“Watching a movie,” he said cheerfully. “X-men. Dude, it is so . . . so unreal,” he said with awe.
He was stoned again. “Is there a reason you are watching it here instead of your own place?” she asked.
He thought about it for a moment. “Not really. Just turned it on when I was eating a sandwich and kind of got caught up.” He turned it off, tossed the remote aside, and looked at Rachel. “Hey . . .” he said, as if he was noticing her for the first time. “You look really hot tonight.”
What was it about a skirt that was at least two sizes too small that made her look hot? She looked like a freaking sausage and she knew it. “It’s time for you to go, Myron. I want to go to bed.”
“Hey, Rach,” Myron said, coming to his feet. His corduroy pants, too big as usual, pooled at his ankles. “What’s the matter? You seem really uptight.”
“I’m not uptight.” But she was uptight. Restless. A malcontent. And actually, she’d been uptight for weeks now and all the reasons why were starting to crystallize in her mind. She’d never really broken up with anyone before. Not that there was really anything to break up with Myron, but that’s what she wanted to do, wasn’t it? The whole scene with him was stale. Overdone. “I wish you wouldn’t call me in the middle of the night.”
“Okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “That wasn’t cool, I get it. But I really was worried, Rach. It’s not like you go out, and I didn’t know you had some guy in the wings.”
He said that as if he had a right to know. “So now you do. So don’t call me, all right?”
“All right, I get it.”
“There’s one other thing,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She looked at Myron standing there, looking concerned and thoughtful and not too terribly stoned at the moment. She wanted to tell him to quit eating her food, to quit dropping by unannounced and using her stuff. She wanted to tell him that they were through, that they really weren’t very good friends, were they? And that she didn’t think she wanted to see him anymore. But he looked so vulnerable at the moment, and she considered that part of her feelings about him had to do with a raging case of PMS. Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to tell him to get lost. Perhaps she just needed to get out of this skirt and go to bed.
“What is it, Rachel?” he asked, looking all worried now, as if he thought she had committed murder or something. “You can tell me. Whatever it is, I’ll help.”
That really pissed her off because she believed Myron meant just that. Whatever was ailing her, he’d help if he could. The only problem was, he never could and she didn’t want him to help her. She didn’t want him hanging around. She didn’t even want to talk to him at the moment.
“Could you . . . maybe call before you drop by?” she asked as a start.
Myron looked taken aback. But he nodded after a moment. “Sure,” he said, and actually leaned down to pick up his plate. “I’ll just clean up a little and go.” He walked into the kitchen. Rachel could hear him fumbling around in there as she tried to unfasten the hook on her skirt. When he emerged again, she was already on the stairs, waiting for him to leave.
“One last thing, Rach, and I’ll leave you alone. I need your phone. I programmed a couple of numbers I need.”
Rachel sighed, stepped off the stairs, and walked to where she’d put her bag, dug around the junk inside and pulled out the phone. She handed it to Myron on her way back to the stairs. “Will you lock the door on your way out?”
“Yeah, sure,” he muttered, his attention on her phone. Rachel walked up the stairs and into her bedroom. A moment later, she heard the front door shut below her.
Chapter Twenty
Rachel tracked down Dagne after returning from the gym the next afternoon and told her they had to go shopping. She’d ridden fifteen miles on her stationary bike but was still feeling restless.
“I thought you were broke,” Dagne said.
“I am broke. But I have a credit card and I made a hundred bucks last night, and I need something really, really hip to wear because I have a date.”
Dagne gasped. “Get out! What happened?”
“I’ll tell you when I pick you up,” Rachel said, grinning.
“Okay, give me a half hour. I could use something new to wear on my date with Glenn.”
“Glenn? I thought you were trying to get rid of Glenn.”
“I was. But he invited me to see a play,” Dagne said, as if that explained everything. “I’ll see you in a half hour.”
An hour later, Rachel and Dagne were in a Hope Street boutique that Dagne said had the hippest clothes in town.