“He does not,” I grumbled with another blush. And then said, almost as an afterthought, “And I don’t love him. I don’t even know him.”
He looked at me knowingly, but didn’t call me out on it. “Well, you know what they say. When life hands you lemons—”
“You’ll slice them to make lemonade, only to find you have miniscule little cuts on your hands and it causes it to sting really bad,” I finished for him. “Oh, and lemon juice squirts in your eye and blinds you for like twenty minutes.”
“You’re like that donkey from Winnie the Pooh,” he told me. “On crack.”
“I’m a manic-depressive, drug-addicted donkey?” I asked, incredulous.
“If the tail fits,” he snapped at me.
“Reality would be if Eeyore was on Paxil. No one could be depressed as much as he is for that long without needing antidepressants. Winnie the Pooh and Piglet probably staged an intervention at their house at one point.”
“They didn’t live together,” Sandy said.
“Of course they did. They were life partners.”
“Pooh was porking Piglet?”
“Brings new meaning to the sentence ‘I ate ham for breakfast.’”
“I bet there’s like an Easter egg on one of the DVDs,” Sandy said, taking a drink of his tea. “A deleted scene that shows Eeyore jerking off to a photo of Pooh fucking Piglet while hanging himself with his tail in the closet.”
We laughed quietly, horrified with ourselves for thinking such things.
And, of course, that was when it happened.
God. Hates. Me.
“What’s so funny?” Vince asked as he appeared out of nowhere like some evil, dark, hot wizard. He had a grin on his face as he stood next to the table, looking so freaking awesome in his suspenders and tie. I wanted to snap one against his skin just to hear the sound it made, but somehow I refrained from doing so, only because I was still laughing at the thought of a beloved childhood character committing suicide when he spoke, and tried to distract myself by shoving more salad in my face at the same time. So, naturally, instead of being way cool and snapping his suspenders while letting him in on the joke and winking at him until he became putty in my hands, I inhaled sharply and a piece of raw spinach was sucked into my black hole of a mouth and lodged itself in my throat.
And I started to choke.
At first, it wasn’t so bad. I thought I could still breathe around it and I made a noise that made me sound like an Ewok: “Urka. Urk. Urk.” Sandy was looking up at Vince, staring at his mouth as if all the world’s secrets lay there. I felt an outrageous flash of jealousy rip through me, but it was waylaid as my Ewok noises turned into full-fledged attempts to gasp in air, however futile they were. I became annoyed that I was dying and my best friend hadn’t even noticed because he was making goo-goo eyes at the man who had a knack for showing up at the worst possible times.
I kicked Sandy under the table, who flashed an annoyed glance at me, as if I was the evil one here. But then, it must have sunk into his tiny little brain when he saw my skin color doing an impression of a Smurf orgy (blue everywhere, like Papa Smurf had just smurfed all over the other Smurfs). He started screeching that he didn’t know CPR and wouldn’t someone just save his best friend in the world?
I couldn’t be bothered with trying to remind him that I needed the Heimlich maneuver, not CPR, because I was choking, not drowning. But his high-pitched damsel-in-distress wails brought attention to us from everyone in the damn restaurant, and I wanted to kick him in the nuts, but realized he’d taped them up enough that even that probably couldn’t hurt him anymore. Even as I choked, I glared at everyone who worked in the restaurant, making sure that they knew that this was their fault for having a vegetarian place when we, as humans, were so obviously made to eat meat. I told myself if I died here, I would haunt this place and make it look like pork chops were raining down from the ceiling. I would be such an awesome ghost.
And then I felt everything go dark and my breath stopped and my heart thudded lightly in my chest. I saw a white light and went into it. My body die
d, but I ascended into heaven, where a group of shirtless and way-hot angels waited for me and wanted nothing more than to cater to my every whim. My favorite was an angel named Esteban Ortega who whispered dirty words in Spanish in my ear and who I called “Papi.” I was happy, happy at last, and that’s where I stayed for all eternity, with a Latin angel and my ginormous penis. And a halo. And wings. And I also could make unlimited wishes.
The end.
Okay, I’m just fucking with you. I didn’t die. That’d been a bummer way to end the story, don’t you think? Gay people get happy endings too, Hollywood!
I was aware of my back getting pulled into a strong body, big arms wrapping around my waist. Oh, I thought, even as I choked. This is nice. Then it stopped being nice when the hands attached to the big arms joined at my midsection and jerked into my stomach, pushing in and up. I could feel my eyes bulge out of my head, and warm lips near my ear saying, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” and then the hands thrust into me again. The action caused the remaining air in my body to expel out. The spinach that tried to kill me ejected from my mouth…
… and landed with a splat on the cheek of my best friend who was demanding that I be saved.
A hush fell over the room.
Sandy’s cheek twitched. The spinach slid slightly down his face.
Arms around my waist. Heat against my back. Breath against my ear.
My heart rapid in my chest. Salad stuck in my teeth.