Page 19 of Lovesick
I shifted in my plush chair, crossing my legs and moving the book I totally wasn’t reading at all to my other knee. If Marty hadn’t agreed to come to New Orleans this weekend, I had no idea how I would get through the week. I already missed him enough as it was. If he hadn’t agreed on the visit… I’m not sure what I would have done. So, I banished that idea from my mind.
Sighing, I gave up on the book, closing it around a piece of paper fashioned into a bookmark and slid the heavy textbook inside my backpack.I might as well go back to the house, eat some dinner, then try again. Maybe with some food in me, I’d be able to concentrate.
I had given myself a good, long look in the mirror at my mom’s house on Saturday morning after I woke up. I had never mentioned a single thing to Marty about snacking my way through all the late hours spent studying, and he had told me my butt was sexy. My butt was the only thing that made me feel self-conscious, and he had paid me a compliment without even realizing how much it meant.
That didn’t mean I had a free pass to go and eat all the chips I wanted or pop a late-night bag of popcorn, but I felt…better. Better about the way my jeans fit, and better about doing whatever got me through nursing school - even if that was snacking a little too liberally.
Before I left the library, I took a picture of my heavy backpack and sent it to Marty with the caption “Studying for my boards.” Just as I got in my car to drive the short distance back to the sorority house, I heard a buzz and checked my phone to find a picture of a bright red poppy.
“You got this”the caption read, and I couldn’t help but smile - but I wasn’t smiling at the flower. I was smiling about the man who had sent the flower, the one I would see again this weekend.
* * *
Today was the day. More specifically, today was Saturday, and more importantly, today was the day that Marty was driving here to see me.
I had been floating on clouds all morning. When I woke up, Abigail was sitting at her desk with a music theory book in front of her on her desk, and I had practically risen out of bed on a draft of cheerfulness. “What’s put you in such a good mood?” she asked almost suspiciously, probably because I had been impatient and struggled to focus all week.
“Marty’s coming today,” I reminded her as I grabbed a change of clothes and headed for the shower.
“Oh, yeah.” I couldn’t blame her for forgetting. Her audition for the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra was coming up, and she was almost always preoccupied with practicing. “You’re going to introduce us, right?”
“Of course! If you have a couple minutes to spend somewhere besides at a keyboard.” I meant the words as a joke, but they sounded a little insensitive in the light of what I had literally just been thinking. “Sorry. I know you’re busy.”
“Not too busy to meet this guy who left you for flowers,” she told me, her eyebrows drawing together and the red, unbrushed hair that hung wildly around her face giving her a fierce look.
“That’s not exactly how it happened…”
“That’s for him to explain,” Abigail said sweetly. “I’m going to make omelets for breakfast. You in, Zoe?” A muffled groan came from the quilt-wrapped lump in Zoe’s bed. “Sounds like a yes. They’ll be done when you get out of the shower, probably.”
“Cool, thanks. I’ll ask Marty when he thinks he’ll get here so you guys can meet him… but be nice, please,” I added. “No demanding of explanations or beating up a guy who may or may not have chosen flowers over me.”
Abigail shrugged and managed to keep a straight face until she disappeared out of the door to go downstairs - which she descended with laughter I could hear even with the door closed. Honestly…it was pretty funny. Marty would definitely laugh when I told him later, and Zoe had even abandoned the pretense of sleep to snicker. I tossed a pillow at her and headed for the shower.
“Hey, what time do you think you’ll get here?”I texted Marty before stepping into the invigorating streams of water. When I got out - my skin steaming and the mirrors foggy - I had a reply.
Momma wants me to help out today, and we have a large party on Sunday. So I’ll get there around 5 this evening….but I can’t stay :-(
Oh, OK! I can’t wait.
I didn’t convey to him the disappointed pout I sent myself in the mirror. The sooner I could see him again, the better, and I had really hoped his mother would let him have today off too so we could hang out in the city together. If he got here at five, that would limit what we could do.
Oh well,I consoled myself squeezing excess water out of my hair into the sink.He has to work. We can still go out this evening to a restaurant or something.Maybe we could go to Abigail’s bar and listen to her play - the drinks there were decent and fairly cheap, and as a Tulane student, I could get discounts on food there - just not alcohol. Which no one thought was fair, but it was what it was.
I shouldn’t be encouraging Marty to drink, though.I still wasn’t convinced he didn’t drink excessively. And I couldn’t deny that once or twice during the week, when he had sent me a picture holding a beer or with one in the background; I asked him if that was the first beer for the day. The first time, he had taken my question in stride, but the second time, I could tell he was a bit annoyed that I refused to drop the drinking thing.
I couldn’t help it. Marty was being ridiculous with his “I know my limits” line that he brought up in his defense every time I mentioned alcohol. As I had told him before, limits had nothing to do with anything. Humans weren’t meant to imbibe a ton of alcohol, and their metabolisms started doing bad things after a point, both when drinking and if one suddenly stopped… much worse illnesses could stem from alcoholism, too. Serious illnesses.
At least I would get to see for myself today if he really looked all right. If he didn’t, well…I’d never had a date at the doctor’s office, but I was always talking about how I liked trying new things. It could be an interesting experience as long as everyone was okay in the end.
It was our turn to sweep and mop the wooden floors, according to the room-by-room schedule magneted to the fridge. So, my roomies and I decided to go ahead and get the chore done since we all had places to be later and none of us wanted to leave it until the last minute. First, though, we enjoyed our omelets along with toast, spread with butter and strawberry jam.
The breakfast fortified us and made the cleaning go quickly. I even decided to go a little further, getting out the vacuum and going over the rug in the living room and the various pieces of furniture.
“You really care about this guy, don’t you?” Zoe asked as I switched off the vacuum.
“Yeah?”
“Enough to break out the ancient weapon and scour the untold wastes-”
