Raising an eyebrow, he opens it, takes a swig, and grimaces. “This stuff is shit.” He sets the bottle on the floor.
“When the room stops spinning again, I’ll see if I can pour coffee.”
“You do that.” With a yawn, he puts his head back down and rearranges the blanket. “Do we have to get up right now?” I shake my head. “Then wake me when I’ve been restored to being a human.”
He’s got the right idea. I email my secretary that I’m not coming in, crawl back in bed to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee, and sleep until noon.
When I wake up the second time, I feel marginally better. Not so woozy. Drew is sitting up, scrolling through his phone with an odd expression on his face. After I go to the bathroom, splash cold water on my face, and reheat the coffee, I hand him a cup, which he takes in his other hand and sips absentmindedly. I sit down across from him. “What’s up?”
“Holy fuck,” he whispers.
“Is the coffee that good?”
“No. I mean, the coffee is fine. But holy fuck, dude. You have to be sitting down for this.”
I shake my head slightly and give him a look like, Already am. “Go on.”
“I think I fucked up. Big time.”
Coffee giving me life-sustaining vim, I motion for him to continue. Feeling well enough to move my arms without nausea now. Progress.
He looks guilty. Like when we got called into the principal’s office in eighth grade because, yes, he really did arrange for the water balloons to be dropped on the cheerleaders the day they all wore white T-shirts. “You’re gonna hate me.”
“I’m never gonna hate you. Well, I already do, but that’s nothing new. Spit it out.”
“I fucked up.”
“I understand. You do that by living. Setting aside that issue, what happened?” The coffee is a vital force pouring into me, and my mind starts working.
Slowly. I’m still hungover.
But I’m wondering what’s going on today. Whether the news cycle has changed. If I can show my face at the office. How Evie is doing.
He sets down his mug and squares his body towards me. Serious Drew is a rare bird. I should jot him down in an Audubon journal. But he creaks out a story. “When I went out the other night, I hooked up with a girl at a bar. She gave me a blow job in the women’s bathroom—”
I swallow the hot drink and chuckle. “Not sure I want to hear this—”
“You do. It was a good one.” I glare at him, and he continues. “Anyway, she said that my dick should be famous.”
“Oh, no,” I say sarcastically. “Only one famous dick allowed here.”
“Well, it should be,” he insists, and I laugh at him, then rub my temples because it hurts. “But I digress. I was fucking drunk, Josh. I don’t know how I kept it up—”
“TMI, dude.”
“Yeah. Sorry.” His expression morphs into one of utter discomfort, his eyebrows all wonky. He presses his lips together and hollows his cheeks, letting out a breath. Then he steels himself. “I’m pretty sure that she mentioned, in between sucks, that I should be like the guy on All About the D, and I might have told her that I know the guy.”
Unease vibrates through me, and I shift in my seat. Suddenly I don’t want to know what he’s going to say. I think I know what’s gonna come out of his mouth, and I don’t like it. At all. But like querying a doctor about how long I have to live, I gotta do it. I hold my breath, wince, and ask, “And?”
“And when she put her number in my phone, she must have seen your messages. Because now she’s texting me going, ‘We should hang out together and get on Josh’s blog.’” He holds up his phone with text after text lit up. “I must have told her about you when I was drunk or she scrolled through our conversations. I’m sure I wouldn’t have said you, Josh, were the D-guy, but I think I said enough that she pieced it together …” He trails off, catching my expression, and sets down the phone like it’s a ticking bomb.
My heart beats so fast it’s roaring in my ears, and flashes of anger thrum through me, each one growing in intensity. While I have a temper, I normally tamp it down. Behave. Try not to be a dick.
I do my best to fend it off now, but I’m failing. I clear my throat. “You think you told some random hookup my deepest, darkest secret. While drunk. During a blow job.”
He nods.
The veins in my neck pulse sharply, hazing my vision. “And you’re sure of this?”
“I can’t think of any other reason why she’d be mentioning you by name. I haven’t told anyone, swear. But I must have told her enough.” He pauses to swallow. “She’s a regular in Gary’s column.”
I can do nothing but stare at him. Unable to talk. Unable to function. Slowly, carefully, I set down the Juliska mug, governed by a little, careful voice telling me not to break my stoneware or do anything I’d regret. Like split Drew’s face with my fucking fist.
I take a deep breath. Stretch my fingers out. Turn the pewter-colored mug ninety degrees so it looks better on the coffee table. Another breath.
Drew lets out a strange whinnying noise.
He reminds me of a bleating goat.
And with that, my faculties return. The words come out through gritted teeth. “I can’t believe that my stupid fucking friend, the one I’ve spent my entire life trusting, the one I would literally take a bullet for, the one I’ve entrusted with everything—is the one who fucking ratted me out. I can’t even look at you,” I hiss.
Fuck tamping down my temper. My fury swells and overflows. He’s so repellent, I can’t be near him. I jump up, ready to take off, but I really want to kick his stupid ass. Then it dawns on me that I should.
I turn and lunge at him.
With his shirt fisted in one hand, I rear back, ready to end him. But it’s the fear in his eyes, the remorse and something else that almost looks like disappointment that makes me strike the leather sofa cushion next to his head instead of his face.
“Damn you,” I gasp, staggering away.
I stand, hands clenched, eyes closed, willing the anger to subside.
His low voice breaks the silence. “I’m sorry, Josh. I’m so fucking sorry.”
I turn to glare at him. “You ruined me. My family. My relationship with Evie. My business. Her job. She’s probably going to get fucking disbarred. And you’re sorry?”
“You’re the only real family I have, dude. You know I’d never do this on purpose,” he says, holding up his hands. “I never meant to for this to happen. I guess it just slipped out.”
My eyes sting, the rage almost blinding me. “It needed to not ‘just slip out.’ It’s my fucking reputation. I. Trusted. You.”
“I know,” he says. “I know.”
Pacing, I can’t even begin to form a plan to deal with this. All I can manage is gut reaction. “Get the fuck out of my house!”