Free Keep Calm and Carry a Big Drink by Kim Gruenenfelder

bacon.”
    “I’m not done here,” Seema yells toward him.
    “I’ll let you make another case against my loft,” Scott tempts her from the other room.
    Seema clenches her jaw, torn. Finally, she walks up to Jay and wags her finger in his face. “I swear to God, if you hurt her, I will break you like a twig.”
    “That’s exactly what I just told him,” I hear Scott call calmly from their room. “I just said it in guyspeak.”
    Seema turns to leave. “Yeah, but I actually meant it!” Seema yells to Scott as she walks to the doorway. She turns back around to Jay. “I will be back at two, and then I’m taking you shopping.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Jay says a little mockingly.
    Seema puts her hands on her hips. “Do you even know what I’m taking you shopping for?”
    “Nope. Don’t care. I promise I’ll go wherever you want and do whatever you say at two o’clock. For now, I’m half-naked and in a pretty girl’s bedroom, so go away.”
    Seema opens her mouth to speak. Then for some reason she takes a moment before saying sternly, “I’m not kidding. Two o’clock.…” Then she warns “And she better still be intact when I get back.”
    “Dude!” I yell at her.
    “Sorry,” Seema quickly apologizes to me. “I’m backing off.”
    Seema makes a show of putting her left index and middle fingers up to each eye, flipping them toward Jay’s eyes, then back to hers as she slowly backs out of my room and walks away.
    The second she’s out of view, Jay races over to the door and closes it silently.
    I am still in bed. “How did you know my birthday was on Bastille Day?”
    He smiles sexily as he strolls back to bed. Before he kisses me he says, “I think the more important question is … does that get me to third base?”

 
    E IGHT
    Seema took Jay out all afternoon, ostensibly to return some wedding gifts, show him her wedding venues, and have a nice, quiet lunch, just the two of them. I totally understood, she wanted and deserved to spend time with him. But I was disappointed anyway. Jay did text me around five o’clock to ask if I wanted to join them for dinner, and I said yes.
    Texting. Man, do I hate texting. I know it makes me old, but I feel so disconnected from someone whose voice I can’t hear. You’re not talking, you’re typing. As if men weren’t uncommunicative enough before, now they’ve invented something that allows them to have entire relationships without ever having to speak to you. (What do you bet texting was invented by a group of guys? I’m just sayin’…)
    Scott was still at the house, so at some point I meandered into the kitchen to hang out with him. I watched him as he sketched on a white pad.
    “What’cha working on?”
    He seems startled. “Hey, didn’t hear you. You want me to get out of your hair?”
    “No, no. This is your house in a week. I’m the one who should be leaving.”
    Scott raises his eyebrows. “Yeah, well…”
    What I want to say is Yeah, well … what? But instead, I head for the coffeemaker. “You want some coffee?”
    “I’d love some. Thanks.”
    I grab two blue mugs Scott and Seema just received as wedding gifts from the cabinet, pour us some French roast. “Do you take anything in your coffee?”
    “Nope. Just black.”
    I bring his coffee to the kitchen table, place his mug down, then grab an ice cube from the freezer, throw it in my cup, and take a seat. I crane my neck a bit to see what Scott is working on.
    On his sketch pad I see a graphite-pencil drawing of a thin, yet curvy, woman dressed in an early-1960s swimsuit. Very Mad Men, very cool. Next to her, written in bright red, are the words I Love Her More Than Anything. “Wow. That’s amazing.”
    “Thanks. This is for my next series of pieces. It’s loosely based on the Six-Word Memoirs books. Each piece will be titled with six words.”
    The more I look at the picture, the more I realize the girl looks as if the weight of the world is on her shoulders. Yes, she