Page 40 of All the Right Words
Harper was deeply relieved. ‘Drink, please.’
‘Great. I’ll get another round in.’
Olivia got the drinks in, and they settled at a table. ‘So, how’s your stomach?’ Olivia asked. ‘You recovered all right?’
Harper wasn’t sure how to respond. It was so early between them that she didn’t think describing her colon’s recent adventures would go down that well. As a result, she just said, ‘I’m fine now, yes.’
‘Really? Because Gina said it was pretty intense.’
‘She did?’ Harper asked.
‘The way she put it was that you needed a lot of fluids afterwards,’ Olivia said with a wry grin.
Harper had to smile. ‘Yeah, well…’
‘Have I told you about the first time I met Cho’s family?’ Olivia asked.
‘Interesting segue,’ Harper said with a raised eyebrow.
Olivia smiled. ‘I swear it’s relevant. It’s on the topic of bodily malfunction.’
‘Then I can’t wait to hear it.’
‘Well, I was twenty-two and a late bloomer. I was scared shitless of meeting this family, but Cho felt we were there, and I knew it was a good sign, so I went. And when I get there, it’s not too bad, and I think, yeah, I can do this. We all sit down at the table, and they serve starters. It’s these little skewers, and I assume it’s chicken. But when I bite into it, it’s not chicken. It’s something else. So I ask the mother what it is, and she says. ‘Grilled pineapple.’ But what she doesn’t know is that I’m allergic to pineapple.’
Harper's eyes widened. ‘Oh no.’
‘Oh yes. But I cannot possibly be rude, so I choke one down because it’s not the kind of allergy that kills you, just the itchy kind. I figure I can handle it. But as dinner goes on, I start to get seriously itchy. So I’m trying to be a good guest, but my god, my body is onfire.I want to scratch my god damn skin off. But I’m not going to sit there scratching myself like I’ve got fleas, am I? I’ve got to resist the urge to scratch.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell her, the mum?’
‘You think I should have said, “Hey, I want to pull my skin off, and it’s your fault?” Olivia asked.
‘I take your point. So what did you do?’
‘I sat there and tried to bear through it.’
‘And did it work?’
Olivia raised an eyebrow. ‘Have you ever tried to resist a bodily function? Pinch off a cough or something?’
Harper thought about it. ‘Umm, yeah, I guess you get kind of… Umm…’
Olivia smiled. ‘Twitchy. The word you’re looking for is twitchy.’
‘You were twitching?’
‘At first. But the urge got so bad, that it became actual jerks. But I was desperate to make a good impression, so I told myself I could power through, keep a handle on it. But then I picked up a glass of wine -red– and I had one last mega-jerk. My hand went flying.’
‘Oh no!’ Harper exclaimed.
Olivia laughed. ‘It was worse than that. I tossed the wine all over her dad.’
Harper laughed bodily.
‘Head to toe. He looked like Carrie at the prom,’ Miranda added, grinning.
Harper’s laugh turned into a shriek. ‘So then what happened?’
