Holly:
I knew she was trouble when she walked in, sitting behind my desk, poking at me with sarcastic insults and obnoxious questions. She was cynical, and brash, and beautiful, and living like a girl on the edge, like a girl who was going through something and was lashing out at the world like a girl who was desperately trying to keep herself from getting hurt, or should I say hurt more, and trying not to show it. When we were done, she swaggered off in the direction of her car, report in hand, commenting about how much she just hated people. I had to laughed at her, and assumed that would be it. Imagine my surprise when I discovered her waiting for me, leaning her hips up against the hood of my car in the parking garage, where she asked me if I wanted to get a drink with her later. Normally, I would have assumed she was hitting on me, but she had made it fairly clear that she was straight.
Trouble.
I didn't hear from her for a while after that, and then one day, out of the blue, she called asking if I could be her plus one to her boss's wedding, of all things. I knew I should have said no, but I was intrigued, fascinated really. Ok, fine, I had a stupid girl crush on her, one that I knew I shouldn't let get out of hand. She was straight, after all. But, I blew off dinner with my med school friends and said yes anyway. We did have a genuinely good time, falling into an easy camaraderie, dancing, and joking, and drinking champagne, and trading snarky comments about everything from some of the guest's outfits, to relationships, and the fake nature of social expectations, and events like weddings. It was getting late, and we were dancing when she saw a couple of her coworkers who had been working late enter the room. She muttered the word losers, and stole a full bottle of champagne from a passing tray, before she grabbed me by the hand and dragged me off into the coat closet, making some comment about how tedious this party had become, and rolling her eyes at me. When she started asking me the about being a lesbian, saying all the stupid things that straight girls say, I kissed her. I must admit, I did get some rather smug satisfaction from the dumb-struck look on her face as I got up to leave. But when she had kissed me back I knew I had to go.
Trouble.
After a few days of silence later, we were thrown back together by work and circumstance. Her roommate's kid had been taken, and she asked me to rush the lab work as a favor. When she appeared in my lab, Caramel Latte in hand from my favorite coffee shop, acting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened between us, I informed her that when a kid goes missing it's always at the top of the pile, even though I actually was making an extra effort to rush things along for her. As it turned out, her roommate's kid wasn't really his kid after all, and I didn't expect to hear from her later. I expected that she and her friends would be out getting drunk at their favorite bar after all that had happened, but at the end of the day my phone rang.
"Hey, what are you doing?" She wanted to know.
I had plans to meet my friends Lisa, and Rachel at the gym for a yoga class, and then Thai food. But she sounded so vulnerable, and it had been such a shit day, I took her to the batting cages and arcade instead. Maybe I should have taken her seriously when she whined at me about not doing sports, but I scoffed at her, telling her that trying new things wasn't going to kill her. When she shrieked, and literally threw the bat at the ball, I realized perhaps I had been wrong. As she stomped off the field like a little girl complaining loudly about feeling humiliated, I laughed so hard it hurt. She tried to hit me, but she was laughing too hard and missed. We laughed until we were dizzy and drunk with it. She stumbled into me, holding on, pulling me in tighter and spinning me around until we landed in a heap with her on top of me on the ground. If life had been a Hollywood movie I swear she would have kissed me right then. Instead, she looked shyly up at me through her eyelashes. Her eyes were still sparkling and the color of the sky after it rains as she leaned in closer, and breathlessly whispered,
"I told you I don't do sports!"
So much trouble.
After that, it was like our friendship grew wings. Before I knew it, she was regularly dropping by my lab with coffee, or sandwiches, or shawarma, or, god help my waistline, donuts. When I told her that just because she had the metabolism of a teen age boy, didn't mean that the rest of us could eat like her, she showed up on the route of my morning run and made me buy her breakfast when we were finished. She simply laughed at me, and stole a blueberry from my yogurt when I commented on her giant stack of pancakes with extra bacon. On most nights, when she wasn't working, there was pizza, or movies, or drinks at her favorite bar, or dragging me back to the batting cages and arcade, insisting that I teach her how to hit the ball, or checking out a new restaurant, or just a whole lot of hanging out, mostly at my place.
Trouble.
When the call came from the hospital, my lab was buried under a million marijuana plants, a dead body, a domestic assault, and three teenage girls who had been hospitalized for snorting a bad batch of cocaine. I wasn't expecting it, but I guess no one ever is. When the nurse explained that she had been lucky, that they didn't think that the chemicals had a chance to enter her bloodstream and do permanent damage, that her wrist was badly burned but she seemed ok, I felt like I had been plunged into ice water. I numbly agreed when they asked if I could pick her up and observe her for the next twelve hours as a condition of her release. My heart was racing so fast I thought I might be sick. I knew I would be useless until I saw her with my own eyes. So I left work and ran to Toronto General as fast as my car would go. She was on her feet, much to my relief, and having an argument with the woman I had seen her avoid at the wedding when I got there.
"Hey, let's get out of here." Was all she said, in a soft, almost timid voice, as she laced the fingers of her good hand with mine and practically dragged me in the direction of the car park.
I managed to get her out of the car, up the stairs and into my guest room with out too much incident, although it was clear that she was high as a kite. I was busy finding her an oversized t-shirt and some cut off sweats when I heard a loud thud followed by a muffled yelp. Her jacket was on the bed, and she was lying on the floor, glaring up at me with her pants around her knees. I knew it was wrong, but I started to laugh. The harder she glared, the funnier it all became.
"Don't be an asshole, Nerd! Help me!" She demanded, rolling onto her back.
I crouched at her feet, still gasping for air, as I began to untie the laces of her boots.
"Did, did you ever think about taking off your shoes before trying to get undressed?" I finally managed to sputter.
"Shut up!" She giggled, throwing her good arm across her eyes, while allowing me to pull off her offending boots and then her pants.
I could feel the heat rising in my face as I noticed she was only wearing tiny, black, boy shorts that dipped into a red lace V in the front. My breath hitched as she sat up and fumbled with her shirt, managing to get it half way over her head before whining at me to take it off. I closed my eyes taking a deep calming breath before getting up, pulling her shirt off her head, and placing it on the chair across from the bed. When I turned back around, she was holding her arms out to me and looking at me expectantly, wearing nothing but her panties.
Holy cow! She's my friend! I can do this!
As I tucked her in, I couldn't help kissing her on the forehead. She hummed contentedly at the touch of my lips, closed her eyes, and promptly fell asleep.
Trouble.
I was puttering around my house, organizing my spice rack alphabetically when I heard the scream, and then the crash that sent me running for the stairs. She was standing in the center of the room as I flipped on the overhead light, wild eyed, and brandishing the base of the bedside lamp like a weapon. She dropped it and threw herself at me the moment she realized who I was. I'm not sure if her nightmare was a result of the pain or the oxy, but all I could do was hold her gently as she clung to me, burying her face into the crook of my neck. After she finally calmed down enough to loosen her grip around my waist, I led her to my bed, noting how gross and sweaty the guest room sheets had become. Siting on the edge of the bed she tugged on my hands, begging for me to stay with her. I knew that I shouldn't do it, if only for the sake of my own sanity, but her eyes were haunted, bottomless, and I caved in almost immediately. I could only hope that as she draped her nearly naked body across mine, holding tightly onto me, that she was too stoned to notice the growing evidence of my unwitting arousal, and growing frustration, held in check by pure strength of will under an iron fist.
So much fucking trouble.
I'm not sure when I finally drifted off to sleep, but when I woke up in the early gloom of morning, she was gone. I worried that maybe things had gone too far, but by noon she came swaggering into my office, brown bag emitting the heavenly aroma of Thai curry in one hand, and an evidence bag containing a piece of soiled fabric in the other.
"Hey," she greeted me, wearing a soft, secret smile I'm sure very few people ever see, "I wanted to thank you for rescuing me yesterday."
"Anytime." I smiled back, wondering exactly what she meant by that.
"I would have bought you dinner tonight, but my mother has set me up on date with some guy who is the son of someone in the mayor's office." She made a sour face and continued unpacking our lunch onto my desk.
I was suddenly unhungry, feeling as if my stomach had been drop-kicked off the top of a tall cliff.
"Oh." Was all that I could muster.
"But if he's as bad as the last one, maybe I we can get together for a drink after I ditch him." She continued blithely, dishing herself up a heaping plate of Pad Thai and Penang Curry with chicken.
"Maybe..." I answered, realizing I needed to do something about this situation, and quickly.
Trouble.
After she left I called Rachel. Rachel and Lisa and I had been practically inseparable since our first year of medical school had thrown us together. I met them when I had asked Rachel to dance, and then Lisa had attempted to pick me up at one of the Harvard University LGBT networking events. As it turned out Lisa was dating Rachel at the time, but insisted on an open relationship because in Lisa's words; "monogamy is an arcane holdover from the patriarchy", or as Rachel likes to say, because Lisa can't keep it in her pants. Where I found Lisa to be arrogant, pretentious and condescending at the best of times, Rachel was, and still is, warm, and smart, and funny, but they were a package deal at the time. When Rachel broke up with Lisa because she was tired of being ignored every time Lisa became infatuated with someone shiny and new, Lisa turned to me for support, and by then she was too much like family for me to abandon.
"Oh honey." Rachel practically groaned, "When will you ever learn to stop hanging out with straight girls."
"You're dating a guy." I answered defensively.
"Holly," Rachel sighed, "the difference is that I never claimed to be straight."
"Fine. Whatever." I pouted.
"Ok, look... Lisa and I will put out heads together and see what we can come up with." She replied.
"Do you have to tell Lisa about this?" I whined at her, and cringed, thinking about what Lisa would surely have to say about my predicament.
"It would be hard not to, she is sitting right here." Rachel laughed at me.
Not even an hour later my phone rang with a girl named Stacy asking to meet me on Friday night at The Black Penny at eight. It wasn't until we got off the phone that I realized exactly what I had done.
Trouble. Trouble. Trouble.