Forever Checking (Checked Series Book 3)

by Jennifer Jamelli

  Please don’t let there be any tools. No cuticle scraper things. No clippers. No metal. Please.

  Not even new tools are good enough. Because I could still get cut. She could still get cut. And—

  Okay. She’s pulling out the first item. It’s—

  Another pair of latex gloves.

  All right. Good. Good. Good. {Pachelbel continues to play.}

  Her hand goes back into the bag. I hold my breath.

  Anti-metal prayers. Anti-metal prayers. Anti-metal prayers.

  She pulls out…a nail file. In plastic.

  Okay. I can do a nail file. I don’t really like the sound nail files make when—

  Next out of the bag, nail polish. In packaging. Red.

  Red? Seriously, red?

  Like blood. What is he—

  “Don’t worry, Callie.” Him. I catch his eyes. “There is another choice. In case you aren’t ready to handle the red because of the, uh, similarity to, you know.”

  I shake my eyes away from him. Back to Sherry—who must think I’m a complete mental case. Her face gives nothing away, though. Maybe she’s also an actr—

  Sherry pulls out a second bottle of nail polish.

  Blue nail polish.

  Bright blue.

  Ugh. I know what he’s doing.

  Either way, I have to leap out of my comfort zone.

  I can pick a red, bloody, diseased nail color OR I can decide to have bright blue nails that will clash with every piece of clothing that I own. Either choice will drive me freaking more insane than Sherry already thinks I am.

  I roll my eyes up to him to let him know that I’m not crazy enough to have missed what he’s doing.

  And he smirks a little. Smirks.

  Adorably smirks.

  Damn it, Callie. Be irritated with him. At least try.

  I look back at the reflection of my choices.

  Red. Or blue.

  Well, it’s an easy decision.

  The red could have secret blood in it. OR the whole bottle could actually be blood.

  So—

  “Give me the blue.”

  I roll my eyes at him again.

  {A band begins to play “The Victors”—the University of Michigan Fight Song…just like a band always did when Jared used to watch football on Saturday afternoons while I tried to do my high school math homework. Proofs and right angles and stuff. I wonder if Holly watches college football with him now that—}

  Sherry, now wearing her new gloves, touches my hair again. She moves it to the side, unties my shampoo cape, and carefully pulls it off of me. She—

  “Okay, come on over to my manicure station. Your nails are gonna look so pretty.”

  No, Sherry. I’m probably just going to pick off all of the—

  He holds out his hand to escort me to wherever this nail stuff is about to happen.

  And he smiles.

  I groan. But I let him pull me out of my chair, away from the big mirror, and into yet another undesirable situation.

  Or maybe not a new undesirable situation…because I’m still pretty much in the same one as before. Same salon. Same Sherry. So maybe it’s like I’m in a new, advanced level of the same situation. Kind of like an old Super Mario game.

  If I were in a Super Mario game, I could warp out of this level, though. That would be—

  Oh. He’s talking as he’s dragging me through the not very crowded (four other customers—that I’ve seen) salon. I should probably be listening. Because he might—

  CALLIE!

  One. Two. Three. Focus. Hear.

  “—also gave Sherry a brand new hand towel.”

  Got it. New towel. Walk. Walk. Walk. She won’t be touching my hands with a used and overused salon towel with, I’m sure, countless nasty diseases on it. Or stains. Red awful nail polish and blood stains. Thank God. If I can—

  He’s still talking.

  “—thought that maybe you could try to go all day tomorrow without picking at your nail polish. I think that you are ready to try to—”

  Ah…doubtful, Dr. Blake.

  No. Aiden. I’m supposed to be calling him Aiden.

  He keeps talking. And walking. Looking ahead. Not seeing my I’m definitely not going to make it a whole day without picking off my nail polish face. He’ll figure it out soon—

  He stops.

  I stop.

  Right in front of a new seat for me to sit in. Right beside a manicure table. A spotless manicure table. No jars or tools or tissues or anything on it.

  Unlike any of the other tables surrounding it.

  Good work, Dr. Blak—

  Aiden. Aiden. Aiden.

  I look up, and…and he’s looking at me.

  Hopefully. Encouragingly. Happily?

  My mouth smiles back at him.

  I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.

  And then we can get out of here. Together.

  He squeezes my hand before letting go and rubbing his palm quickly over my new seat. After not finding any—Needles? Blood? Gum? Herpes?—he pulls the chair out for me.

  {And the Michigan cheerleaders cheer for me, doing some jumps and claps and waves.}

  One. Two. Three. Sit. My purse resting again on my lap. Sitting. Across from Sherry.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I see him sit down at an empty nail station right beside me. To my left.

  There is no mirror in front of me this time. So I can’t really watch him. I can just watch Sherry. And Sherry’s hands, wrapped in latex gloves, place a brand new towel on the table in front of—

  “You can put your hands on the towel.”

  Okay, Sherry. Okay.

  One. Two. Three.

  Hands on the soft white towel.

  As Sherry’s gloved hands reach for my fingers, I use all of my energy to not flinch, to not be rude. She gets closer and closer and clo—

  “Hold on. I have to just—” She doesn’t even finish her sentence. Her eyebrows scrunch up in some sort of concern, and she gets up, walking to the back section of the salon.

  Okay…

  I don’t move my hands, but I do turn my neck to look back at him. In question.

  He just shrugs his shoulders. And he—

  “So what do you want to do after this?” He speaks. Teasing eyes. Hungry smile.

  Now I shrug. “Oh, I don’t know. What do you want to—”

  “This will take care of the bits of nail polish still on two of your fingers.”

  Wait. What?

  I jolt my neck, my eyes, back to Sherry. She is sitting across from me again, but now she’s holding a half full bottle of nail polish remover and a cotton ball. She swiftly twists off the cap of the bottle, covers the opening with the cotton ball, and flips the bottle over.

  NO.

  How many cotton balls have met the opening of that bottle? How many times did a customer’s cotton ball get double dipped, backwashing all kinds of germs into—

  “Sherry, no.” Him. “Callie can’t have…um, you can’t use that remover. Do you have a brand new bottle or—”

  Sherry’s hands flip the bottle back over so it’s right side up. She places the nail polish remover with the cotton ball on top of the salon table to my right.

  “Oh, I can go look in the back, I guess.” She sounds confused. Apologetic. Amused?

  I don’t look at her. I stare at my hands.

  I don’t want her to go look in the back. She might find a seemingly full bottle of nail polish remover and think that it’s new. But what if the seal has already been removed? If the bottle appears to be full, but the seal is removed, how would she ever really know for sure that no one else has used—

  I really REALLY don’t want Sherry to go in the back to find a “new” bottle of—

  “I’ll take care of it myself.” I interrupt my own thoughts to stop Sherry. Then I quickly scrape off the little bits of nail polish present on my right thumb nail and left pointer nail.

  Sherry coughs awkwardly. “Oh,
um, okay, well…”

  I know, Sherry. I know that wasn’t the healthiest way of treating my nails, but—

  “I guess we can get started then.” She starts to reach for my—

  I yank my hands back to my lap before she can—

  “Sherry.” Him.

  Once again looking out of the corner of my eye, I see him hold out yet another new pair of latex gloves. {Enrique Iglesias serenades him with “Hero.” He shouldn’t just serenade him—he should freaking knight him or something…well, I guess we would need a queen or—}

  “Oh, of course.” Sherry says this in a voice that doesn’t imply any sort of “of coursing.” She cautiously removes her contaminated left glove, pulling at the glove from the bottom and turning it inside out as she pulls it off.

  I approve of this method. All of the germs get stuck on the inside out center of the glove this way.

  She repeats the process for her right hand. Then she puts her gloves in the trash and heads over to the sink. Hands washed and dried. Back over to me…us. New gloves taken from Dr. Blake. Gloves on.

  “Okay?” I think she directs this at him.

  She’s definitely going to make fun of me with her coworkers later.

  I don’t even care. Because later I won’t be here. Sherry won’t be touching me.

  Maybe he will be touching—

  “Yes—go ahead.” He tells her to start.

  Here we go.

  One. Two. Three. I put my hands back on the towel.

  Okay. Okay. Okay.

  Sherry’s gloved fingers come closer and closer and—she’s touching my hands now. Starting to file my—

  Stop thinking about it, Callie. Don’t think about her touching you. Don’t think about the scratchy, sandpapery nail file sound. Don’t—

  But I see her hands touching mine. And I hear the nail file noises. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Scratch. Scr—

  STOP. STOP. STOP. Eyes closed.

  {And music on. Of course. Right now, “Turn the Beat Around.” Gloria Estefan.}

  Okay. Now, think okay thoughts.

  Like…what am I going to wear tomorrow?

  I start to mentally comb through my closet, mind-searching for anything blue. Bright blue. After several minutes of this exercise, I only come up with one option. A skirt with several shades of blue in it. I haven’t worn it in a long time. It might work. Or—

  OH.

  Wet. A little cold. She must be putting the nail polish on now.

  Brush. Brush. Brush. Brush. Brush. Brush. Bru—

  CALLIE! Stop paying attention to that. Stop. Stop.

  Okay…eyes still closed. Back to thinking. Thinking. Thinking. Thinking. {Gloria Estefan still singing, singing, singing.}

  Shoes. I can think about shoes. I don’t have bright blue shoes, though. Too bad.

  Had I known that this was going to happen, I would’ve ordered a pair. Or pairs. Because, really, I’m supposed to have this polish on for multiple days. That’s apparently how people are supposed to wear nail polish.

  I highly doubt I’ll make it more than one day, though. Probably only a partial day.

  So the multiple pairs of blue shoes would’ve probably been a waste of money. But other pairs of shoes that I’ve ordered might also fit into that category…

  I do another mental jump into my closet, this time organizing my shoes in order from most worn to least worn (and some never worn). This keeps me busy, very busy, until—

  “All done.”

  What? My eyes flip open.

  Sherry is looking at me, nodding. “Since I wasn’t, um, supposed to have you go over and put your hands under the light bar with the other customers, I just let them dry here.” She smiles. “And now, they are done.”

  I did it.

  I made it through a haircut AND a manicure. I—

  “Good work, Callie. We are making progress tonight.” He talks behind me. Still in his spot behind me. “Now, while you were sitting there with your eyes closed, you seemed to be in deep thought. Were you thinking about your worst case scenario? Or about the extremely low odds that anything bad would happen? Either one is fine. It’s so important to think through these exercises as we do them so that you face your fears, focus on them, and eventually eliminate them.”

  I don’t turn to look at him right away, just in case he’ll somehow see on my face that he is totally wrong. That I wasn’t thinking about my therapy. AT ALL.

  Shoes, Dr. Blake. I was thinking about shoes.

  I try to make a face to reveal that I was thinking about my worst case scenario, my odds, and my relaxation techniques.

  Game face on (I hope). I turn my head toward him.

  He’s smiling, smiling, smiling.

  Now I am too. He’s so hap—

  “Do you want to share how you went through that thought process now or—”

  “Sherry, your next appointment is here.” Another stylist calls from the front of the salon.

  Good interrupting, Stylist. Because I really don’t want to “share” (DUMB ASS WORD) my thought process.

  “Oh, okay.” Sherry calls back to my savior stylist. Then she turns back to us. “Well, it was nice working with you. Someone can ring you up at the front whenever you’re ready.”

  I force myself to smile at Sherry, but the smile actually turns out to be a real one—because Sherry did a good job. She got me through a haircut AND a manicure.

  Unfreakingbelievable. {Estefan turns back into Iglesias. “Hero” again. This time for Sherry.}

  As Sherry turns to head back up to the front, I pick up my blue-nailed hands and start to reach into my purse for my wallet.

  I don’t get very far.

  “I’m paying for this.”

  I don’t even turn around to look at him. “No, you aren’t. That’s stupid.”

  “No, it isn’t—this is included in your therapy.” His voice gets closer. I feel him move behind me to the other side of my chair. Closer to the front of the salon—and the cash register.

  I stand up and look at him, shaking my head and, well, smiling, because he is grinning at me. “Did you forget, Dr. Blake, that I’m not actually paying for my therapy since my insurance wouldn’t really understand our after-hours arrangement?”

  He shakes his head. And whispers. “Aiden.” Then he…he puts his hand on my waist, warming the whole left side of my body. He whispers again. Close to my face. “Speaking of our after-hours arrangement, I think it’s time that I get to take you home.”

  Him…home…perfect.

  But first…

  “Almost. But first I’m going to pay.” I swat his hand off of my waist and try to push him out of the way so I can move around—

  He puts his arm back around my waist, holding even tighter this time and, well, making me a little dizzy and—

  CALLIE.

  Against my body’s will, I try to shrug out of his embrace, wiggling around and attempting to push past him and—

  And bumping my hip into the next salon table—the one beside the station where my nails just went from clear to blue. The table shakes a little as I make contact.

  I stop moving around, regaining my balance. He stands in front of me, still smiling. Teasing. His arm starts to reach for—

  Oh. My. God.

  Splashing on the bottoms of my nyloned legs. Wet. The tops of my feet. Wet. My copper shoes. Wet.

  I don’t even need to look.

  I know what is spilling all over me.

  The nail polish remover. The bottle with the cotton ball at the top. Only the cotton ball at the top.

  Nail polish remover all over my feet, my shoes.

  Diseases all over me.

  I freeze.

  I’m vaguely aware of the pressure of his hand on my arm, but I don’t really feel it. In a fuzz, in a blur, he says some words to me, but I don’t really hear them. His eyes blaze into mine, but I look through him, seeing nothing.

  I don’t see. I don’t hear. I don’t feel.
r />   But I know.

  I know that I’m covered in germs. I know that I’ve lost all power over my body. I know that I somehow need to get home to my shower.

  He must know too.

  Arms, his arms, are around me. Guiding me, tugging me, moving me toward the front of the salon.

  Tugging. Feet moving. Diseased feet. Ruined shoes.

  Moving. Moving. Moving.

  Body shaking and numb at the same time.

  Him. Right here. So close. Whispering meaningless phrases like “It will be okay” and “No need to worry.” Worthless, worthless, worthless words.

  He says some syllables to one of the salon girls too—I don’t quite catch what he says…sounds like a quote from one of those Terminator movies, though—as we make it to the front door.

  Then he opens the door and pushes, pulls, guides me out. My feet, my body, me. All moving. Moving with him toward his car.

  His arms squeeze the top of me against the top of him. Warm. Close. Comforting.

  But not enough. Not enough.

  He opens the car door and helps me step my diseased, MRSA and SARS-filled shoes inside.

  Great. Now his car is—

  “Don’t worry about the carpet in the car. I’ll have it cleaned tomorrow.”

  Without looking up at him, I nod my head in understanding. In gratefulness. In recognition of the fact that, yes, once again he has accurately read my mind.

  He shuts my door, shuts me in, and walks around to his side as I strap my seatbelt around me (at least I can protect myself from some dangers).

  My feet have no protection. I can feel liquid swirling around in the bottoms of my shoes. Pools of hepatitis and HIV and—

  CALLIE!

  I’m sure that some people bleed when they get a manicure. They have to with all of those crazy tools that are used. There have to be mistakes. Little nicks. Scrapes. Cuts.

  And then, if a stylist uses a bottle of nail polish remover and uses a bleeding person’s…or a scraped person’s cotton ball more than once, then—

  My head starts to pound. I begin to pick off the nail polish on my left hand. I—

  “Callie.” His hand moves over to mine, trying to stop my busy fingers.

  I can’t stop, though. Pick. Pick. Pick. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. His hand bounces up and down on top of mine as I work.

  He doesn’t say anything. He drives with one hand.