With painstaking slowness, Noah lifted his foot to investigate. A large, rusty nail protruded from the sole.
“Whoa.” Lucille rushed up the stairs and pushed Perdie aside. “That looks bad.”
Perdie attempted to disguise her horror. She was very squeamish. “Noah, we’ve got to get you to a hospital, quick. Here, grab onto our shoulders and we’ll guide you down.”
Lucille put her head in her hands. “I think I’m drunk and sober and hungover all at once.”
“Too bad, get in the car.”
It took both Lucille and Perdie shouldering Noah’s body to get him to Perdie’s car, and folding him into the backseat.
Brunch was officially over.
Perdie and Lucille sat shoulder to shoulder in the hard plastic chairs of the emergency room. They’d waited for over two hours before a doctor finally could see Noah. And now they were waiting longer while Noah got an emergency tetanus shot and his foot examined.
Lucille, anxious and a little drunk, had burst into tears at the news, but Noah had been stoic as ever, explaining to her calmly that a nail in the foot was nothing compared to a boxing match.
“Are you furious with me?” Perdie asked, staring at the vending machine against the wall in front of her. She wrung her hands in her lap, her ankles crossed. “I shouldn’t have interfered with you and Hampton.”
Lucille rested her head on Perdie’s shoulder. She sighed. “No... No, I’m not mad. I mean, what you did was wrong but... Okay, I have a confession to make. That guy Michael from, like, two years ago—”
“The bass player?”
“Yeah. That’s the one. Well, I may have texted him on your behalf saying you moved to Alaska.”
“You can’t be serious. Who would even believe that?”
“He didn’t know Taylor Swift.”
“Excuse me?”
Lucille dramatically rolled her eyes. “Okay, so he was waiting for you in the kitchen one time and that ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ song was playing over our speaker system, and granted it’s not from the greatest era of Taylor’s music, but still he said ‘Who sings this?’ and I said ‘Taylor Swift’ and he said ‘Who’s that?’ And, Perdie, I can’t abide by the elitism, I just can’t. Imagine a musician not knowing who Taylor Swift is! I gave him a preemptive strike. It was wrong of me though. And Michael probably wasn’t even half as bad as Hampton. Not even a tenth as bad. I don’t know what I was doing with Hampton, anyway. It was like I was under some weird spell.”
Perdie pursed her lips, then sighed. “How about we admit that our intentions are good, but our boundaries aren’t always great. So, we need to respect boundaries a little better. Deal?”
“Deal.” Lucille rested her head against Perdie’s shoulder again. “I’m lying. I might do it again. I’d probably do a lot of things. I couldn’t stand to see anyone hurt you. Or Taylor.” She sniffled and rubbed her face.
Perdie rested her head on top of Lucille’s. “I know, Luce. Me too. And don’t even get me started on what I’d do for Rihanna.”
“But next time let’s get a handyman. And some pepper spray.”
“Really? I thought the banana pudding worked fine.”
Lucille laughed. “Maybe now isn’t the best time for me to leap back into the dating pool. I think I need a little time to myself.”
“Oh?”
“And...speaking of the dating pool, you gonna ’fess up about those dirty pics you were sending this morning?”
A cold wave washed over Perdie. “Carter. Shit. Shit. What time is it?”
“Six fifteen?”
In the midst of panic, time slipped away from her. She cursed herself and her abnormal brain. Perdie reached for her phone—Shit. No phone. “Quick. Give me your phone.”
“I thought we were setting boundaries?”
“Lucille!”
Lucille dug her phone out of her handbag and handed it over.
Perdie couldn’t call or text Carter because she didn’t know his number. The best she could was try his office phone, but he wouldn’t be in the office. She let her head drop back in the chair. She’d have to email his work address. Ugh, HR better not find any of this.
As she was typing, a sinking feeling festered in her stomach. Surely he would understand why she had waited to contact him. Her phone was broken after all. And an ex-boyfriend had attempted to assault a friend of hers. And their client had stepped on a rusty nail due to her homeowner negligence. It wasn’t like she had purposely stood him up...
At the end of the message, she left Lucille’s number, asking him to contact her there. She returned the phone to Lucille. “Hey, this is important, are you sober now?”
Lucille tilted her head, considering the question, then nodded. “Feels like it. Why, do you want to get a drink? Honestly, I could use one.”
“No, pay attention. If you get a text from a number you don’t recognize, let me know right away, okay?”
Lucille saluted. “Aye, aye, captain.”
By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, Perdie’s sinking feeling had grown to the size of a black hole.
Noah had been all patched up—hopefully he wouldn’t suffer any infections—and he’d stayed with them overnight. She’d woken to find him splayed out on the couch, legs dangling off the end, with Bananas sleeping on his chest as if it were an enormous dog bed. Both were snoring.
Coffee mug in hand, Perdie picked up the faux fur blanket that was hanging off the side of a cushion and pulled it over Noah and Bananas so that Bananas’s little head was poking out beneath.
