Page 17 of Perfect Mess

“You okay over there?” asked Janet. “You seem a little off.”

She was right. Not only was I was off my game, I was out of my mind. After what happened at the reunion the previous night, and then what happened with Gary Wright earlier that day, my mental health was on life support. Janet telling me about spending time with Jack Thompson wasn’t helping.

Not that I was jealous. Of course I wasn’t jealous. There was no way Jack would be interested in someone like Janet, so there was nothing to be jealous about. Janet was too innocent and nice for someone like Jack. It would be like a shark dating one of those cute little Dorie fish fromFinding Nemo.

After the next point, we switched sides, and I switched the subject. “Guess who I saw today?” I asked Janet.

Janet dinked to Mabel. “Who?”

“Gary.”

“Gary who?”

Mabel dinked it back.

“Gary Wright.”

The ball deflected off Janet’s paddle higher than she expected and Mabel pounced, blasting it back at her feet. The ball went straight through Janet’s legs for another point.”

“I hired him to paint Aunt Catherine’s house. He told me to tell you hi.” It occurred to me in that moment that we never found a hooking up prospect for Janet during the reunion.Perhaps …

“Well tell him I said hi too.”

“I’ll do that.” Maybe after I figured out what I wanted to do about Jack, I could revisit my original plan to hook up Janet. And this time I had a potential target.

With the two of us distracted, Dick and Mabel were true to their word. They whipped our butts. Nothing like getting your ass kicked by senior citizens to finish your day.

Touché Universe. Touché.

* * *

After pickleball,Janet and I said our goodbyes and then I went home and showered. After changing into my pajamas, the pair with the grumpy cat on the front, sticking the middle finger of its paw up, I realized I was hungry, so I called Ralph.

“Hello?” Ralph sounded tired.

“Hey it’s me.”

“Me who?”Irritated too.Ralph was in one of his moods.

I said, “I thought you were going to stop by and check in on me? Make sure I wasn’t still suffering from cow trauma.”

“Are you still suffering? From cow trauma?”

“A little.” I rearranged the pillow that was jabbing me in the back. “On your way over, can you stop by the Thai place?”

“I never said I was coming over. And if I was, that’s out of the way. Plus, I don’t like Thai food.”

“Make sure you get extra pineapple in the pineapple fried rice. Love you!”

While I was waiting for Ralph to deliver dinner, I dug out my old yearbook from the closet, flipping through the senior class pictures. I found the “T’s”. Specifically, “Thompson”. More specifically, “Thompson, Jack”.

His perfect smile, perfect skin, perfect face stared up at me from the page. Every high school has one. Captain of the football team. Prom king. Voted best looking, most athletic, and most likely to succeed. All the girls want him. All the guys want tobehim. That guy at our school was Jack.

So … I have a confession to make. Back in high school, I was kind of a stalker. Truth be told, I was obsessed. My teenage hormones worked overtime 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I did everything I could to get close to him. Was he out of my league? Of course he was. Did it matter? No. I even tried out for cheerleading. Can you imagine? Me being cheerful? I only did it to get close to Jack.

As I flipped through the yearbook, a picture of prom caught my eye. There was Jack. With Ashley Griffin. The crowned king standing arm in arm with his witch, I mean, queen. Every high school has one of her too. Captain of the cheerleading squad. Boobs like a swimsuit model. The girl voted most likely to marry some rich, wrinkled old guy and then smother him in his sleep.

Ashley must have known what I was up to back then. As squad leader, she put me on top of the cheer pyramid during practice. And then her cronies, Heather and Britney, “accidentally” dropped me. I was on crutches for the rest of the season.

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