“I’ll try to be home by seven so you can have some time with him,” she tells me.
I smile. “Thank you. Come on over as soon as you get home.”
“Will do,” she says, and I hang up just as Lauren arrives with my lunch and places it on my desk. I thank her and continue writing my brief for court tomorrow.
“Hey.” I look up, seeing Noah at my door, and he comes in, handing me something. “Here is the cream. Honestly, I wonder if Lauren is right; maybe I do have an oily face.”
I drop my pen on the desk and cross my hands on my desk. “Who fucking cares?” I tell him. “Honestly, you have a wife who loves you, and a kid who thinks you hang the moon.”
He shrugs and puts his hands out. “Just do me the favor please.”
I shake my head. “Fine. I’ll do it tonight before Aiden comes over.”
“I owe you one,” he says, walking out, and I look down and see it’s almost five. I grab my stuff, packing everything up and walking out. Lauren is already gone since she has strict hours of eight to three. Just to pick up the baby and her kids.
Walking into my house, I toss my keys on the desk in my office and place my bag on the desk, then walk upstairs to change out of my suit. Coming back downstairs, I grab a protein bar and walk back to work in my office. My phone beeps at six thirty. I close everything up and walk upstairs to put on the face cream for Noah. I send Noah a picture of myself putting the cream on, and he sends me back a thumbs-up.
I finish rubbing it in and then go downstairs to prepare myself something to eat. I pop one of those meals that I have delivered three times a week into the microwave and wait for the beep.
My face is tingling a bit, and I scrunch up my nose. Grabbing my container of food, I eat standing up, and this time, my eye starts twitching. I blink it a couple of times, rubbing my eye with the back of my hand.
I continue eating, trying to ignore the tightness in my face, and then my lips start tingling, so I roll them. They feel like they are swollen a little. I don’t even finish my pasta before my eye that started to twitch gets blurry.
I grab my phone and text Noah.
Me: Did your face get tingly when you put this cream on?
He doesn’t answer, and my eye starts to feel tight as does my lips, but now it’s only my top one. I go to the bathroom, and I shriek. My eye that is twitching is almost closed shut it’s so swollen, and my lip looks like I had five pounds of lip injections; it overlaps the bottom lip.
“Holy shit.” I touch my lips, and now it looks like a fucking duck.
I grab my phone and call Nick, who answers right away.
“Where are you?” I ask him, and my lip starts to sting again, and my right eyelid now feels heavy. I look in the mirror and see that it’s almost closed.
“I’m home,” he says, and I press the FaceTime button. He accepts the invitation, and his face fills the screen.
He gasps when he sees me, his hand going to his mouth. “Dude, your face. It’s lopsided,” he says, and now I try to speak, but I can’t move my upper lip.
“Noah gave me a cream, and I think I’m having an allergic reaction,” I say, garbled, and now I look down to see that I’m drooling, and I can’t stop it. Nick throws his head back and laughs hysterically. “Seriously, man, I can’t even see out of my right eye.”
I look back into the mirror, and my eye is sealed shut now, and my upper lip is so big it’s covered my lower lip on the left side.
“This isn’t funny.”
“You need to go to the hospital,” he says. “I’ll be there in five minutes.” And I hang up on him.
“I’m going to fucking kill him.” Spit comes out when I try to talk, and I touch my swollen lip again and then my eye. My phone buzzes with a Facebook message, so I pick it up, joining the group chat. I hear Nick telling them about my face.
“Dude, it’s so fucking bad. His lip is covering half his face.”
My face now fills the screen, and they all gasp and then start laughing. “Holy shit, dude, you look like you just walked out of the Botched show,” Tom says while Jason puts his fist to his mouth and laughs.
“It looks like you took the vacuum cleaner and made it suck in your lips,” Tom says, laughing.
“Your lip looks like it’s legit going to explode. How much bigger can it get?” Jason asks, moving the phone closer to his face so he can see it even better.