The Love Sucks Club(40)
“Sam does.”
“I just said that they might be!” Sam is indignant.
“At any rate, we need to go. Rox, we’ll drop you off at your place first.”
“You go on. I’ll stay here and talk to Ja...”
“No!” Sam and I both yell.
“She-who-shall-not-be-named!” I continue.
Sam falls back against her chair, gripping her head. “My ears! My ears!”
“Oh for Pete’s sake,” Roxanne scoffs. “Am I dealing with teenagers here?”
“Totally,” Sam grins.
“And I don’t want you to stay here and talk to her,” I add. “She’s dangerous.”
“Fine.” Roxanne hangs up my phone and tosses it to me. After checking to make sure that all of my doors and windows are locked, we all pile into Sam’s truck and ride the short distance over to Roxanne’s.
“Call me as soon as you’re done,” she says, getting out of the truck. “I don’t want you dealing with all of this on your own.”
“What am I?” Sam says. “Chopped liver?”
“More like spam,” I reply.
Roxanne shakes her head. “We need to stick together over this. Besides, someone has to be the voice of reason for you two.”
Sam nods. “Good point.”
We wait until Roxanne gets into her house before taking off. When Sam backs out of Roxanne’s driveway, I direct her back to my house.
“Let’s get her shit and go drop it off at her work.”
Back at my house, we quickly gather the packed gear and toss it into the back of Sam’s truck. When we get to the store where my ex said she was working, I scan the parking lot for her odd vehicle.
“There it is,” I call.
Sam pulls up behind it. The vehicle is a strange kind of Jeep/SUV hybrid and it looks as if the back window has been broken out of it. Lifting the plastic that is glued around the back opening, I motion to Sam to start passing me the stuff. When the back is full, we both put our hands on the pile and give it a huge shove. Some of it crushes into the front seat, leaving us room to wedge in the last few bits. We high-five each other and jump back into the truck. After laughing for several minutes over our brilliance, Sam falls quiet. Fiddling with the radio, I let her stew in silence for a while. When we pull into the parking lot of Dr. B’s, I turn to her. “What’s wrong?”
“I guess I’m just worried about what the doc is going to say.”
“She’s going to say that I’m a nutcase and I should be locked up for life.”
“Well, that part is obvious.”
Laughing, she slaps my arm. “You’re fine.” She looks out the window at a woman walking into the doctor’s office. “You’re totally fine.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
“Come on, let’s go spend a couple of hours sitting around a waiting room.”
“Dr. B is pretty good, from what I’ve heard.”
“Whatever. They’re all the same.”
We walk into the waiting room and Sam plops down into a chair. The woman at the front desk gives me a sheaf of papers about the size of a manuscript and tells me to fill everything out.
“Jesus,” Sam says when I sit down next to her. “Do they want your life story?”
“I guess. It’s medical history.”
“I thought you’d been here before.”
“No. I just know Dr. B socially.”
“Me too,” Sam says with a wink. “If you know what I mean.”
“No, I definitely don’t know what you mean.”
She laughs. “Okay, not really. But she was totally flirting with me last time she was at the resort.”
“I’m sure.”
She takes out her phone and starts checking Facebook while I fill out the forms. The woman sitting to the left of me is fidgeting. The heel of her shoe strikes the wood of the chair leg every time she jiggles her foot. The noise is sending little jabs into my brain and the longer the noise goes on, the more irritated I become. The woman next to me, staring into space, is oblivious to my irritation. Glancing around, I notice that a couple of the other patients are glaring at the woman as well. Ignoring all of us, she continues to slam her heel against the wood.
Trying to put it out of my mind, I return to my papers. Flipping through the pages, I can feel the muscles in my neck getting tighter with every slap of heel against wood. Every time I read a question, the heel strikes again. Finishing the papers, I sign my name with a flourish and jump up to turn them into the woman behind the desk. With my back to the room, I miss what happens next, but a man’s voice makes me jump.