“I was beginning to think you actually served your thirty
minutes with my dad,” said Adrienne with a cute smile as she held Scott’s
sweaty hand in hers. While the two of them walked down the street together like
a cuddly couple, Scott’s hand wouldn’t stop perspiring and his face wouldn’t
stop glowing with strawberry redness. The more embarrassed he looked, the more
Adrienne held onto his hand and smiled at him. “You don’t need to be nervous
around me, Scott.”
“I know, I know…it’s just that…” Scott sighed as he searched
for his words. “It’s been a while since somebody held me hand like this. I
mean, are we…uh…what are we, exactly?”
“We can be anything you want, Scotty-Boy. We can be friends.
We can be good friends. We can be really, really, really good friends. For all
the world knows, we could be dating right now.” That last sentence really
brightened up Scott’s tomato-colored cheeks. “You’ve never had a girlfriend
before, have you?”
“Actually, I had three of them before you,” explained Scott,
his eyes tucked low and not meeting Adrienne’s. “They didn’t work out too well,
though. They were a lot like your dad in the sense that they didn’t give a crap
about my introversion. Either that or they didn’t know it was a real thing.
Constant phone calls, twenty-four seven, right in the middle of homework.”
Adrienne gave him an accusatory look and placed one hand on her right hip.
“That doesn’t mean that…” Scott stuttered. “I mean, you can call anytime
you…oh, no…”
“I’m just screwing with you, Scott, you can relax now,” said
Adrienne while swinging Scott’s liquefied hand. “Truth be told, I actually get
a lot of what you’re saying. Sometimes you’ve just got to have your space,
that’s all. But even with all that space, there still can’t be secrets between
us. You have to find a balance between those things, you know?” A beat of
awkward silence hung between them. “So tell me the truth, Scott: did you have
anything to eat today?”
He sighed, “No, I didn’t. That’s part of the reason why I
didn’t show up for our walk right away. I was at the gas station eating a
microwavable pizza.”
“Lift up your shirt, Scott,” demanded Adrienne. Scott
swallowed a nervous gulp and questioned his girlfriend before she asked him
again to lift up his shirt. When he did so, he revealed that his ribcage was
slightly visible. “I knew it,” she said. “You’re not getting enough to eat
these days. That’s not good for you, honey.”
“Thanks, Mom,” snickered Scott.
“Scott, I’m serious. Didn’t you take health class in middle
school? You would have learned all about anorexia if you actually paid
attention.”
“I’m not anorexic!” snapped Scott, to which Adrienne’s
accusatory eyes widened. “Sorry about that. You’re right. I should be eating
more often than I do. It’s just that…it’s this goddamn dream I keep having
every night. It won’t go away.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s like…having an acid trip every night. There’s this
puppet teacher and she’s always covered in worms. So are her students. And
every time I try to take a bite of food, all I an see are those worms just
crawling around on my plate. It took all the strength I had just to eat that
gas station pizza. Goddamn, what the fuck is wrong with me?” Scott placed his
head in his free hand and rubbed his temples, as if the face massage would
actually ease his permanent pain.
Adrienne let go of Scott’s goopy hand and instead wrapped
her arm around his shoulders. “I get it, Scott. School is a shitty place to be.
It always has been. But if you don’t eat on a regular basis, you could die. And
don’t even try telling me that’s a better option than living.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do? Every time I have something
to eat, it’s just worms and maggots. I can’t put it out of my mind. I can’t see
a shrink or else they’ll lock me up in a loony bin.” A little tear splash
plopped onto the sidewalk, Scott hurrying to wipe his eyes away.
“I have an idea. How about instead of worms, you imagine
something else over it. It’s like mental censorship. If you’re eating mashed
potatoes, imagine gravy instead of worms. If you’re eating pizza, imagine more
cheese and pepperoni instead of maggots. It takes a lot of time to master, but
that’s true with pretty much any skill. That’s what being healthy is, Scott: a
skill. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
Scott let out a deep sigh and said, “Okay, I’ll give it a
try. If it’ll keep me out of the nuthouse, I’ll do it. By the way, how do you
know all about this?”
“I see a therapist every Sunday morning.” Scott’s dewy eyes
widened as if this therapist was a true alternative to the nuthouse he saw in
Terminator 2: Judgment Day. “It’s true, Scott,” said Adrienne. “You get to sit
on a comfy couch and talk about your feelings for an hour or so. It’s good for
the soul.”
“Wait a minute, wait a minute…You always seem so happy all
the time. I mean, why would you…you know…”
“You of all people should know that what happens on the
outside has little to do with what happens on the inside. My therapist got me
through the divorce proceedings between my mom and dad. There was nothing happy
or joyful about any of what happened between those two. I’m still hurting over
it. I get that my dad can be a pain in the ass sometimes, but he’s still my
dad. He should have protected me…”
A small tear welled up in Adrienne’s eye and Scott gently
wiped it away with his shirt sleeve. He said, “Now we’re even,” referencing
their shared moment in the cafeteria. She gave him a little smile and his heart
pulsated with life once more. For the next twenty minutes, the two of them
walked together in silence, just admiring each other’s company.
Scott still couldn’t help looking down at Adrienne’s bare
feet in those sandals. He tried his damnedest not to get a boner in front of
her as he admired those pink-painted toenails of hers. He even titled his head
backwards so that he could see her soft and silky soles, which were his
favorite part of the female foot. Adrienne thought he was staring at her ass
and playfully swiped him away before giggling.
“Is this your house?” Adrienne asked. Scott nodded and the
two of them stopped in the lawn while holding each other’s hands. They gazed in
each other’s eyes and Adrienne couldn’t help but giggle again, while Scott’s
shy guy smile was a little more attractive than his slasher smile in the locker
hallways. “I had fun walking with you today. I learned a lot about you.”
“Yeah, uh…same here…heh…”
“Goodnight, Scott. I’ll see you at school tomorrow.”
Adrienne grinned sweetly at Scott before slowly bringing her face closer to his
and planting a kiss on his already flaming cheek. The senior’s eye’s widened as
his newfound girlfriend kissed him on the lips and swirled her tongue around
his mouth. For good measure, she kicked off one of her sandals and rubbed her
sole against his calf while kissing him deeper and deeper.
This was the first time in a long time that Scott’s oral
activities didn’t involve worms and maggots. Adrienne’s lips and tongue tasted
more heavenly than Crème Brule despite the fact that she had eaten a crappy
school lunch just hours before. This was Scott’s instant vacation from reality,
if only for a few seconds. He could stay in this beautiful kiss forever. He
thought to himself, Fuck you, Mrs. Striker! Fuck you, Mr. Simpson! Fuck you,
Alan! Fuck everybody…
“Oh my god!” said Adrienne as she broke the kiss with
shocked wide-eyes. Scott began to kick himself once again as he assumed he was
talking out loud the whole time. But how could he form a coherent sentence with
another woman’s tongue in his mouth? And then Adrienne pointed down at Scott’s
crotch and the offender stood proudly in the air.
Scott used his backpack to cover up his aroused manhood and
profusely apologized to Adrienne, who just stood there not knowing what the
hell to do. Any smile she once had was minimal at best. Instead of throwing
more useless, “I’m sorrys” her way, Scott ran inside his house and bolted
upstairs to his bedroom, where he threw the backpack on his bed and locked the
door. He hoped in all of that turbo-charged madness that his own mother didn’t
notice the wood jutting through his sweatpants. Otherwise, he’d have to kick
himself even harder than before.
Scott placed a hand on his chest and kept telling himself to
settle down before taking a seat on the bed and breathing heavily. “It’s just a
boner. It’ll go away. They always do.” His breathing intensified as he laid
back in his bed and pounded the mattress with his fists. “Goddamn it, why did I
have to be so stupid!” He tried to say it softly enough so that his mother
didn’t hear him. Lord knows she didn’t need to see Scott giving her a one-gun
salute after a hard day of work. “I’m so fucking embarrassed,” he whispered
while his breathing intensified yet again. He wiped the sweat off of his face
and hands and closed his eyes for a while, hoping the boner would flatten
sooner than later.
