Page 53 of I'm Not Yours
“I am not going to run after him, Leoni.” I dripped on my wood floor. I knew where Reece was going, he was going home to get changed. He said he’d be back up at my house in tenminutes. Ten minutes! Hardly any time to put my face and hair and myself back together!
“Why not?” Estelle asked. She used to be the mayor of a large city. “Politicians’ middle names are Crooked and Creepy,” she’d told me once. “I would only go back if I was allowed to throw things at annoying people’s heads.” She is also a most excellent seamstress, taught by her grandmother, who was taught by her grandmother. She shook her pointer finger at me. “You need a man in your life to get rid of that excess energy you’re always sizzling off. Keeps a body young.”
“You’re wet, June!” Leoni declared, as if I didn’t know it. She stomped a red, knee-high boot. She dresses in retro style and buys only used, vintage clothing. “Wet and soaked. Did you go swimming in your clothes? That’s dangerous, June. You should know better.”
“A wave ran after me and tackled me to the sand.”
“One of those sneaker waves?” Estelle said. “The curse of the Oregon coast. They sneak up on you and rip-rap, rip-rap.” She snapped her fingers.
“That would be it.”
“Are you all right?” Leoni asked.
“Didn’t hit your head, did you?” Estelle asked, peering over her glasses at me. “You don’t want to lose your marbles. Some of yours are broken already. You weren’t hurt, were you?”
Leoni squealed, as understanding dawned. “Did that tall drink of water rescue you?”
I bit my lip.
“He did! I can tell by the guilty expression!” Estelle pointed her scissors at me. “And it all started with a semidrowning. You look terrible. Makeup streaking, hair a wreck. Could you not have kept yourself dry for this one man?”
I almost giggled, couldn’t help myself, then turned on my heel toward the bathroom.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to get the seaweed, whale poop, and salt water off of me.”
I heard Leoni whisper, “Maybe for the first time in a million years she’ll get a date out of this,” to which Estelle said, voice on full volume, “That mouth of hers is a whip. She scares men. She sews wedding dresses that women kill for, but she swears she’ll dress as a gnome before she be-bops down the aisle in one herself.”
I rolled my eyes and skeedaddled for the shower, turning on the radio as I hurried in. My favorite song was on. It was about a small town on the river, sunshine, hope, and a cheating boyfriend who was locked up in jail for running naked through the streets, his girlfriend threatening to shoot him from behind and, “blast his butt to Jupiter.” It was hilarious.
I sang along as I showered, washed the ocean out of my hair and dried off, quick as a lick, then jumped into jeans and white sandals. I pulled on a white lace shirt and a flowing white lace blouse, both of which I’d sewn, a rope belt I’d wound together with gold ribbon, and gold hoop earrings. I pulled a comb through my blond curls and dried it. I added lotion, liner, mascara, and lipstick. I reached for a lotion that smelled seductive, called Amber Moonlight, and rubbed it on my neck and wrists.
Fifteen minutes tops, I was new, improved, and done.
“He’s been back for five minutes,” Leoni whispered, again worried that Reece had bionic ears. “He knocked and I left him downstairs in the family room. He must live nearby. He’s not wet anymore, either. He is a piece of heaven. A piece of handsome work. A stud.”
“What are you two going to do?” Estelle said, again not bothering to curb the volume of her ricocheting voice. “If I wereyou, I would dispense with the preliminaries and invite that tiger to my bed.”
I waved my arms at her, as in,be quiet!
“In fact,” Estelle mused, “I think I’ll invite him myself. He probably has a hidden thing for women of a certain age and experience.”
I tried not to smile like a fool at the thought of my taking the chariot driver to bed. “He’s taking me to the emergency room.”
“How romantic!” Estelle dramatically clutched her chest. “Maybe you can take X-rays of each other’s bottoms. Or you can give each other colonoscopies. Tar and feather me, you can get your pap smear and he can wield the tools . . . or,” she used her fingers to form two guns, “you can practice giving each other stitches and shots in the butt!” I rolled my eyes.
“Go, go!” Leoni insisted. “Before he escapes! Before he runs off or is intimidated by your harsh and ghastly view of men in general. Please do not go into one of your harangues about how men are comparable to vermin, spiders, or orangutan spit. Please don’t tell him your history. Please don’t lecture him on the faults of his ‘species,’ and for Godzilla’s sake, don’t list the problems that men have caused in this century, or in the last century. Try to be nice . . .”
“I’m going to be nice. I’m always nice.”
“Not with men, you man-decimating wreck,” Estelle said. “You’re a charging grizzly bear with night sweats.”
“I’m not going to change who I am because of a man.”
“No one’s asking you to change,” Estelle argued. “Heck, I have never changed one iota of my charming personality for a man. We’re telling you not to assume he’s inherently a monster because of his plumbing and I’ll bet he has big plumbing.Bigplumbing!” She semishouted the last two words.
I blushed again.Darn it!
