Tattoos and TaTas (Chocoholics #2.5) (4 page)

We both laughed at that thought and then it got quiet again.

Even though we’d been to plenty of frat parties during our two years of college, we’d avoided Pi Kappa like the plague. That was the house known for its jocks and snotty rich boys. It was also the house that threw the best fucking parties on the planet, though, and pretty much everyone at this school and every school within a seventy-five mile radius showed up. Except for Claire and I.

“Do YOU feel like we’re weird because we haven’t been to one yet? I mean, if that’s the case, I would totally suffer through a Pi Kappa party to make you happy,” Claire informed me. “Just because it isn’t my idea of fun, doesn’t mean it’s not yours. Who knows? You could meet the love of your life there.”

Claire moved her hands under her chin and fluttered her eyelashes at me. “Oh, you big, strong, frat boy! Please, do another keg stand to pledge your undying love for me!”

I punched her in the arm as I laughed. “Oh, shut up, you whore. I’m pretty sure I won’t meet the love of my life or even someone worth a one-night stand at one of those things, but it might be nice to check one out and see what all the fuss is about. I mean, this is our sophomore year. We should do something memorable.”

Claire looked at me in mock horror. “Oh, my God! You mean watching movies or going to the boring frat parties where they serve h’orderves and cups of tea every Friday night while we smuggle in Boone’s Farm in our purses isn’t memorable?”

Speaking of Boone’s Farm…

I quickly scrambled off the bed and pulled two bottles of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill out from under the bed and held them up.

Claire immediately started laughing, sprang forward and grabbed one of the bottles out of my hand and unscrewed the top. “Jesus, we’re so fucking classy. It doesn’t get much better than screw-tops.”

She chugged a good amount of wine before letting out a loud, satisfied sigh and lying back down, resting the bottle on her stomach. I set the unopened bottle next to me in bed before grabbing Claire’s and taking a sip.

“Okay, so frat parties aside, we should really talk about the sex club,” I told her.

“You’re going to have to ply me with something a hell of a lot stronger than wine with only four percent alcohol in it to get me to agree to that shit,” Claire informed me, snatching the bottle back and taking another sip.

“Fine, it doesn’t have to be JUST a sex club. Maybe we could pair it with something you’re interested in. Make it sort of a joint company. What are you interested in, Claire?”

She thought about it for a minute while I curled up next to her and we passed the bottle of shitty but delicious wine back and forth.

“It would probably be easier to tell you what I’m not interested in. Like say, a club where people are doing gross things to each other in public,” she told me, sticking her finger in her mouth and mock-gagging.

“You are such a fucking buzz kill. Fine. We can rethink the sex club aspect, but we WILL own a business together. Maybe if you’d finally give it up to someone, Virgin McVirginsen, you would be more agreeable to all things involving sex,” I reminded her.

The virgin comment was Claire’s cue to punch me in the arm. I loved this girl to death, but she was wound up entirely too tight, pun motherfucking intended. I’d been trying to convince her to get rid of that pesky virginity since high school, but she was dead set on finding “the one.” She didn’t need to find “the one.” She just needed to find the one who would do for a few hours. Scratch that, we’re talking college boys. A few minutes, tops.

“Stop talking out of your ass. I’ll show you. Maybe I’ll drag you to one of those stupid frat parties and have a one-night stand,” Claire threatened.

I started laughing. And once I started I couldn’t stop.

“Shut up! It could totally happen!” Claire argued.

“Right! It will happen just like My Little Pony will make a comeback. Give it a rest, Claire. You’re not the one-night-stand type and that’s perfectly okay. One slut in a friendship is one slut too many.”

Claire shook her head at me. “You’re not a slut. You’re just equal opportunity. You buy eight pairs of shoes at one time because you can’t stand the idea of leaving a pair in the store to get lonely. It’s only natural you do the same with your vagina. You never want your vagina to be lonely. It’s so beautiful.”

I chugged half the bottle of Boone’s while Claire laughed.

“Okay, in all seriousness, I really want to own a bakery some day. What if we sold like sexy lingerie on one side and cookies and cupcakes on the other?” she suggested.

I started to make fun of the idea, but then I thought about it. And thought about it some more. I thought about it while I polished off the rest of the bottle and then chucked the empty onto the floor.

“Heeeeey, wine whore!” Claire complained as I jumped up from the bed and started pacing the room.

“Sex and cookies,” I muttered.

Claire paused in the process of opening the second bottle of wine. “Huh?”

“Sex and cookies. Oh, fuck, Claire! You’re a GENIUS!” I shouted.

“Wait. Let me drink some of this and catch up to you before you shower me with more compliments.”

She held her hand up in the air in the universal sign of “hold the fuck up” while she downed half the bottle. She wiped her arm across her mouth and belched loudly. “Okay, I’m ready. Tell me more. Make sure to add how pretty and nice I am.”

I walked over to my desk and sat down, grabbing a pen and a notebook. I wrote “Sex and Cookies” really big at the top of a blank page.

“So, I like sex and you like baking. Jesus, this is brilliant. BRILLIANT!” I screamed as I made a list of things we could sell at this store and a rough estimate of how much money it would take to get something like this off the ground. Turns out my Business Administration classes were actually useful. Who knew?

“Fuck. They put more than four percent alcohol in this shit. I think I’m drunk,” Claire mumbled as she squinted her eyes and tried to read the label on the bottle.

“Nah, I just roofied you.”

Claire sniffed the opening of the bottle and then shrugged. “Cool. Make sure you take advantage of me when I pass out. Anyway, back to this Snack and Sex thing. Tell me more.”

I scribbled a few more things on the paper before turning the chair to face her. “Sex and Cookies, asshole. It’s the name of our future business endeavor, although we might have to tweak that a little. I’m not sure the city would allow us to put the word ‘sex’ on our sign, but whatever. You can have your bakery on one side and put people into sugar comas every day and I can sell sex toys and lingerie and shit like that and put people into erotic comas on my side. Then, we can make sure the building has a loft upstairs and live above our businesses and throw awesome parties every weekend. WINNER!” I shouted.

Claire bolted forward on the bed so fast she smacked her head into the wooden slats of the top bunk.

“SON OF A BITCH!” she yelled, rubbing her hand on her head as she got up and walked over to me.

I got up from the chair and we stood staring at each other for a few minutes before both of our faces broke out into huge smiles. We grabbed onto each other and started screaming and laughing and jumping up and down in the middle of the room like a couple of assholes.

After we got that nonsense out of our system, we went to work making more lists.

“This is totally happening. We’ll go to a Pi Kappa Phi party next weekend and make THAT dream come true, and then right after graduation in two years, we’re opening this fucking business!” Claire stated.

We finished off the second bottle of Boone’s Farm in celebration and popped our worn out copy of
Heathers
into the VCR on the dresser, reciting the words to the entire movie while we dreamed about our awesome future.

I STOOD IN
the corner of the room, staring at Claire and thinking about the day we came up with the idea for Seduction and Snacks as the nurse got her IV started. She doesn’t look sick. How in the fuck is this happening? Sure, we’re in our mid-forties, but we’re still young. This does NOT happen to young people and it most certainly doesn’t happen to one of MY people.

She met my eyes across the room and huffed. “Will you stop looking at me like that?”

“Like what?” I ask, pushing away from the wall and going to the edge of the bed.

“Like you’re expecting me to start spewing green vomit or keel over.”

I scoff and put my hands on my hips. “That’s not funny. This is serious, Claire. You… you’re…”

“I have breast cancer. It’s okay, you can say it. My tits may be small, but they’re deadly,” she says with a laugh.

“The doctor just gave me this form she says you need to fill out,” Drew interrupts, walking through the door.

For the first time since I met him, I’m actually glad to see Drew. Ever since Claire told us the news and we almost got kicked out of Fosters, he’s been the calm, rational one. We met Drew when Claire met her husband, Carter. Drew and Carter had just recently moved to our town and they worked at the same car manufacturing plant where my husband Jim worked. From day one, Drew was always the guy who said whatever he was thinking no matter how inappropriate or disgusting it was. He’s the jokester in the group, the crazy dude you sometimes don’t want to be seen in public with. Who am I kidding? You never want to be seen in public with Drew. The last few days, though, he’s kept us all from falling apart and on a few occasions, I’ve actually thought about hugging him to thank him. Then I remember the story he told us last week about how he and his wife Jenny decided Tuesdays were now referred to as Taco Tuesday in their house. Something to do with salsa on his penis and Jenny wearing a sombrero. I’ve blocked out the rest of that story out of respect for my mental health.

“What’s the form for?” Claire asks, craning her neck to look at the paper Drew holds out to her.

“It’s all about your likes and dislikes and some ‘getting to know you’ shit. It’s like the cancer version of Match.com. I think they want you to get a little action while you’re here,” Drew replies.

The nurse finishes up Claire’s IV and smiles at us. “That’s just a way for the staff to get to learn a little more about you. We want you to be as comfortable as possible and we feel that knowing some personal things about you helps us make that easier.”

She fiddles with the IV machine, presses a few buttons and then leaves the room, telling Claire she’ll be back in a little while to check on her and pick up the finished form.

“I don’t have the energy to fill that thing out, will you guys do it for me?” Claire asks, closing her eyes and resting her head on the pillow behind her.

At this point, I would strip naked, light myself on fire and run screaming through the halls of this hospital if she asked. It’s not easy for someone like me to feel helpless. I’ve spent my life being known as the bossy, take-charge one in this group. Having to stand off to the side and watch your person suffering and not being able to do a damn thing about it is sobering.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Claire. Jim and I will fill this out for you,” Drew announces with a smile as my husband and Carter walk through the door, their arms loaded with coffee, bags of chips, Snickers, Pepsi and anything else they could find in the vending machine down the hall.

“Dude, they had pudding cups in the vending machine?” Drew asks, his eyes growing wide as he snatches a chocolate cup out of Carter’s hand.

“Uh, not exactly. We found a fridge a few doors down and it was filled with a bunch of free stuff!” Jim explains.

I shake my head at them. “You guys, that’s probably the nurse’s lounge. You just stole someone’s lunch.”

Drew already has the top off of the pudding cup and we all watch as he reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a mini bottle of Kahlua. He unscrews the top and dumps the entire thing into the cup of pudding, using his fingers to stir the mixture around.

“Mmmmmm pudding shots,” he mutters before tipping the cup back and slurping the entire thing down in one gulp.

Carter busies himself dumping all of the food on a table in the corner of the room, lining it up by size and then rearranging it by color. He huffs and then tries organizing the items alphabetically. Carter has been manically arranging things since Claire got the call from her oncologist last week. He started at Seduction and Snacks, putting all of the butt plugs with the ball gags because they both start with B. After that, he took every item out of their pantry at home and lined them up by expiration date. When he tried to rearrange Claire’s baking cupboards, that’s when she put her foot down and told him if he put the cinnamon near the coriander she would castrate him.

I feel for the guy, I really do. He needs to keep himself busy so he doesn’t dwell on what’s happening with Claire. I tried doing something like that after she told us. I decided it was a good idea to take up running. Jim found me an hour later, two blocks away from our house screaming about how no one in their right mind should run unless someone with a gun was chasing them. Even then, I might just let the guy shoot me. Running is dumb.