High School Hangover

by Stephanie Hale

  Jack strolls in after him, tossing me a casual wink. I nearly fold over with laughter, knowing he came in here to see my reaction to Dom’s lack of attire.

  Milly pats the bed suggestively. “Come on over here, Dom,” she purrs.

  I feel like I need to spray anti-bacterial lotion into my eyes just witnessing this encounter.

  Ginger starts fanning herself with a nearby phone book. Jack stifles a laugh and Trudy goes about unpacking her suitcase like there is nothing odd about a half-man/half-gorilla standing practically naked in our hotel room.

  “You guys are coming to the hot springs, yeah?” Dom asks, in that weird way he has of asking and almost answering his own question.

  “You bet, big boy. Wanna watch me change?” Milly offers.

  My eyes meet Jack’s and I know we have to be thinking the same thing. There wasn’t even this much sexual tension at our party last night. I thought old people sat around comparing ailments.

  “Ginger, Trudy, you gals are goin’ too, yeah?” Dom asks, ignoring Milly.

  “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Trudy answers, after noticing that Ginger hasn’t gone back to a normal complexion since Milly’s comment about her incontinence.

  “Kris says we are pulling out at eighteen hundred hours,” Jack adds.

  “I bet you are,” Milly responds.

  “What is wrong with you?” I ask Milly, as Dom and Jack wander back into their own room. Milly tosses something in my direction that smacks me in the face.

  “What the…” I mumble pulling the stretchy garment off my shoulder.

  “It’s a bathing suit because I’m guessing that you can’t fit into anything those two wear,” Milly so sweetly points out.

  Ginger and Trudy ignore her as I stand there smoldering. “I’m NOT putting any of my body parts against something that has been against any of your business,” I tell her, throwing the suit back at her.

  “More action for me,” she says, whipping off her clothes right in front of me. It’s like a car accident and I can’t seem to look away. Secretly I’ve always admired those girls who have the confidence to walk around buck naked in the locker room and get dressed without strategically placing their towel so that nothing is revealed, but I’m not one of those girls.

  I’ve seen a lot of naked girls, including myself and Mom, but never anybody this old. I want to look away as Milly unhooks her bra and slides her panties off, but it’s kind of like that horror movie I watched with Erika. I just can’t close my eyes. Surprisingly, Milly looks pretty good. All her girl bits are still identifiable and with the exception of her paper-thin skin, she still has it going on. No wonder she thinks she is such hot stuff.

  “Take a picture, hater,” Milly says, stunning me out of my trance.

  “You are so weird,” I tell her, plopping down on the bed.

  “And you are so pathetic. That little boy in there is young, dumb, and full of …”

  “Milly,” Ginger shrieks from behind me. I nearly jump off the bed. “Keep your filthy mouth shut,” she says, stepping out of the bathroom. She is wearing a hideous flower-printed swim dress that is so bright, it could probably be seen from space.

  “Or what?” Milly taunts her. Ginger steams toward her, the skirt of her swimsuit swishing around her ham-hock sized thighs. I can’t believe I’m going to witness an old lady fight club.

  “Cut it out, you two,” Trudy steps in and interjects her two massive wrinkly mounds of cleavage between Milly and Ginger. Nobody will be punching anybody with those Shar-pei puppies blocking the way. Ginger gives Milly a snarl but backs away.

  “Tell her to keep her filthy mouth shut around these kids. They don’t need to listen to her trash,” Ginger says, slipping her wrinkled toes into a pair of flip-flops.

  Trudy gives Milly a warning look then goes back to dressing. Being around these characters is better than watching TV. It’s almost like high school. If Axe smelled like Ben-Gay and liver spots were the new tramp stamps.

  “I’m going to pass on the hot springs,” I pipe up, knowing my stomach can’t handle seeing any more old people in tiny bathing suits. Besides, maybe the hotel has a business center where I can use a computer. I’d like to do some damage control on Facebook before it’s too late, and maybe even leave Leo a message.

  “It’s going to be fun,” Trudy says, adjusting her swimsuit bottom and exposing part of her enormous butt cheek.

  “I’m not quite sure I can handle much more fun,” I warn, looking away.

  “Good, I won’t have any competition,” Milly says, strutting around the room in her gold sequin bikini.

  I take one glance at an apprehensive Ginger trying to primp herself in the bathroom mirror and I know that I have to take Milly on. She’s been bullying these women for who knows how many years and she needs to be put in her place.

  “It is so on,” I mutter under my breath. I snatch up Milly’s hand-me-down suit and make my way to the bathroom. As I slip into the swimsuit, I realize how ridiculous it is that I am actually trying to put a seventy-something woman in her place. Part of me envies her confidence. The other part wants to scratch her eyes out for being so horrible to Ginger.

  I take one look at myself in the mirror and shriek. The suit is a one piece but it somehow manages to cover less than a bikini. The V-neck plunges almost to my belly button while the leg openings are so high cut that I can see the faint tan lines from my last year’s suit. There is no way I can wear this in public, especially in front of Jack.

  I guess technically he has seen me in less since I was practically skinny-dipping last night but I don’t have the punch to make me fearless tonight. I step out of the bathroom to ask Milly if she has something else I can borrow.

  “There is no way I can let the guys see me in this,” I say, walking out of the hall, not even caring if Milly makes fun of me for not wanting to bare so much skin.

  The girls are gone. Jack is lying on his stomach on the bed, his hands propping his chin up as his eyes practically bug out of their sockets.

  “Holy crap, Jack,” I shout, rushing back into the bathroom. I throw Milly’s sundress on over the suit.

  “Two thumbs WAY up,” he kids. But it doesn’t matter because I’m completely mortified. Damn Milly probably set me up. As if things between Jack and I weren’t awkward enough, now he’s seen me half-naked again.

  I scurry back out into the room and into Mom’s heels. I feel like a baby prostitute in this bathing suit/sundress/high heels combo.

  “Come on, let’s go,” I tell him, not making eye contact. I’m just noticing that he isn’t wearing a shirt.

  I quickly move to the door of the hotel, petrified of what the effects of staring at Jack’s chest too long may do to my heart rate. I hear him bounce off the bed and head toward me. I start pulling frantically on the hotel door trying to get out of this suddenly claustrophobic hall with him.

  The door opens a crack but then jerks and won’t open the rest of the way. Hearing Jack’s approaching footsteps, I pull harder and harder on the door trying to get it open.

  “Hold on, Dimples,” Jack urges, putting his hand on the arm I’m using to try and jerk the door open.

  He presses his chest against my back and reaches over me. Milly’s sundress is cut low in the back and I can feel Jack’s smooth chest pressed against my skin. I nearly swoon at the sudden electricity that races through my limbs. His arm reaches across and pulls back the security lock above the door handle.

  His scent is so intoxicating that I feel a bit light headed. The heat from his breath raises goose bumps on the back of my neck. I could turn around right now and our faces would be so close that our lips would practically touch. I can’t stop thinking about that kiss and how bad I want another one. I try to make myself think about Leo but Jack’s lips keep running through my mind.

  “Dimples?” he asks, touching my shoulder.

  I’m going to turn around and kiss him. I can’t be the only one feeling this electricity betwee
n us. If he rejects me, I might die of humiliation, but at least I’ll know once and for all.

  “Grandma was slow, but she was old, and even SHE is already downstairs. Let’s go,” Bernie bellows coming out of the adjoining guy’s room. Good old Bernie. He saved me from doing God knows what.

  I can’t believe what I was just about to do. I turn around, trying my hardest to look completely casual so Jack doesn’t suspect anything. I didn’t have anything to worry about. I’m completely alone in the room.

  Chapter Eight

  I convince myself on the short bus ride to the hot springs that the trauma I have sustained in the last twenty-four hours has killed a few brain cells causing some synapses to misfire so that my mind thinks I’m attracted to Jack. But my heart knows it belongs to Leo. So I’m writing off the hotel room fireworks to PTSD, Post-Texas Stress Disorder.

  “How could anyone resist him?” Ginger asks, sitting next to me. I follow her gaze to the seat that Jack and Dom are sharing. They seem to be deep in conversation and Jack’s hands are flapping around like crazy.

  “I could resist him easily,” I lie, trying to block out how good Jack felt pressed against my back in the hotel room.

  “He’s so much man,” Ginger says dreamily.

  “Leo is way more man than Jack,” I disagree, raising my voice to compete with the Lady Gaga CD that Kris is blasting.

  “Who’s Leo?” Ginger asks, snapping out of her stupor.

  “My kind-of-boyfriend back home,” I answer, stretching the truth a tiny bit. Okay, I was stretching it a lot. But for all I know Leo could be beating down doors looking for me right this very minute. I wish I could remember where we’d left things last night.

  “Nobody can compare to Dom,” she retorts, almost coping an attitude.

  “Dom? I thought you were talking about Jack.”

  “Jack? He’s young enough to be my great grandson,” she answers, throwing me a disgusted look.

  “I thought you were trying to convince me I should go for Jack.”

  “I’m hardly an expert at love,” Ginger admits. “If its love advice you’re looking for, maybe you should sit with Milly,” she says, pointing a few rows up. Milly’s seat buddy is Archie, who is faithfully allowing her to drape her legs across him. The man has arthritis so bad his hands look like lobster claws but she somehow convinced him to massage her feet. Maybe I should be taking love advice from Milly.

  “Wow. She says jump and they say how high, huh? Wait, so you like Dom?” I ask, Ginger’s comment registering.

  Ginger brightens to the color of the slutty bathing suit that Milly loaned me.

  “Holy crap, that’s why you got so mad back in the room.”

  “Pipe down, Laney. I don’t want everyone knowing. It doesn’t matter because he likes the GILF over there,” she says, looking miserable.

  “You don’t know that,” I disagree, even though it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that most men, Viagra users or not, would pick Milly over Ginger. It’s kind of depressing to realize that’s a universal theme throughout life. Guys like Jack and Dom don’t choose people like me and Ginger. Beauty trumps brains every time.

  “Drop it,” she says forcefully.

  I don’t have time to respond because Kris is pulling the bus into the lot. It takes another ten minutes for everyone to pile out with their respective walkers, canes, and oxygen tanks. Jack and I exchange a friendly glance as we wait patiently. Jack is so relaxed that I know there is no way he was feeling anything back at the hotel. I’m so thankful that I didn’t give him the opportunity to reject me. I know I wouldn’t be feeling any of this if I wasn’t sequestered on this bus with him. Once I get home, everything will be normal again, and hopefully, Leo and I can pick up where we left off.

  “This is going to be the bee’s knees,” Trudy says, leading the way into a spa-like building.

  I have no idea what she’s talking about and don’t particularly care, although I still have to restrain myself from telling her that bees don’t actually have knees.

  “Remember that scene in Cocoon where they all get in that pool and feel young again?” Kris adds, excitedly. “It’s going to be like that,” he says, holding the door open for all of us.

  I don’t have the heart to tell him its hot water, not the fountain of youth.

  We are led by a woman guide to a room with a round in-ground pool. The water is a beautiful ice blue with steam clouds floating on the surface. The seniors are so giddy I can barely hear the lady telling us about the thermal waters. I hush them because it’s fascinating to me that the water has been Carbon-14 dated to be 4,000 years old. The one hundred and forty-three degree water is high in calcium, magnesium, sulfate, silica and other therapeutic minerals.

  “Wow, so Native Americans probably came here to use this water,” I exclaim.

  “Yes, this valley was used as a common ground for healing,” the spa worker adds excitedly. She gazes around at the seniors disrobing at lightning speed and must decide she has seen enough elderly flesh for one day. She mumbles something about pushing a button on the wall if we need assistance and disappears.

  “That was so rude, you guys,” I scold them.

  “Seriously, don’t get us kicked out of here,” Jack adds. We exchange a conspiratorial eye roll. It’s like we are the mature ones on this trip.

  “Oh, blah, blah, blah, I was practically born on a reservation,” Bernie teases, ditching his cane by the pool ladder and making his way slowly into the pool. Milly struts slowly down the stairs to the water, making sure everyone sees her sparkling bikini. Ginger stands self-consciously off to the side then when she thinks no one is looking, she hurriedly wades in.

  One by one, the rest of the seniors waddle into the thermal pool excitedly. Their already boisterous voices are made deafening by the echo in this room. I shake my head in disbelief that a mere twenty-four hours ago I was at a party of my peers never imagining that soon I would be stuck with the seven most obnoxious senior citizens on the planet.

  “I guess we should get in, huh?” Jack asks innocently. At some point since our hotel room incident, Jack slipped a navy blue T-shirt on top of his trunks. I can’t stop myself from watching as he peels the shirt over his head. My pulse quickens. Stupid pulse. It’s just a tan, hairless, every-muscle-exposed chest.

  “I think I might just dangle my feet for a minute,” I say, kicking Mom’s heels off. Had I known I was going to be wearing these shoes for three days, I definitely would have made a better choice.

  “She’s shy,” Milly teases me, nudging her way in between Dom and Kris in the pool.

  “Not everyone actually enjoys showing off their lady parts,” Ginger blurts out.

  “Only fat people want to cover up their bodies,” Milly retorts. The look on Ginger’s face tells me that she wants to dunk herself under the water even if it means her eyebrows would get scalded off.

  “I like a woman with a little meat on her bones, yeah?” Dom says, nudging Bernie.

  “Esther was husky,” Bernie agrees.

  “Skinny women always seem so bitter,” Trudy chirps, not making eye contact with Milly. I love it that they are all trying to make Ginger feel better.

  I ease myself down on the ledge of the pool and dip my feet in. The water feels amazing. I really want to get in, but the thought of Jack seeing me in this suit again is more than I can handle. Jack steps in and eases himself down on the other side of Kris.

  “You should really get in,” Ginger tells me, resting her head on the ledge and closing her eyes.

  “I’m good,” I answer, secretly jealous of them.

  I see Dom wade over to Jack, holding his oxygen machine in the air, and whisper something in his ear. Jack shakes his head no and Dom shrugs his shoulders. Those two sure have hit it off. Normally I would think that is completely sweet but something about Dom alarms me. He gives off that connected guy vibe. Like if you cross him he might have you whacked. But I guess that is crazy because he has been no
thing but nice to me. Besides, how scary can a guy on portable oxygen be? All you would have to do is put a crimp in his oxygen tube to slow him down.

  “How did you two manage to get so far away from home, anyway?” Bernie asks me and Jack.

  “I’ll let Jack explain that,” I tease. I’m hoping I’ll get some small piece of information out of him that I didn’t know before. I haven’t had hardly any time to even rewind last night in my mind to figure out what went wrong.

  Jack twists his hands together under the water and seems flustered. I guess maybe this impromptu trip wasn’t exactly on his agenda either.

  “We were at this crazy party last night,” Jack says, glancing at me. “And I drank a lot. Somehow I ended up in a moving van that Laney was in and when we woke up we were in Texas,” he wraps up quickly, his words nervously running over each other. Maybe he is still worried that his parents are going to be disappointed in him for taking off.

  “That is the lamest excuse for climbing into a car to make out that I have ever heard,” Milly smarts off.

  Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever have the urge to beat up an old lady but Milly is really pushing me.

  “Let me guess, you don’t remember anything,” Kris teases me. “It’s no wonder sexually contracted diseases are at an all time high.”

  My mouth drops open at the suggestion of me and Jack having sex. Okay, so maybe I enjoyed that kiss a little too much, but there is no way we would ever hook up.

  “I would never have sex with Jack,” I blurt out. A deafening silence falls over the room as my words echo back to me. “Wait, that’s not what I meant,” I try to explain, but the look on Jack’s face says it all. I might as well have sucker-punched him square in his junk.