“Self-absorbed?” I repeat in my highest register. What absolute slander! “Do you have any idea how many Livestrong bracelets I’ve owned? Oh, and I’ve stopped killing all those bees! What have you ever done?”
I follow him to the door. He slams it shut but I open it up again, beaming at him as he terrorizes the poor driveway. Leaves have never been stepped on so hard. He realizes too late that a puddle is hiding beneath some of the leaves and a string of curses rips from his throat when he inspects the soaking hem of his trousers.
“If you’d used common sense, then you wouldn’t have wet the bed, now would you?”
“If I’d used common sense,” he shouts, getting into his car, “I never would’ve proposed!”
The remark is a direct hit on my pride. It’s sharper than it looks, surprising me by tearing right through its target and lodging a few inches deeper. I cross my arms. “Oh, shut up. Anyone would be lucky to have me. I’m a prize.”
“You’re the trophy they give to last-place losers.”
He hears his self-burn and bangs his head on the steering wheel.
“Good luck!” I shout over the rev of his engine. “Have a great day, sweet pea! Try not to think about how everyone is staring at that zit on your chin.”
Through the windshield, he murders me with his eyes. He’s got his entire soul compressed right up against his irises and they’re the color of hatred. They desperately want telekinetic powers so they can blow me into the sky, through the fabric of our universe and into another one. I hope it’s a parallel universe with a parallel Nicholas and Naomi. I want to torture him with two of me.
I’m so busy dreaming of teaming up with my parallel-universe self for evil purposes that I don’t notice he’s backed over the baby evergreen poking crookedly out of the earth. The Charlie Brown tree. Jason.
He plows forward over Jason and backs up again. Weakling branches snap and crunch. It’s twenty-two degrees and I’m standing in the yard in a tank top and an old pair of Nicholas’s boxers that I laid claim to long ago. Yesterday’s mascara clumps in my eyelashes and my cheek is wearing the pattern of my wristwatch. We belong on Jerry Springer. I inhale half the oxygen in Morris and bellow: “NICHOLAS ROSE, YOU UNFORGIVABLE LITTLE SHIT.”
He arches a brow at me. Then, to test my nerves, he puts his car in park and revs the gas. I try to convey with my stare exactly how deceased he’s going to be if he runs over Jason one more time. Poor Jason. He’s leaning so pitifully that another punch will do him in.
Nicholas smiles. Then his Jeep lunges forward, dragging up Jason by the roots.
Nicholas and I are a parable about bottling your frustrations. We’ve been inflicting a quiet violence onto our own feelings by confining them to tiny spaces with only a teaspoon of oxygen, fermenting them into an ugly chemistry incompatible with love. We’ve felt the glass trembling from the increase of pressure but continued suffering through our smiles.
I look at his smug, stupid face, and BOOM. The bottle combusts, releasing word shrapnel in the form of screamed nonsense.
“What was that?” He cups a hand behind his ear. “Was that … what you get for destruction of my property?”
“I didn’t break your phone on purpose! You know how much I LOVE THAT DUMB FUCKING TREE.”
He tips his head back and laughs, harder than he’s ever laughed at anything: sharp and surprised and peppered with necessary gasps for air. I think I spy a tear running down his pinkened face. I want to throw a rock at him but I can’t move, I’m so fascinated by this strange and magnificent new laugh. The hood of his car dazzles with sun, which pings off the gaudy diamond on my left hand and spins light into my eyes. I hate this damned ring. It’s a symbol of possession, of love and eternity, declaring to the world that I’ve been taken over. The man who gave it to me is still laughing, reflected in the side mirror as he winds out of sight, out of our lawless frontier and back into the real world we’re so detached from.
Nicholas isn’t laughing anymore when he storms through the door after work. I’m lounging on the couch in mismatched socked feet and a cherry sucker in my mouth, channel-flipping with glazed eyes. He’s sharp and ready for blows, while I’m about to nod off. I’ve got half a second to reach the number he’s dialed up to if I want to be any good in this fight we’re about to have.
Excellent. It’s been getting boring around here.
He strides over to stand between my feet, eyes flashing. His hair should look awful, but it’s raining outside so it’s doing this unfortunately sexy thing instead, falling across his forehead in damp, gleaming waves. I narrow my eyes and bite down hard on the candy. “What’s up?” I drawl.
“Give me your phone.”
I make a sound like Pah! “What? No.”
“You ruined mine, so it’s only fair that I get yours.”
“I didn’t ruin your phone, dum-dum. I have no idea how a bowl fell on it. Maybe you should stop putting bowls in your bed.”
He pats my pockets, which makes me giggle. “Where is it?”
I shove him off, but he just starts grabbing at the couch cushions. I’ve made myself a nice little nest of peanut butter chocolate bonbons, blankets, Kit Kat wrappers, a paper plate from the Toaster Strudel I ate for lunch, and two of Nicholas’s watches. I’ve been gradually removing their links to make the fit tighter but forgot to put them back in his room.
“All day!” he exclaims. “The phone rings but I can’t swipe on calls. My mom can’t reach me on my cell anymore, so who do you suppose she calls next?”
“Hold on, let me guess.”
He doesn’t let me guess. Rude. “The office! And not my personal extension, either, since I have my phone set to voicemail. She’s been calling the front desk nonstop over every goddamn thought that wanders into her head. Wasn’t so bad when I had a working cell phone, because I could send her to voicemail and text back my replies. Short and simple. But no! Instead I get Ashley running in to interrupt me every five minutes, crying because she knows she’s not supposed to interrupt me for unimportant crap like this but my mom won’t give her a choice. ‘Dr. Rose, your mother wants me to send her a PDF of your calendar so she can mark down what time you’re taking her shopping this Saturday.’ ‘Dr. Rose, your mother’s on the line again. She needs you to come by after work and tell your father he has to see a doctor about a cyst on his back.’ ‘Dr. Rose, your mother wants to know if you’ll have time on your lunch break to go find those walnuts you brought to her Christmas party in 2011. Her friend Joyce needs them ASAP.’”
“Sounds like a busy day for Dr. Rose,” I snigger.
“I looked unprofessional in front of everyone! I could lose patients over this.”
“And yet you’re blowing up at me instead of, say, the person who’s been calling your office all day?” I pop a bonbon in my mouth and give him a look like Yeah, I make way more sense than you.
“I expect you to be the bigger person! You know Mom doesn’t understand. I tried to tell her she couldn’t call the front desk unless it was an emergency, but everything’s an emergency to my mother.”