Chapter 24
When Claire
finished with work the following afternoon, Tim and Laureen were flirting by
the clock yet again. Rolling her eyes
behind their backs, Claire slipped her timecard back into its slot, said a
quick goodbye in their general direction, and left quickly, wondering how long
it would be before Laureen fell victim to his charms and went out with him. Of course, at that point, the next guess
would be how long Laureen would keep going out with him until his repetitive
calling and rambling stories about his mascot days in college got to be too
much. Maybe she could start an office
pool and take bets?
Giggling to
herself, Claire slid behind the wheel of her car and quickly started the
engine, blasting the air-conditioning.
While she waited for the stifling interior of the car to cool down, she
pulled her cell phone out of her purse and checked her voicemail. One new message. She expected it to be from Nick, but the
phone number that was read off into her ear was not Nick’s. And when the message began to play, it was
not Nick’s voice either, but a deeper, almost more-familiar one.
“Hey, it’s Jamie. I guess you’re working now, but hopefully
you’ll get this when you get off. I’m
meeting a couple of friends from college and hitting a few bars tonight… was
wondering if you wanted to come. I know
you’re off tomorrow, but you’ll probably be busy the next couple days getting
ready to move, and I’m leaving Friday morning, so… yeah. Give me a call back. Later.”
When the
message ended, Claire lowered the phone and just stared at the number on its
screen, hesitating. Her first instinct
was to turn Jamie down. After all, she
had told Nick she would do something with him that night, and why would she
want to go drinking with a couple of Jamie’s college buddies that she had never
met?
But then
she remembered the rest of the message. “You’ll
probably be busy the next couple days… and I’m leaving Friday morning…”
She
sighed. He was right. He only had two more nights in town, and
Thursday was no good. She had to take
Nick to the hospital for his check-up in the morning, and depending on how long
that took, the rest of the day was devoted to running errands and working in
her apartment. As for Thursday
night? Who knew. But she figured after a long day of running
around and cleaning and packing, she would much rather just watch a movie with
Nick than go out with Jamie. But that
would mean putting Jamie first for tonight.
She owed him that much – actually, she owed him a lot more than that –
so she reluctantly pressed the button to call his number back. She hadn’t seen him nearly enough this week,
and she needed to hang out with him at least once more before he flew back up
north. Who knew when he’d be down again?
Nick would
probably be pissed, she thought as the phone rang, but he would just have to
understand. She saw him all the time,
and Jamie almost never. Besides, she
could just hang out with Nick the following night instead.
“Hey.” Claire stifled a giggle as Jamie answered his
cell; it never failed to amuse her how unenthusiastic he always sounded on the
phone.
“Hey!” she
said brightly, mocking him with her exaggerated perkiness. “Whatcha up to?”
“Hoping you
would call. Did you get my message?”
She
smiled. “Sure did. You still want me to come with you
tonight? It’s not a ‘Guys Night Out’ or
anything?”
“Nope,
you’re more than welcome to come. Are you
going to?”
“I think
so,” she said. “I should probably call
Nick first… I-“
“What, you
need his permission?” Jamie interrupted her.
His voice had a sardonic edge that she did not like, and she frowned.
“No…”
she enunciated. “As I was trying to say
before you interrupted, I just don’t think he’s gonna be too happy. I kinda promised him we’d do something
tonight.”
“But you
see him all the time.”
“I
know. I’ll remind him of that. I just hate having to change my plans on him.”
She heard
Jamie expel a short breath on the other end of the line. There was a pause, and then he said, “Well,
if it’ll make you want to come with us, you can bring him along.”
She knew
there was no way Nick would go for that – he would barely even leave his house
when he couldn’t wear his leg, and hell would probably freeze over before he
was caught bar-hopping with her ex-boyfriend and company on crutches, his stump
bared for the world to see. But, coolly,
she replied, “Okay, maybe I’ll ask him when I talk to him. Can I call you back in a bit?”
“Yeah,
sure.” He didn’t sound too happy. Too bad for him. Nick would be even less happy when he heard
her new plans for the night.
A little
annoyed with the whole situation, Claire considered just blowing Jamie off
right then and there, but she didn’t.
Instead, she said, “Okay, talk to you in a little while” and hung up,
speed-dialing Nick’s number instead as she decided she should probably get out
of the parking lot. She was just pulling
out onto the highway when Nick answered.
“Hey, hon,”
she greeted him, accelerating down the road.
“Um, listen… Jamie called, and he wants me to do something with him and
a few friends tonight. I know I said we
could hang out tonight,” she added before he could say anything, “but Jamie’s
leaving Friday morning, and tomorrow’s gonna be busy, so I thought it might
work out better if I did something with him tonight and then hung out with you
tomorrow. What would you think about that?”
There was
silence on the other line, and just when she was about to ask if he was still
there, Nick said, “Sure, whatever. I
guess you’d have more fun going out with him than just sitting around here.”
“Nick,” she
sighed. “It’s probably going to be the
exact opposite – the people that are going to be with us tonight are his
friends from college, and I’ve never met any of them, so chances are I’m going
to be bored out of my mind. But I
haven’t done a lot with him since the weekend, and I can’t let him go home
without hanging out with him one last time.
You understand, right?”
“Yeah,”
Nick said dully, “I understand.”
She sighed
again. “Nick, please… I don’t want you
to be upset with me. You’re more than
welcome to come with me tonight if you want.”
“No,” was
his flat response.
“I knew
you’d say that. That’s why I didn’t ask
earlier,” she said. “Listen, I know
you’re probably bored out of your mind being alone at home all day, and I’m
really sorry I’m doing this to you – you probably think it’s a crappy thing to
do, but look at it from Jamie’s end – it would be crappy if I blew him off his
last couple of days in town. So I’m
going out with them tonight, and I promise I will make it up to you
tomorrow night. Sound okay?”
“Yeah, that
works. You’re gonna owe me tomorrow
night though, you do know that?”
She smiled
as his tone grew more playful. “Of
course,” she agreed cheerfully. “I owe
you, and thanks for understanding.”
“No
prob. Have fun, okay? Will you call me later, when you get home?”
“Sure,” she
said. “Love ya.”
“Love you
too. Bye.”
“Bye,
Nick.”
She hung
up, feeling a little better, and decided she would call Jamie back when she got
home. She set her phone down and turned
on the radio, blasting it loud as she drove.
***
It didn’t
take long for Claire to decide that Jamie’s two college buddies – Greg and
Jerry, or simply “Jerr,” as he told her to call him – were a couple of drunken
idiots. Jamie had never joined a
fraternity in college, and from what she had heard, neither had these two, but
that was not what she would have guessed.
Slap a few Greek letters on them, and they were stereotypical frat boys
to a T - cracking dirty jokes, trying to be smooth while flirting with the hot
bartenders, guzzling beer three times as fast as she could. Oh, they were nice enough (Jerr had tried
flirting with her at first, before Jamie gave him a warning look that made him
back off), but it did not take long for her to get annoyed with both – no, make
that all three – of them, just as it did not take long for the three of
them to get totally wasted.
By ten
o’clock, as she sat nursing a beer while the guys laughed raucously at some
joke she’d not heard, nor cared to hear, she was ready to go home. Or back to Nick’s, to keep her buzz going
while cuddling with him on the couch, watching some lame late-night movie on
TV. She regretted her decision to go out
with Jamie that night, because Jamie, as she had discovered, was not himself
when he was plastered and in the presence of these two goofs. She had not seen much of Jamie during their
college years, because he had dumped her the summer before freshman year and
freaked out the spring of sophomore year, after her diagnosis of leukemia. Things had been tense at best between the two
of them for the next two years, and she had missed seeing what “college Jamie”
was like. But if this was a snapshot,
she didn’t miss it at all.
It wasn’t
that she didn’t like to go out and drink and have fun, and hang out with guys
who liked to do the same. But Jamie had
always been a horrible drunk, and his two friends were no better – they got
stupider and ruder with every drink they downed. And even with a nice buzz going herself, she
couldn’t seem to get in on their fun.
She felt left out and wished Jamie had asked Dianna to come along that night
too so that at least she’d have someone to talk to. Because Jamie certainly wasn’t doing any of
that. He’d gone from trying to be all
suave and charming with her at the beginning of the night (nothing more than
showing off in front of his friends), to basically ignoring her. She wondered why he’d even asked her to come
along.
She was
just considering getting Jamie’s attention long enough to tell him she was
leaving when he turned to her, surprising her.
“Hey, Clairie,” he said loudly, his words slurring slightly, “you
remember senior year of high school, when Randy Curtis snuck into the teacher’s
lounge and pissed in the coffee pot? You
remember that?”
She cracked
a smile at the memory and nodded, remembering the lecture the entire senior
class had gotten from the principal the following day, about how they were
going to “crack down” on senior pranks.
“Any student who is caught participating in foolhardy end-of-year
practical jokes will not be allowed to attend the graduation ceremony!” she
barked in an imitation of Principal Johnson’s gruff voice, bringing Jamie to
laughter.
“Yeah!” he
cried, slapping his knee. “Oh man that
was funny!”
“I got an
even better one! Yo, listen to this,”
said Jerr, and launched into another senior prank story from his own high
school. Despite having decided she was
ready to leave, Claire found herself laughing until her eyes watered.
“Listen to
this one,” she jumped in, after Greg had shared a story too. “One time, my boyfriend’s best friend
convinced him to take a crap in a sock…”
By the time she’d finished Nick’s “pooping in a sock and hiding it
inside the band’s bass drum” story, the three guys were cracking up.
Jamie
stopped laughing long enough to ask, “Nick did that?”
“He sure
did,” she replied with a strange sort of pride, finding it funny that a woman
could be so proud of her man for crapping into a sock – come on, how gross was
that? “Nick’s a funny guy,” she went on,
almost defensively. “I wish you two would
get to know each other better; you’re more alike than you’d think.”
Jamie
didn’t reply, but Greg cut in with, “Wait, Nick? Ohh-ho-ho, you’re the one who’s dating
the Backstreet Gimp, aren’t you?”
At first
Claire wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly.
He didn’t just say-? But he had,
and she knew it. Her mouth fell open
slowly, and she shook her head in disbelief.
“What did you say?” she demanded.
“I
said-“ He started to repeat himself,
then stopped, realizing she had heard him fine the first time – gee, was it her
expression that gave her away, or the fact that her cheeks were quickly turning
red as her whole face grew hot with anger?
“Damn, girl, you don’t gotta get touchy about it; I was just sayin’…”
“Yeah, I
heard you, asshole, you don’t need to repeat yourself,” she spat venomously,
sliding off her barstool. She started to
stalk away, fully intent on leaving, but Jamie intercepted her.
“Claire,
wait,” he said, grabbing her by the arms and practically tumbling off his own
stool in his attempt to hold her back.
“He didn’t mean anything bad by it; he was just kidding around.”
“Did you
see me laughing?” she retorted, giving him a hardened glare.
“Hey,
Clairie…” Jamie holding onto her had
given Greg enough time to get up off his ass and sidle up alongside of her –
not to mention use a nickname that only Jamie got away with calling
her. “Look, sweetheart, I didn’t mean
nothin’… you don’t gotta run off,” he said slimily, daring to put an arm around
her.
As soon as
his hand touched her back, she flipped.
One twist, and she was out of Jamie’s grasp and facing Greg. And when she saw his face, complete with an
arrogant smirk that repulsed her, she followed through with the urge to hit
him, and wipe away that silly smirk.
Before she knew what she was doing, she’d drawn her whole arm back, made
a fist, and launched it forward, stopping only when it had made contact with
his right cheek. Greg stumbled back,
face in hands, and she stumbled back as well, knuckles throbbing, shocked at
what she had just done. But not shocked
enough to hiss, “Don’t fucking touch me, and don’t call me ‘sweetheart’ – or
‘Clairie,’ for that matter.” With that,
she turned and bolted, pushing her way out of the bar before Jamie or anyone
else could stop her.
Once outside,
she ran a ways down the street and turned the corner before she finally
stopped, sinking to the ground with her back pressed up against the wall, knees
tucked to her chest. First she felt
anger, at Greg; then pride, in herself.
But it was not long before tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked rapidly, feeling suddenly
humiliated. Why was she crying? Because of what that jackass had said about
Nick? Or because her knuckles hurt like
a mother. Or because she was out here
all alone, slightly drunk and without a ride.
At least I didn’t forget my purse, she thought, picking up the small
handbag she’d brought with her. She
fished her cell phone out of it and wondered who to call. Nick, of course, was the first who came to
mind, but there was no way in hell she was going to call him to come here and
get her. Dianna was the obvious next
choice, so Claire found her name in her list of contacts and dialed her
cell. No answer. Deciding that leaving a tearful voicemail
would only upset Dianna when she heard it, Claire hung up and tried her home
number instead. Still no answer.
“Damnit,
Di, where are you?” she murmured, her voice slightly shrill, and wondered who
to try next. She realized with regret
that she didn’t have too many other close friends in the area. She thought about her brother, but he lived
in St. Petersburg; it would take him a good half hour to come and get her. She quickly nixed that idea and started
flipping through the other contacts on her cell phone, hoping to see a name she
hadn’t thought of yet.
Right below
Kyle, there was one – Laureen.
Claire had
just added her phone number the other day, and she didn’t really know Laureen
that well yet… but Laureen was always so sweet to her, definitely the kind of
person who would help out a friend in need.
Deciding to give it a try, Claire pushed the button to dial her
number. She sagged in relief when she
heard Laureen chirp, “Hello? Claire?”
“Hey,
Laureen!” she said breathlessly.
“Listen, I’m so sorry to call you like this, but I need a huge
favor.”
“Oh sure,
what is it? Are you okay?” Laureen
asked.
“Yes and
no,” answered Claire truthfully. “I
won’t go into all the gory details now, but I’m sitting out on a sidewalk
downtown, and I really need a ride home, and I can’t call Nick, and my friend
Di’s not answering her phone, and-“
“I can come
pick you up,” Laureen said before Claire could ramble on any further. “Where are you?”
Claire told
her the nearest intersection and the name of the bar they’d last been at and
was relieved to hear Laureen say, “Oh, I know where that is! I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”
“Okay. Thank you so much, Laureen,” Claire
stressed gratefully.
“No
problem!”
As soon as
their conversation ended, Claire shoved her cell phone back into her bag and
stood up, brushing off the seat of her pants.
From now on, she was going to have to start taking her own car
everywhere, because this was the second time in the past month that she’d been
stranded somewhere and had to bum a ride off one of her friends. Then again, even if this hadn’t happened, she
figured she would have ridden home in a taxi, for she knew she shouldn’t be
driving, and Jamie, who had brought her, definitely shouldn’t. Despite the fact that she was angry at him –
and even more so at his friends – she hoped he would have enough sense to call
a cab to take him back to his hotel.
Lord knows his stupid cronies probably wouldn’t.
Her anger
returning, she began to pace the sidewalk, up and down, up and down, never
straying far from the spot where she’d sat down to call Laureen.
After a few
minutes of pacing, she stopped suddenly.
She heard footsteps, pounding against the cement, coming her way, ready
to turn the corner. She wanted to turn
and walk in the opposite direction, to run even, but her feet stayed rooted to
the sidewalk. Arms crossed, she waited
until he appeared.
A few short
seconds later, there he was.
Jamie.
***