Page 109 of Hot Mess Express
I give her a funny look. “Ice cream for lunch?”
“What’s it with me and bananas today? I think I miss having Pete’s banana in my mouth. It curves a little,” she lets me know.
“Didn’t need to hear that.”
“Y’know, like a banana,” she goes on. “It was fun to play with a little bit, off and on. I’d play with it, then leave it alone, over and over. Drove him crazy. Called it my little banana. Gosh, I really … I really want a banana now.”
Her walking has slowed. “Uh, Juni?”
And then, here on Main Street, in the dead-center of Spruce, Juniper explodes into tears.
Inconsolable.
Body-trembling.
Howling tears.
Honestly, my first instinct is to throw a blanket over her and tackle her to the damned ground. She’s so loud, people are poking their heads out of stores or rushing to the windows. Even on an early weekday morning, people are around, and Juni’s big show of tears right now has a full-ass audience.
“Juni, Juni, the fuck?” I get right in her face and take hold of her arms. “What’s going on with you? You’re so dang loud, people are thinkin’ I’m tryin’ to mug you or somethin’!”
She sucks in her sobs, at once going quiet, and whispers, “I … I just really … r-really miss Pete.”
I sigh. I guess she didn’t take their departure as well as I had thought. She’s just better at swallowing it all down.
And waiting for an opportune moment to let it all out.
In the middle of goddamned Main Street in front of the town.
“I really miss spanking him,” she then tells me, right back to using her full voice. “He made thecutestmoaning noises through his ball gag …”
I clear my throat. “Uh, Juni.”
“And the way his eyes kept telling me ‘no more!’ but his moans kept telling me not to stop, and he never ever used the safe word, which is awfully good, because I could never remember it.”
“Juni, you can tell me the rest of it back at the apartment.”
“Okay.” She takes my hand for some reason, and the two of us walk on down the street, hand-in-hand, while all the onlookers decide the scene’s over with and go back to their business. When we pass the smoothie place, it’s open, and Junihelps herself to the biggest size of whatever banana cocktail they can whip up. It does the trick of getting her out of her funk.
It’s while sitting on a patch of grass in Spruce Park to suck down our smoothies that Juni says, “You might not believe it, but my favorite thing about playing around with Pete is what happens afterwards. When he gets this look in his eyes. And I get this weird kinda fluttering feeling in my stomach, like I could just … die.” She smiles into the sky, squinting against the sunlight. “Is it too soon to say I think I might be in love with him?”
I stare down at the smoothie I’ve barely drank half of. A smile spills over my face as I lick the sweet taste off my lips, thinking of Bridger. “Nah,” I say. “Not too soon at all.”
“Anthony, what can you make out of an X, two I’s, three E’s …”
“Alphabet soup,” I answer my mom from the office as I pore over my dad’s work binders, flipping the pages.
“Oh, you and your funny answers.” I hear her cuss to herself—I guess she’s losing her current game, muttering something about having crummy letters—and then: “Do you want to stay for lunch, sweetheart? We’re havin’ hotdogs.”
“Thanks, but I gotta head out once I get what I’m gettin’.”
Her chair creaks as she shifts in it. “Whatareyou gettin’?”
“Dad’s so dang unorganized,” I mutter to myself, shutting one binder and opening the next. “He needs a secretary.”
“Ooh … well, that’s usually me.”
“A secretary that ain’t playin’Scrabbleall the time,” I amend.
