I laughed, “I said the last few years, not the last few hundred years. Laurel and Hardy, really? How old are you?”
She laughed and said, “My grandmother says I was born thirty five.”
“Well if that’s the case that would make you about fifty-three or four. Laurel and Hardy make sense,” I said. “But I’m sorry, no Laurel and Hardy here.”
“Okay, I’ll take Adam Sandler then. Which ones do you have?”
I named them off and she picked Fifty First Dates. It was his chicky-est movie, so I wasn’t surprised. Is that a word? Chicky-est? I don’t think so. I’m glad I didn’t say that out loud. I put it on and then I took our plates to the kitchen. “Do you want seconds?” I asked her.
“No, thank you, I’m stuffed. You did a good job on the salmon.”
“Thanks,” I said. “The asparagus was divine.”
“I think divine is laying it on a bit thick, don’t you?” she said with a grin. “I mean, I might have gone with heavenly, or celestial.”
“And divine is laying it on thick?” I asked with a laugh.
I put the plates in the sink and reached into the freezer to get the desserts. “I can’t really eat dairy,” she said. I guess she thought I was reaching for Jake’s box of Dreyer’s.
“Me neither,” I told her. “It’s lemon sorbet with crushed raspberries. Is that okay?” She grinned and said, “Bring it on.” We ate our dessert and watched the movie. I suddenly couldn’t believe my ears as I heard my own voice announce out loud that this was Adam Sandler’s “chicky-est” movie. When did my brain give my mouth permission to speak?
“Chicky-est?” she said with a grin.
“I’m sure you would have gone with a better adjective, perhaps?” I said, smiling back at her.
“I’m sure anything I went with would have been a better adjective,” she said.
“Are you sure you’re not an English major?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not sure why.” That made me laugh until I felt that old familiar rise of nausea from my stomach, to my esophagus and into my cheeks. Damn it!
I excused myself and headed down the hall to the bathroom. Sometimes I puke once and it’s over, and other times I literally can’t get away from a toilet, or a bucket. Please God, I prayed as I walked down the hall. Let tonight be the former.
I went inside the bathroom and as I closed the door I leaned up against it and took some deep breaths. Sometimes if I slowed my breathing, and didn’t allow myself to get too anxious, I could make it go away before it even really started. As I took my third breath, I could feel the vomit in the back of my throat and I knew that tonight wasn’t going to be one of those nights. I quickly pulled up the toilet seat and bent over it. Within a few seconds, the entire beautiful meal that Molly and I had cooked and ate together was in the toilet. I had meant to turn the water on before I puked. I hope the television was loud enough that she didn’t hear that.
I flushed the toilet and turned around to the sink and turned the cold water on. I splashed some on my face and then reached for my toothbrush. I hadn’t got as far as the paste before I had to turn around again, this time ridding myself of our dessert…I think. I leaned there for a few minutes with my knees against the toilet and my forehead against the wall. I didn’t usually feel pity for myself. In spite of having cancer, I live a pretty normal, full life. But tonight, all I wanted to do was spend the evening with Molly. I wanted to look at her pretty face and talk to her about…everything. Yet here I was with my head in the toilet, and now I’m having a pity party in my head to boot.
I tried it again, turning slowly this time and keeping my eyes I one spot. That’s what my doctor had always told me to do when I got really nauseated. No quick movements of the head or the eyes. It makes you lose your equilibrium which makes you a little dizzy or lightheaded, which makes the nausea even worse.
I washed my face again, this time with a washcloth, and slowly. Then I reached again for my toothbrush. I hoped that the paste wouldn’t make me want to throw up again, but I’d be damned if I was going to go out there with puke breath.
I made it through the teeth cleaning, flushed and washed once more, and then headed out the door and back down the hall, the whole time trying to come up with an excuse for why I was gone so long. As soon as I saw her face, I knew she had heard me throw up. I felt my face going hot with embarrassment and the anxiety stirring in my chest was probably going to make me want to puke again. Then she smiled and said, “Are you okay?”
I smiled back. How could I not? “I’m good, thanks. I have a really…sensitive stomach. That’s what the diet’s about.”
“Me too,” she said. “Believe me, I understand.”
“If anyone else said that, I would think they were just being nice. But somehow I believe that you really do understand.”
“You don’t think I’m being nice?” she said.
“No, I mean…That’s not what I meant, I said it wrong.” She laughed then. She was just yanking my chain. I loved the sound of her laugh.
“I think you’re nice,” I said.
“I’m a wonderful person,” she said with a grin.
Chapter Seven
Molly
“So, is this a real date?” Megan asks me that every time I see Brock. We have been hanging out a lot for the past month or so, but each time she asks me that I say, “No, Meggs. We’re still just hanging out.” She grins at me, like she knows something that I don’t know. Maybe she does. There are a lot of things I don’t know. I mean, I did tell her that I didn’t even want to meet this guy in the first place. Now I look forward to his phone calls and even to the times I go over to his apartment and help him with his homework. Sometimes he even helps me with mine. He’s very “right-brained” and I’m not. I work from the left side of my brain almost always. If it doesn’t have a logical equation, I’d prefer to not have anything to do with it. So, when I have to draw an abstract sketch in art class, Brock is my man. Well, not my man, more like the man. Anyways, he’s awesome with creative stuff and I’m better at the logical things like math and science. Maybe together we make one brain?
Are we dating though? It’s still a no. That one brain thing isn’t like two hearts make a whole. I’m sure every two people who work well together are like that. But it’s not dating. We don’t hold hands, although the one night we danced at the club and he held my hands and pulled me in close, I have to admit I had a hard time catching my breath. He looked down at me; like he was afraid I was going to pull away. I did think about it, but I didn’t want to. It felt…comfortable, so I stayed there until the song was over and we went back to our table. We held hands for the dance, but we don’t walk around holding hands.
Another thing that proves we’re just hanging out and not dating is that we have never kissed. Megan and Jake are dating, and they do an awful lot of kissing. So much it kind of makes me sick sometimes. I mean, there is such a thing as too much PDA, am I right?
Have I thought about kissing him? Oh, yeah, I’ve thought about it. That night when we were dancing, sometimes when he leans in close while we’re working on our homework, or in the middle of Benny and Joon last weekend when he quoted Joon, “Having a Boo Radley moment are we?” I mean really, what nineteen-year-old guy knows Benny and Joon that well? It’s one of my favorite movies; Grandma and I used to watch it together all the time. That one and Untamed Heart. I think I would have to kiss him if he quoted Marissa Tomei, “He doesn’t make sense. I don’t make sense. Together we make sense.” Yeah, I’d probably kiss him full on the lips for that one… Maybe I’ll rent it next week…Anyways, I’m pretty sure that the fact we’ve never kissed still means we’re not dating.
“He’s taking you on a haunted train ride for Halloween. That’s pretty romantic for a couple that’s not dating,” Megan was still going on. I sometimes wonder if Megan wishes she was dating Brock.
“It just sounds like fun,” I said. It’s Halloween. What are we going to do, t
rick or treat? Go to some lame sorority or fraternity costume party? I found out, since we’ve been hanging out so much together, that Brock doesn’t drink either. The fact that he stays on a really strict diet and doesn’t drink alcohol helps me out a lot. That’s what happened with my first and last college boyfriend. They were the same guy. He kept taking me to parties and I finally told him I didn’t want to go to anymore parties where the main focus was the keg in the middle of the room. He told me that maybe if I had a beer every once in a while, I wouldn’t be so uptight. I admit I played the cancer card that night. I was pissed and I wanted him to feel bad. He felt bad alright, all the way out the door.
“It will be fun, and it’ll be cold so you can snuggle up against one of his muscled-up tattooed arms.”
“It will be what?”
Poor Megan. I wasn’t listening to her.
“Fun and cold! I said use it, snuggle time!”
I couldn’t help it, I had to ask. “You wouldn’t like to date him, would you, Meggs?” She threw me a look and her pillow. I think the pillow was supposed to hit me in the side of my head, but I caught it. I knew Megan too well. I was expecting it.
If I was going to date someone, it would definitely be someone like Brock. He was funny, and obviously good-looking. He was smart, although I don’t think he realizes it most of the time. He’s always making comments when we do homework about how smart I am. He can do his math when he applies himself, he just doesn’t usually want to.
I will say this though, the boy can sing. I went to the club with Megan and Jake last weekend to hear him and his new band play. He can belt out a song let me tell you. His voice kind of sounds like a cross between Justin Timberlake and Bob Dylan. I know it sounds weird but you’d have to hear him for yourself to understand. He’s incredible. And then there’s the guitar playing. I watch his fingers sometimes when he plays, and it amazes me how it just looks like they’re moving up and down on the strings. When I try to do it, it sounds something like, “Dum, dum, dumb, and dumb.” When he does it…well, let’s just say I think even the angels who play those pretty harps might be jealous.
I know that sappy stuff sounds like I’m talking about a guy that I’m dating. It’s exactly why I don’t say any of it out loud. People, and by people I mean Megan and Jake, would take it the wrong way. Thinking it in my head just means that I think he’s a really cool guy. Saying it out loud would make me sound like I was in love. Which I am not. Absolutely, positively, not.
“You spend more time at their apartment than I do. Jake says he sees you more than he does me.”
“I’m tutoring him in math,” I said. It was true. I have always been good at math, and he was struggling. We’re friends and that’s what friends do for each other. If Megan or Jake needed to be tutored, I would tutor them as well. It’s not like we’re in one of those silly teenage movies where we gaze at each other across the table over the math book and realize we’re made for each other. We do his math, we cook and we talk. Sometimes we play video games or watch movies. We do lots of things that people who are just hanging out do. He’s easy to talk to. Sometimes I find myself almost saying too much. Last week we started talking about our childhoods and I told him about my grandmother and how grateful I was for everything she’s done for me. I was so comfortable talking to him that I almost said the “C” word. Whew!
“Are you guys taking the bike?” Megan asked.
“Yes, we’ll be taking Suzie.” Suzie, now that’s the real love of Brock’s life.
Megan laughed, “Do you call it that in front of him with a straight face?”
“Yes,” I said, “And don’t call her an “it”. He hates that.”
“Ohh,” she said, “We wouldn’t want to say anything that upsets Molly’s boyfriend.”
“Megan.”
“Yes?”
“Shut up,” I told her as I pulled my warm sweater over my long-sleeved shirt. As we have already established the night of the football game last month, I hate to be cold. At least when we ride Suzie, Brock’s body blocks most of the wind. He tells me to put my hands around his waist and hide my face down behind him. Some people, and again I mean Megan and Jake, might think that we looked like we were dating, but it’s just about staying warm. And since I’m not saying this out loud, he always smells really good.
“Are you and Jake going tonight?” I asked Megan, hoping to distract her from worrying about me and my “not a date” tonight.
“Yeah, but he has a study group until nine, so don’t worry, we won’t interrupt your date.”
“Megan, you are incorrigible!”
“Is that a fancy word for pretty?” She said it with a smile. I just shook my head at her. Sometimes no words will do.
I was saved by a text message from Brock. I grabbed my jacket and told Megan, “See you later!”
As I was going out the door she said, “He really should come to the door and pick you up.”
I told her, “He would, if it was a date.” I think I heard her pillow hit the door as I closed it behind me.
Brock was sitting on the circular brick walk in front of the dorm on Suzie. Suzie looked great, and so did he. He grinned and said, “Hey, you look nice.” I think I blushed, or at least my face felt hot.
“Thanks, so do you,” I said. He handed me my helmet. I called it my helmet because lately I’d been using it a lot. But if the truth was told, I was pretty sure it wasn’t my helmet. I mean I would be willing to bet it was the one he had bought for all of the girls that he’s taken out to wear. For tonight it was mine, so I slipped it on and climbed onto the back of Suzie. He started her up and told me to hold on. I put my hands around his waist as we took off and rested my face down low behind his back. Suzie had really grown on me.
The haunted train ride was at a tree farm about forty miles from the school. I had never been there but I had looked it up online. It said that besides selling Christmas trees and fresh fruits and corn grown on the farm, they used it for Halloween with a haunted train and a haunted hay ride through a corn field. The whole place was decorated with scary things and there were people who jumped out at you as you wondered through. They had pumpkin patches and pumpkins for sale, face painting booths and food booths. At Christmas time, it said they have a pajama train ride with a live band and Santa Claus and Christmas trees. It sounded like a lot of fun, and I was looking forward to tonight a lot.
It was a pretty ride out there too, with a lot of curvy roads and pretty scenery. I liked that Brock wasn’t one of those guys that thought he had to drive fast or like a complete idiot to be cool. He took it slow and easy around the steep curves, and I wasn’t even scared.
The sun had just gone down when we got there. We parked in the lot and it was a little hike down a dirt hill to where the festivities were. I slipped a little bit as we were going down the hill and Brock grabbed my hand to help me down the rest of the way. When we hit level ground, he was still holding onto it, and I wasn’t pulling it away. Hmm…now we’re holding hands. Megan would analyze this to death. I decided to be cool; it comes naturally to me…really.
We walked down past one of the pumpkin patches and I saw two of the biggest pumpkins I had ever seen in my life.
“How’d you like to make a jack ‘o lantern out of that guy?” Brock said, pulling me over towards the bigger of the two.
“That would be so much fun!” I loved making jack o’ lanterns on Halloween.
“I don’t think we could carry him on Suzie,” Brock was saying. “If Megan and Jake get here before we leave tonight though, I’ll buy us two and ask them to take them home for us. I’ll probably go a little smaller than this guy here.”
I smiled; that was sweet of him. What other nineteen-year-old guy wants to carve pumpkins? And, he was still holding my hand too.
“That sounds like fun.”
From there we went and walked through the corn maze. It wasn’t really hard, although that could be because I held onto the back of Brock’s shirt most of
the way through. I know they’re fake, but those guys that jump out at you scare the crap out of me. After we made it out of there alive, Brock said, “Do you want to get something to eat?”
I wasn’t really hungry, and as usual I was worried that they might not have anything here I could eat. “They make these really good fruit cups at the corn stand,” he said. I was sold. We walked around some more as we ate our fruit. There was a giant old eucalyptus tree that had a swing in it, and I sat down and Brock pushed me. That was fun; I haven’t been on a swing in a long time. The announcer from the dark somewhere announced that the haunted train ride would be leaving the station in fifteen minutes, so we headed over there. On the way, we had to cross this old, suspended wooden bridge. It was cool, except there was a twelve-year-old boy on it with us that thought it would be fun to swing it back and forth. I hope he had fun with it, because it didn’t sit well on my stomach.
We passed a castle playhouse with a moat and an old schoolhouse playhouse that Brock told me had a slide that went underground. I opted to try that one next time. It’ll give me time to think of an out. We finally found the line for the train. It was long, and the cold was horrible, but the employees had bonfires lit and a bizarre pack of clowns that looked like Gene Simmons were handing out hot chocolate and cookies.
We had to wait for four trains before it was our turn, so we got to hear the faint sounds of blood-curdling screams in the distance, and we watched a few sweaty, shaky people get off the train as well. It only increased the excitement factor. Brock let me pick the car we would ride in. Being a huge chicken, I picked one in the middle. These cars aren’t covered, and I’m guessing that when things jump out, the front and the back probably get the worst of it.
The car was small, so we were sitting really close. No one sat opposite us, so we also had it all to ourselves. As the train began chugging along I had to think that Megan had been right…again. This was really romantic.
Just as I had that thought, Michael Myers and his trusty, sister-killing bloody knife stepped out of the corn and waved at me. I wanted to scream, but thought maybe etiquette dictated it was too soon, so I waved instead. I did grab Brock’s jacket and I didn’t let go of it either. If Michael was there, Jason and Freddy were sure to follow.
Dirty Biker (An MC Motorcycle Romance) (The Maxwell Family) Page 54
