Читать книгу Fishbowl - Sarah Mlynowski - Страница 11
4 ALLIE GETS EXCITED
ОглавлениеALLIE
One hour till Clint comes. Well, not comes exactly, but comes over. Maybe comes.
So that’s it, then. I’ll organize for potential coming. I’ll take the vodka out of the cupboard and put it into the freezer. Hea-vy. Why did I buy the supersize bottle? Was I planning on bathing in it? How much vodka can two people drink?
Ditto for the cranberry juice. Supersize? Puh-lease. But it will make a perfect vodka diluter later and a fab dry-mouth remedy immediately. Mmm, good. Back into the fridge. Whoops…cranberry juice leakage. Why can’t I ever remember to screw the top back on properly?
Will cranberry juice make me have to pee? It’s supposed to cure bladder infections, but I don’t want to be running to the bathroom every five seconds, do I? Talk about ruining the mood. Although I read you have a better orgasm when you have to pee. I think that’s just for women. I don’t think guys can have to pee and be hard at the same time. I also read that if you’re about to have a G-spot orgasm you feel like you have to pee.
I’ve never had a G-spot orgasm. I’ve never had an orgasm during sex. I’ve never had sex.
I’m a twenty-two-year-old virgin.
Is that crazy? It’s not like I have a third eye or a missing front tooth or anything. There are other virgins. Thousands of them, probably. It’s just that the others are either waiting for marriage, religious or ugly.
Or thirteen years old.
I’m pathetic.
But I’m waiting to meet a man I’m utterly in love with! Or a little in love with. Or, at least, a man I like.
Or, at least, a man who likes me.
Okay, fine. I’m waiting for a man, any man, as long as I like him and want to sleep with him, and as long as he likes me and wants to sleep with me. I don’t think that’s too much to ask for, is it?
Open mouth. Insert nail of left ring finger. Mmm.
I almost did it in high school. With Gordon. God knows he wanted to. He asked me pretty much every day: “When are you going to be ready? Are you ready yet? How come everyone else is doing it? How come everyone else is ready?” I wanted to, but for some mind-numbing, inexplicable reason, I felt it was my duty to say no. We’re too young. We’re not ready. Why is that exactly? Someone remind me, please. Teenage girls want to do it as much as guys do. We daydream about doing it, we imagine ourselves doing it, but we believe it is our duty not to do it. Except for the girls who actually do it. They’re the ones we call sluts when their backs are turned. They’re the ones we pretended to be when our eyes were closed.
Is it possible I waited too long and now it won’t even work? Does that happen? Can a hymen ferment?
Gordon dumped me and slept with Stephanie Miller. “Thank God I didn’t sleep with him,” I said, crying into the purple bedspread of my then best friend, Jennifer (while wishing I had slept with him and that he still loved me).
You’d think I would have done it at least once over the next four years, but I haven’t had a boyfriend since Gordon. I’ve dated, of course, and I’ve fooled around a lot (everything but), but I feel gross about losing my virginity on a one-night stand. I don’t have to marry the guy, but I should be dating him for at least three months. Is an entire season too prudish? Maybe six weeks. Reality TV shows take place in under six weeks and look how complex those relationships become.
Okay, how about four weeks? I can accept that. I don’t think it’s crazy to plan on being with someone for four measly weeks. A lot can happen in four weeks. For example, you get your period at least once. Most people, anyway. For some inexplicable reason, I’m on the “Surprise! It’ll come whenever you’re wearing white pants!” cycle, which is sometimes every four months, sometimes every two weeks. But at least it comes. (Not that I’ve ever had to agonize about it not coming. Nope, I’ve never been in that particular predicament.) By the time I got it for the first time, I was already geriatric enough for my parents, my brother, my friends, my teachers and even the grocery deliveryman to be repeatedly harassing me with “So? Are you a woman yet? What’s taking so long?” type comments.
Apparently I’m a late bloomer.
In college, I would have slept with Ronald. Yes, I admit it. I dated a guy named Ronald, although I always tried to call him Ron. (“I prefer Ronald, thanks.” Why, why, why? Why would anyone except for the nerd-turned-cool-guy in Can’t Buy Me Love prefer Ronald?) We dated for two weeks in junior year, and one night, when we were fooling around, I told him “the truth.” Big mistake. Huge. (That’s a line from Pretty Woman—you know, when she walks into the snobby store that wouldn’t let her shop there before, to show them how much she spent in the other store? I love that movie. I’ve seen it forty-six times. Maybe I shouldn’t be admitting that, either.)
Somehow I had always been under the impression that when I finally did offer my virginity to a guy (Would you like some tea with this virginity, sir? Or would you prefer it to go?), it would be something he’d want. Apparently this is not the case. It FREAKS guys out. His you-know-what turned as soft as a decaying banana. And then Ronald left, saying he had an eight o’clock class in the morning. (Funny, his eight o’clock class was the last thing on his mind five minutes ago, when his banana wasn’t overripe.) He ignored me for the next week in the cafeteria, and when I saw him at a dorm party that weekend, he drunkenly admitted that he felt there would be too much commitment involved if we were to get intimate.
Who wants to have sex with a guy whose name is Ronald, anyway?
Who wants to have sex with a guy who uses the word intimate?
Is it possible I haven’t had sex with anyone because I’ve been subconsciously saving myself for Clint? No…maybe…but what if it never happens? Will I stay a virgin forever?
The clock on the VCR, which even when it was connected to a TV refused to play videos, says 6:10, which actually means that it’s 7:10, because it’s still on eastern standard time. In a few months it will be right again.
Fifty minutes till Clint-time. It has to happen.
Time to prepare the body and make it sexable.
Tonight’s shower requires many props. Got the loofah. Got the razor. Got the pear body wash. Got the citrus face wash. Got the watermelon-fortified shampoo. Got the avocado leave-in conditioner that was stuck through the mailbox and because it’s just me picking up the mail, it’s mine, all mine! (The girls and I used to rock-paper-scissors for these mini treasures.)
I place my glasses on the sink. I know I should put them into their case, because if I don’t, I’ll never remember where they are and spend a minimum of twenty-five minutes frantically searching for them tomorrow morning. But I don’t know where the case is.
Fab! So much hot water! No one flushing the toilet while I’m trying to cleanse myself! The apartment has two bathrooms. One has a shower and toilet, and the other one has just a toilet. I’m in the one with the shower and toilet, obviously. The other bathroom is off the smallest bedroom, soon to be Emma’s room, once Rebecca’s room. Isn’t that weird? Why build an apartment like that, where the master bedroom, mine, has no bathroom, and the smallest one does? It must be built for students—to make it fair. If a family moved in here, the kid would have its own bathroom and the parents would have to share!
I’d need my own bathroom if I lived with a boy. When I’m with Clint, I leave the water running when I pee so he doesn’t realize what I’m doing in there.
Melissa let me use her bathroom if someone was using the shower in the main bathroom. I hope that Emma won’t mind the same rule.
That felt great. Why don’t I ever remember to keep my towel next to the shower? Thirty minutes until he’s here. The skin around my thumbnail is bleeding. I reach over to the toilet paper roll and rip off a few squares, and bandage my injured finger and apply pressure. Why do I do that? And when did I do that? Why don’t I even notice when I’m biting anymore?
Post-shower is really prime biting time. The skin gets all pruned. There are so many little pieces and layers for teeth to grab on to. That sounded disgusting. That’s it. It’s over. I’m stopping. No more biting. How can I make ecstatic nail marks on Clint’s back if I have no nails?
“What are you doing?” he asked me earlier today. When I realized it was him on the phone, I got into my Phone Concentration position. This is basically lying down on my unmade bed in a right-angle position, my feet up against the wall above my pillow. I love my bed. I have a yellow daisy-covered duvet cover and six soft throw pillows in varying shades of yellow. I love my bed most when it’s made. Which only happens on sheet-changing day or when a guy comes over, the latter not being too often. The former being less often than I should admit. What can I say? I hate doing laundry.
“Not much,” I answered. “You?”
“Maybe I’ll come by later to watch Korpics.” Korpics is that new let’s-hang-out-at-the-water-cooler-to-talk-about-lives-that-aren’t-ours detective show. The fact that it’s only available on the Extra channel—Canada’s version of HBO—only increases its water-cooler coolness factor since only select people are capable of chiming into the conversation.
Luckily, I’m part of the select few.
I know he doesn’t get Korpics at his place, but he could have gone to see it at a bar if what he was really interested in doing was “watching.” It’s an excuse. It has to be. He’s never asked to watch TV here before.
Hemorrhage averted. I throw the soiled toilet paper into the slightly overflowing garbage, leave the towels discarded on the tiled floor (I will remember to pick those up before he gets here. I will, I will, I will…) and wander naked to my closet, something I would never do if anyone else were home. What to wear…It can’t be something that looks like I want action. I need a hangout outfit. Not too Victoria’s Secret, because why would I be wearing anything sexy if I’m just sitting around the apartment? I have to look like I don’t care what I look like, right? That’s the rule with guys. They want what they can’t have. So if I look like I’m not interested in the slightest, he’ll be interested. The grosser I look the more he’ll want me.
Decision made. I’ll wear my old camp overalls, the ones with the tear on the left knee from when I tripped on the bench in the rec hall. Which killed.
A cattle rancher stares back at me from my reflection in the mirror. What if being this extreme on the gross-a-meter repulses him? Maybe I should go casual. Gap modelesque. And makeup that doesn’t look like makeup. Natural makeup with no lipstick. No lipstick looks more natural.
The truth is I hate wearing lipstick because I’m perpetually afraid of getting it on my teeth. I have a tiny overbite and I’m always convinced that I’ll spend half the day walking around with red-stained front teeth.
Jeans and a little T-shirt?
Modrobes (look like doctor scrub pants but in funky orange) and a tank?
A wrap skirt?
Why would I be wearing a skirt to sit around in my apartment?
The buzzer sounds.
Oh, God. He’s here! I’m going for the true natural look, then. Jeans and a tank top it is. Why is he so early? He couldn’t wait to see me? He couldn’t wait to see me!
The buckle digs into my stomach. I hope it’s because I put my jeans in the dryer by mistake, and has nothing to do with that cheesecake I polished off last night.
Mmm. Cheesecake.
They’ll stretch, right?
Note to self—hold in stomach. And butt.
Can you hold in your butt?
“Coming!” I holler. I certainly hope I’ll get the chance to say that again later.
My reflection catches me off guard in the mirror next to the door. Yuck. I got deodorant on the sides of my tank top. Why does that happen? The bottle says “Clear!” So why are there white tire tracks on all my shirts?
“Hold on!” I scream (I hope I won’t have to say that later tonight) while running to my room. I throw my tank into my laundry basket and squeeze into a white T-shirt.
“Who is it?” I ask. You never know. I don’t want to let an ax murderer into my house.
“It’s Em,” replies a voice that does not belong to a yummy-smelling hard body. Em? Who’s Em? Oh, Emma.
“Hi!” I say, opening the door.
“Hey. I just came by to drop some shit off. Hope that’s all right.” She’s holding a fancy-looking metallic-green box.
“Sure, no problem. Come in.”
She leans toward me and air-kisses me near the right cheek. I pull my head back just as she heads in for a double, and I end up smashing her in the face.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to kill you there,” I say.
“It’s the Montreal double-kiss. You’ll get used to it. It’s addictive.”
I don’t think I’m a double-kiss type of girl, but you never know. “Aren’t the movers bringing over your stuff?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want them touching my perfume collection. They’ll help themselves to a present for their girlfriends or mothers or whomever. I thought I’d drop them off myself on my way out. Is that cool?”
“Of course. Cool. Do you need any help?”
“No, I got it. Thanks.”
As she walks toward her new room, her gold hair swishes below her shoulders. Why can’t I have gold hair? What are you if you have gold hair? A golde? I don’t think I could pull it off. I couldn’t pull off the Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction bangs that frame her face, either. Or the perfectly arched eyebrows. They look like they stepped right off a McDonald’s sign.
“So how are you?” she asks, flashing her head back at me.
“Fine. Thanks. How are you?” The chunky silver belt around her hips scratches her size-zero silver jeans as she walks. How do I get pants that make my butt look like that? And a top that makes my boobs look like that? She’s wearing a black cotton V-neck, the perfect sexy hangout shirt.
I follow her into her recently painted red room. Her father sent a man named Harry over to paint the walls, install new silver blinds and disinfect the bathroom. Emma pulls the blinds open, exposing the black sky and our reflections in the window. Emma glitters.
“I like your belt,” I say. Ooh, I hope she lets me borrow her clothes. I wonder how long it’ll take me to get down to a size zero? I must stop staring. She’ll think I’m a creep.
Must not look. Pretend she’s an eclipse.
Where does she buy belts like that?
“Thanks.”
“Nick didn’t want to come with you?” I met Nick when Emma came to see the apartment last month.
“That fuckhead? It’s over. What an idiot.”
But he was so hot! “What happened?”
She closes her eyes as if the scene is unfolding in her head. “He called me a slut.” Her eyes flutter open.
“No!”
She scrunches her lips as if she’s just swallowed a French fry soaked in vinegar. “He’s absurdly controlling. I shouldn’t have to put up with that.”
“Of course not!”
Her eyelids slam shut. “He wanted me to change my clothes. Do you believe?”
I shake my head to show that no, I do not believe (despite the fact in the past twenty minutes I’ve tried on about a gazillion outfits, but those were without Clint ever knowing, so it doesn’t count). But she can’t see my reaction because her eyes are still closed. Hello?
“And then he drove off. Do you believe that?”
I pointlessly shake my head again.
“Then he went out with his friends and didn’t call me until the next day. Do you believe that?”
I shake my head again, this time adding a little sigh for emphasis and audio concurrence.
“Of course I told him to go jerk himself off when he finally had the decency to apologize. Obviously.”
Yes. Obviously. Now I’m picturing a masturbating Nick. I wonder if that’s what she’s seeing behind her eyelids, too.
“I’m exorcising my life of shit-suckers.”
I don’t know exactly what a shit-sucker is, but I’m pretty sure it’s not something I want to be.
“No more dickheads telling me what to do.” She opens her eyes and places the green box in the corner of the room.
Why didn’t I ever paint my walls red? Now I can never do it because I’ll look like a copycat. Why didn’t I think of that first? Why why why? She’s officially moving in the day after tomorrow. Maybe I can have my room painted purple by then. No can do. Jodine is moving in tomorrow.
“New apartment, new frame of mind,” she says. “So what’s Jodine like?”
Oh my God. She practically read my mind! Is that a sign we’re going to make good roommates or what?
“I haven’t met her. We spoke on the phone a couple of times, though,” I say.
“I hope she’s normal.”
“I’m sure she’s normal. I met her brother and he seemed nice. And we’ve been e-mailing back and forth for about a month.”
“If she’s freakish we’ll keep her locked in her room,” she says, revealing a perfectly white tooth-bleach commercial smile. She’s wearing a brownish lipstick and of course none of it has smeared onto her teeth. “I wonder what she looks like.”
“She’s tall with long brown hair.”
“How do you know? She sent you a picture?”
“What? Oh, no.” Hmm. I have absolutely no reason to think she’s tall with long brown hair. That’s how I pictured her looking, because she sounded exactly like Christine Torrins on the phone, a girl I went to college with, and I had brilliantly deduced that they must look exactly alike as well. “I don’t know, actually.”
“She hasn’t seen the place? What kind of a person rents an apartment without seeing it first? I bet she’s a flake.”
I suddenly feel defensive for Jodine. “Her brother took some digital pictures for her.”
“Don’t judge an apartment by its pictures. That’s how you know her? You know her brother?”
“Yeah. My brother is a friend of her brother.”
“Is he hot?”
“Her brother or my brother?”
“Either,” she answers, and laughs.
“I don’t know.” How do I answer that? First of all, I can’t tell if my brother’s cute. He’s my brother. He looks like me. Second, no I don’t think Jodine’s brother is cute—he has a unibrow and a big head, but I’m not going to start making fun of my new roomie’s family, am I? Besides, maybe Emma will like him, I don’t know. How cool would it be if Emma started dating Jodine’s brother?
“Are they single?”
“My brother isn’t. I don’t know about Jodine’s. We can ask her tomorrow.”
“Shit. I gotta go. I’m meeting some friends in Yorkville. What are you up to tonight? Wanna join us?”
I almost regret having made plans. Almost. “A friend is coming over to watch Korpics. I get Extra and he doesn’t.”
“We get Extra?”
“Yeah. We get movies and most of the HBO shows, and it’s only a few extra dollars a month.”
Emma’s lips scrunch back into their just-ate-vinegar position.
Uh-oh. “Unless you guys want to—to cancel it,” I stammer. Please don’t want to cancel it. I really, really like it and I keep forgetting to fix the VCR.
“No, we shouldn’t cancel it. Do you think we can splice the cable into my room? I’m bringing a TV.”
“Oh, definitely. I splice it into my room.”
“Who do you have plans with? You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?”
“Not a boyfriend exactly…”
She smiles knowingly. “I get it. A ‘special’ friend.”
“You could say that.” Very, very special. “Do you think this looks okay?” I twirl.
She eyes me up and down. “Your hair is so long.”
I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. “But what about the outfit?”
“It’s cute.”
Cute? Is that good? It doesn’t sound good. A younger cousin with spaghetti sauce on his chin is cute. “I wish I had a shirt like yours. Where did you get it?”
“Some store on Queen Street. I’ll take you. Do you want to wear mine?”
“The one you have on?” Is it possible? Is she so awesome that she’ll not only help me shop for a new wardrobe but she’ll lend me the shirt off her back (literally) in the interim? It’s a good thing the material is stretchy—not that she’s lacking anything up front. There’s just more to me on the sides. “But what are you going to wear?”
“I’ll borrow a sweatshirt. Don’t worry—I know where you live.”
She follows me into my oh-so-boring white-walled but maybe soon-to-be-purple room. Unfortunately I haven’t yet cleaned it for Clint’s visit. I was supposed to be doing that now, instead of chatting. She was inevitably going to find out I was messy, but it didn’t have to be before she even moved in, did it?
I pull a semiwrinkled blue Champions sweatshirt out of a pile and hand it to her. What should I do now? Should I leave my room and let her change? Apparently not. My new roomie is not as conscious of public nudity as I am. She whips off her shirt in a fluid stripperlike motion and sits on my bed, wearing a see-through beige bra. She has huge nipples. I shouldn’t stare at her nipples. What is wrong with me? I don’t mean to be staring at her nipples. Did she see me staring at her nipples? It’s just that women hardly ever see each other naked. Really. Men see each other’s private parts every time they use a urinal. Women see breasts on TV, of course, but these aren’t real breasts, they’re Hollywood-perfect breasts, which are far from the real thing. Far from my real thing, anyway.
How does she manage to look like a Victoria’s Secret model even in my five-year-old safe-to-paint-a-garage sweatshirt?
She hands me her cleavage-revealing shirt.
She doesn’t expect me to try this on in front of her, does she?
Apparently she does. I’d like to turn around while I take off my shirt. Will she think I’m weird if I turn around while I take off my shirt? It’s not that I think she really cares what my boobs look like or anything. Can I turn around when she didn’t turn around? Is that bad-mannered? Is she entitled to see my bra now that I’ve seen hers? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours? At least I’m wearing a good bra for Chrissake (or Clint’s sake).
I try the trick we used to use in camp when you had to change in front of the whole cabin. I put on the cleavage shirt before taking off the old shirt. It doesn’t work. Now both shirts are tangled around my neck and I feel like a five-year-old struggling to take off her snowsuit.
I remove my top from my neck and slip on her shirt. The armpit material has an already-been-worn aroma, but nothing that a little extra spritzes of perfume won’t fix. (Maybe a few extra spritzes of her perfume? Am I becoming Single, White Female?) Hmm. Maybe she doesn’t wear deodorant and that’s why there are no white marks on her shirt.
“What do you think?” I ask, catching a glimpse of my new sexy-yet-casual self in the mirror over my bureau.
“Very hot.”
Hot? Hot is good. Much better than cute. Yes, I think I like my new roomie.
After Emma leaves, I run around my room and bathroom, trying to make it look Clint-presentable. And then I stumble upon an additional dilemma. Do I move the TV in my room into the living room, or keep it in the bedroom? The only place to sit in my room is on the bed. Unless he wants to sit on my lone computer chair. Into the living room the TV must go. Hea-vy. Arms hurt. How can something so small be so heavy?
Hmm. Do I just plug it in and turn it on? Where’s the cable? Do I use the red cable or the yellow cable? Red or yellow? Five minutes until he’s here…I feel like I’m in a Lethal Weapon and I’m about to cut the yellow wire and there are only three seconds left, and what should I do? Yellow, red, yellow red yellowredyellow…red. Definitely red. I plug in the red.
Nope.
Yellow?
Nope.
Okay. TV goes back to my bedroom. He’d have to sit on the floor in the living room, anyway. Thank God Emma will be here soon with couches.
Heavy heavy heavy.
Korpics starts in three minutes. Where is he?
I sit on my bed.
It smells good in here, right?
Maybe I should open the window.
Should I spray perfume on the bedspread?
It’s starting!
I should fluff up the pillows so they look more inviting.
Fluff-fluff.
Fluff.
One minute into Korpics.
Where is he?
Two minutes into Korpics. People are already dying and he’s not even here. He’s going to come in the middle and I’m going to have to miss some of the show and I hate missing parts of shows.
Hah! The fact that he’s late proves that he doesn’t care about watching the show, because if he cared he wouldn’t be even a minute late for it, right? If he were coming all the way here to watch it, then he would certainly be on time for it, right?
Unless he changed his mind and found somewhere else to watch it. And he’s not coming. And I’ll be staring at the television not absorbing anything that goes on, sitting here wallflower-like as the minutes turn into hours, the hours into days.
The doorbell buzzes.
Finally! I speed through the hallway and throw open the door.
“Hey,” he says. And smiles. He has a big smile. A big, beautiful smile exposing big, beautiful teeth. (All the better to eat you with, my dear, I think. Now that’s sick. Why do I always start having perverted thoughts when he’s around?) His smile finally looks proportioned. His face has filled out since he put on about twenty pounds last summer, but the good kind of twenty pounds. The muscle kind. He used to be a bit too skinny and his smile looked kind of out of place. Now he’s completely gorgeous. Of course, I thought he was completely gorgeous before, even when he wasn’t really, you know?
Did his eyes just sneak a peek at my cleavage? I think they did! Hah! It’s working! He’s falling in love! Or in lust. I’ll take lust. He already loves me as a friend, so all I need really is to provoke a little lust. If he feels lust, then there’s nothing missing. I might as well start ordering the wedding invitations immediately. Kidding!
Kind of.
“You’re missing it!” I tell him, impossibly trying to pout but too happy to see him to be angry with him. “It started five minutes ago.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He kisses me on the cheek. “You smell like a fruit salad.”
Who doesn’t like fruit salad? He’s slightly more casual than I am. Not that I expected him to dress up. He’s not one of those dress-up guys at all. Not that he dresses badly or anything. He’s more of a sporty dresser. He wears a lot of baseball caps and those bubble shirts. You know, the kind of shirt that has tiny indented squares patterned all over it—but in one color. He’s wearing a white one now, a white bubble shirt with tiny white bubbles. And snap pants—the blue nylon pants that have snaps all down the sides. They’d be so easy to just rip right off.
“I had the craziest day. Troy Cobrint wants to do the Cobras.”
I try not to stare blankly. Apparently I should be aware of who Troy Cobrint and the Cobras are. “What are the Cobras again?” I figure pleading ignorance to a probable brand name is better than pleading ignorance to a probable Toronto athlete.
“Our new basketball shoes.” Aha! Troy Cobrint must be a basketball player! Brilliant deductive reasoning, Nancy Drew!
“He walked into the office at around ten-thirty. He was supposed to be there for nine, but I guess when you’re that crazy rich and famous you can come and go whenever the hell you want. Anyway, he agreed to endorse the shoes. He said he tried them and liked them. My VP is loving my ass for coming up with the idea to create a shoe for him called Cobra. Get it? Cobrint—Cobra?”
“Got it.”
“I bet I get a crazy raise.” Clint’s favorite adjective is crazy. He sprinkles it in every sentence he can.
“Didn’t you just get a raise?”
He started his marketing job right after we graduated and is already some kind of office hotshot. “Yeah. But since I come up with the craziest ideas, I should be compensated, huh?”
“I’m shocked you’re not VP by now. Maybe next week they’ll make you CEO.”
This whole “attitude” thing is pretty new for Clint. He struggled to keep a B average at school, and was always better at criticizing other people’s athletic abilities than showcasing any of his own. He dated a bit, but not the girls he talked about. And then out of nowhere he got a prime marketing job (possibly through one of his dad’s connections, but that doesn’t mean he’s not qualified), and he now has this whole “big man on campus” attitude going on.
“C’mon.” I grab the piece of his shirt near his wrist (there’s not too much spare material around the chest area anymore) and pull him into my room. How many girls dream about walking into their bedrooms with a guy who looks like this? Hah! And he’s here!
He picks up the freshly arranged yellow pillows one by one and drops them onto the floor. Then he kicks off his shoes and sprawls across my bed. Reaching over, he picks up one of the pillows and squashes it against the wall to prop up his head.
Hmm. Where should I sit? On the corner of the bed? By his feet? Should I lie down? Sprawl next to him? It is my bed. There’s nothing obvious about me sitting on my own bed, is there? Will he think, Wow, it’s so obvious she invited me over because she’s so desperate and no one else wants her? Will he think, I definitely don’t want her and that’s why she’s lying so pathetically on her bed, to make me want her? Will he also think (God forbid), She even moved the living room television into her room so I have no choice but to fool around with her?
I sit on the computer chair.
Swivel.
“Your hair got so blond from the sun!” I say.
He smiles sheepishly. “I highlighted it last week. Do you like it?”
Are men supposed to highlight? “It looks great. Very California. Do you want to know what you missed so far?”
“I can figure it out.”
Oh. Okay.
Twenty minutes later, I’m starting to wish the show were on regular cable, not Extra, so it had commercials through which we could talk. Although if it were on regular TV, he wouldn’t be here, now would he?
Why did I choose the swivel chair? Why why why? Should I make him something to eat? Is he hungry? He’s probably hungry. “Do you want some popcorn?”
“Sure. Thanks. You’re such a sweetheart.”
My heart fully stops. A sweetheart. I am a sweetheart. Men marry women they think are sweethearts. Reason Number One why he should fall in love with me: I am a sweetheart.
Reason Number Two is that I make great popcorn. I do. In the kitchen, I pull out my fancy popcorn maker that goes on the stove, and the real butter.
As soon as I set up the popcorn I peek my head into my room so that I can follow what’s going on. I hate missing my shows. Which is a problem because I have a lot of favorite shows and no VCR to speak of. Now that I’m out of school, I can watch TV all day, which is fab, but I miss the prime times because during the week my shift is at night. This isn’t as annoying as in the summer when it’s repeat season, but soon all the new shows will be on and I’m going to miss them.
Making popcorn is definitely a good call. I’ll be expected to share some of it, which means I’ll have to be on the bed, too. We’ll be lying right next to each other, our hands delicately grazing each other’s in the salad bowl, since Rebecca took the popcorn bowl with her when she left.
What’s taking so long? Standing here by the door is starting to hurt my legs. But I know that as soon as I sit down, it will start to pop, and I’ll have to get up again. C’mon, popcorn, please hurry. The show will be over by the time it’s ready. Although that might not be such a terrible thing. It will force him to stay longer.
Pop. Pop pop pop. It’s almost ready. Pop. FINALLY. Ready.
“Thanks, hon,” he says without lifting his eyes from the television. I love when he calls me hon. You don’t call someone you have no feelings for, hon, right? I oh-so-casually slide onto the bed.
He reaches for the popcorn. Our hands touch in the bowl. His fingers linger. Is he thinking about sneaking his hands under my sexy shirt? And then gently kissing me, and then passionately kissing me and then taking off all my clothes, lying on top of me and pressing his hard broad-shouldered musky-yummy-smelling body into mine? Is the fan on?
He stuffs a fistful of kernels into his mouth.
“What did I miss?” I ask.
He rambles about some sort of murder and “crazy fight scene.” Can’t really concentrate. Clint is in my room. Clint is on my bed.
Why are we wasting time watching TV?
I spend the next thirty minutes trying to casually drop my hand into the popcorn bowl whenever his hand is there, without looking obvious about it.
Is he going to make a move? Maybe when the show is over?
When the credits roll he leans toward me. This is it! This is it! My heart is hammering about a thousand beats a minute. I’m not sure how many beats are normal, but this seems excessive. Can he hear it? I’ll bet he can hear it. I’ll bet he’s wondering if someone is at the door, because the sound of the pounding is echoing throughout the apartment.
And then…he kisses me.
On the cheek.
On the cheek? “Thanks, hon. You’re the best.” He jumps off the bed.
Come back, I telepathically scream. Where are you going? Return to my bed. Return to my bed!
“I’ll see you later this week, okay? We’ll grab dinner.”
“Oh. Okay, sure.” What are you doing? Where are you going? “No problem.”
“You have plans tonight?” He is looking at himself in the mirror, running his fingers through his recently processed hair.
“Um…I’m meeting some friends. My new roommate. Later. You?”
“I’m hooking up with the boys on College. First I have to stop by my place to change.” Apparently his snap pants are of the hangout not make-out variety. “Call me on my cell if you girls end up on College.”
“Definitely.” Definitely not. What a wasted opportunity. If I had gone with Emma then I could have plotted bumping into him. I push myself off the bed with my hands, and my buttered-covered fingers leave a trace on one of the daisies. Ew.
“You’re such a mess,” Clint laughs as I try to scratch the stain off with—oops—the sleeve of Em’s shirt.
Mess? I just cleaned my room for him. What mess? A little butter? Ew. This sleeve procedure isn’t helping the matter. Apparently butter stains must be some sort of contagious virus—the circle has now spread to twice its original size. Since letting him watch this cannot be a good strategy for the Get-Clint-to-Want-to-Have-Sex-with-Me objective, I walk him to the door.
“Have fun tonight. Maybe we’ll see you later,” I say.
See, wasn’t that sneaky of me? When I don’t show up later, he’ll think I’m far too busy to make time for him, thereby increasing my level of desirability. “Sure,” he says, and pats me on the head. “It’ll be fun to hook up.”
Hook up—hook up? Uh-oh, he’s really going. He’s walking away. Wait! I forgot about the vodka! Before next time I’d better forget about my popcorn abilities and focus on my bartending skills.