A pimply-faced boy, no more than nineteen years old, walked toward me, slowly. He was wearing skinny jeans, a grocery store smock, and a badge that said, “I’m Trevor”. His mouth was open, and he had a look on his face, like he was lost and had no idea how he wound up in the store.
I snapped my fingers in the air. “Where’s your Rocky Road?”
He stared at the freezer and then at me. “Uh,” he said.
“What happened to the ice cream? Where’s the ice cream?” I demanded, maybe too loudly.
“There was a problem with the freezers,” he explained, finally. “We had to throw out the ice cream. Come back tomorrow. We’ll have more tomorrow.”
It was my turn to open my mouth. “But I need the Rocky Road,” I said. My voice started out normal, but then it took on a screeching quality a little like I had the power to turn him into a toad. “Is it so much to ask for ice cream? I work hard, you know. Don’t you think I deserve some goddamned ice cream?”
Like a near-death experience, I seemed to float up above my body and watch myself have a violent psychotic break, taking out all my rage on a poor teenager with likely more than a passing relationship to weed. I wasn’t proud. And the little piece of sanity in me wanted me to shut up. But I was like a locomotive at full speed, and no way could I stop the momentum.
I ranted. I raved. I think I even stomped my feet and quite possibly threw a bag of Hot Cheetos at the kid. But I’ll deny it if the cops decide to press charges.
The boy looked terrified. After thirty seconds of my crazy lady behavior, the manager came over with his cell phone in his hand and a threat of calling 911 spilling from his lips. I didn’t care. I wanted them to arrest me. I wanted to battle it out. I was Fort Apache. I was Norma Rae.
I was nuts.
I needed help. Why wasn’t someone helping me? Someone needed to save me from myself.
Suddenly, a strong hand took my arm with a gentle but firm touch. I was startled and looked up into the face of the best-looking man I had ever seen. Better than a movie star. He was blindingly handsome, uncomfortably so. It was like he was airbrushed. Photoshopped, like Beyonce’s thighs. He was about thirty years old, six-foot-three with muscles in all the right places. He was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers. His hair was dark and wavy, and his face was chiseled, like it was sculpted by Michelangelo, himself.
Oh my God, I was delusional. My psychotic break was giving me visions of impossibly good-looking men in my local supermarket. What was I going to see next? The Loch Ness Monster? Big Foot? I rubbed my eyes, but it didn’t help. He was still there.
“Come on,” he said. His voice was rich velvet, as attractive as his genetic mutant, sexy face. Uh-oh, the delusion had moved to my ears. But his eyes spoke to me, too. Compassion. I had created the person I most needed at the moment. No, he wasn’t offering me ice cream, but he was the first person to care. The kindness tranquilized me. In an instant, I was calmed and almost didn’t give a damn about the lack of happiness ice cream in my mouth.
My fury deflated, and I sniffed. “Okay,” I squeaked. My eyes sprung a leak, and tears started to flow. The mysterious Adonis took my hand and walked me out of the store. I walked with him as if I had been hypnotized. “But my basket,” I said, gazing backward. The basket was full of junk food and seemed to call out to me, asking me not to leave it abandoned in the freezer section.
“You don’t want all of that poison, do you?” he asked.
I was pretty sure I did. “No?”
“Good girl.”
We walked outside and around the corner. I wondered if he was abducting me, and I felt perfectly fine about it. “They didn’t have Rocky Road,” I explained.
“You’re a hot mess.”
“You think I’m hot?”
He didn’t answer. We walked a half of a block more to Denny’s and went inside. The seating hostess got one look at my escort, and she seemed to get something in her eyes because she was batting them so fast that I thought she was going to take off.
“Look at you,” she squealed and pointed at him. She giggled and shifted on her feet.
“A booth for two,” he said, his voice still velvet. I didn’t blame the hostess for slobbering over him. “Booth?” he repeated when the woman seemed to forget what she was doing.
Finally, she took us to our table, and we sat down. “What are we doing here?” I asked, but I hoped he had brought me there for Rocky Road ice cream. He took the menu from me.
“You’re calming down, and I’m ordering for you.”
“You are?”
“She’ll have the egg white omelet and a glass of water,” he told the waitress.
Blech. “I will?” I asked. “I like the Grand Slam. Double hash browns.”
He leaned forward. He had long black eyelashes that I would have killed to have, myself. Without mascara, my eyes looked like hollow holes in my head. “How long are you going to continue poisoning your body?”
