Page 1 of Wrong Car, Wright Guy
One
Ruby
The bass thumps, vibrating in my chest as I tap the bar rhythmically, drumming my red fingernails while the bartender lines up eighteen shots. “Come on, come on!” Tonight will end up with someone on the floor or it won’t end at all.
“Oh my god, Ruby. How many of these did you order?” Tahlia yells, the noise of the packed bar making normal conversation an impossibility.
I lean close to her ear and yell back. “Enough to make you forget about that asshole of a man who had the audacity to call himself your boyfriend.”
Tahlia purses her lips and frowns, her auburn hair falling forward over her shoulders. Today is her birthday. Twenty-five. And instead of having the time of her life, we’re drinking away her heartache after her douchebag of a boyfriend decided to dump her yesterday. Seriously, who dumps someone the day before their birthday?Asshatsdo. That’s who.
“Oh darling, don’t say the B word around Tahli-pie,” Darren—our resident drag queen who goes by the moniker ‘Coco Munro’ on stage—says, clicking his manicured fingers at my twin brother, Theo, then pointing at the row of shots with a dangerously long stiletto nail. I look at my chipped polish and wish I was as well-groomed as Darren.
“Let’s do this.” Theo steps forward, slinging a muscled arm around his boyfriend’s slender shoulders. I love Darren like a sister, but he’s prettier than me—even out of drag. He has the kind of body runway models starve themselves for and cheekbones for days. I need to drink just so I don’t feel like the Duff of the group when I stand beside him. When he morphs himself into a she, well, I don’t stand a chance. Coco Munro is so pretty, a straight man would consider switching teams just for a date with her. Me? I don’t get dates at all. With basic blonde hair, brown eyes, and more than my fair share of curves, I’m about as plain looking as one can get. Makeup helps. My feisty attitude doesn’t. Still, I’m not about to start changing. At twenty-six, I’m rather set in my ways, and I kinda like it like that. Men are overrated.
“Maybe I should just call him?” Tahlia suggests, sighing as we line up along the bar, our shots in front of us. “I mean, maybe he just got cold feet, or—”
“No!” Theo, Darren, and I seem to yell in unison.
“OK.” Tahlia’s eyes startle and she tucks her phone straight back into her purse.
“On the count of three,” I say, handing her a shot before picking up my own. We need to get this show on the road before she’s making excuses to leave and knocking on his door. From what I’ve learned over the years, watching my stunning best friend work her way through one disastrous relationship after another, is that the trick to helping her move on is to keep her distracted. “Ready?”
Theo and Darren hold their shots in the air and give me a resolute nod. Tahlia sniffs hers and shrugs. “I guess.”
“OK then,” I start, flicking my long hair over my shoulder. “One, two.Three!”
* * *
“Hoooor.”The noise coming out of Tahlia’s body is akin to the sound a demon would make while being exorcised. For once during the course of our friendship, I’d say no to switching my oversized body with her tiny one. Mine holds liquorwaybetter.
“That’s it, baby. Get it all out,” Darren says soothingly, rubbing her back while she pukes on the ground next to a dumpster. Theo and I try to find a cab so we can get her home and into bed.
“Did she drink more than us?” he asks, sucking on the end of a cigarette that he never lights. He used to be a massive smoker, but ever since he started dating Darren, he’s been trying to quit. He claims that holding one in his mouth helps with the cravings.
“Less. She’s just a bit of a lightweight. Poor girl.” Seeing a flash of yellow round the corner, I step out into the street, ready to flag it down. But it stops about twenty yards away from us when someone gets in first. “Dammit.” I sigh as the light shuts off and it drives by the space where we stand, the dirty slush surrounding our cold feet,occupied.
“I’m OK. I can walk,” Tahlia says, her voice sounding hoarse as she emerges from the side of the building, leaning heavily on Darren.
“Are you sure? We’ll find a cab. Eventually,” I assure her, not really liking our chances at two o’clock on a Sunday morning. It isn’t that there aren’t any around. New York is teeming with cabs. The problem is they’re mostly taken, and the ones that aren’t don’t want to risk having some girl puke in the back.
“I’m sure. Walking will be faster anyway.”
“Come on, then.” My brother slips his arm around her waist and holds her against his strong body.
“Ugh, why aren’t you straight?” she gripes, loping along beside him. If you’ve ever seen that movieTwinswith Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in it, you’ll have an idea as to the difference between mine and Theo’s looks. My twin is tall and beautiful with slightly darker hair than I have, a sculpted body—that Idon’tpossess—and a thousand-watt smile. In high school, girls fell at his feet. But he was never one to swing their way. He didn’t date at all until college, which is when Darren entered his life. They met at a bar when Theo was only twenty-one and have been inseparable ever since. We should all have a love as pure as theirs. Sometimes, I think that’s why I’m still single. I’m waiting to find my Coco.
“He can never be straight because he’s too bent up over me,” Darren jokes, walking alongside Theo with his hips swaying from side to side. He’s in a pair of jeans and a fitted tank top with five-inch heels on his feet, traversing the sidewalk as easily as if he was wearing a set of trainers. Meanwhile, I’m wobbling along in mytwo-inch heels that are biting into my feet and giving me blisters on my toes while I carry both Tahlia’s and my bags, sweating in forty-degree weather. I suck at this being feminine thing.
“Well, you’re lucky,” Tahlia says. “I keep thinking I’ll find my one but…” I can hear the hitch in her voice that tells me a distraction is needed andstat.I amnothaving her finish her birthday celebration by crying over the douchebag who dumped her.
Just as I’m about to tell a bad joke or burst into song, the sleek black body of a familiar-looking Porsche comes in to view, looking a lot like a panther crouching in the dark.
“Tahlia.” I stop walking, the others quickly following suit. “Isn’t that Douchebag’s stupid car parked right over there?”
Squinting against the dim lighting and the alcohol in her system, Tahlia looks at the car and shrugs. “I think so.” Terrence, the guy she was dating—stupid name—was an investment banker and loved to flash money around like he was the mayor of pimptown. Honestly, I always hated the guy. He was smarmy and talked down to people. But Tahlia has been my best friend since the first grade, so I put up with him for her. But now that he’s unceremoniously dumped her in the nastiest of ways, I can let my true feelings be known.
“That’s his car,” I declare, starting across the street, my anger on behalf of my friend churning in the pit of my stomach.
