“A poor one,” I told him, honestly.
He laughed again and said, “There it is…that brutal honesty again. Do you want anything to eat or drink before I start it?”
“What do you have?” I asked him. Again, the level of comfort I was beginning to feel here was a little bit over the top for me.
He went over and opened the fridge. “I have apple slices, I have bananas, I have raspberry parfait yogurt; Jake hates the fact that it’s in our fridge so if you eat it, you’d be doing us all a favor.”
“Why does he hate it in there?” I asked him.
“Because he’s a homophobic weirdo. He had a friend of his over playing X-box the other day and he was embarrassed because the guy saw it in the fridge when he went in for a beer.”
“Huh! That’s terrible!” I said in a mock-terrified voice. “What if he tells everyone that Jake eats pink yogurt?”
Brock pulled two out and two bottles of water. He closed the fridge door and got two spoons before he said, “Yes, luckily for his manly reputation, he is a fast-thinker. He told me that he said they were Meg’s. I asked him why he didn’t just tell him they were mine and he said, and I quote, “I don’t want him to think my roommate is gay, dude.”
He had Jake’s voice so down pat, it was hilarious. He handed me the yogurt and the spoon and I thanked him and then he turned on the movie. We sat back into the couch eating our “gay” yogurt and watching What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. When I finished my yogurt he reached for the cup to throw it away and his fingers touched mine. It was just a little brush, finger-on-finger. But I got this thrill, like a little electric jolt or something. It was so weird. I have never been this weird over a guy before. Maybe it was my new medications. I’ll have to ask the doctor about that next time I go.
Brock sat back down and this time he kind of slouched so that his face was even with mine, and he was kind of leaning towards me. It was nice, and it made me nervous at the same time. It would be the perfect position to go in for a kiss.
“So what is it you like about this movie?” he asked. I realized I was still looking at him and not at the movie. I supposedly don’t want this guy to kiss me, yet here I am, staring at him like I’m waiting for it. I looked back at the screen. It was at the part where Leonardo DiCaprio climbs the water tower and Gilbert has to talk him down.
I looked back at Brock. I knew what I liked about it, but I didn’t want to sound too sappy when I said it. Finally, I said, “It’s one of those movies that just brings home that no matter how screwed up your family is…you still love them. You’ll still stand up for them and fight for them, no matter how much they drive you crazy.” He was looking at me again with those blue eyes. I know that it’s really me that’s not being fair. What was he supposed to do, look at me with someone else’s eyes?
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” he said. “My family is pretty weird and screwed up, but I’m the only one that’s allowed to say so.”
I knew what he was talking about. “My family consists pretty much of me and my grandmother,” I said, “But if someone talks crap about grandma I will go bat crazy on them.”
He laughed at that. “Bat crazy?” Now he was making fun of me, but in a cute way.
“Yeah, have you ever seen a bat try to fly in the daylight?” I asked him. I was just giving him more ammunition, I know. I couldn’t stop myself though.
“No,” he said, still amused.
“They fly into walls and whatever else is in the room. They’ll beat themselves into a closed window until they’re bloody. It’s really interesting to watch.”
He raised his eyebrows then. I know he’s rethinking that kiss now. I’ve shown him how weird I really am. “So you’ve tried this?” he asked. Now he was picturing me trapping bats and setting them loose in the house to see what they’d do.
“Not on purpose,” I told him. “We used to have this old shed out in the back of our house. There was a bat nest in there, but I didn’t know that. I used to sleep with my bedroom window cracked a little bit and one night Count Dracula flew in. I thought it was a bird, until I turned on the light. Then he really freaked out. He was squeaking and running into things, and I was screaming. Grandma came running with her own bat…the Louisville Slugger kind. It was a whole ordeal.”
“And there you have the explanation for your “bat crazy” saying,” he said it with a grin.
Yeah, he’s over the kiss now, I’m sure.
“I just thought of something.”
“What?”
“Your grandma had a “bat” too right? Maybe that’s what the saying means…that she went “bat” as in Louisville slugger…crazy. You know like in the Carrie Underwood song where she takes the Louisville Slugger to both headlights?”
It’s funny I think how, as a musician, he relates so many things back to music.
“Are you calling my grandma crazy?” I asked.
“I would never,” he said. “You just told me she owns a bat and she’s not afraid to use it. I’d never call her crazy.”
“You would be a smart man not to call her that to her face. Grandma’s a pretty tough old cookie. She is a little bit crazy though, and please don’t ever tell her I said that.”
“Scared of her a little bit?” he said with a grin.
I shrugged, “She does have a bat.” He laughed again. I have to admit, and I know that it’s weird, but I like that he laughs at my corny jokes. In reality, it should make me question his intelligence. I can come up with some doozies. I guess I always laugh at his too. I remember that first night I met him, promising myself I wasn’t going to be one of those giggly groupie girls. I guess laughing at all of his jokes was just as bad. He is a pretty funny guy, and it’s not always so much what he says, as it is the way he presents it.
We both looked back at the movie then. I watched as Gilbert and his friend tried to fix the floorboards under where Mama sits everyday so that the whole floor wouldn’t cave in. They do it quietly though, trying not to alert Mama. It’s one of those parts of the movie that reminds you to love your family, unconditionally.
As I stared at the movie, I could feel him looking at me every now and then. I’m pretty sure that he’s planning on going back in for the kiss tonight. I could almost see the wheels in his head turning. He was overthinking it. I thought, “Just do it.” Then I remembered that I didn’t want him to do it. That wasn’t true either though. I did want him to. I wanted to be normal and have a boyfriend that I cared about and knew without a doubt that he wouldn’t walk out on me as soon as I needed him most.
Unfortunately, I’m not normal. Not the kind of normal he would get if he dated one of the five thousand or so other females at the university. I still wonder why he’s with me, when he could probably have all five thousand of the others. Just as I had that thought, he came in close. He was going for it. I saw it coming and I was millimeters from leaning into it. What could it really hurt if I just gave him one little kiss? I started to lean into him and close my eyes before I regained my senses and pulled back. It was obvious, and abrupt. I couldn’t tell if the look in his eyes was hurt or embarrassment. It wasn’t my intention to embarrass him. Either way I felt bad.
He sat up straight on the couch and said, “I’m sorry, Molly. I just got caught up.”
I knew what he meant. It was like the other night at the haunted train ride. It had just been the two of us, and it was dark and raining. I got caught up in the heat that was coming from his body, the beautiful way he was singing Aerosmith in my ear. The moonlight was probably partially to blame that night as well. I was so close to kissing him. Five more minutes would have done it, and as I think about it now, I almost wished I’d had the opportunity to go through it that night, before I over-thought it…like I was doing right now. I didn’t want him to be sorry. I wasn’t ready to say that I didn’t ever want it to happen.
“Don’t apologize,” I told him. “I’m just not ready, Brock. I’m the one who’s sorry.” He didn’t look amused any more.
I had taken the amusement out of his pretty blue eyes. I felt really bad. “I’m sorry,” I told him again.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he said.
“I’m here all the time. We’re together a lot lately, and then I tell you I don’t want to get involved…”
“You’ve been honest with me from the start, Molly. I knew within an hour of meeting you that you didn’t want to get into a relationship right now. You’re just so pretty and so smart and funny and on and on and on,” he said. “I’m extremely attracted to you, Molly. But I also like being your friend, a lot. I don’t want to mess that up. I won’t pressure you, I won’t try to kiss you anymore…not unless you tell me that you’re ready, okay?”
Damn! He really does fight dirty. He thinks I’m pretty, and he is apologizing for trying to kiss me. I think there are millions of women out there who would call me eighty kinds of crazy for not wanting to be with this guy. They’d probably stone me in the streets.
“Okay,” I said. I suddenly didn’t know what else to say. I couldn’t backtrack now and say, “Oh what the heck, kiss me.” I couldn’t do that, but don’t think I didn’t give it some serious thought.
We turned our attention back to the movie. It was a little awkward now. I knew he was embarrassed and he knew I was feeling guilty for saying no. Somewhere along the way I shivered. It was a very slight shiver, and I didn’t say anything about being cold. I was, but it was his apartment. I wasn’t going to say so.
He excused himself right after the shiver, and he went down the hall and came back with a blanket. This guy was something else, and those women would be right, I must be eighty kinds of crazy. That was my last conscious thought before I fell asleep. I guess the blanket put me over the top…
Chapter Ten
Brock
I woke up sometime during the night. I wasn’t sure what time it was. The movie had gone off and it was too dark to see the clock. I started to sit up to grab my phone when I suddenly realized that Molly’s hair was tickling my nose. I blinked a few times, adjusting my eyes to the dark. I could finally make out her pretty face. She was lying on my chest, and with each breath I took, I could see and feel her chest rise and fall, and I admit, I smelled her hair. I had wanted to do it all night, but I think it might make women a little uncomfortable for a guy to just stick his nose in her hair. Besides, she hadn’t let me kiss her. Smelling her hair after that would have just been weird.
I honestly couldn’t remember going to sleep though. As nice as this was, and as much as I liked it, I sincerely did not plan it. We were watching the movie after I had embarrassed myself by going in for the kiss and she was really quiet. I thought maybe she was just uncomfortable because of the whole kiss thing at first, but then I realized that she was asleep. I did take her head and lean it over on my shoulder softly. I had the most honorable of intentions though. I didn’t want her to wake up with a kink in her neck. Then I must have fallen asleep, and then we must have just stretched out. We were laying on the couch with me on my back and her alongside me with her head on my chest now. I panicked a little. The last thing I want her to think was that I staged this and I’m some kind of pervert. I can be, but that wasn’t what this was about, I swear.
I had the strongest urge to rub my face against her hair, but that would seem a little…desperate and weird, if she woke up and caught me doing it. Instead I settled for the hair smell again. She always smelled so good, I thought to myself, just before falling back to sleep.
I woke up again when the sunlight started coming through the blinds. I had hair in my face now. I knew it wasn’t mine; it was too soft and shiny. Molly was still in my arms. Sometime during the night I must have pulled her in closer, because now she had her leg just slightly draped over my knee, and her left hand on my chest. I was still trying not to move. I was afraid…no, I knew that if I woke her, it would break the spell.
I lay there like that for half an hour or so before she woke up. When she did, she looked surprised. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep, that much was obvious. She was looking around the living room with wide eyes like she wasn’t even quite sure where she was. I hoped that she wasn’t going to be upset. It was not a big deal really. We had slept together, but that was it. The pervert in me liked that I phrased it that way. I tried to change it to something less perverse in my head, so when I opened my mouth I didn’t piss her off. I threw caution to the wind and said, “Good morning.” Scary stuff, I know.
“Hi,” she said. “I’m guessing I fell asleep?”
“Yeah,” I told her. “Right before Arnie ruined the cake.” She smiled at that.
“That’s good, I hate that part. Gilbert smacks him around then, right?”
I nodded and she said, “What part did you fall asleep during?” She was testing me. She wanted to know how long after she fell asleep that I did. If I said right away, she wouldn’t believe me. But if I said I finished the entire movie then she would wonder why I didn’t just wake her up and take her home.
“Right after Gilbert smacks him around,” I told her. It was the truth.
She moved her neck back and forth and smoothed down her hair. I wanted to tell her that she’s gorgeous in the morning, but that sounded more like a boyfriend and less like a friend. I had no problems admitting that I wanted to be her boyfriend, but I was so afraid of scaring her away now and having no relationship with her at all.
“Want coffee?” I asked her.
“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Please. I’m going to use your bathroom.”
While she was in the bathroom, I put the coffee on. Then I started making my juice drink. I have a combination of vitamins I put in it, so I was doing that when she walked back in. I sat a cup and the creamer next to the coffee pot. She poured herself a cup, left it black and took a big sip of it without even making a bitter face. Awesome girl!
“What are you making?” she asked me as she took a seat at the counter.
“It’s a juice drink. I put some vitamins and herbs into it. It gives me energy.”
She was nodding. She didn’t seem to think it was too weird. “What kind of vitamins?” she asked.
“Um…there’s B12, Vitamins C and E, and some electrolytes too, magnesium and potassium.”
“What’s in the powder stuff?”
“It’s protein.”
“For muscle?” she said.
“Something like that,” I told her. Actually Molly, I imagined myself saying. I have a tumor in my brain. Because of that, my body doesn’t absorb vitamins and minerals the way it should and I get sick. The increased protein helps my body to do what it should just naturally do. I didn’t say it out loud. If she wasn’t ready for a kiss, she wasn’t ready for that. I poured some in a glass and said, “Would you like to try it?”
She took it and smelled it. It reminded me of Jake saying it smelled nasty.
“How does it smell?” I asked her.
“Good,” she said, “Fruity.” I knew she was smarter than Jake. She took a sip and said, “Hmm, it’s really good.”
“You want a bagel to go with it? I think I’m going to have one.”
“Sure,” she said. “By the way, I’m sorry for falling asleep on you last night.”
I smiled and said, “Are you sorry for falling asleep on me in the middle of the movie, or literally falling asleep on me.”
She shook her head and then with a smile she said, “Both, I suppose.”
“Don’t be,” I told her. “It was the best night’s sleep I got in a while. Do you want cream cheese on your bagel?”
She smiled. “No thanks,” she said.
After our bagels were done, we took them out on my little balcony. It overlooked the back lawn of a dilapidated, should-have-been-torn-down-years-ago house and across the street from one of those fortune teller places with the big neon palm out front. Needless to say, the view is not what we’re paying for here. While we ate I asked her, “So how long have you known Megan?”
“We met in
kindergarten and bonded over our first haircut.”
“Your first haircut?”
“Yeah, you know she cut my bangs, I cut hers. All kindergarteners do it. Didn’t you?”
I thought about it for a minute. Part of what my cancer treatments have done to me is mess with some of my memories. I don’t really have short term, or long term problems, per se. It’s just harder to remember things then it used to be. Good old radiation zap to the head about thirty times will do that.
“I don’t remember doing it,” I said. It was as honest an answer as I could come up with.
“How about you and Jake?” she asked.
“Jake moved into the neighborhood when I was eight and he was seven. I acted like I didn’t know him at school, but at home we played together almost every day.”
“Why did you act like you didn’t know him at school? Was he already a little weird?”
I laughed at that. I loved the fact that she liked Jake, yet she also loved to pick on him. She never did it in a mean way, just funny.
“I was eight,” I told her. “I had just started third grade. Third grade is a big step up from second. It was about my image, my reputation. I couldn’t be seen running around the playground with a seven-year-old.”
“Of course,” she said. “What was I thinking?”
“What about high school?” I asked her. “Were you a cheerleader, prom queen or all of the above?”
She smiled one of those far away smiles that said the memories were either bad or bittersweet. Her eyes looked kind of sad as she said, “I wasn’t much of a socialite in high school. Megan did all of that our junior and senior year and I lived vicariously through her.”
“It’s hard for me to imaging that you didn’t have a hundred offers to go to the prom. Were you an emo girl, against all of the establishment and the gender and societal norms?” I was kidding, sort of. I really couldn’t wrap my head around this beautiful girl not being the most sought after, popular girl in school.
“No,” she said with a smile. She got that it was mostly a joke. I liked that about her too. She had a great sense of humor. “I was too cool,” she said. Then she grinned. I thought she was kidding, but I wasn’t sure.
Dirty Biker (An MC Motorcycle Romance) (The Maxwell Family) Page 56
