“Hailey! You’ve got to see this! Stat!” It’s Jenny’s voice yelling from the bullpen.
Stat? Well, then it must be important. I pick up my coffee cup and duck out of my office toward Jenny’s desk. I find her sitting in her chair, staring at the computer screen with eyes so bright you’d think it was Christmas morning.
“What’s up?” I ask, coming up behind her.
“This!” She points a perfectly manicured finger at the screen.
I bend closer, and gasp. “Oh my God.”
“Oh my God,” she confirms.
“Oh my God,” I say again, my jaw half open.
“Oh my God,” she repeats.
“Guys,” Dion calls from his cube/desk. “We just got an emergency request from a priority client. Should I—”
“We’ve got this!” Jenny and I shriek in unison. Then we look at each other and burst out laughing.
Softening my tone, I glance over at Dion. “Don’t worry, we’ve got it covered. Jen and I have been handling this account personally for months.”
And our hard work is finally coming to fruition, because either I’m misinterpreting this email, or…we actually get to meet Mr. Dick this morning.
Subject line: Lubrication needed ASAP
MrEightInches: Yo, need a bottle of lube, preferably in the next hour. Willing to pay extra for rush order. Extra-large 64 ounce bottle, warming lube, edible preferred but not necessary.
The address he provides isn’t to the building we usually deliver to, where we just leave his mysterious packages with the doorman. And he included a cryptic set of instructions: “Tell the guard at the door you’re there for Thomas. I’ll come out and meet you.”
Jenny is practically bouncing in her chair. “He has a name! His name is Thomas! Thomas! And he’s coming out to meet us! We’re going to meet him!”
I scan the rest of the form. He didn’t include a picture this time, but it sounds like maybe he was in too much of a panic to take the time to pose for us. Who can blame him? Lube emergencies sound stressful.
Jenny won’t stop giggling as she hops out of her chair and grabs her purse from the bottom desk drawer. “I am so excited right now,” she declares.
Honestly, so am I. We’ve been responding to this guy’s sex-obsessed requests for months now. I am dying to put a face to the eight-inch package. I wonder if being this excited to meet some random man is considered cheating. No, right? I mean, Matt can’t fault me for wanting to meet such an infamous client, can he?
“You think Matt will get mad that I’m meeting a man who likes to show me his dick?” I ask Jenny as we leave the office to track down a cab. Normally we’d ride the subway, but Mr. Dick needs his lube in the next hour. We can’t let him down.
“Um, no. I don’t think Matt is capable of getting mad at you,” Jenny replies, waving at an approaching taxi.
A few seconds later, we’re in the backseat and directing the driver to the nearest sex shop, because I don’t think a drugstore will have the extra-large, warming, edible lube our client requires.
“Seriously, that man worships the ground you walk on,” Jenny adds.
I feel myself blushing. I think she might be right, though. Ever since The Night of Many Disasters, as we call it, our relationship has been awesome to the degree of amazeballs. We see each other as often as we can. We have the greatest sex imaginable.
He even referred to me as his girlfriend the other day. In front of his daughters! Yup, the other night when June tried to snuggle with me on the couch while we all watched a Disney movie, Matt teasingly swatted her little hand away and said, “Hailey’s my girlfriend, Junebug. Find your own.” But we all ended up snuggling together, anyway, Matt’s daughters curled up between us while he flashed me sweet, tender smiles over their heads every other second.
I like what we have. No, I love what we have. And I think he does, too. The only dark spot in our otherwise bright lives is the growing tension between Matt and his ex. After I told him about Kara’s possible indiscretions, I thought for sure he’d confront her. He didn’t.
No, Matt refuses to discuss the potential affair with his ex. He claims he doesn’t want her to blame me or Fetch for breaching client confidentiality, and that he doesn’t want any hostility to affect their relationship as co-parents, but…the hostility is there. I feel it in the air every time she comes to pick up the twins. I see it in Matt’s eyes every time he’s around Kara. It’s like a thick thundercloud hanging above our heads. Or rather, Matt is the thundercloud.
The resentment is growing inside him, and I’m terrified that one of these days it’s going to explode in the mother of all confrontations.
For now, all I can do is hold my breath and hope that he lets go of that resentment. It doesn’t affect our relationship in the slightest, but I worry that his daughters will start to pick up on the tension.
“By the way, how fun was the game on Saturday night?” Jenny raves, turning to grin at me.
I’d brought her along to the WAGs box, which I later found out isn’t normally allowed. But Katie Hewitt made a special exception when I told her I could just sit with Jenny in the stands. For some reason, Katie and the others have really taken to me. I want to say it’s because I’m awesome, and I’m sure that’s part of the reason, but I’ve honestly never had so many women clamouring to be my bestie before.
“It was a blast,” I agree. “How potent was Estrella’s mango margarita?”
Jenny groans loudly. “Oh Lord. Potent as hell. My stomach was doing the mango-tango the entire day afterward. I think I’m dating my toilet now.”
I snort. “Speaking of dating, what happened with that guy you were seeing? Hank?”
“Frank,” she corrects, then sighs. “I cut him loose. He was sending too many dick pics. Seriously, it got annoying. I mean, you’ve seen one dick, you’ve seen ’em all, right?”
The cab driver twists around to grin at us. He’s in his late fifties, I think, with a shaved head and white teeth that sparkle as he smiles. “Amen, sister.”
Jenny and I exchange a look, neither of us quite sure what he meant by that. Luckily, we’ve reached our destination. The cabbie waits outside while we duck into Naughty by Nature to purchase our client’s lube, and then we’re back in the taxi heading toward an industrial area near the lakefront.
Jenny claps her hands happily when we arrive at the address provided. “Do you think he’s cute?” she wonders.
“Why? You angling to date him? Because you literally said five minutes ago that you’re tired of dick pics,” I remind her as we get out of the car. “And this guy is the king of the dick pics.”
“King of the Dick Pics would make a great self-help dating book, warning women of the dangers of online dating,” Jenny muses.
I can’t help but snicker. “Tell you what, you write it, and I’ll sell copies on the Fetch website.”
“Deal.”