Seriously, what the hell is coming out of this guy’s mouth?
He lifts up a battered skateboard, the kind that I saw many a time with the flamboyant roses and skulls painted across it when the boys back in high school would do their thing in the parking lot. The Viking looks up at me with what can be described as a sad puppy face, or worse, like I’ve torn out his heart and plunged my stiletto-clad heel on it. But the way he’s looking at me…
“This thing got me to and from high school.”
“I’m sorry?” I shrug, hoping that’ll make him lose the sad look. It makes him look tinier somehow, and way too familiar.
He glares down at me from his towering height, and something inside me wants to snarl and spit back at him. I straighten my shoulders and raise an eyebrow.
“Well, good thing it wasn’t your noggin then, uh?” I smirk. “Look, collect your flotsam, and let’s get out of here. I’m gonna take you to the hospital and they’re going to make sure your brain hasn’t gone to mashed potatoes.”
He makes a grossed out face, all puckered lips, and screwed down eyebrows. The look strangely reminds me of Sera trying to beg Matty to eat some broccoli. I wonder how old he is.
Shit, if he’s less than twenty-three, I’d be dealing with an insecure little man-child. But then again, every man I know hasn’t graduated from horny-idiot-teenager yet either.
“Why would you put that image in my head? Mashed potatoes, the greatest food in the world, and you compare that with my cortical condition?”
I stuff my hands in my trench coat, and cock a hip out, feeling the slightest pinch in my toe cleavage. Pain is beauty. I want to smack my forehead all Homer Simpson like, but you know, I’d leave a red mark on my head and ruin my make-up. I settle for a little growl and crack my jaw left, then right. I look back at my car, then back at the giant.
“Could you just get in the car so I can drive you to the General? It’s not like they’re waiting for your highness to arrive so the doctor can especially see you.” That nose, that jaw… they’re bugging me. The precise shade of his eyes. I think I know this guy. But he’s looking at me like he doesn’t recognize me, either. Rather than get caught in that awkward dance, of ‘yeah, remember me? We used to…’, I shrug off the weak feeling of deja-vu.
Fuck it, it’s been a long week, and I need to sleep. Wine first, then a solid five hours so I can do research tomorrow for my meetings on Monday morning.
He looks down at the hood of my ‘Stang again with regret, shakes his head and gets into the passenger seat. I quell the urge to snap the locks in place and laugh once I’m seated inside.
“This is a sweet ride,” he says, and that voice… Am I going crazy?
A tickle of memory is just out of my reach. I’m sure I’ve seen him somewhere.
And I got a couple of hours wait at the Emergency to hopefully get reacquainted.
Chapter 2
Once we’ve been registered and everything at the emergency department, we take two opposite seats and commence the countdown to boredom. At least I do.
So, I didn’t think this through. Strange guy, with a totally strange way of talking; add in one quarter cup of social anxiety by the way he’s fidgeting and running his fingers through his hair, fold in the eggs whites, and you have one undercooked conversation that tastes like shit and it’ll give you the runs.
I go through my phone, answering quick e-mails for work – seriously, do people even read the shit I send to them in the first place? – and go through my texts. Russia’s sent me one that he needs to ‘talk to me’, and I have an inkling about what he’s going to want to say. Yeah, not ready for all that drama, so I’m gonna ignore that for now.
The Viking clears his throat, and since it’s so quiet in the waiting room, it feels like it’s the uncomfortable sound a microphone makes in a silent auditorium – awkward.
I glance up from my phone and pin him with a look that clearly says gimme two more minutes. He raises an eyebrow, and gives me a stiff nod. Yeah, like I needed your permission.
Glancing back down at my phone, I send off a text to Sera, wondering if she wants to keep me company after I explained the whole situation and that yes, I’ve gone and ruined our Friday night get-together, just us girls. She’d been texting me all week with the toothy emoji, telling me just how excited she was for tonight.
All because I needed to check my reflection one last goddamn time. Well, your lipstick was smudged.
I palm my phone and stuff it in my coat pocket then sit in uncompanionable silence with the giant.
“Hi,” he says, sitting across from me, rubbing at one eye. Not sure if that’s the one with the contact in or not. Oh, well.