What the hell thing was that?
I hold down a girl I outweigh by 100 percent, whom I could lift by the collar of her blouse using my thumb and index finger, because she comes at me with a dessert fork? It’s not even the heavy, silver-plated kind of fork she could use to poke holes in me. It’s cheap stainless steel, the weight of a plastic picnic fork.
I knew what she was when I started this. Now I’m pissed Don rubbed it in my face?
I hold out my hands, and they look like someone else’s—someone I despise, I’m ashamed to be, and I wasn’t supposed to turn into. Someone who just took a call about how soon he has to smoke the girl he’s making out with.
She’s backing toward the door.
Is this Nicolette, America’s mouthy sweetheart, who’s afraid of a guy who just demonstrated what an all-powerful creep he is? Or is this Nicolette, the throat-slasher who has to be stopped?
It doesn’t freaking matter. She’s not the crazy bad one in this scene. I am.
I start apologizing again, and I don’t stop.
Her hand is on the doorknob.
“Stop. Please accept my apology. I know how bad that was.” She looks enraged but also undecided. “I’ll make you a Nutella sandwich.”
“Making fun of me doesn’t help!”
“I’m sorry, also for bringing up the sandwich.”
It’s not my natural inclination to start telling her the truth, but I don’t see any other way to go in for the save.
The first try, I can’t do it. I say, “I got a shit phone call.”
She gives me a look. “Well, that explains it. I feel so much better now.” Acid is dripping off her tongue.
I say, “How about this? I lose it when people come at me with things that look like they could hurt me.” I feel like a dog rolling over and showing his throat in submission.
“It was a fork.”
“Do you think I’d embarrass myself like this if it weren’t true?”
Her eyes are angry slits. “Are you sure it’s not, some girl pushes you over and you have to prove what a big strong jerk you are?”
“I swear. Push me again, and nothing will happen. Kick me, and I’ll stand there.”
“Fine.” She drops her pack onto the floor and storms over, stands facing me, a head shorter. There are blond roots growing out on the top of her head. Then she lands a kick on the middle of my shin, swift and well-placed.
I force my hands flat, my fingers extended, no fists, and I don’t respond.
“Fine.” She does it again.
She seems to be winding up for another assault. My eyes are tearing, and however bad holding her down was, I can’t let her go for it.
I put my hand on her shoulder. At least she doesn’t flinch at my touch. I say, “Twice was enough.”
“Are you ordering me?”
“I’m telling you.”
She’s rubbing her wrists together. I left marks on her wrists. There’s a wave of nausea so powerful, I have to sit, buckled over, forcing down the glop that chokes my mouth.
“Maybe you should go.”
She straddles a kitchen chair, facing me over the back. “Don’t have to. I made my point. And I got to watch you control yourself. Which was quite the spectacle. I want my Nutella sandwich.”
It’s starting to feel as if all my buttons are lined up on the coffee table, screaming Push me, and she’s obliging. I’m close to pitching over the edge for the second time in ten minutes.
“Now can we get something to drink?” I say.
There’s no excuse for this. I’ve lost control and I’m on the verge of losing more control, I have no plan, and I decide it would be good to drink a shitload of alcohol? Think, Jack.
But I don’t want to think.
I have never in my life wanted to be drunk this much. Drunk, stoned, or punched in the face—any one of those would do it.
40
Cat
On the bright side, if anyone comes at me when I’m next to him, he’ll probably break them in half.
On the dark side, what happens if you pat his cheek too fast? He shatters your wrist?
I squirt a bunch of his chocolate sauce into my mouth right out of the squeeze bottle. This makes him seriously annoyed, but he tries not to let on. Ha. I drip it onto my tongue and stare straight at him.
I say, “If you ever do that again, I’ll cut important parts off you. You get that, right?”
“Got it. On a not-joke note, I’m sorry. I’m not saying it to look good.”
“That wasn’t a joke. And it doesn’t make you look good.”
There. I’ve made him turn white.
He says, “Jesus.” He might be praying I don’t cut him up.
“Plus, I’m leaving. Go play with a two-hundred-pound guy who likes to wrestle.”
“Feel free to take the fudge sauce.”
“I’ll have more fun sitting at home imagining you trying to sterilize the nozzle without getting soap in the chocolate.”
He sits down on his sofa, laughing.
I want to sit down next to him, but having some tiny shred of impulse control, I don’t.