Me:Sorry, got lost in thought. I appreciate your preference for me to be living and will do my best to persist in that state.
Jamison Duschene:Damn straight, you'd better.
Jamison Duschene:Oh shit, my sister’s calling again. Should I even answer? She probably just wants to yell at me some more.
Jamison Duschene:But if I don’t answer then I get extra yelling next time.
Me:Answer it. I’ll ttyl.
Jamison Duschene:If I never respond to you again, it means she killed me. Avenge me!
Shaking my head with a smile, I put my phone down and returned to my work on the table. I’d promised the Uthers that they’d have it for Thanksgiving, which meant that I needed to buckle down and focus on work rather than not-flirting with a guy I’d slept with once.
Even if I kinda wanted to do it again.
6
Jamison
Week 5
I held the gauze to the crook of my elbow and grimaced. That had…not been the painless stick the technician assured me it would be. Ow. And the room kinda smelled like feet, which did not strike me as a good thing in a place where they were putting holes in humans.
“Ok so you should hear back from us within a week,” the technician told me as he slapped a band-aid carelessly in the general vicinity of the new hole in my body. “Keep this bandage on for two to three hours to minimize bruising.”
“Too late,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I shook my head. “Will it really take a week to get results?”
He shrugged. “It could. Or it could take a day. It depends on how backed up the lab is and whether there’s a high viral load to detect. If there is, they can return a positive sooner.”
When he put it like that, I’d rather it took a month. Goddamn, I just wanted to get the finalall clearand be able to tell Hen that we were good to go. But we were months away from that, though our odds of safety rose with each negative result. Sighing, I followed the technician to the exit and checked myself out of the clinic.Soon, Jamie.
On the bus home - whichalsokinda smelled like feet, and I was starting to wonder if it was me and not my environment at this rate - I fingered my phone idly. Facebook to while away the time? I imagined posting a status that said I was waiting on my latest HIV test and stifled a giggle at the reactions that would garner. My grandma was on Facebook, for god’s sake. She’d probably ask what HIV was, and then my sister would answer with way too much detail, and then Charlie would start asking me pointed questions, and then my mom would want to know what was going on between me and Charlie and…yeah, no on the Facebook.
I gazed out the window at the passing city scenery for a few minutes, but that didn’t hold my attention, so I opened Instagram and started scrolling. Nothing interesting was popping up in my feed, and I started poking around for new content to follow. After a few more minutes of finding nothing good, I shrugged and typedHenry Rodriguez + carpenterinto the search bar. Maybe he had an account and I could see the kind of stuff he did.
The search returned way more results than I’d expected, most of which were just guys named Henry Rodriguez, and a few of which managed to be Henry Rodriguezes who also did woodwork but weren’t my Henry. Finally, on page four of the results, I found a familiar face.
MyHenry sat, eyes shining, astride a wooden chair with a delicate back that looked like a tree was inset in the chair. Henry’s red hair was pulled back in a messy braid and hewas grinning.Woodwork artisan Henry Rodriguez with one of his creations, read the caption.Anthemion style-backed dining chair, custom order. Contact:[email protected] pricing and order details.
Grinning, I clicked on Henry’s account name and started browsing through his images. Most just showed his work in various stages of completion, with captions that only made about 20% sense to me because they used what must have been words of the trade. But a few showed Hen at work, often smiling widely as he manipulated some tool or another or shoved a dangling piece of hair out of his eyes. It was clear that he loved his work, and the work he produced was, at least to my less-than-knowledgeable eyes, beautiful.
I pondered messaging him to say that. On the one hand, it would make it obvious I was social media-stalking him, and that came across as just a smidge too needy. On the other hand, I bet it would make him smile, maybe even make his day. Hen didn’t strike me as the type to be too creeped out by my looking up his business. After all, it was his business, he’dwantpeople to find it!
Before I could stop myself, I was thumbing out a message:
Me:Might’ve just Insta-stalked your work. Damn, you’re good!
There was no reply for a few minutes, and I flipped back to Instagram and officially followed @HenRod and kept scrolling through his images. I wished I understood more about carpentry or furniture making, because I didn’t have the vocabulary to really articulate thoughts I could share with him about the pieces.They’re awesomecould only go so far.
Finally, my phone buzzed just as I was pulling the stop-cord for my stop. I glanced down at my screen as I walked off the bus.
Hen:I’m guessing @jamieofthelake is you, then?
Me:You didn’t immediately stalk my photos to find out? I’m hurt, boo.
