Page 8 of Cocky Jerk

Smirking, she shakes her head.

“Nothing. Let’s go, I’m starving,” she says, taking my hand as she drags me toward the elevator and stabs the button with her finger.

“Your husband knows about our little lunch date, right? He’s not going to magically appear at the restaurant and bust my face open with a right hook, again, is he?”

Yeah, that happened.

Once upon a time, Soraya called on me to make her now husband jealous. Ever the helpful friend, I volunteered my services and posed as the new guy in her life. I suppose our mission succeeded since the pretty boy dislocated my jaw. But, hey, I’m trying to let bygones be bygones. I even shook the guy’s hand and gave them a fat envelope at their wedding.

I’m all for being the bigger man.

* * *

We goto Katz delifor lunch. They have the best pastrami in all of New York City and that’s not a matter of opinion, it’s a damn fact. I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise. I’m halfway finished with my sandwich when Soraya whips out a notebook and pulls a pen from her cleavage. Completely unfazed by her ways, I take another bite as she goes over her checklist.

About a month ago she called me, asking to meet up for lunch. Soraya’s best friends and my cousins, Tig and Delia, are celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary in a couple of weeks and since they’ve been having a rough time lately, Soraya thought a surprise party would lift their spirits. Tig is a giant pain in my ass, but him and Delia are family and when family hurts, I hurt. Besides, I’m all for a good party. We met two days later and have been communicating through text daily. It’s the most we’ve spoken since she got hitched, and I realize I kinda miss having her as a constant in my life. So what if her husband is a stuck-up suit, Soraya is good people and you can never surround yourself with too much of that, especially when there are so many assholes in this world.

“Are you listening to me?” she asks as the wrapper of her straw hits my forehead.

I have no fucking idea what she said, but I nod with my mouthful of pastrami and reach across the table to snatch the lonely pickle on her plate. It’s a sin to waste food.

“So, what do you suggest we do?” she presses.

Fuck.

“About what?” I reply, forcing the pastrami down my throat. She sighs exasperatedly and flips her Pocahontas like hair over her shoulder.

“You weren’t listening!”

“I’m sorry, repeat it one more time, dollface,” I say, grinning at her sheepishly. It’s a piss-poor consolation prize for not paying attention to her. The last thing anyone needs is for those blue tips to turn red. Graham will have my ass, I’ll be stuck planning this party by myself and everything will turn to shit.

“You need to figure out a way to get Tig and Delia to the party.”

“Whoa,” I say, nearly choking. “Why are we giving me the hardest job?” Tig and Delia own a tattoo shop on Eighth Avenue and unless there is an apocalypse there is no way in Hell they’re going to shut down their shop on my account.

“Someone has to do it.”

“And we think that someone should be me?”

“Why not? You’re going to have to connive a way to get them both out of working. It’s a miracle they showed to my wedding, and that was just a small thing in City Hall.” She pauses to frown. “If you had a girlfriend, this would be easier.”

How does me not having a girlfriend relate to any of this?

“Excuse me?” I question.

“We could tell them you were proposing or something. They wouldn’t miss that for anything.”

She’s right.

Because they’d have to see me down on one knee to believe it was happening.

Like Antonia is a no-fly zone, so is fucking marriage.

“Right, okay, so marriage and a girlfriend are not an option,” I tell her.

I can’t believe I have to even say that out loud.

Crazy, I tell you. The whole fucking female species is absolutely nuts.

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