CHAPTER 7
THINGS YOU CAN DO TO
MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY
(YOU WON’T BELIEVE #4!)
ADRIAN
I woke up to knocking on my door. I glanced at my phone. It was 7:03 in the morning. It was Saturday, so I didn’t have to work and I’d been planning on sleeping in. Damn. Probably Becky.
She’d texted me a few times last night to check in on the dog, and I hadn’t texted her back. She was probably here on her suicide watch.
Harry Puppins growled from the pillow next to mine as I threw off the covers and put on slippers. I’d started letting him sleep in the bed. I couldn’t stand the frail, confused way he looked at me when I’d put him in the
laundry room at night.
He still bit me every chance he got.
I opened the door expecting my assistant, but it was Vanessa standing there. She had Grace strapped to her front in a baby sling. “Hey.” She beamed up at me.
I hadn’t seen her since Monday, five days ago, when we’d done dinner and The Office at her place. I’d worked late every night this week, and I
hadn’t knocked to take her trash out again because I didn’t want to wake her up when I got home.
She’d been randomly sending me Office memes. It was like a tiny little smile that popped up on my phone once in a while to surprise me. I liked it —though I was too busy to respond most of the time.
I smiled at her. “Hey. Good morning.”
Her eyes were a little red. Maybe she hadn’t slept well last night.
She bounced the baby. “Sorry I didn’t text. This is sort of an impulse visit. I was on a walk around the building. I get stir-crazy in there. I passed by your door and the next thing I knew, I was knocking.”
She was very perky for 7:00 in the morning. I felt my smile reach my eyes.
She was in pajamas. Fleece bottoms with the Grinch on them. I couldn’t see the gray shirt under the baby sling, but it was baggy. Her hair was piled in a messy bun on top of her head and she had on unicorn slippers. She was a hot mess and it was oddly attractive.
I wondered what the real reason was that she didn’t date. She certainly was datable. Good-looking, intelligent, fun to be around. Inherently likable.
I’d really enjoyed hanging out with her the other night.
I hadn’t had a chance to check out her channel yet. I’d been slammed at work. I was in the middle of a jury trial. But now I wished I’d taken a few minutes to look at it.
She cradled Grace’s bottom in the sling. “Anyway, I was wondering if you’d like to…” She wrinkled her forehead and peered past me. “Are those crime-scene photos?”
I looked over my shoulder. “Oh, yeah. I was working from home last night.”
She edged past me without being invited in and made her way to my dining room table. She scanned the photos with her back to me. “You know, without the lawyer thing for context, this makes you look like a serial killer.
Like you might as well have a necklace made of teeth or something.”
I chuckled. “And yet you’re not afraid to be alone here with me?”
She looked back at me and shook her head. “This is not how I die.
Believe me, I know.”
She was wearing a brace on her right hand. I nodded at it. “Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.
“No. Carpal tunnel.” She cocked her head. “Is your tetanus shot up to
date?”
I wrinkled my forehead at her. “What?”
“There’s a thing I thought you might want to do with me. Do you have
time?”
I smiled. I actually did have time.
The weekends were hard these days. It’s when my personal life, or lack thereof, really glared. No more dinner every Sunday with Mom and Grandma. I’d had Rachel to look forward to every few weeks, but now that was over. I wasn’t training for anything at the moment, no marathons or fun runs, and it was winter, my least favorite time of the year to be outside. If Vanessa hadn’t shown up, I think I would have opened my eyes to an instant gloom. I appreciated the distraction.
“I have time,” I said. “What’s the thing?”
“You’ll see. We can do it at my place, or here, since you have the floor space.” She looked around with her hands on her hips. “Why is your apartment so big? I feel like mine used to be a file room or something.”
“This used to be two units. I took them both and knocked down the wall.
Put in the bigger kitchen.”
“Do you cook?”
“Not really. Kitchens equal resale value,” I said, crossing my arms.
“Okay. But you obviously make coffee,” she said, nodding at the $2,000 espresso maker I had on my counter. “That thing is vulgar.”
I glanced into the kitchen. “I like good coffee. I get the beans locally roasted.” I looked back at her. “Do you want one?”
“Well, I’m not gonna say no to that. But I need to eat before I caffeinate.
I’ll go have cereal real quick and I’ll be back in ten minutes?”
“I could make us eggs,” I offered.
She grinned. “I thought you said you didn’t cook?”
“I’m perfectly capable of eggs,” I assured her.
“All right. If you say so. I do need to go get the thing we’re doing, though, so I’ll be right back. Can you take Grace?”
I held the baby while Vanessa made two trips back to her place. One to get Grace’s swing and a diaper bag, and the other for the mystery activity she had planned. In between I brushed my teeth and washed my face as best I could while holding a baby. I didn’t change. I was in house slippers, a
white T-shirt, and gray pajama bottoms.
I didn’t usually let myself be dressed down like this in front of anyone.
But since Vanessa didn’t have the sling on her chest anymore, I saw that not only was she wearing a Schrute Farms shirt with a picture of a beet on the front—an Office reference that I now understood—but she also wasn’t wearing a bra. Changing might make her uncomfortable, like she was underdressed.
And I liked it. I liked that she didn’t feel the need to impress me and I didn’t feel the need to impress her. There was something comforting about it, about just being you in whatever state you happened to be in.
Vanessa came back lugging an enormous canvas bag behind her. The sack was so full it jammed in the doorway and I had to put Grace down and run to help her.
“What the hell’s in here?” I asked, setting it in the middle of the living room floor.
She was panting from the effort, leaning forward with her hands on her hips to catch her breath. “Adventure and excitement. It’s fan mail—sure to be both thrilling and horrifying in equal measures.”
“You get this much mail?” I asked, eyeing the sack.
She shrugged. “Sure. It comes from all over the world, so…” She crouched down and grabbed the bottom of the bag, then lifted it and spilled the contents onto the carpet. Letters fanned and boxes tumbled out.
“Jesus, how many months’ worth is this?”
“About two weeks,” she said, kneeling back and looking it over.
I blanched. “Two wee— How many people follow you?”
She shrugged again. “A lot.”
I made cappuccinos while Vanessa sorted the envelopes and boxes into piles. Then I went to the fridge and started to rummage. I didn’t have much.
I ate most of my meals out. But between some cheeses, the sauce from some leftover chicken cacciatore I’d brought home a few days earlier and some crème fraîche, leftover Italian bread, and a container of Chipotle guac Vanessa ran to get in her apartment, I managed to make us some pretty decent Spanish omelets.
We sat on the floor of the living room to eat them in our laps so we could start to open mail.
“This tastes amazing,” she said, licking some sauce off her thumb. “You
seriously undersold your egg-making abilities.”
Grace was napping in her swing next to us and Harry was snuggled up against Vanessa’s thigh, sleeping. She put a hand on his head.
He growled.
She set her plate on her knees. “Okay, some fan mail disclaimers.”
I took a sip of my coffee and set the mug back down on the carpet.
“Shoot.”
“All right. I don’t know what’s waiting for us in this pile. Most of my fans are perfectly normal and nice. But it is the Internet. I’m not saying there’s a severed ear in here, but there might be a severed ear. General rule of thumb, if it’s dripping, smells bad, or vibrating, I don’t open it.”
I put my plate in my lap and spread the crème over my omelet. “Why?
Because it could be a bomb?”
“No, because it’s probably a vibrator.”
I almost choked on my laugh. Jesus, she cracked me up.
“There’s going to be nudes. Hopefully for your sake, you only open up the female ones.”
I was still chuckling. “Women send you nudes?”
She looked me dead in the eye. “All. The. Time. And I don’t eat anything
anyone sends me.”
“Even if it’s untampered with?”
“Yup. Somebody might have rubbed their balls on it or something. It does not go in my mouth. Also, I don’t touch anything from Monett, Missouri. We’ll need to set it on fire. Don’t ask.”
She reached into the diaper bag she’d brought over for Grace and pulled out hand sanitizer and baby wipes and set them off to the side between us.
“We’ll need this. Are you ready?”
“Ready,” I said.
She gave me a mock serious look. “You’re a brave man for doing this, Adrian Copeland. Braver than most.”
I smiled as I grabbed the first box and tore the tape off it.
An hour later we were sitting in a pile of empty envelopes and cardboard, wearing an assortment of paraphernalia from the fan mail. Both of us were covered in glow sticks. Vanessa wore a necklace strung with Froot Loops. She’d made me put on an extra-large shirt from a fan in
Maryland that said I HAVE CRABS on it, and we both had stickers on our arms.
It was ridiculous. Normally I’d never do something this juvenile, but I had to admit I was having fun.
Vanessa did all the cards and I did all the packages, since she had a hard time with her hand. This meant she got the majority of the dick pics.
“We got another one,” she announced, putting a picture upside down in the dick pic pile.
I shook my head with a smile. “This is some job you have here.”
Vanessa scoffed. “I just don’t understand why men think we want to see that. It looks like a wrinkled elbow or something. It is not cute. Send me a picture of a puppy or cookies or something.” She ripped open an envelope.
“If some guy sent me a picture of a cake at two a.m. like, ‘Hey, gurl, you up?’ I’d be like, ‘Hell yeah I’m up, come over.’”
I snorted. “Is it really that common? Do women get pictures of strange men’s dicks often?”
She tore open a pink envelope. “Most of being a woman is running a gauntlet chock-full of penises,” she mumbled. “I hope you don’t send them.”
I picked up the next box. “I’ve never sent a dick pic. I prefer the shock and awe of letting them see it in person.”
She practically cackled, and I smiled at the victory of making her laugh that hard. “Just for the record,” she said, “I soooo do not believe you.”
I gave her an amused look. “You don’t believe I don’t send dick pics?”
She shook her head, still giggling. “Nope. Men like you always send dick pics.”
I smirked, looking at the contents of my box. A large, squishy poop emoji. “Men like me, huh? And exactly what kind of men is that?” I held up the brown spiral and Vanessa nodded to the donate pile.
“The super-confident, self-assured, brooding alpha male kind.”
I chuckled. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but, as far as I am aware, my penis has never been photographed.”
She put her hand out. “Let me see your phone.”
I squinted at her. “What?”
She looked at me, dead serious. “Let me see it. You don’t have any dick
pics. What’s the problem?”
I grinned. “Okay. Let me see yours.”
She shrugged. “Fine. Whatever. But no deleting anything first. We hand them over and whatever’s in there is in there. No filter.”
“Okay.” I unlocked my screen and handed it to her.
She grabbed at it excitedly. But then she froze and clutched it to her chest. “Wait, why aren’t you nervous?”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Because there’s nothing in there you can’t see.”
She narrowed her eyes. “This feels suspicious. Is this your burner phone?”
I laughed. “No. What kind of guys do you date that you think I need a burner phone?”
“I told you, I don’t date. I just find it awfully odd that you’re not sweating bullets right now.”
“Because there are no dick pics in there. Like I said.” I put my hand out for her phone.
She gave me a long, hard, playful glare and then slapped her cell into my palm.
We both went quiet looking at each other’s phones.
Vanessa’s cell was like the digital version of her. Nothing but fun. It was bejazzled in pink rhinestones with a sparkly PopSocket on the back. Her home screen was a picture of Grace wearing a little beanie with teddy bear ears.
Mine was the opposite. Black, functional, and with a stock lock screen.
And I meant what I said. There was nothing in there she couldn’t see.
Her home screen had a music app, Uber, Lyft, Tripadvisor, Audible, Instagram, iFunny, and a couple of games.
I tapped on her photo icon and started to scroll through. Everything in her gallery was excitement and color. Pictures of resorts. The bed in the hotel room, an elephant made of towels on the comforter. A snowy small town with a huge mountain range in the backdrop. Her, laughing in a bikini at a swim-up bar in a pool. There were pictures of her holding a sangria on a cobblestone street. A cruise ship on blue water somewhere.
My gallery was boring in comparison. I almost felt sorry for her getting the short end of the stick. It was mostly legal documents and several dozen shots of the sign in the parking garage downtown by the courthouse so I’d
remember where I parked. A picture of a light bulb I needed to pick up at the store, the claim ticket on a dry-cleaning order.
“Wow,” she said, looking at my screen. “You sure do park a lot.”
I chuckled and scrolled on. There was a picture of Vanessa dressed in a milk maid’s costume of some sort under a large tent. She had an enormous stein of beer, bigger than she was. I turned the phone to her. “Where was this?”
She looked up from my phone. “Oktoberfest. Germany. Where are your
pictures of Rachel?”
“I don’t think I have any,” I admitted.
She laughed. “So you had a girlfriend, but she doesn’t go to this school?”
I smirked. “You don’t think I had a girlfriend?”
She shrugged. “I’m just sayin’.”
I nodded at my phone. “Look for her on Instagram. Her account’s private, but if you search on my phone you can see it. Her name is Rachel Dunham.”
I watched her punch the icon and scroll through my phone and my smile fell a little. I should probably unfollow Rachel and her fake account. I made a mental note to do that as soon as I got my cell back. I looked back at the picture of Vanessa, trying to distract myself.
In the Oktoberfest photo her chest was pushed up almost to her chin by a bodice of some sort. Her hair was in an intricate braid that wrapped around her head and she was smiling. She looked beautiful in it.
Her cell phone vibrated in my hand and a number popped up at the top of the screen. It was mine.
“What are you sending to your phone?” I asked.
She didn’t look up. “Pictures of you. I told you, the ladies aren’t going to believe I’m hanging out with you. I’m gonna need proof.”
I tapped on the message and a text from my phone filled the screen.
She’d sent herself three pictures of me from my gallery. One was me with Mom and Grandma at Mom’s birthday back in June. Another was a shot of me shaking hands with Marcus, at a fund-raiser. And the last one was my finisher picture for the last marathon I’d run, six months ago.
“You know, just because you have pictures of me doesn’t prove anything,” I said. “The ladies might say you just took them off my
Instagram.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Good point, lawyer. I am a known cyber stalker.
What do you have in mind?”
“We could take a selfie,” I suggested.
She brightened. “Good idea! Let’s put the baby and the dog in it for a time stamp.”
She picked up Grace and handed her to me. Then she grabbed the dog and crawled through the pile of trash between us, scooted over, and leaned into me, her shoulder pressing into my biceps.
The contact sent a warm ripple through me. It surprised me, gave me an
impulse to turn my head to her.
I kept my face straight.
She angled my phone, we smiled, and she took the picture. Then she took Grace from me and moved back to her side of the pile with the baby in her lap.
The spot Vanessa had touched felt vacant.
We spent another few minutes going through each other’s phones. We both played the first song in each other’s favorite playlist.
Hers was “Redemption” by Lola Simone. Mine was “Back Down” by Bob Moses. I liked running to it.
“So,” she said, returning my phone. “Tell me, Adrian, how much time do you spend at the gym? Why are you so chiseled?”
I laughed. “Chiseled?”
“Yeah.” She cradled Grace and kissed her cheek. “I read a lot of romance novels and this is definitely chiseling that you have going on.”
“I try to stay in shape. I do triathlons sometimes.”
She blanched. “For fun?”
I peeled the tape off a box. “What, you don’t think running, biking, and swimming are fun?”
“I think walks on the beach, leisurely bike rides, and floating are fun. I don’t run unless I’m being chased. So, do you drink anything other than
wine?”
“Bourbon sometimes. You?”
“Gin, socially. What are your vices?”
I wrinkled my forehead. “I drive too fast. And I like good restaurants. I spend too much money on food.”
“Me too! The restaurant thing, not the driving thing. What’s your favorite restaurant?”
“Oh, that’s a tough one.” I pulled a tissue-wrapped snow globe out of the box I was opening, dipped it so that the snow flew, and showed it to her.
She nodded to the keep pile. “I can’t say I have a favorite restaurant. Just favorite dishes.”
She looked at a postcard with a crayon drawing on it. “Even better.
Which ones?”
“Well, let’s see. I like the cavatelli with braised rabbit at Lucrezia’s.”
She was nodding. “Their gnocchi is in my top ten.”
“Yes. And for steaks I like Cl—”
“Clove and Cleaver,” she said, finishing my sentence without looking up.
I smiled. “I love their jalapeno poppers.”
“And the fried green tomatoes.”
I laughed. “Yes.”
She put the postcard in the keep pile. “I am a huge foodie. I almost fainted once in Rome after a PA wanted to eat at McDonald’s. If someone invites me to lunch, and they take me to Taco Bell or something, it’s no longer an outing, it’s a kidnapping. Small business, all the way—except Chipotle,” she added. “I do like Chipotle.”
I chuckled, because I was the same way. Every time I took Mom out to eat and she wanted to go to Perkins, I died a little inside. I preferred supporting small businesses too. And why would you get something mass produced when you could try someplace unique? There are a finite amount of meals in this life and wasting one on something mundane when you have the means to have anything different is a travesty.
“Have you ever been to Badger Den?” Vanessa asked. “In L.A.?”
I had to stare at her for a second. “You know about Badger Den?”
She looked at the front of an envelope, holding Grace against her chest.
“I’ve been on their waiting list for two years.”
I blinked at her. I couldn’t believe I was sitting here talking to somebody who knew what Badger Den was. In Los Angeles, sure. But in Minnesota?
The exclusive, invite-only, secret-location pop-up dinner had been on my bucket list for as long as I could remember. “I’m on their waiting list too, but I haven’t gotten in.”
She smiled. “How about we make a pact. If either of us gets into Badger Den, we’ll take the other as our plus-one.”
“You have a deal,” I said, a little too quickly.
“Of course, you’ll have to fly there. They only give you a few days’
notice.”
“I drive very, very fast.”
She laughed, setting Grace back in her swing. Then she grabbed a yellow manilla envelope and pulled out a package of sponges. She squealed.
“Yeeeees! Yes yes YES!”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Sponges?”
She smiled down on them in her hand. “I did this segment on small things you can do to make you happy. Clean sheets, warm towels out of the dryer, fresh flowers in your bedroom. A new sponge.” She looked up at me.
“It is amazing how restorative a new sponge is.” She got up. “I’m giving you one.”
“A sponge?” I asked, twisting to watch her walk to the kitchen.
“Yup. It’s going to change your life.” She unwrapped it and set it on the sink, tossing the old one. “It’s like a spiritual cleansing. A cosmic reset.”
“A sponge…” I deadpanned, giving her an amused look.
She looked like she was about to reply, but someone started pounding loudly on a door in the hallway. Vanessa peered up past me toward the banging. “That sounds like my door, doesn’t it?” She walked from the kitchen, undid the bolt lock, and poked her head outside. Then she looked back in at me, her face etched in worry.
“I have to go. The police are here.”