, brows peaking in Reaux’s direction. “Not even close, player. It’s Calendula.”

Paula and Nita exchanged pained looks but said nothing.

Reaux ran her hand through her dyed blonde hair, shaved on one side, and swooped over in a messy wave on the other. “I call everyone Jen,” she lied. She looked at Paula for help. “Don’t I, Jen?” 

“Umm,” Paula stammered.

But Reaux soldiered on. “It’s my term of endearment, like pumpkin or sugar or…kitten chin.”

Calendula rolled her eyes, sauntering back over to where Reaux sat. “Okay, sure, if you say so.” She kissed Reaux on the cheek. Her breath was sour and bourbony, despite the mint rolling around in her cheek. “I had a great time last night. Text me.”

“You bet,” she said, knowing full well she wouldn’t. 

When the front door closed and Calendula had gone, Reaux breathed a little easier. She didn’t do mornings. She especially didn’t do morning-afters. One-night-stand etiquette was awkward enough without the intimacy of mornings, which was why she preferred quietly slipping out of the apartments of whoever her conquest for the night was long before the sun rose if she could help it.

Last night she clearly couldn’t—what else had she said and done while blacked out?—and made a mental note to avoid hard seltzers for the indefinite future. They tasted like water! How was she supposed to know their potency?

Paula smirked at her. “Maybe you could write their names on your wrist in Sharpie. Then next time you forget, you can pretend you’re checking your watch, but you’ll be cleverly gaming the system of remembering a person’s humanity.”

Names, Reaux thought. Who cared? A screw by any other name would smell as sweet. Still, Paula’s barb, friendly as it was, made Reaux squirm a little in her chair. 

“Har har,” Reaux said. “I probably just need to up my ginkgo biloba intake.” She tapped her temple. “Good for the memory.” 

“Or maybe,” Nita chimed in, “you should consider upping your capacity for human connection beyond twelve hours.” Nita tapped her chest. “Good for the heart. And your liver, probably.” 

“Please,” Reaux said, waving away her friends’ concerns. “It’s more like twenty-four hours sometimes. Forty-eight on holiday weekends.” She took another big gulp of coffee, relishing its sweet, roasty scent. “But enough about my amazing sex life. Hit me with that wedding setlist. Let’s see how bad your taste in music is.”

Nita slid the setlist across the table to Reaux. She zipped her hoodie up to her chin and popped the hood. While she perused the list, she chewed on one of its white drawstrings, nodding along to one of the songs (Sleater-Kinney’s “I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone”).

“Lovin’ it.” Reaux continued to nod approvingly. “Lizzo, Whitney, Britney, Kendrick, The Cure, Bey, Kid Cudi…some great remixes in here, too…Queen, yes—wait, stop. Stop everything. No.”

“What? What is it?” Paula said.

“No Celine?”

“Uh,” Nita said, her face becoming a stern shelf that resembled Bert from Sesame Street.

Reaux’s eyes widened. “Oh my god, not your ex! I mean Celine Dion!”

“Ohh.” Nita sighed in relief.

“You’re getting married on a cruise ship!” Reaux said. “Think of all the wasted Titanic refs. You have to include her. I’m sorry. I’m pulling rank.” She reached for a pen at the far end of the table and scribbled on the setlist. 

Nita looked at Paula, who returned her gaze with a helpless shrug. 

Reaux continued to make edits, crossing songs off the list and adding others. When she came to a Lesbian Bed Death Metal number, her face puckered. “No LBDM, please.”

“Oh, come on,” Nita protested. “I love your stuff!”

Paula placed a hand on Nita’s shoulder. 

Reaux chewed her drawstring harder. The ends began to fray under her molars. “They’re old news. We can do you better.” 

Paula turned to Nita. “Reaux’s still sore about the band, uh, breaking up.”

“It’s fine.” Reaux was quick to protest. “Like I care that they forced me out of the band I founded or anything.”

Nita frowned, her eyes soft in sympathy. “I’m sorry, Reaux. I hadn’t heard. What happened?”

“She slept with the lead singer’s girlfriend,” Paula said.

“Ex-girlfriend,” Reaux clarified. “They were on an off period. Or so I thought. They’re more on-again, off-again than a bikini area and hot wax. Who can keep track?”

“Oh, Reaux,” Nita said.

“It’s fine, really,” Reaux said. She crossed the LBDM song off the list with an exaggerated flourish. “This all looks solid to me. I just need your Do Not Play list and, you know, a big fat check, and we’re good to go.” 

Nita turned to Paula. “We aren’t paying her in PBRs? I thought I amended that contract…” She smiled a disarming smile with two dimples high in her cheeks. 

“Oh sure,” Reaux said, “laugh at the funderemployed person.” 

Paula did laugh then, though not maliciously. She kissed Nita on the corner of her mouth. “Sadly, no. Reaux only accepts cash or Dogecoin.” To Reaux, she said, “Are you really underemployed? I thought you had, like, fifteen jobs.” 

“I do-ish, but I’m saving up,” Reaux said. “And I need your sweet wedded-bliss moolah for Bash Gordon.” 

“Who’s Bash Gordon?” Nita asked.

“It’s what Reaux named the souped-up prosthetic hand she’s been drooling over forever,” Paula said.

“It’s banana sandwiches,” Reaux said, snatching Paula’s phone and pulling up a website for Nita. “Like right out of a sci-fi movie. This company is building mind-controlled, bionic limbs that restore all physical mobility. Once I can afford it, Bash Gordon’s gonna make me the fastest drummer in the world.” Reaux’s eyes lit up. Then, she thought, LBDM is going to be sorry they ever canned me.

“Whoa,” Nita said, scrolling through the images of the robotic prosthetic. “This looks really rad.”

“Right?” Reaux drummed an upbeat ditty on the table with her left hand. “I’ve been waiting years for this bad boy, so I’m saving up my skrilla.”

Paula placed her hand on the stack of unpaid bills on the table. “Is that why the internet company keeps sending us these pretty envelopes?”

Reaux’s face fell. “Shit. That was on my to-do list, I swear. I’ll do it this afternoon, right after my gig today. I’m standing in line for a well-to-do gentleman named Andrew who wants to be the first to get his hands on the new Mary-Kate and Ashley Aquafresh BubbleCool Toothpaste.” 

Paula and Nita looked at each other again. When had their disappointment in her so thoroughly replaced that of her parents’?

Reaux shoved her hand into her hoodie pocket, searching for the tin of Altoids she kept on her person at all times. Something lacy brushed her fingers, and when she removed her hand, she was surprised to find herself clutching a purple thong. Calendula’s, presumably. How had it ended up there? Another mystery she’d never solve.

Reaux dropped it on the table, but Paula flicked it away like a spider. It landed back in Reaux’s lap.

All three of them started laughing then, soft chuckles at first, then a full-on uproar. 

When her shoulders finally stopped shaking, Nita said, “Thus concludes another dramatic episode of ‘CSI: Reaux’s Bedroom.’”

“Good one, Jen,” Paula said.

“Thanks, Jen,” Nita replied.

Paula took a sip of her coffee, her shoulders slumping a little. After a beat, she raised her eyebrows at Reaux. “So, speaking of dramatic, there’s something else I wanted to tell you.”

“The conversation opener everyone wants to hear,” Reaux said. She finished the dregs of her coffee, trying to project an air of nonchalance. “Well, out with it then, Roomeo.”

Paula looked at Nita, who gave her an encouraging nod. “Right, so, remember how I told you I was gonna invite a few people from our high school to the wedding?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, one of them was Fitz.”

Reaux’s mouth fell open. She shut it swiftly, like a mouse trap. “Fitz?” Her hand twitched as she spoke. One tiny syllable and she felt as if a tray of ball bearings had been shoved down her throat. She forced herself to swallow the lumps. “As in, my first girlfriend? The one who ripped my heart out? Wh-who didn’t even have the guts to break up with me, instead opting to just never speak to me again? That Fitz? She’s coming to your wedding?” 

“She goes by Catherine now.” Paula gritted her teeth. 

“Wonderful,” Reaux said. “That’s just wonderful.”

“We can put you at opposite ends of the ship, if you want,” Nita said. “You’ll barely notice each other.”

“Shit,” Reaux said, trying to calm the sinking feeling in her stomach. “Catherine Fucking Fitzgerald.” Reaux could practically feel the anxiety radiating from her chest. 

“It’s been more than ten years,” Paula said unhelpfully.

Twelve, actually. Not that she was counting. But what’s twelve years to a broken heart? A blip. An eternity. One hundred eternities. All of it fine. Fine. FINE.

“I know she hurt you,” Paula said. “And what she did was shitty. No question. But we had some good times together, right? And she and I have stayed in touch over the years, and Nita wanted to meet more people from my past, and I-I guess I thought maybe…you’d, well, be over it?”

Reaux sighed. A storm eddied about inside her, but she kept her voice as flat as a La Croix left out in the afternoon sun when she said, “I am over it. Totally, one hundred percent, over it.”