"When are you going to make the mojitos?" Amanda asked Marc as soon as they had both flopped down on her small couch.
Marc turned to Amanda. "I thought you were going to."
"Why me?" Amanda asked. "I'm not a bartender."
"But you are a lush," Marc snarkily replied. Getting up from the couch, Marc started searching through Amanda's bare cupboards. "I'm starved. What do you have to eat? Every time I come here, you have nothing to eat." Opening Amanda's freezer, he pulled out a bottle of vodka. "But you have plenty of alcohol."
Amanda stretched herself across the couch and stared blandly at Marc. "Eat? Why would I have food here?"
Marc consulted the mojito recipe he'd downloaded from the internet earlier this morning. Wilhelmina had been particularly vicious to him this week and Amanda had suggested a happy hour at her apartment before they went out for the evening. They'd both agreed on mojitos, but neither of them knew how to make them. So in between visits to the Dude Cruise website, he'd downloaded the recipe. Too bad no one had remembered to buy the ingredients.
Amanda came to stand next to him. "I don't have fresh mint leaves. Or limes." She snatched the recipe from Marc's hand. "This is too complicated. Let's just go out." She started at the sound of footsteps getting closer to her apartment. "Do you think that's Henry?" Amanda whispered to Marc. Both crouched by the door, trying to hear if the footsteps were getting closer to her door. The sound of the footsteps seemed to drift away. Having had enough of crouching on the floor and wrinkling his new pants, Marc stood up and looked through the peephole.
"What do you see?" Amanda hissed.
"Nothing. It's a peephole. Unless he's in front of the door, I can't tell who's out there." Marc pressed his ear to the door. "I don't think it was lover boy. You're safe for now."
Stomach twisting, Amanda got to her feet and opened the crisper drawer in her refrigerator. Pulling out a bag of chips, Amanda immediately ripped it open and started shoving the chips in her mouth. "I can't take this, Marc. If he comes to my door, I'm going to freak out."
"Who cares if Hank comes to your apartment? Tell him you had a fever or something that caused you to go temporarily insane, and that's why you kissed him." Marc took a handful of chips from Amanda and sat down on the couch.
Amanda desperately wanted to confess what had really happened to Marc. But how could she tell him that she'd kissed Henry and liked it? If she concentrated hard enough, she could still smell him. She could still feel what it felt like when he held her tightly against him. Worse still, she wanted to feel it again. "Are you hungry? Let's order a pizza," Amanda said abruptly changing the subject.
An hour later and after having found some mixer for cosmopolitans, Amanda and Marc were both sitting on her couch staring blankly at her TV. "When's the pizza coming?" Marc asked.
Pulling herself from her drunken stupor (she guessed they both drunk at least two drinks each on fairly empty stomachs), she tried to remember when she'd called the pizza place. "I don't know." She was about to say more when her buzzer went off. She and Marc looked at each other. "Pizza!" she said gleefully and handed the nearly empty bag of chips into Marc's hands.
"About time you got here," Amanda said as she threw open the door.
"I'm sorry. I didn't know you were expecting me at a specific time. I should have called before I came over," Henry apologized.
As quickly as she opened the door, Amanda slammed it shut. "You can't be here!" Amanda motioned Marc over. "He's here," she hissed.
Marc sank further into the couch cushions and ate a large handful of chips. "I know."
"Aren't you going to help me?"
"No, this is better than what's on TV."
"I hate you," Amanda said as she put the chain on the door and slowly opened it. "Uh, hi Henry."
"Can . . . can you let me in?" Henry asked putting his face to the crack in the doorway.
"Sorry, I can't. Why don't you just hand me my handbag and you can go home." Amanda put her hand through the small opening and motioned for him to give it to her.
"Why can't you let me in?" Standing so close to the door, she could smell his cologne and it was driving her crazy. Her resolve to keep him out was weakening. "Amanda, we need to talk about what happened in the elevator. I'm not giving you back your purse until you tell me what happened in there."
Amanda sighed. "Please give it to me now and I promise I'll talk to you tomorrow?" Again her hand slid through the opening and she grabbed at her purse. Henry caught it and carefully placed her hand on his chest. His heart was beating wildly.
"Can't you see what you're doing to me? I need answers now." His thumb was idly rubbing back and forth over the top of her hand.
Amanda looked back at Marc, motioned that she would be just a minute and slid into the hallway. "Listen, Henry . . ." she started, but was cut off when he grabbed her and began kissing her again. How could someone that she didn't even find attractive kiss her like that? How could she like it so much? More than anything else, Amanda wondered how someone as nerdy as Henry could have so much passion pent up in them. She wished he'd never stop and was disappointed when he did.
Henry leaned his forehead against hers. "Good evening," he said in his formal way that usually annoyed her. Right now it was making her insane.
"Hi," she said breathlessly and stared at his lips. "Kiss me again," she commanded.
Henry didn't need to be asked again. Once more, he began kissing her. She didn't know how long they stayed like that, but again they were interrupted by the arrival of the pizza man. "This your pizza?"
"What?" Amanda asked dazedly. Pizza? She knew what she wanted right now and it definitely wasn't pizza.
"Did I interrupt something here?" The man asked eyeing Amanda and Henry's disheveled clothing.
Amanda opened her mouth to deny that she and Henry were doing anything that needed to be interrupted, but found she could say nothing. All she wanted to do was drag Henry into her apartment and make a man out of him. She figured one night of passion would get him out of her system. So ignoring the pizza man, Amanda stood eyeing Henry wondering how she was going to get rid of Marc.
Seeing that Amanda was not answering the deliveryman, Henry shoved a twenty-dollar bill into the man's hand and handed the pizza to Amanda. "Thanks."
The delivery man quirked an eyebrow at him and said, "Have a good night."
Annoyed, Henry waved him off and turned to Amanda. "Shall we eat this inside?"
Amanda grabbed Henry's hand and began dragging him into her apartment. It was Marc's voice that stopped her. Amanda say that Marc had his hands covering his eyes as he spoke into the hallway at them. "I realize that I'm probably interrupting some sort of 'Beauty and the Geek' moment right now, but I need to talk to you."
Caught! Amanda dropped Henry's hand and shoved the pizza box into it. "Yeah?"
"Your dad called while you were talking to Hank. He said it's urgent, you have to call him back."
"Uh, that's Henry," Henry corrected Marc.
"Whatever," Marc said dismissively. "Amanda, your dad sounds ready to blow a gasket." He pulled Amanda aside. "Listen, this is the perfect opportunity to get rid of him."
"Amanda, if you're having some kind of family emergency, I can talk to you tomorrow." Henry nervously pushed the frames of his glasses up the bridge of his nose
Marc began shoving him out the door, but not before taking Amanda's handbag from him. "She is. Amanda will have to come and play another day, Romeo." Before he knew what had happened, Henry found himself standing outside Amanda's chic Manhattan apartment. Smiling to himself, Henry decided to head for home. He didn't know what was going on, but it had been a good night.
Things did not end so well for Amanda. "What happened out there?" Marc asked as Amanda checked her cell phone and saw that she had a voicemail.
Amanda shooed him away and listened to her father's irate voice.
"Amanda, I'm sick of paying for your outrageous credit card bills. I assume you know that money does not grow on trees. I won't stand for this anymore. I'm cutting you off. It's time you learned the meaning of the word economy."
He was clearly drunk, but Amanda knew he meant business. She called his cell phone, his office and his home. No one picked up. She turned to Marc.
"My dad's cutting me off. He's not going to pay for any of this anymore," she said as she gestured around room. "I'm going to be as poor as Betty!" she wailed.
Shocked, Marc held her close. "We'll think of something."