“This is why you’re the procreator and I’m just the benevolent uncle.” I made a gimme gesture with my fingers. “Now out with it. What do you want from me?”
She bit her lip before a slew of words tumbled forth.
For the record, I did not like any of them.
“I wouldn’t normally ask this, because I try really hard not to meddle, and she’s old enough to do what she wants and live her own life, but I can’t help being a little anxious. With the baby coming so soon, my fledgling new mom senses are going all haywire, and we’d
appreciate it if you could maybe just do this one thing for me…for us. Seth would be happy too if he knew he didn’t have to talk me off the ledge while she was there.”
She paused long enough to fill her lungs with oxygen.
“So, can you go with Sage to Vegas?” I wasn’t sure, but I think she batted her lashes at me. “Pretty, pretty please?”
3
Sage
I put aside all thought of Oliver’s erection. From what I’d heard from girlfriends over the years, it often didn’t take much to get them going. There was even that song “Jizz in My Pants” where the guy got excited by the breeze blowing and eating grapes and all kinds of crazy things. That hadn’t been my experience, but someone always screwed up the curve.
Leave it to me.
Considering Oliver actually being sexually aroused by me—me, specifically—was too far-fetched to swallow. I had good breasts, but from what I’d heard, he saw that part of the female anatomy too often to get excited by mine. Unless mine were more stupendous than I believed, and Jim’s underperforming penis could not corroborate that fact.
Regardless, I was moving on.
As the weekend neared, I called the radio station and tried to reschedule my trip one more time. For April or May, perhaps. When Ally would be able to travel and might relish an escape from her newborn.
So I liked to delude myself. So sue me.
The radio station, however, was not into delusions.
You’ve rescheduled multiple times already. Shit or get off the pot.
Said more nicely, of course. Slightly.
I was so at odds about how to proceed that I didn’t even try to find Moose again. That hadn’t gone well the other day, and heck, if I was going to Vegas anyway, why look for an old man when I could potentially find a new one?
Again, I realized this was unlikely since stranger danger was a real concern vis a vis my lady terrarium. But fantasies are free.
Moose probably wouldn’t be that thrilled to hear from me in any case. I’d accidentally stomped on his shoe while dancing at the prom, and I’d broken a bone in his foot.
If only I’d known back then that the die of my love life had already been cast.
And it was firmly set on crazy eights.
Friday morning, I woke for my last shift at the diner before my few days off with a migraine and a tickle in my stomach. I was sure I was coming down with a raging case of the flu. I’d picked up Laurie from school a few days ago and chatted with her teacher and some of her classmates, and naturally, the place was rife with the virus.
I was ill. Clearly, I could not travel.
A day at work being barked at by Greta without even the softening presence of my bestie—who was now out on maternity leave—did not improve my condition. I crawled into my bed at ten pm with the reassuring laugh track to the Golden Girls lulling me to sleep, confident that the fates were instructing me not to travel to the land of lust.
My pristinely hymenated state would continue.
Strangely, I was okay with it. Perhaps the answer was to consider alternate situations where my virginity would be a bonus rather than a seeming detriment.
Like the nunnery.
I would spend Saturday looking into those options, just in case. Even without traveling to engage in carnal desires, I didn’t intend to pursue becoming a nun right now. Things weren’t that dire. But if in, oh, five to ten years, I still hadn’t found someone to share my bed—if not my life—with…