Do-Overs

by Christine Jarmola

  “That would be mine,” said a very guilty knight in shinning armor. My brain kept saying that’s okay. But my mouth wasn’t in on the act. Instead, I just mumbled something incoherent. I wasn’t sure if it was the brain injury making me unable to talk or being so close to the man of my dreams. If ever I should have done something over that was the time. But my brain wasn’t only not talking to my mouth, it was on the outs with my hands too. I had dropped my purse a few feet away, and I couldn’t reach it even if my body parts were speaking to each other.

  “Can you bring my stuff?” Al asked. “I’ll get Lottie. She needs to see a doctor and fast. Brain injuries should be taken seriously.” With that he lifted me up. Wow. If my brain could have functioned, I would have been worried that I had something major wrong with me, or that he would think I was too heavy, too fat. Instead, all I could think was how romantic. He just swooped down and picked me up like Rhett and Scarlett. And off we went to our chariot of love. Or Rachel’s beat up old Ford Windstar commonly known as “da Godmother.” At least there was room for all of us, including the ninja force. We even had room for Chuck Norris, but he didn’t show up.

  ***

  “I’m okay. Really,” I finally was able to say when we reached the emergency room doors.

  No one believed me.

  “You’re seeing a doctor,” said Rachel.

  “We’re not having you die on us like that beautiful movie star lady who hit the tree skiing,” said Stina.

  La—ah joined in, “Never take a brain injury lightly.” And the discussion was on about all the famous and not so famous people, including La—ah’s Great Aunt Beatrice, who died from unattended brain trauma. The fact that she was ninety-seven didn’t play into the equation, or so the story went. I only half listened. Al carried me from the car to the hospital entrance. I could walk for myself by then. But why? Here was the world’s most amazing guy willing to carry me. And he smelled so good. I’d enjoy the ride while it lasted. A nurse with a wheelchair met us at the door and the glorious ride was over.

  ***

  After an hour of waiting, x-rays and me begging them not to call my mom and have her come, the conclusion was a concussion. No need to stay in the hospital. No treatment unless I displayed more symptoms. Sometime during the evening Rachel was allowed to go back in the treatment room and had become my surrogate mother. The doctor gave her the list of signs to look for and put her in charge.

  It was well after midnight when we all piled back into da Godmother and headed back to campus. I was delighted to see that while I had been back with the doctors Al had remained with the rest of the ninja force.

  “Al, put on your seatbelt. Nobody rides in da Godmother without proper restraint,” said Rachel.

  “Oh, sorry. I don’t know why, I’m horrid at remembering to use a seatbelt. Thanks.”

  Restraint seemed to be the theme for what was supposed to have been an Enchanted Evening. In no way had this turned out to be the romantic interlude of all our strategic planning. Just Al and me—and Stina and Rachel and Olivia and La—ah in the world’s oldest minivan with Sonic and QuikTrip trash at our feet. No intimate moment to share our deep passionate feelings. I felt like I was on a rerun of Big Love.

  “Can you drop me at the theater?” asked Al. “I need to pick up my car.”

  Fail.

  As we cruised into the back parking lot of the theater building, Al began to gather his evil book bag. Obviously, he was looking to make a quick escape the moment da Godmother came out of warp speed.

  The car stopped. No one moved. Four ninjas tried to melt into the upholstery in order to give us some privacy.

  “Hum, Lottie,” Al looked at me expectantly. Here it came. He would ask me out—or propose. No probably not propose. He’d save that for a real date. He looked at me with beseeching eyes. He wanted something that only I could give. He spoke again. “Um, I need to get out your door. This one doesn’t work.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.”

  I opened the only sliding door that worked and crawled out of the middle row seat so that he and his book bag could get through. As I turned to get back in the van, he took my elbow and turned me to look at him.

  “I’m really, really sorry that I left my ridiculous book bag on the floor and made you trip.” He paused. There was that mischievous little boy smile again, like he knew he was going to time-out, but hoping to charm his way out of it. “Do you think. . . that maybe. . . we could go on a proper date? No emergency room and,” he glanced back over his shoulder, “no ninjas?”

  All I could do was nod my head. Ouch that hurt, but it was worth it.

  “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “You don’t have my number.” I was panicked.

  “I do now. Olivia gave it to me on a note while you were in the emergency room. Rachel gave it to me on an index card. And Stina jotted it down for me on the back of a hygiene pamphlet. Oh and La—ah wrote it on my arm.” He pulled up his sleeve to show my number written in big black Sharpie reaching from his wrist to his elbow. “Don’t worry, I won’t lose you. . . I mean your number.”

  -35-

  He Didn’t Call

  “Lottie, Lottie wake up!”

  I was in the most fabulous dream. A dream where I was dressed in a flowing gauzy white gown and Al was wearing a white piratey shirt, half open. Like those pictures on paperback romance novels. And he was carrying me across the threshold of some amazing. . . And then someone was pounding at my door, which echoed in my concussed head. It was Saturday morning. Serious sleeping time. Somebody was going to die.

  Kasha came bouncing into my room, followed by Kyra and Kaylee. “Look, look!” they all kept saying together like a bunch of yippee dogs when they meet you at the door. Kaylee was holding a take-out bag from the Coffee Corner, Kyra held a cup of coffee, and Kasha held some daisies.

  “I was working the desk and he came in,” said a very excited Kasha.

  “He brought you breakfast,” said Kyra.

  “And flowers,” said Kaylee.

  By this point Stina was up and out of bed also. “How romantic,” she chimed in.

  I was about to say, I thought so too, but before things went too far I had to check one basic fact. “He who?”

  “Al Dansby!” they shouted like a chorus of demented cheerleaders.

  All I could do was smile.

  Sometimes life is good. And then it gets better.

  But very, very seldom did it get as good as it was that morning.

  I opened the bag. There was a blueberry bagel and a banana muffin and a doughnut and a raLSPSerry torte. Also, most importantly, a note.

  Lottie,

  I hope you are feeling better this morning. I still feel dreadful for leaving my book bag in your path. I thought you might like breakfast in bed, but seeing as how your dorm isn’t co-ed I’ll drop it off at the desk.

  I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I sent a variety. For some bizarre reason I thought you liked skinny cinnamon dolce latte coffee. Don’t know why, but hope I’m right.

  Al

  He remembered my coffee order from a time that never really happened. (Wow, I’d never had a guy remember even when it did actually happen.) I wondered, as I had since the whole impossible magic eraser adventure had begun, how much could really be erased. Even if it changed time did residual thoughts still remain somewhere in the very recesses of others’ minds?

  The room had gotten really quiet. I looked around to see what had happened. Kyra was eating the muffin, Kasha the donut, Stina the torte and Kaylee the bagel.

  “Can I at least have the coffee?” I asked, pretending to be angry, but in such a happy mood even food thieves couldn’t bring me down.

  All of a sudden a cell phone began to ring. I went flying across my bed to my dresser to grab my phone. Taking a deep breath I went to answer. But the ringing kept on. It wasn’t my phone.

  “Oops, that’s me,” said Kasha sheepishly. “Hey, . . . oh yeah. Sorry. Yeah, I’ll be right th
ere.” Kasha hung up and then started dying laughing.

  “What?” we asked.

  “I have to go back to work. I got so excited about Al bringing you breakfast, I just left the desk without thinking.”

  With that a trio of laughing K’s left the room.

  -36-

  A Whole New Chapter

  I was finishing drying my hair, very gently with my sore head, when Rachel came rushing into the room.

  “Did he call?” she asked breathlessly.

  “Better,” Stina answered before I could. “He brought her breakfast. Isn’t that romantic?” Stina finished with a heavy sigh. I wasn’t the only one enjoying my new romance. It was if the whole wing of our dorm was basking in the wonderful aura of hopeful bliss. All I could do was smile. I’d been doing that a lot all morning.

  I always loved romance novels growing up. From the sweetness of Cinderella to those bodice rippers with half-clothed men on the front, nothing made my heart melt more or my toes curl tighter than, after hundreds of pages and when it looks all hope is lost, the girl finally gets the guy of her dreams. And then the book ends.

  It’s so not fair. I’ve read for hours and hours and invested all my emotions to get to the happily-ever-after and then it just ends.

  So what happens after the end? He liked me. I liked him. I had spent so many hours hoping and dreaming of ways to get to this point, but this was a whole new chapter. The best chapter? Who knows. It’s the chapter the authors never write.

  What if after getting to know me Al decided he didn’t like me after all? Or what if he did and I suddenly realized I didn’t like him? Maybe I was not actually infatuated with the real Al Dansby, but the fantasy one I had created in my own overactive, hormone-driven imagination? What if he expected sex? On the first date? What if I wanted it and he thought I was slutty? And if I didn’t, would there be a second date? What if he was okay with waiting but after dating for weeks or months or even just a few days he changes his mind? What if we find we have nothing in common, nothing to say to each other? What if he’s a bad kisser? What if he thinks I’m a bad kisser? What if I really am a bad kisser? What if his dad doesn’t like me? What if he finds out I don’t floss regularly? What if...?

  “Lottie, what’s wrong?” Rachel asked. I guess my poker face was a tell-all book again. “You look like you’re getting ready to have a panic attack. Where is that McDonald’s sack we used last time? Everything is working out just like you wanted. What in the name of heaven and Hugh Jackman is wrong with you?” she asked again.

  I had to get a grip. My ninjas had gotten me this far. I’m sure they could help with the rest.

  “I don’t know what happens next,” I said in a small, bewildered voice.

  Stina giggled. Rachel laughed out loud. Olivia yelled from the adjoining room, “Can you guys be quiet in there! Some of us need our beauty sleep!”

  -37-

  Getting To Know You

  “It sure is nice weather we’re having today,” he said.

  “Yeah, not much wind,” I replied. This just couldn’t be happening. I had tried for months to get Al Dansby to notice me, without me making a catastrophic fool of myself, and this was it? We were sitting there in a lovely restaurant while the candlelight flickered, talking about the Oklahoma weather?

  Silence. I knew what he was thinking. It had been a mistake. He wanted to find an excuse to leave. Ever since he had picked me up for our date he’d been glancing at his text messages and looking at the ground. He was regretting our date, our whole start of a relationship. He had been so eager and now, he wanted an out. I knew he did. I started to dig in my purse for my trusty magical friend. I’d just do this over and cancel the date. Save us both a lot of embarrassment.

  “Lottie,” he broke the silence. “I’m sorry,”

  Oh no, here it came. He was apologizing for asking me out and then he was going to end the date. WHERE WAS THAT STUPID ERASER?

  He kept talking while I kept digging. I was going to have to learn to make sure that my magic escape route was always easily accessible. I needed to buy a purse with a special magic eraser pocket built right in for just such emergencies.

  “I was so elated that you would go out with me tonight. I . . . um . . .,” he kept struggling for words and looked down again at his phone. Obviously he couldn’t find a nice way to say, This ain’t gonna work.

  Instead he said, “I’m so happy to be with you that my brain doesn’t seem to be communicating with my mouth.” And then came that mischievous, but shy little boy smile again. “It was so much easier to talk to you in the dark.” Pregnant pause. Was it going to turn into the whole nine months? Should I ask the waiter to turn the lights out? But then he was talking again. “I know we barely know each other. It’s strange, because I always seem to feel like I’ve known you longer. But, I do know that I want to get to know everything about you. Not just what you think about the weather.” With that he gave a relieved laugh and million-watt smile and continued. “I have a confession to make.” He paused and looked at his phone again.

  For the past ten seconds things had seemed to be going well. We weren’t going to talk about the weather and then suddenly he was confessing. What? Was he already engaged to someone else? Was it one of those third world country childhood betrothals?

  My fingers finally touched that pink eraser, when he spoke again. “I am a little bit shy. On stage is easy because someone else has written all the lines and I simply repeat them. But in real life I have a very hard time thinking and speaking at the same time.” He gave an embarrassed laugh. “I can’t believe I’m telling you this, but I wrote down some things to say on our date on my iPhone and then I lost them and I keep trying to find that app and it was making me even more distracted and making it even harder to think of the right thing to say. So then all I could think about was the weather and . . . can we start again? Without the meteorological updates?” Al gave a sheepish smile and I dropped the eraser back in my bag, glad that I hadn’t undone what promised to be a great evening. I had to learn not to be so trigger happy with changing time.

  “I think this is the point where we start to play twenty questions,” Al suggested. “You go first.”

  Twenty questions. Try twenty thousand. Where to start? Will you marry me? would probably be too pushy. I’d start with something more generic.

  “Where are you from? You don’t sound like most of the people around here.” Oh that sounded stupid. He didn’t sound like the people around here, he sounded glorious.

  “Whelp, little lady,” he said with his worst Oklahoman accent. “I reckon I do sound a little foreign as I’m not being from around these here parts.” With that he laughed and returned to his luxurious voice. “I’m from California.”

  “Oh, but . . . well, I don’t know. There’s something a little different.”

  “You should go into linguistics if you picked up on that. Yes, I am a little different.” Oh no, now he’s going to tell me he’s a vampire. Or gay. Or a gay vampire. “My mother was from London. I spent some summers there with my grandparents. So, there are some times—some little phrases that I use that sound not quite from around these parts.

  “My turn. Where are you from?” he asked.

  “Just down the road a fair piece,” I said with my best Okie accent which wasn’t hard as I always said everything with an Okie accent. “I moved a whole three hours away from home to go to school. I’ve lived in Oklahoma my entire life. In fact the same house since I came home from the hospital at birth. Pretty boring, huh?”

  “No, not boring. Settled. Secure. It’s a nice place to live.”

  “How does a guy,” a gorgeous, sexy, accented guy, “from California with a British mother end up at OKMU? Do you have the world’s most faulty GPS?”

  That got a laugh out of him. Oh, and what a laugh. Not a loud, barky laugh that seemed fake, or a snorty, wheezy laugh that sounded geeky. No, just the perfect masculine, deep laugh. Yep, he even laughed perfectly.


  “I came for their theater program. OkMU has the best theatrical department anywhere except the coasts.”

  “But California? That’s movie world. Wouldn’t you find better schools there?”

  He was quiet for a while, deep in thought. Like there was a lot more to the story, but unsure how much he wanted to tell me, someone he barely knew. “Let’s just say, I needed my own space. Next question.”

  Oh great, now I’d blown it. One, okay maybe two if being really picky, down on my twenty questions and I’d already made him defensive.

  “Favorite food?” I asked hoping that was safe.

  “Tacos.”

  “La—ah was right.” Oops, did I say that out loud? “I mean, she just was observing what people prefer in the cafeteria one day.” Bad cover.

  “I guess I’ll take that as a compliment that my eating habits make the daily news. Tune in tomorrow for my favorite drink.”

  “Mine’s Diet Dr. Pepper.”

  “I like coffee. No let me correct that. I love coffee. I live for coffee. Don’t ever come around me in the mornings before I’ve had my coffee.”

  That sent my brain on a short fantasy trip of what would he look like in the mornings before his coffee, with just PJ bottoms and tussled hair and a little bit in need of a shave?

  “Lottie, you okay?”

  Oh crap! I hoped I wasn’t drooling on myself.

  “I seem to have lost you there for a moment. Are you sure your head is okay from yesterday’s accident?” he asked, concern filling his voice. Fortunately, we were distracted by the waiter who came to take our orders. I’ve no idea what I ordered. Some sort of food. I assumed he did too.

  “Back to our questions,” he resumed after our order was taken. “Tell me about your family.”

  “That will cost you more than one question.” I proceeded to tell him of my siblings and my parents. I tried to explain my life as the middle child without sounding whiny about it. I didn’t tell him of my extended family. I didn’t want to scare him off.