Professor Feelgood (Page 27)

“Damn,” Eden says, shaking her head. “Of all the assholes in all the gin joints in all the world, you had to develop a literary crush on The Butthole Next Door.” She throws a look at Joanna. “That’s what Ash used to call him.”

“For the love of Hera’s boobs,” Joanna says, throwing her arms in the air. “Would someone please enlighten me about this Jacob Jacob person before my curiosity gland explodes?!”

Eden picks up the wine bottle and distributes the remaining contents between our three glasses. “Jacob Stone used to live next door to us. He and Asha were besties when they were little.”

I nearly choke on my wine. “Slight exaggeration.”

“Really?” Eden says, fixing me with her sarcastic expression. “From the ages of three through eleven you were practically joined at the hip. People thought you were brother and sister, for God’s sake. He spent so much time at our house, everyone in the neighborhood thought mom had three kids. He was like family.”

I pull my legs underneath me so I can wrap the cover around them. “Yeah, well, that was a long time ago.”

“Oooh,” Joanna says, her eyes lighting up. “So, give me the juicy gossip. Was he the boyfriend-next-door who broke your heart?”

“No,” I say, a little too defensively. “Jake and I never had romantic feelings for each other. We were just friends. The boyfriend-next-door was his step-brother, Jeremy.”

Eden gets up and goes over to a nearby bookcase. “Oh, the tension in our neighborhood between the three of them. It was straight out of a John Hughes movie. Former best friends turn into bitter enemies when girl starts paying attention to boy’s despised brother.”

“Step-brother.”

“Whatever. Even before the smack-talk started, I had no idea how anyone could be friends with Jake. He was a little shit to everyone except Asha. But then, when he became an angsty teen rebel, he stopped being nice to her, too. I mean, I know he had a crappy family life and all, but he really turned into a prime slab of A-grade dick.” She grabs a thick photo album from the bookcase and comes back over to the couch. “Make room, bitches.”

She squeezes her narrow butt between me and Joanna before flipping the album open. “Now, let’s see if we still have some photographic evidence of Mr. Teen Dark-and-Stormy.” She flicks through the pages until she comes to a picture of me and Jeremy. We’re standing in his front yard, our arms around each other, beaming like teenagers in love generally do.

“Here we are,” Eden says, as she carefully pulls the photo free. Then she unfolds the left side of it to reveal a young Jake, standing behind his brother’s shoulder, sneering and flipping the bird.

I remember the day this picture was taken. Jeremy had just told me he loved me for the first time. It was also the day I let him touch my boobs for the first time. I’m guessing those two events were linked.

In that moment, I thought no other girl on the planet could love a boy more than I loved Jeremy. Now, the thought makes me cringe. If that was as good as it gets as far as my love life goes, I might as well just give up now.

I flick my gaze over to Jake. Flipping the bird was his main hobby in those days. I don’t think I have a single photo of him over the age of twelve in which he’s smiling. Not that he smiled much before then, either, but it was around that time we drifted apart.

Looking at his face, I can recognize the scaffolding of the man I saw tonight, especially in the darkness of his hair and eyes, the strong eyebrows, and the sharp cut of his jaw. But in the picture, it’s clear he’s still a boy. I don’t think teen-Jake had even started shaving when this photo was taken.

I turn my attention to the other face in the picture. Ah, Jeremy––the boy who looked like he belonged in a Disney movie. The blond-haired, blue-eyed jock. A picture-perfect boyfriend.

As it turned out, also a total prick.

“Wow,” Joanna says as she takes the photo to get a closer look. “Look at you, Ash. Always gorgeous, of course. And this Jeremy guy … wowzers. He was quite the babe.”

I sip my wine and look away from the photo. “Yep, but as my aunt Judy always said, it’s the good-looking ones you have to watch out for.”

“How long were you guys dating?” Joanna asks as she glances up from the pic.

“For most of high school.” It’s annoying how tight my throat still gets when discussing Jeremy. I always believed there was special innocence to first love, like it’s a pristine notebook in which you write an epic love story. Then you realize there are faint scribbles between the words. Hidden messages that you could probably read if you tried hard enough, but you don’t, because they’re not the story you want to tell.

That was my relationship with Jeremy. His fine print was unexpected and painful, and now, whenever I think about the bright, shiny book of my first love, I realize it’s the crap in the margins that tell the true story.

“Yeah,” Eden says, sensing my discomfort. “Jeremy was gorgeous, but he turned out to be a cheating asshole, so he can go suck on a bag of dicks, forever. Jake may have been a douche, but he never pretended to be anything else. Jeremy was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. If I ever see him again, I owe him a spinning fan-kick to the face for the way he treated Ash.”

Joanna looks crestfallen. “Well, crap. So, your former-best-friend-turned-Frankenteen shows up tonight and admits he’s Professor Feelgood, and … what? He’s still an ass?”

“Very much so.”

“Does this mean you won’t be editing for him?”

“Unfortunately, he had it written into his contract just to annoy me.”

Eden makes a disgusted noise. “That little shit.”

“You could go to Serena,” Joanna says. “Tell her the real story.”

“And say what? That I don’t want to work with the guy they just spent a fortune securing at my request, because we have a rocky past? She’d laugh me out of her office. Oh, yeah, and the other nugget of news I discovered tonight was that Jake didn’t sign with us because our advance was the largest. No, apparently, another publisher offered to make him a millionaire.”

Both girls’ jaws drop.

“What?!” Eden expression is so gobsmacked, it’s comical.

Joanna’s eyebrows have disappeared into her hairline. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Not kidding. Clearly, I’m not the only one to see the potential sales in his millions of followers.”

“Holy crap,” Eden says, her eyes glazing over. “A million dollars.”

I nod. “That was my reaction, too.”

Joanna’s expression morphs into awe. “So … he chose passion over greed. You over the money. Are you sure this man hates you?”

“Very,” Eden and I say in unison.

“So what was the big event that turned you two against each other? I mean, apart from dating his brother.”

“Step-brother,” I say, more out of habit than anything else. “There was no big event. Just years of escalating animosity. The constant drip of our ill-will slowly wore through any bonds of friendship we’d built.” I sip my wine. “And this whole book situation is some form of sick vengeance. I’m trying to find a way out of it, but in the meantime, I have to figure out how to work with him without hiding all sharp implements.”