“Well, I’m not gonna say no to that. But I need to eat before I caffeinate. I’ll go have cereal real quick and I’ll be back in ten minutes?”
“I could make us eggs,” I offered.
She grinned. “I thought you said you didn’t cook?”
“I’m perfectly capable of eggs,” I assured her.
“All right. If you say so. I do need to go get the thing we’re doing, though, so I’ll be right back. Can you take Grace?”
I held the baby while Vanessa made two trips back to her place. One to get Grace’s swing and a diaper bag, and the other for the mystery activity she had planned. In between I brushed my teeth and washed my face as best I could while holding a baby. I didn’t change. I was in house slippers, a white T-shirt, and gray pajama bottoms.
I didn’t usually let myself be dressed down like this in front of anyone. But since Vanessa didn’t have the sling on her chest anymore, I saw that not only was she wearing a Schrute Farms shirt with a picture of a beet on the front—an Office reference that I now understood—but she also wasn’t wearing a bra. Changing might make her uncomfortable, like she was underdressed.
And I liked it. I liked that she didn’t feel the need to impress me and I didn’t feel the need to impress her. There was something comforting about it, about just being you in whatever state you happened to be in.
Vanessa came back lugging an enormous canvas bag behind her. The sack was so full it jammed in the doorway and I had to put Grace down and run to help her.
“What the hell’s in here?” I asked, setting it in the middle of the living room floor.
She was panting from the effort, leaning forward with her hands on her hips to catch her breath. “Adventure and excitement. It’s fan mail—sure to be both thrilling and horrifying in equal measures.”
“You get this much mail?” I asked, eyeing the sack.
She shrugged. “Sure. It comes from all over the world, so…” She crouched down and grabbed the bottom of the bag, then lifted it and spilled the contents onto the carpet. Letters fanned and boxes tumbled out.
“Jesus, how many months’ worth is this?”
“About two weeks,” she said, kneeling back and looking it over.
I blanched. “Two wee— How many people follow you?”
She shrugged again. “A lot.”
I made cappuccinos while Vanessa sorted the envelopes and boxes into piles. Then I went to the fridge and started to rummage. I didn’t have much. I ate most of my meals out. But between some cheeses, the sauce from some leftover chicken cacciatore I’d brought home a few days earlier and some crème fraîche, leftover Italian bread, and a container of Chipotle guac Vanessa ran to get in her apartment, I managed to make us some pretty decent Spanish omelets.
We sat on the floor of the living room to eat them in our laps so we could start to open mail.
“This tastes amazing,” she said, licking some sauce off her thumb. “You seriously undersold your egg-making abilities.”
Grace was napping in her swing next to us and Harry was snuggled up against Vanessa’s thigh, sleeping. She put a hand on his head.
He growled.
She set her plate on her knees. “Okay, some fan mail disclaimers.”
I took a sip of my coffee and set the mug back down on the carpet. “Shoot.”
“All right. I don’t know what’s waiting for us in this pile. Most of my fans are perfectly normal and nice. But it is the Internet. I’m not saying there’s a severed ear in here, but there might be a severed ear. General rule of thumb, if it’s dripping, smells bad, or vibrating, I don’t open it.”
I put my plate in my lap and spread the crème over my omelet. “Why? Because it could be a bomb?”
“No, because it’s probably a vibrator.”
I almost choked on my laugh. Jesus, she cracked me up.
“There’s going to be nudes. Hopefully for your sake, you only open up the female ones.”
I was still chuckling. “Women send you nudes?”
She looked me dead in the eye. “All. The. Time. And I don’t eat anything anyone sends me.”
“Even if it’s untampered with?”
“Yup. Somebody might have rubbed their balls on it or something. It does not go in my mouth. Also, I don’t touch anything from Monett, Missouri. We’ll need to set it on fire. Don’t ask.”
She reached into the diaper bag she’d brought over for Grace and pulled out hand sanitizer and baby wipes and set them off to the side between us. “We’ll need this. Are you ready?”
“Ready,” I said.
She gave me a mock serious look. “You’re a brave man for doing this, Adrian Copeland. Braver than most.”
I smiled as I grabbed the first box and tore the tape off it.
An hour later we were sitting in a pile of empty envelopes and cardboard, wearing an assortment of paraphernalia from the fan mail. Both of us were covered in glow sticks. Vanessa wore a necklace strung with Froot Loops. She’d made me put on an extra-large shirt from a fan in Maryland that said I HAVE CRABS on it, and we both had stickers on our arms.
It was ridiculous. Normally I’d never do something this juvenile, but I had to admit I was having fun.
Vanessa did all the cards and I did all the packages, since she had a hard time with her hand. This meant she got the majority of the dick pics.
“We got another one,” she announced, putting a picture upside down in the dick pic pile.
I shook my head with a smile. “This is some job you have here.”
Vanessa scoffed. “I just don’t understand why men think we want to see that. It looks like a wrinkled elbow or something. It is not cute. Send me a picture of a puppy or cookies or something.” She ripped open an envelope. “If some guy sent me a picture of a cake at two a.m. like, ‘Hey, gurl, you up?’ I’d be like, ‘Hell yeah I’m up, come over.’”
I snorted. “Is it really that common? Do women get pictures of strange men’s dicks often?”
She tore open a pink envelope. “Most of being a woman is running a gauntlet chock-full of penises,” she mumbled. “I hope you don’t send them.”
I picked up the next box. “I’ve never sent a dick pic. I prefer the shock and awe of letting them see it in person.”
She practically cackled, and I smiled at the victory of making her laugh that hard. “Just for the record,” she said, “I soooo do not believe you.”
I gave her an amused look. “You don’t believe I don’t send dick pics?”
She shook her head, still giggling. “Nope. Men like you always send dick pics.”
I smirked, looking at the contents of my box. A large, squishy poop emoji. “Men like me, huh? And exactly what kind of men is that?” I held up the brown spiral and Vanessa nodded to the donate pile.
“The super-confident, self-assured, brooding alpha male kind.”
I chuckled. “Well, I hate to disappoint you, but, as far as I am aware, my penis has never been photographed.”
She put her hand out. “Let me see your phone.”
I squinted at her. “What?”
She looked at me, dead serious. “Let me see it. You don’t have any dick pics. What’s the problem?”