I walked up to the counter where the ingredients for peanut butter and jelly was already laid out, and got to work making four sandwiches.
I couldn’t even muster the hate for it that I normally would have. Nothing tasted good, anyway. Not when Mable wasn’t in my life.
“Is one of those for me?” Dru asked.
“No,” I snorted. “You don’t like peanut butter.”
She lunged for my sandwiches, and I had to hold them up high over her head to keep her from snatching them.
“Leave it!” I yelled. “You freakin’ crazy weirdo!”
She laughed and punched me in the thigh, which luckily was over my phone.
“Ow!” she grumbled as she gave me the bird.
I chuckled as she shook out her hand.
Pushing her slightly away, I placed my sandwiches on the counter and helped her with her sandwich.
She pulled out two more slices of bread as she said, “Pregnancy messed with my brain chemistry. I like it now.”
I sat down at the kitchen table with my stack of sandwiches and got to work eating them.
“Are we going out to ski?” I asked.
“No,” Dru cried. “We’re going to stay here all day and cuddle up on the couch! We’re going to watch movies and make popcorn. And we’re going to do all kinds of fun things during nap time. Then we’re going to go out to eat later, and we’re going to visit that shop where they have all those cute baby clothes I showed you a few days ago…”
On and on she went, telling me how she wanted to spend her day.
She did this for a solid fifteen minutes as we ate and cleaned up from lunch.
Only when we were done did she say, “Let me borrow your phone.”
I pulled it out of my pocket and handed it to her.
She tapped the screen, then handed it back to me. “Never mind. You didn’t charge it and it’s dead.”
I grimaced.
I sucked at remembering to charge it.
Before I was locked up, cell phones weren’t as popular as they are now. It wasn’t as taboo to not have a phone on you twenty-four-seven. So, I sometimes forgot to charge it.
I’d gotten a little better about it when I had someone I wanted to talk to all day every day that also had one, but since I was supposed to lie low, I’d reverted back to my old ways.
And, to be honest, sometimes it was easier when I didn’t know what she was sending me.
If it wasn’t right in front of my face, I didn’t have the urge to throw up.
Because that was how I felt almost all the time.
The urge to puke because of how I’d left her.
I just hoped that I would be able to make it up to her.
Twenty-Six
Falling in love makes you do stupid things. There was this one time I even got married.
