Ana - 4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

“My pants aren’t happy!” Yeah, that was the best I could come up with as I sprang to my feet. He looked amused, but I began to see spots from moving way too fast with a hangover. My head felt like someone had split it in two, and I rocked back and forth on my feet.

“Whoa there, happypants, you okay?” He reached out and grabbed my hands to pull me back down on the bed. I sat back and waiting for the blood to return to my head. Andy grabbed both hands, prompting me to slip them away. Bad habit.

“Yeah, fine. So… what happened last night? I kind of don’t remember you.” In this instance, honesty seemed to be the best policy. It had to be fairly obvious anyway.

“Well, first I came in around one in the morning and you were absolutely shit-faced. Has anyone ever told you that you flirt a lot when you’re drunk?” I blushed as he went on, his mischievous grin not unnoticed. “So then I took away your vodka bottle, and let you fall asleep on me. You definitely didn’t object.”

My pockets were a maze as I searched for my pack of cigarettes, yanking them out only to find the pack empty. I fell back on the bed and willed myself to sink down into it, but it didn’t work. I opened my eyes to find Andy four inches away, while holding a cigarette backward in his mouth. His sparkling teeth gripped it firmly and I could see a spot of darker, translucent white where his saliva had touched the paper.

“Here you go, happypants. I’ll even light it for you.” In the darkened room, I heard a snap and the flame’s reflection made his eyes dance. They were sharp blue, with feral intelligence. My breath caught with a hitch, and he smiled wider as he let the cigarette drop from his teeth to rest on my collarbone. “Sorry, I’ll pick it up for you.”

His head shifted slowly, and I smelled shampoo and smoke. His hot breath tickled my neck and his teeth grazed my skin as he picked up the forlorn menthol. Anna chose this time to burst in the door.

“Stop making out and come be social!” she yelled before she popped back out.

“We weren’t making out!” I screamed back.

“He’s lying!” Andy’s lips touched mine, his tongue barely touching them before he backed away, and sat up.

“Didn’t count, no tongue,” I said, sticking my own out at him. He advanced on me, clearly aiming to remedy the mistake, but I slid away and ran for the door. “Anna! Help!”

I paused in front of the couch as the realization sunk in that I had been blatantly flirting. Andy pounced and tackled me to the couch as Anna ran in brandishing a bendy straw.

“Any false moves and I’ll suck you both!” She raised the straw to her lips and pointed it at us, as we stared at her with the dumbest of looks. I mean really, what do you say to something like that?

“Careful, you’ll make his pants happy again,” Andy said. I smacked him in the head with a pillow.

“Leave my pants out of it!”

“Oh, Andy, he wants you to get rid of his pants.” Anna waggled her eyebrows as she dodged the other pillow.

“Stop turning everything I say into sexual innuendo, damn it!” I snatched the cigarette from behind Andy’s ear, and sulked down into the couch.

“Fine, Jamie. Haha… you said sex.” Andy held out his hand to give me his lighter and I smacked him in the head with another pillow.

I’d never felt more attractive.

***

Jiggly. Still so goddamn jiggly. I poked my stomach and watched it shake. I pressed hard enough to hurt, trying to make it concave. Too jiggly, the fat just rolled to other places. I dug my fingernails into the skin on my hips and stifled the urge to scream. So fucking chubby. My fingernails started to leave angry crescents on my love handles. Tears crept into my eyes as they drew blood.

I pulled on pants and a shirt quickly, covering up the abundance of jelly that rode across my abdomen. First a pillow, then the bed, then the wall, then the window caught my fists. The shatter of glass made me blink, surprised by the sound. It didn’t feel like it was real until then. I looked down at the white carpet, wondering what sound was coming from the floor. Blood was collecting in tiny exploded droplets, floating atop the stain-proof coating.

With a sigh I set about cleaning up the mess. I got a bunch of wet paper towels to wash away the blood from the carpet, and scooped the glass into the garbage with a dust pan. Cold water stung at my hand and forearm when I shoved it under the faucet. A few little shards of glass were still adhering, but none of the cuts looked deep.

I carried the last of the paper towels and glass to the kitchen and dumped them in the trash. As I turned to head back to my room, something snagged my eye. Someone had made a cake. It was on the counter underneath its glass dome, a single wedge taken out to reveal that it was red velvet.

The cake’s covering slid off easily enough, and the smell of cream cheese icing wafted up to my nose. My mouth flooded, but then I thought about Andy. He’d even taken the time to drop me off on his way home. I was lucky he paid any attention to me the way I was. If I touched that cake, it would be asking for him to put up with just a little too much. I wanted him, and I wasn’t going to get him by stuffing my face. I let the dome slide back into place with a chink, and walked into the living room. The couch rose to meet me and I snuggled into it. I pulled a blanket up close to me and relished the warmth it gave. Lately, I’d been so tired, and always chilly. A little rest felt so good.

Sometime after it got dark, I woke up to someone shaking my shoulder lightly. My mom was there with a concerned look.

“What happened to your arm?” she asked. I wondered what she was talking about until I moved to sit up and felt a cut rub across fabric.

“I tripped in my room and broke the window, sorry.”

“Did you put anything on it?” I nodded back at her.

“I cut a piece of cardboard to fit and put it there, but I broke out the glass pretty good. I’ll fix it if you’ll go pick up the glass and silicone for it,” I told her.

“Not the window, dufus. I meant your arm.” I shook my head and she led me toward the kitchen to medicate me. A ton of alcohol later and she was satisfied that it wouldn’t fall off. “There we go, you hungry? Dad’s not gonna be home for a while, he had a thing to go to today.”

“Nuh uh, I’m just gonna go back to sleep. Thanks anyway,” I said.

“You feeling okay?” she asked.

“Fine, just tired. Love you, see ya tomorrow.” I ducked into my room and shut the door quickly before I changed my mind. Eating now would just be stupid.

***

I couldn’t breathe. So maybe smoking wasn’t good for me after all. The blubber didn’t help either. The guy on the TV who was jumping around like a flea on a hot brick was saying something about “Keep going! Stick it out! Don’t quit now!” I raised a middle finger toward him and sat on the couch with a plop. I was sweating like crazy, and couldn’t catch my breath for anything.

Cardio exercise was serious stuff. I had to lose the weight, though. I had good reasons. Andy was a good reason. Feeling better about me was a good reason. Not feeling better, really, more of not hating myself for being a fat pig.

I was tired, sweaty, and I’d only woken up an hour ago, but I felt great. It was that same sense of accomplishment, victory over the chubby enemy. I padded into the kitchen to look for the scales, but I didn’t see them anywhere. That was a little odd, but I shrugged it off and opened the fridge. My mom had been busy.

A caramel cheesecake sat on the top shelf. A tray of lasagna was on the next shelf down. I stared at the contents and raised an eyebrow. “No… she didn’t… is that lemonade?” I thought to myself. No one was supposed to come over. Why was she cooking all this food? It wasn’t even just cheesecake and lasagna and lemonade. There was a smorgasbord of food laid out, even steak marinating.

I grabbed a bottle of water and closed the fridge before my mouth started watering. Even if I wanted to eat, I would’ve just ended up sucking it into a lung, instead of down my esophagus, with the way I was still huffing and puffing. I drained the water and breathed deeply, finally starting to get my heart rate down to normal. Someone knocked sharply five times on the door; you know, that polite but insistent knock. A knock with good taste, an upper class knock, even.

“Hey Jamie. Been taking care of the happy in your pants? You look a little winded.” He was good at this snappy greeting thing. My consolation was simply that happypants couldn’t stay amusing forever.

“Nice to see you, too, Andy. Just been running around, on my way to take a shower,” I said.

“Well, do ya wanna go somewhere when you get out? Or just hang out some?” He flashed that damn smile of his again.

“Yeah, just gimme about five minutes, okay? You can watch TV or whatever while you wait, make yourself at home,” I told him.

“That’s okay, I’ll sit out here and have a cigarette.”

I left the door standing open and headed for the bathroom. The whole time I was rinsing away the sweat and soap, I was wondering what he had on his mind. Nobody ever just showed up at my house to see me. Never.

My brain hopped into another rollercoaster of thought, looping and corkscrewing reality into something that was utterly fucked up. Maybe he didn’t really like me and he was just being a prick somehow. Maybe he felt sorry for me. Maybe it was all a mean joke. Maybe Anna and Jordan hated me, too.

Maybe I needed copious amounts of medication. I got out of the shower feeling like I needed another. After pulling on jeans and shaving, I stepped through a light mist of cologne and shrugged on a slightly less baggy than normal shirt. Second guesses attacked me again, and I almost went to go get a different change of clothes before I realized I’d just look like a freak who couldn’t dress himself. Crisp, dry air met my face as I stepped out of the bathroom and sat on the couch to get some shoes on.

“Come out on the porch with me, you can do that out here,” Andy said from the doorway. He still had half a cigarette left; either I was fast or he didn’t light it for a while. “Here,” he said, handing it to me. I took it with an eyebrow raised.

“I didn’t see a rectangle in your pocket, so I assumed you didn’t have any,” he explained. My thoughts were a little scrambled as I looked at his hand to see his pack crumpled in his hand. He was laying it on thick. Smokers don’t share the last cigarette unless they like the person they’re sharing with. It made the menthol taste even better.

“So what did you have in mind?” I asked, while I slipped on the other shoe.

“We can kill about half an hour and then go someplace.”

“Where?” I asked.

“You’ll see.” He took the depleted cigarette and tossed it toward the road before giving me a light kiss. “It’ll be fun.”

“We’ve got half an hour to kill. Can’t watch a movie in half an hour,” I said.

“You’re right. And it’s 2:45 so we’d have missed the first half of any shows on,” he said.

“Yeah… bummer,” I said, kicking my feet against the porch.

“Wanna go to your room and make out for a little while?” he asked, grinning like a three-year-old.

“Sounds good to me,” I replied, grinning like a three-year-old who’d just received a brand new power ranger.