She's With Stupid Read online

  Though Kate addressed Brian, she and Emilie were both now eyeing the sallow-faced woman standing next to him. She had long, inky black curls with chunks of lime, indigo, and plum hair extensions sticking out around her head. Her eyes, which were glaring daggers at Kate and Emilie, were heavily lined with kohl, and her outfit, if the two scraps of material barely covering her breasts and her hoo-ha could actually be termed clothing, left nothing to the imagination.

  Brian backed away from them, shaking his head and mumbling something about having to find his buddy, Bedpan. Kate was momentarily distracted from Skanky and Brian’s shifty behavior by the existence of a human being who called himself Bedpan. Did his head resemble a toilet bowl? Did he smell faintly of urine? Forcing herself to put these pressing psychological questions aside, Kate shook her head and met Emilie’s puzzled gaze.

  They were in unspoken agreement that something about Brian was off. Well, something about Brian had always been off —he was Stupid, after all— but the mention of Lana’s name had seemed to signal retreat in his drunken head, which was peculiar.

  Before Kate could comment on this, Skanky reached for Brian’s hand. He took it, looking vaguely surprised that she was still there, and, after a final, suspiciously guilty glance at Kate and Emilie, he allowed Skanky to pull him away.

  The two of them skulked off towards the front of the bar, and Emilie made a face as she watched Brian’s retreating form bang against several washing machines and a foosball table with Skanky clinging firmly to his arm, her tramp stamp winking coyly above her plainly visible red thong.

  “What is his damage?” asked Emilie.

  Kate shook her head and continued to pull Emilie towards the bar where Lana was currently kneeling on a bar stool and anxiously looking around, most likely hoping that her friends had not been abducted by one of the seedy patrons of this fine establishment.

  “Come on, we can’t worry about it now. I don’t know about you, but I am more than ready to get out of here.”

  “Amen, sister,” muttered Emilie.

  Both silently agreed to mention Brian’s odd behavior to Lana when they weren’t all so dizzy with drink.

  Chapter 10

  Emilie kept her head down as she stood by her kitchen counter, drowsily stirring cream into a mug of hot tea. She kept sneaking glances at Lana, who was sitting at the table munching on a bowl of frosted cereal. Kate was still passed out on the couch.

  Lana caught her staring and offered her a quizzical smile as she waited for Emilie to say what was on her mind.

  Taking a deep breath, Emilie moved to stand beside the table. “Um, Lana—” She shifted from one foot to another, visibly uncomfortable with what she had to say.

  “What’s on your mind, Em?” Lana reached over to give Emilie a gentle shove into the kitchen chair next to her.

  “It’s just, well, Kate and I ran into Brian last night.” Lana’s expression became shuttered and Emilie winced. “We were on our way back from the restroom, and he was, you know, there,” she said weakly.

  Lana’s spine stiffened and her body tensed as if expecting a blow, but she remained silent.

  The silence stretched for long moments before Emilie cast a pained glance at Lana’s face and finally said in a rush, “Nothing happened — I mean we didn’t see anything really. He just — he was pretty drunk. And there was this girl.”

  Emilie took a gulp of her tea, feeling horrid for telling Lana any of this. She had debated keeping it to herself all night, but determined that she couldn’t keep something like this from her best friend. Emilie knew that she would definitely have preferred to know about Stupid Leo and his stupid girlfriend before allowing the jerk to make her trust him enough to almost go to bed with him.

  Looking rather green, Lana met Emilie’s gaze. “Were they…?” Lana’s voice trailed away.

  She looked like she was going to be sick, and Emilie briefly pondered the wisdom of having this discussion when they were both slightly hung-over. “No!” Emilie assured her. “They weren’t doing anything, he was just acting kind of suspicious, what with the bottle of Jim Beam and the trashy Goth girl hanging all over him, and I-I thought you might want to know that he was being weird. And that there was a girl with him, one who has definitely been around the slut block a time or two.”

  Lana’s eyes had taken on a glassy, far away look. Emilie debated whether or not to pat her cheeks or wave her hand in front of her face to make sure she wasn’t in shock or something, but before she could do either Lana seemed to come out of her trance.

  “The girl — was she pretty?”

  “Uh, only if you consider skanky whores pretty, which I for one do not.”

  “It was the Elvira wannabe with all the tattoos and the general air of griminess permeating the air around her, right?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” Emilie’s lips pursed with distaste. “She seemed fairly dirty, and I mean that in every possible sense of the word.”

  Lana made a little noise in the back of her throat, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, as she ran a frustrated hand through her uncombed hair. “She’s also the girl he was dating before I came back to town. Her name’s Samantha. Brian said she lived with him for a few months before they broke it off.”

  “Oh.” There was a hard glint in Lana’s eyes now, and Emilie was feeling increasingly awful. “I didn’t know that. But, maybe that just means they were, I don’t know, catching up on old times?”

  “Em, do I look like an idiot?”

  “Of course not!” Emilie’s eyes widened. “I hate seeing you hurt like this, that’s all. And we don’t know if anything actually happened—”

  Lana sighed. “We know that Brian Connelly is, and has always been, about as faithful as a hooker strolling down Hollywood Bou levard. He hasn’t changed at all. I was just too thick to admit it to myself.”

  “You’re not thick, Lana! You wanted to believe that the guy you love is actually worthy of love. Believe me, I get it. I also get how much it sucks to find out that you might have misplaced your trust in someone. But Brian’s jerkiness is not a reflection on you, Lana.”

  Tears were coming out of Lana’s eyes in a slow drip, and Emilie felt her heart break a little. She reached over and pulled Lana into a hug, wiping away a few tears of her own. Struggling to catch her breath, Lana rested her head on Emilie’s shoulder and hiccupped.

  “Oh, man, who died?”

  They looked up to find a groggy Kate standing in the kitchen doorway, rubbing her eyes and finger-combing her frizzy blonde waves to try to get some of the snarls out.

  “No one died. I was telling Lana about you know what.”

  Kate continued to stare at Emilie, too woozy to pick up on subtlety.

  “You know — last night?” Emilie tried again.

  A light seemed to go off in Kate’s head. “Oh! Brian the Dickhead? Jeez, Em, you could have waited for me.”

  Lana swiped at her tears with the ends of the tablecloth. “I think she was trying to break it to me gently, Kate. Thanks so much for helping.”

  Kate harrumphed. “Since when is it even possible to gently tell someone that their boyfriend is a cheating ass? That’s dumb.”

  “No, it’s not dumb,” said Lana. “It is, however, pointless. I should have known this was happening. I knew he was acting strange and distant and—”

  “Stupid?” Kate offered helpfully.

  Lana clenched her jaw. “But I didn’t want to think about it. I thought we were going to make it work this time. I thought we were happy.”

  “Yeah, well, now you know you were wrong.”

  “Thanks, Kate,” Lana said with a glare. “Whatever would I do without you?”

  “All I’m trying to say—” Kate moved behind Lana’s chair and briskly patted her shoulder “—is that you were wrong, it happens. Now you have to decide what you want to do about it, about him, and then do it. The same goes for Emilie. Enough of this moping around and gazing longingly at the phone, hoping He Who M
ust Not Be Named will call. Why do you guys want to be with jerks, anyway?”

  Emilie stared at Kate for several moments before finally shaking her head in consternation.

  Kate’s eyes narrowed in confusion when Emilie got up to clear the dishes and place them in the sink. “What?”

  “You amaze me, Kate,” Emilie said mildly.

  “I do?”

  “Yep. I only wish you were as astute about your own love life as you seem to be about ours.”

  Kate crossed her arms defensively. “Huh?”

  It was Lana’s turn to sigh as she got up and put the milk back into the fridge. “Never mind, Kate. Never mind.”

  Emilie and Lana left the kitchen, leaving Kate to brood, willfully ignorant about the source of her friends’ amusement.

  ***

  The next afternoon, Lana stood outside the door of Brian’s rundown loft, which was located across the river in one of the creepier parts of Covington. She had often marveled at her good fortune to have never been mugged or accosted in this rat trap, but her stupid fascination with all things bad for her had led her to look on every night spent here as an adventure.

  Lana looked longingly over her shoulder to the elevator doors and desperately wished that there was some way to avoid this confrontation. She had even suggested to her friends that she could instead send Brian a nice, hateful note detailing what a scumbag he was. Emilie, having an innate aversion to conflict herself, had thought the idea showed promise, but Kate had poked fun at both of them and insisted that Lana would have to tell Brian that she was done with him face-to-face.

  Privately, Lana wondered why Kate was so determined that Lana stand up for herself. She suspected it had something to do with Kate’s desire to live vicariously through “Lana’s Liberation,” as Kate called it, since the bride-to-be certainly didn’t seem eager to pursue her own liberation from Stupid Will anytime soon.

  Taking a fortifying breath, Lana raised her hand to knock and nearly fell on her face when the door opened to reveal a smiling Brian. He reached out to steady her and gave her a thorough kiss before Lana could muster up her defenses and stop him. He was, she had to grudgingly admit, an excellent kisser.

  When he finally let her up for air, he nuzzled her soft newly pink and black head and pulled her into a tight embrace. “I’ve missed you, sugar. Where you been?”

  “Um, well, you know,” was her articulate reply.

  Before Lana could blurt out her suspicions in the brilliant speech she had prepared on her way over here, Brian was pulling her into his small, sparsely furnished apartment and shoving her towards the couch.

  “I saw your friends at the bar the other night.” He sat beside her on the couch and casually threw his arm behind her. “Man, were they out of it. I’m surprised they were able to stay upright! Did you all get home okay?”

  Taken aback by his question, Lana could only open and close her mouth like a guppy. Apparently her vocal chords had gone missing with her good sense because she was starting to feel a niggling hope that she could have been wrong to suspect him so easily, without any real proof that he had done something wrong. He certainly wasn’t acting guilty.

  “I bet they had the hangover from hell.” Brian laughed easily and leaned back into the couch cushions, playing absently with the short strands of pink hair that lay against the tattoo on the back of her neck. She loved when he did that. “I was going to ask them about their ride home, but when they saw Sam they seemed to wig out a little.”

  “Sam?” Lana asked in a weak voice.

  “Yeah, you remember that chick I told you about? The crazy one I dated for a few weeks before you moved back? She was at the bar Friday, and she kept following me around asking me if we could try again. Can you believe that crap?” He laughed at her blank expression. “God, I’m so glad you’re not a loon.”

  His eyes were twinkling and he looked remarkably sincere.

  But Emilie and Kate wouldn’t lie.

  “I was there for hours, Brian. You avoided me.”

  “What are you talking about, sugar?” He shook his head and ruffled her hair like she was a hilarious, somewhat dim, puppy. “You were having fun with your friends; I didn’t want to get in the way. They were never all that fond of me, if you’ll recall.” He winked at her.

  He actually winked at her.

  Lana absently rubbed her temple, feeling confused and unsure and… hopeful. Damn it. “Emilie said you looked awfully cozy with that girl, Brian—”

  She was cut off by Brian’s finger over her mouth. “Wait one damn minute, Lana. Did she say I was doing something hinky with Samantha?”

  “No!” She quickly shook her head and twisted to face him on the couch. “She just said you seemed a little, I think shifty was the word she used.”

  Brian visibly relaxed. “Honey, your friends were totally out of it. I’m surprised they even recognized me.” He smiled as he lightly stroked her bottom lip with his thumb. “If I seemed jumpy, it was because Sam was playing stalker all night and I was her unwilling prey. You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  He was looking at her with those innocent eyes that never failed to weaken her resolve. The three of them had been fairly tipsy Friday night — it was entirely possible that Emilie and Kate had misconstrued the situation out of concern for Lana and the suspicion they were all feeling due to the Stupid Leo situation. Entirely possible.

  Lana offered Brian a hesitant smile. “I just… you’ve been acting so strange lately. Like you’re avoiding me or, I don’t know…” She shrugged helplessly and started fiddling with her bracelets.

  “Lana.” Brian gave her his most charming, conciliatory smile. “I’ve been working a lot. I’m tired. That doesn’t mean I don’t think about you all the time.”

  Suddenly, his hand was inching its way up her skirt, while he nibbled on her earlobe and rubbed his nose in her neck. “It doesn’t mean I don’t want you all the time.” He eased her down so that her body was pressed into the couch and his hips were resting between her thighs.

  “You know I love you, sugar.” His clever hands were working under her skirt, pushing her panties out of the way, and then, with no warning or preliminaries, he was inside her. Lana gasped in startled delight, and Brian leaned down to catch her squeal in his mouth.

  “You know you’re the only one for me.”

  Then he was moving, and Lana was too caught up in pleasure to notice the cynical glint in his eye.

  Afterwards, while Brian was in the shower, Lana slipped her cotton undies back on with a grimace and fought a nagging sense of doubt, along with a healthy dose of guilt, at having been so quick to fall back into bed with Brian. Or back into his couch, if you wanted to get technical.

  He had seemed so convincing about that Samantha girl and Lana had really wanted to believe him. It was possible that Emilie had misread what she saw on Friday night — even though she had seemed pretty sure…and even though Lana knew that Emilie would never have mentioned the scene at all if she had not been seriously concerned.

  Lana banged her head against the side of the couch and groaned in frustration. Her eyes narrowed as they glimpsed something sticking out from under the leg of the nearby loveseat. Gulping down the sudden excess of saliva in her mouth, Lana reached forward and tugged on the material.

  She stared down at the offending fabric for a total of thirty seconds before springing into action. Tossing the lacy red thong onto the cardboard box that served as Brian’s coffee table, Lana stood up and fought a wave of dizziness. Looking around she found a legal pad and a red marker and hastily scrawled a note, tossed it onto the box, and stalked out the door, slamming it hard enough to knock it off its hinges.

  When Brian emerged from his shower twenty minutes later, a satisfied smirk planted on his face, he was shocked, and not a little dismayed, to see the incriminating underwear on his table. Hesitantly, he bent over and picked up the note, which was brief and to the point:

  YOU LYING, CHEATING B
ASTARD—I HOPE YOUR PENIS SHRIVELS UP AND FALLS OFF!!!!

  Wincing, Brian sat down on the couch and shook his head in disbelief. He had definitely not seen that one coming.

  Chapter 11

  Emilie was beginning to feel like one of Pavlov’s dogs. Every time the trilling ring of the phone reached her eardrums, she felt the uncontrollable urge to throw something at the wall. For the past two weeks it seemed that the phone had not stopped ringing. If it wasn’t Stupid Brian calling for Lana, it was Stupid Leo calling for Emilie.

  Lana had stopped answering the phone a week ago, but Emilie still took special delight in picking up the phone and slamming it back down whenever she saw Leo’s number on the newly installed caller id. This at least spared her the whiny, often lengthy messages that Lana was enduring. Both of their voicemails were full and, rather than delete the messages and let them pile up again, both women had decided to leave them alone. If someone other than a stupid male wished to contact them, they would call back.

  By the twenty-sixth ring in as many seconds, Emilie groaned, laid her book down beside her on the bed, and stomped to the living room to check the id. This one was Leo. Glancing at the clock—one in the morning, ugh!—Emilie growled, picked up the phone, and yelled, “Get bent!” into the receiver. Then she slammed the phone down as hard as she could, grumpily predicting that the offending piece of plastic was going to break apart at this rate.

  She did not understand what could possibly be going through Leo’s tiny brain. What did he hope to accomplish by harassing her like this? And why did Leo’s persistence only serve to remind Emilie of the person who was not calling?

  Thinking about Ethan made her chest clench in a dull ache as she shuffled back to her bedroom. She had managed to avoid seriously thinking about him for over a decade, so why he was once again plaguing her sanity was beyond her. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to call upon the coolheaded disdain she had perfected years ago whenever someone mentioned his name anymore.