It’s cute that he thinks my inability to function is because I don’t know what the food is. I picked it up, after all. The app told me what I was getting—not that I memorized it or something. Still.
With a deep breath, I load up my plate with honey garlic and barbecue wings. I’ve never been a big fan of Buffalo sauce.
He’s sitting at the end of the table, already eating, two bones on his plate next to the pile of wings waiting to be eaten, one still in his hand. When I turn toward the table, he grins at me, then takes another bite, thumping the spot adjacent to his to encourage me to sit there.
Almost reluctantly, I do as he indicates. I was planning on sitting farther down, but he’s feeding me and letting me hang out for a second, and … “Can I use the bathroom?” I ask, setting my plate down.
He almost jumps out of his chair. “Of course! It’s down that hall over there”—he points to the other side of the room—“first door past where the hall branches off.”
“Thanks.” I offer a polite smile, then make a beeline across the living room to where he indicated. I hesitate for a second once I’m in the hall, but then I make sense of what he said, find the bathroom and hurry inside.
Letting out a sigh of relief at finally getting to pee, I take my time looking around at what’s obviously a guest bathroom whileI wash my hands. I’m stalling more than I should. My wings’ll be ice cold at this rate. I had ‘em in my insulated bag in my car of course, but they sat on his doorstep for several minutes while my car decided to give up the ghost, and then we had our whole back and forth about me eating.
I’m not sure why I’m so hesitant … I guess I’m just not used to being taken care of very much. But this is a much nicer bathroom and much better food than I’d get at the gas station down the road.
Pulling out my phone, which I’d already set to pause my orders after I finished this delivery, I say I’m done for the night and close the app, swallowing the lump that rises when I once again take note that I’m short fifty bucks for rent. I was already pushing things by being a few days late to get rent to Whitney, my thirty-seven-year-old roommate, who rented me the room after her second divorce. I’m not sure how much sheneedsthe money, but she definitely likes it. She’s not the worst roommate ever, but I know she’s getting annoyed by me being a few days after the first of the month the last few months. And now I’m going to have to ask for grace for the last fifty bucks, and I don’t know how I’m going to scrape it together anyway. Try selling my panties on Craigslist?
I’m not sure how quick of a turnaround that would be, though …
Not wanting things to get weird, I emerge from the bathroom and sit down at the table. Jason’s nearly done with his wings already. He must’ve been hungry.
He grins at me again when I sit down, finishes up with his last wing, sets the bone down, and wipes his hands on a napkin as I pick up my first wing and take a bite. “So tell me what you’ve been up to since the last time I saw you.”
I cover my mouth and snicker. “When even was that?”
Screwing up his face, he leans his elbows on the table on either side of his plate, his hands clasped above it. “Ummm … I wanna say you were in the eighth grade.”
Laughing, I shake my head. “You want a rundown on everything that’s happened since I was fourteen?”
He shrugs. “You can give me the tl;dr version.”
Still snickering, I shake my head again, trying to figure out where to start. “Well, I finished the eighth grade and went to high school, where I did most of the normal high school things?—”
“Went to wild parties and got hammered every weekend?”
Jerking my head back, I let out a shocked laugh. “Is that what you and Hunter did in high school?”
His grin turns wistful, and he shakes his head, sitting back in his chair, his hands in his lap. “No. We were good boys who did all the right things. We went to practice, we ate what our coaches told us we should, we slept enough so our bodies could recover and meet the demands we placed upon them. We wanted to be the best at our sports. We were both gonna go pro, you know.” The last is said so softly, it’s almost a whisper.
“Well, that seems to have worked out well for you,” I say after a moment, needing to fill the silence, not wanting to let the sadness win. I don’t have it in me to relive Hunter with him. Nor to think about how ironic it was that doing all the right things didn’t save my brother’s life.
Clearing my throat, I look down at my plate, pushing the wings around, suddenly not so hungry anymore. “No,” I say softly. “I didn’t go to wild parties or get hammered.” Well, only that one time. I was so desperate for my parents to pay attention to me while simultaneously convinced I was as much a ghost to them as my brother that I deliberately went to a party and got drunk one weekend my junior year just to see if they’d notice.
They didn’t. Not really. After I puked my guts out the next morning, my mom glanced up when I came out to the kitchen to get some water and asked if I had a stomach bug. I just nodded and went back to bed.
But I learned that hangovers suck. I hate throwing up with a burning passion. Deliberately choosing to do something that ends with me with my head in a toilet and everything in my stomach making a violent exit through its entry route wasn’t something I wanted to experience again. Or regularly.
Plus, being drunk wasn’t as great as everyone seemed to make it out to be. I felt dizzy and stupid, and I couldn’t control my mouth, and I ended up ugly crying on some random guy for like an hour. It was embarrassing and awful and just made me feel worse in every way.
“I don’t know if you remember,” I continue, trying to force myself to sound a lot more chipper than I feel, “but I started playing the violin when I was a kid.”
“Oh, yeah,” he nods. “I remember when you were first starting and listening to you practice ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ like every day for months.”
Grinning, I take another bite of my wing. “Well, first it was because I wanted to get good at it. Then it was because I was so proud of being able to play something I actually recognized, that I kept playing it all the time even when I’d moved on to other songs with my lessons.”
“That’s adorable,” he murmurs, and I blush a little, looking away again.
I remember thinking that Jason was really cute when I was eleven or twelve, though I knew that as a high schooler and my brother’s friend, he only saw me as a little kid. He’s grown into a very attractive man, and his obvious workout regimen as a pro hockey player certainly doesn’t hurt anything.
