Page 32 of Sister of the Bride

God, I really need to get laid; otherwise I’m going to wind up turned on by the thought of Toby’s sweat socks. Maybe I should have kept Everett around a little longer. It would be worth it to eat chicken at a restaurant if it meant I could stop having blush-worthy sexy time thoughts about Toby.

Thankfully, Toby cannot see into my thoughts, so he just flops onto the couch. “It was Jen. She ran cross-country in college, and at that point I was basically living on pizza and General Tso’s chicken, so I figured I’d better attempt some kind of physical activity before my arteries filled with rocks.”

“Is that a medical term?” I come around and take a seat next to him and find myself unsure of exactly where—or how—to sit. Before I started finding Toby attractive, I would have flopped down right next to him, head at one end of the couch, legs sprawled across his lap for maximum comfort and stretchitude. But Toby’s entire being suddenly feels like a sex magnet, and if I get too close to him I might just be sucked in with enough force to try to shove my hands up his scrub shirt. Instead I take a seat a respectable distance from him, leaving a full cushion between us, and lean back.

Toby gives me a sarcastic laugh. “Speaking of, how’s your head?”

I reach up and feel a goose egg forming beneath my bandage. I’m dreading looking in the mirror for sure. My bruises usually look like Jackson Pollocks, and I am not psyched for one of those to form on my face. One time I cracked my head on the pass-through in the restaurant, and the next week my gynecologist asked me if I felt safe in my relationship. At least the throbbing has ceased, so thank god for small favors. Hopefully the wedding is far enough away that I won’t still have a mark, because I’m not talented enough with makeup to hide something like that. “Fine,” I say, letting him change the subject away from Jen, as he always does. “My bigger problem is that I’m starving.”

“Unfortunately I have neither the ingredients nor the skills to make you anything, but I can Postmates whatever you want,” Toby says. He whips out his phone and fires up the app. “So what’s your fancy? Thai? Pizza? Thai pizza?”

“Burgers,” I say, because I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast, and I’ve had at least two full breakdowns since then. That requires some red meat for sure. Good lord, was wedding dress shopping really just this morning? My stomach immediately constricts at the memory of Polly in that dress while I melted down in the salon. “Make mine a double, please.”

“Lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, and cheese?” Toby asks, tapping at his phone. It’s been my order since I was twelve and discovered that mustard is good, and I’m pleased that he still remembers despite all those years on the West Coast eating burgers with strangers.

“And cheese fries and a Coke the size of my head, please,” I add.

“On it.” Toby enters the rest of the order, and within minutes he’s tracking it to his door. “Twenty minutes. Can you hang on that long, or should I dig out that brown banana I chucked in the trash this morning?”

I swat at him, though I’d be lying if I said my thoughts don’t linger on the banana for a moment. I lean back on the couch and take a deep breath, my nostrils filling with a noxious mix of sweat and hospital cleaner.

“Ugh, I smell disgusting,” I say. “Sorry, I hope this scent isn’t leaching onto your couch.”

“This couch is older than I am, so no worries,” Toby says. “But you can hop in the shower if you want. I’ve got some sweats I can loan you.”

Which is how I find myself standing in Toby’s shower, surreptitiously smelling the amber bottle of shampoo he apparently uses now that has notes of eucalyptus, pine, and cedar—or at least that’s what it says. To me it just smells like sex, the good kind that’s lazy and lasts all afternoon and ends with a big meal and a glass of wine. Which is not a thought I need to be having while standing naked in Toby’s shower, the suds of his new sex shampoo running down my naked body. Goddammit, I’m definitely going to have to call Everett and un-break up with him. Or download Tinder again, even though I think I’d rather eat my own hand. Anything to kill this case of the hot-and-hornys I’ve developed forToby.

Of course, despite his fancy-man shampoo upgrade, Toby still uses the same old Irish Spring bar soap I remember from when we were kids. As I scrub it over my skin, I have a rush of sense memories—everything from shivering in a tent with him over spring break sophomore year, cursing him for dragging me on the camping trip, to the time he made me watch a double feature of musicals from the Golden Age of Hollywood at the Brattle and I fell asleep on his shoulder duringSingin’ in the Rain(people romanticize those movies, but hoo boy, are they boring). Sure, a lot of the time teenage Toby smelled like a walking armpit, as most teenage boys do, but when he wasn’t rank, he smelled like Irish Spring, and I can’t help but smile, the spray of the shower lingering on my lips.

I didn’t realize how much I missed him while he was gone. Sure, we texted and FaceTimed and hung out over every holiday break, back when he actually came home for them. But it’s never the same with that much distance. He had a whole life without me, first at USC for undergrad, then at Stanford for med school. He had friends and classes and favorite bars. He had a whole relationship with Jen that I still know barely anything about. Hell, he became a runner and I didn’t even know it. Having him back in my life now, seeing him regularly and getting to have that bond again…it feels good.

And I certainly don’t want to fuck that up by picturing him naked. It’s clearly just a by-product of Polly planting the idea in my subconscious and then shaking up my entire brain with her fast-track nuptials. It’s notreal, because I don’t want to have sex with Toby. I mean, my hormones do, because he’s tall and beautiful and makes me laugh. Fuck, it would probably be phenomenal. But then it would be terrible, as most decisions made by my hormones tend to be.

So I don’t want to do it.

Or think about it.

Dammit, I can’t stop thinking about it.

I use the dude sex shampoo and help myself to his face wash, carefully navigating the bandage Toby applied to my forehead. When I step out of the shower and wrap myself in a towel, I have to stop myself from opening the medicine cabinet to snoop. Then I step out of the bathroom into Toby’s bedroom and find that he’s laid out a pair of basketball shorts and a Boston Marathon T-shirt for me. I have to go commando, and the pants are a little big, so I make a mental note not to make any sudden movements lest I accidentally take a flying leap past the “just friends” line by putting on an impromptu striptease. Luckily, my tender forehead ensures that sudden movements are not in my immediate future.

“Hey, Toby, do you have any ibuprofen?” I call as I pull the shirt over my head, careful not to tug on the bandage.

“Tylenol only,” he says, appearing with a glass of water and two pills in his hand. “Ibuprofen can increase the risk of brain bleeds if you have a concussion.”

“Yeah, we get it, you’re a doctor,” I reply, tossing back the pills and praying for them to work quickly. “Fancy medical school and everything.”

Toby ignores my sarcasm. “Food will be here in ten, do you mind if I hop in next?” He points to the open bathroom door, and I nod. I move toward the living room, but not fast enough to avoid seeing Toby peel off the blue scrub top out of the corner of my eye, giving me another glimpse of the definition of his muscles, this time the taut ones across his back. I nearly swallow my tongue and bolt for the door before he gets too comfortable with his old best friend and starts peeling off his shorts.

Which is a good reminder that while I seem to be having a series of impure thoughts about Toby, he is definitely not having the same thoughts about me. I’m still Pippin, best friend of twenty years, knower of all secrets, seer of all embarrassing moments, and practically his fifth sister.

The only thing worse than trying to start something with Toby would be trying to start something with Toby and having him reject me.

Toby’s shower is so fast I barely have time to settle into the sofa before he’s emerging in a loose pair of lounge pants and a Boston Duck Tours T-shirt, his wet curls dripping on his shoulders.

“Okay, I have to ask,” I say, pointing at the overtly touristy shirt that I don’t remember ever being in his collection. “Do you have some kind of deal with the Boston Chamber of Commerce? Or the tourism board? Are you going to start calling it Beantown?”

Toby looks down as if he doesn’t even realize what he’s wearing. “Oh yeah. I amassed this ridiculous collection during undergrad, but I never wore them when I was visiting home. But now Iliveat home, and I can’t let all these perfectly good T-shirts go to waste.” He flops down on the couch next to me and grins. “See, when I got to California, I discovered that Californians are just so fuckingproudof being from California and have to remind you of the state’s virtues at all times, as if they personally grew all the avocados and regulated the climate. I sort of went ham on the Boston freshman year in retaliation. Like, full Ben Affleck. It started with me just wearing the ones I had—you know, Dropkick Murphys and that Wicked Pissah one you bought me as a joke before I left. But soon people started giving them to me for, like, every occasion, and then my entire wardrobe became a walking postcard for the Bay State.”

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