Then Sandy started screaming, clawing at his face to get what had ejected from my mouth off him. He didn’t have a hard-core aversion to germs or anything like that, but I figured something that had once lodged in a throat and was now stuck to his face deserved a bit of hysterics. Hell, I’d have been shrieking had it been me, but since it wasn’t, I was just staring at him like he was overreacting. “Really,” I sniffed as he rubbed his cheek furiously with a napkin. “We’re in public, Sandy.”
He glared at me.
The people in the restaurant started going back to their own meals, the lunch theater starring the homosexuals now over.
“You okay?” our waitress asked. “Your color is coming back. Do I need to call for paramedics?”
I shook my head, feeling my face turn even redder. “I’m okay. Sorry for causing a scene. I will learn to chew my food before I come back here.” Not that I’m coming back to your vegetarian place of death ever again, you purveyor of killer spinach!
She smiled. “You’re lucky this gentleman was here and acted as he did. He doesn’t seem to want to let go of you now.” She winked and walked away.
And then.
Oh, boy.
And then. And then I realized who she was talking about, who I was still lying against, who still had his arms around me, rubbing one of his hands in a small circle on my stomach like he was trying to soothe me. And then I leaned back without any forethought and felt that broad chest against my back. A chuckle rose near my ear and my skin felt alight with little shocks of electricity.
And then I remembered who was behind me and who I was and stepped away quickly, keeping my head and eyes down, looking everywhere but at him. I heard him sigh quietly, sounding exasperated, but I thought I’d heard it wrong. After all, there were so many ways to interpret a sigh. He might have been sighing in relief, happy that he no longer had to have me pressed up against him like that. The jerk.
“Sorry,” I mumbled to Sandy. “I didn’t mean to project my throat spinach on your face.”
“You better not have,” he snapped at me, a little bit of Helena in his eyes. He dipped his napkin into my cup of water before dabbing it roughly across his cheek. “I wouldn’t be able to continue this decades-long friendship any further had you done it on purpose.”
I knew he was joking—kind of—but I was still mortified. “Sorry,” I mumbled.
“It was an accident,” Vince said, coming up behind me. He sounded almost angry, and Sandy and I both jerked our heads up at him. He squeezed my shoulder but didn’t look down at me. “You don’t need to be such a jerk,” he told Sandy coldly.
“Ix-nay!” I hissed at him. “Ix-nay!” I didn’t know why I resorted to Pig Latin right then. It just seemed like the thing to do.
He ignored me as he scowled at Sandy. “You should apologize.”
Sandy’s eyes narrowed. “Listen, pretty boy. You better back the fu—” He caught himself and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, Helena was gone from them and he smiled weakly at me. “You okay, baby doll?”
I nodded, wondering what the fuck was going on that Vince was trying to be my knight in shining Versace while my best friend had backed down from a hissy fit when his alter ego had been looming heavily in his eyes. This was turning out to be a very weird Monday.
And, oddly, I couldn’t help but notice how Vince’s hand on my shoulder tightened at the words “baby doll.”
“Okay,” Sandy said, picking up his bag that was really a purse, but we pretended it wasn’t. “I’ll tell you what. I need to go get some fresh air before lunch is over, so I’m just going to start walking back to work now. You going to be okay?” A certain wickedness returned in the curve of his lips.
I nodded, unable to open my mouth to beg and scream for him to not leave me alone with a masturbatory fantasy (not that I’d gone that far… yet). I could tell when he saw the words I wasn’t saying but ignored them regardless. He slid his man bag (Your stupid purse! I thought savagely since he was leaving me behind. Your lady’s purse, you big homo!) over his shoulder and looked at Vince, still standing with his hand on my shoulder, the grip even tighter. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “For helping my friend.”
He nodded, a tentative smile on his face.
Then Helena returned in full force, rising up out of the dark. She stepped over, moving like smooth liquid, her hips rolling. The change was startling. “But,” she said in a deep growl, “you do anything to hurt him? Sugar, I will tear you apart until your insides are on the outside. We understand each other?”
Vince’s eyes widened just a bit, but he nodded, his jaw tightening. I wanted to ask which one of them was going to piss on me first, but then I realized two things: first, they probably wouldn’t even hear me as they were too focused on each other; and two, I was not into watersports. Why would you let someone pee on you to get you off? That’s so fucking gross!
Helena seemed to be appeased like a volcano god receiving a virgin sacrifice and went back to sleep. Sandy leaned in and kissed me on the cheek, lingering maybe just a little bit longer than normal. He pulled away with an audible smack of his lips, gave Vince one more look, and turned, walking away with a perfect swish to his hips.
And then I was alone with Mr. Yes Please himself. Me. Paul Auster. With Dimples.
I was just a bit nervous, to say the least.
Okay, okay. So. First things first. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! Second thing: I should probably say “thank you” for saving my life. Say it and then follow it up with something funny like… okay. Spinach joke. Spinach joke. Shit. Um… Oh, I know! What do anal sex and spinach have in common? If you’re forced to have either as a child, you won’t want it as an adult. Holy fucking Christ. What the fuck is wrong with me? There is no way I can make a spinach/molesting joke! I am a monster. Think of something else. Think of anything else.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, not able to think of anything else to say.
Vince looked at me. He was taller than me, maybe by an inch or two, so he had to angle his eyes down. His big brown eyes. His pretty, huge brown eyes that looked like chocolate. I realized I was standing far too close when I could feel his breath on my face and I could see my reflection in his irises. I had a deer-in-the-headlights look on my face, and apparently a little piece of spinach still on my lip. I looked away and not very discreetly wiped my face with my hand.