Chapter 67
“Well, I
think I’m gonna go change my clothes,” Claire announced when they had finished
their ice cream. “Be right back.” She headed off to her bedroom, and Nick
remained on the couch, watching “ET”.
When Claire reappeared a few minutes later, she had traded her dental
hygienist’s scrubs for a pair of thin, cotton pajama pants and a ratty-looking
t-shirt. Flopping down onto the couch beside Nick, she pulled her bare feet up
with her, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Oh no!” she
cried as her attention moved to the TV, “this is when they come to get ET!”
“I know,”
Nick said.
“I always cry
at this movie, when ET dies…”
Nick chuckled
lightly, refusing to admit that he, too, had cried at the end of “ET”
before. Of course, that wasn’t quite as bad
as Howie crying at Titanic – Nick would never let him live that one
down. A loveable alien was one thing,
but Leonardo DiCaprio? Ugh.
After that,
their conversation died down, and they watched the rest of the movie in
silence, Nick stiffening awkwardly when he heard tiny sniffles coming from
Claire’s side of the couch. Crying girls
always freaked him out.
By the time
the movie ended, it was ten p.m., and pathetic as it sounded, Nick was already
getting sleepy. Normally he was more of
a night owl, but the chemo had taken its toll, leaving him feeling tired almost
all the time and ready to go to bed at early hours. Still, he didn’t feel like going home just
yet, and Claire didn’t seem too anxious for him to leave yet either, so he
decided to stay awhile longer. Flipping
through the channels, Claire found back to back episodes of “The Man Show” on
Comedy Central, and they settled back to watch.
I’ll go home when this is over, Nick told
himself.
But eleven
o’clock found both him and Claire sound asleep on the couch, his head leaning
back against the sofa, mouth hanging open, snoring slightly, while Claire’s
head had fallen onto his shoulder. And
by the time Nick awoke and realized this, the sky was already beginning to
lighten. Squinting groggily around the
room in search of a clock, Nick saw that it was just past five in the
morning. He had slept for six hours
straight, sitting up, on a couch. How he
had managed to do that was beyond him, but after so many years of touring and
spending every night sleeping either on a bus or in one unfamiliar hotel bed
after another, he supposed he had grown accustomed to being able to sleep
anywhere.
Claire was
still slumped against him in sleep, and he didn’t want to move and wake her,
but he was dying to get up and stretch.
Carefully scooting out from under her, easing her head down to the
couch, he stood up, his muscles screaming in protest. He shook out his shoulders and rotated his
neck, trying to get the crick out.
“Are you
still here?” he heard a muffled voice say and turned to find Claire blinking
tiredly up at him from the couch.
“’Morning,”
he said with a sheepish grin.
“Apparently we fell asleep. I
just woke up.”
“What time is
it?”
“Like five.”
“Wow…”
He
chuckled. “Yeah… well… I guess I should
just go then… you probably want to go back to bed.”
“Nah… I’m
good for now,” Claire said, pulling herself up into a sitting position. “Besides, I might as well make you breakfast
before you leave.”
He
blinked. “Breakfast? I thought you didn’t cook.”
“I don’t,”
she smiled. “But I can make eggs… or
pancakes…”
“You don’t
have to. If anything, I should be making
breakfast for you. After that backrub
last night…”
“Good point,”
said Claire. “You cook.” She grinned expectantly at him, and he
laughed.
“Well…
okay…” Uncertainly, he wandered into the
kitchen, where he stood blankly for a moment, wondering what to make and how to
go about doing it. I can do this, he
thought after a moment; he was not completely clueless in the kitchen. Living alone as a bachelor, he couldn’t
afford to be; he had to provide for himself somehow, and he refused to act like
some stuffy, snobbish rich person and hire a cook. He was not entirely helpless.
Pancakes
sounded good to him, so he started opening cupboards in search of a box of
Bisquik. Luckily, the kitchen was so
small that there wasn’t much storage place, so he was able to find what he
needed easily. Carefully following the
pancake recipe on the side of the Bisquik box, he had a batch whipped up in no
time and was flipping browning pancakes on the griddle (and feeling very
domestic, mind you).
“Mmm,” Claire
inhaled, coming into the kitchen just as Nick started piling the hot pancakes
onto two plates. “Dang, Nick, those look
good! I didn’t think you’d have a clue
how to do that!”
“I used
Bisquik,” he admitted, handing her a plate stacked with pancakes.
“So? I still didn’t think you’d be able to do it,”
she laughed. “So Mr. Backstreet Boy does
know his way around a kitchen… interesting.”
“Hey, I cook
for myself at home,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Do you
really? You don’t have someone to do
that for you?”
“Nope.”
“Do you have
a cleaning lady?”
“… Well,
yeah…”
“Ha, gotcha
on that one,” she said smugly. “Of
course you’d have a maid.”
“Well, she’s
not like a maid maid like you’d think… I mean, she doesn’t live with me
and walk around in a skimpy black dress with a white apron and a feather duster
all the time. She just comes once a
week, ya know,” he explained.
“I see.” Claire smiled, glanced down at her plate, and
then said, “Well, come on, let’s eat before these get cold.” She rummaged through the refrigerator and
retrieved a tub of margarine and a bottle of maple syrup, which she placed on the
kitchen table between them as they both sat down. His appetite aroused by the aroma of warm
pancakes, Nick eagerly smeared butter across his stack and then proceeded to
drench it in syrup, the thick, brown liquid flowing down the sides of the
mountain of pancakes like hot lava on a volcano.
“So,” Nick
said between bites, “what are you up to today?”
“Working,”
replied Claire through a mouthful of pancake.
Swallowing, she added, “I’m on at eight.”
“Oh, fun.”
“Uh,
yeah. So, how about you? Doing anything interesting?”
“Probably
heading to Michaels to pick up a picture frame for this painting I have, if
that counts as interesting,” laughed Nick.
“Oh, I love
Michaels!” exclaimed Claire. “I spend
way too much money there on scrapbooking stuff.”
“Scrapbooking?”
“Yeah, I’m
addicted to scrapbooking; it’s awesome!
I should get you into it…”
“Ha, yeah right,” Nick chuckled. “Sorry,
but I don’t think scrapbooking is really a ‘manly’ hobby, you know?”
“Oh, psh,”
Claire replied with a roll of her eyes.
“I don’t know why it’s considered girly to organize your pictures and
memory stuff in a book.”
Nick just
shrugged; he could actually almost picture Kevin doing something like that… the
guy was forever taking pictures and filming them with his camcorder, and he was
just anal enough to want every photograph he owned categorized and organized
neatly in a memory album.
When they
were done eating, Nick asked, “You want me to help you with dishes or
anything? I kinda made a mess…” He eyed the bowl he had used to mix the pancakes;
it was now encrusted with dried batter.
“Nah, that’s
okay. You cooked; I’ll clean,” she
replied reasonably. “I’ll have just
enough time to straighten up before I have to go get ready for work.”
“Well, okay…
if you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,”
she replied. “So, you gonna take off
now?”
“Yeah,” Nick
replied. “Hey, thanks for inviting me
over last night. It was fun.”
She
smiled. “Yeah. We should hang out more… but at your place
next time. You know I wanna see how the
other half lives.” She winked, and he
just rolled his eyes.
“Yeah,
whatever.” He grabbed his flip-flops and
as he slid them on, asked, “Hey, do you want my phone number? I mean, it’s unlisted, obviously, so you
can’t just look it up like I can yours… just in case you wanna hang out or
something.”
“Oh yeah,
sure,” she replied. “Let me grab you
something to write it down on cause if you just tell it to me, you know I’ll
forget it in like two seconds.” She
rummaged through one of her drawers and came up with a small tablet of paper
and a pen, which he used to jot down his number.
“There ya
go,” he said. “Well, I’ll see you
around.”
“Yeah, see
you… on the nineteenth, if not before, right?”
“The
nineteenth?” Nick repeated blankly.
“Doctor’s
appointment? Or don’t tell me they messed
up the scheduling this time around?”
“Oh!” Nick laughed.
“No, I think it is on the nineteenth… so yeah, I guess I’ll see you
then.”
“It’s a
date,” smirked Claire with a roll of her eyes.
“Oh yeah…
oncology clinic waiting room… great date,” Nick nodded sarcastically.
Claire
giggled. “Well, you’d better scram now
cause I gotta start getting cleaned up, or I’m gonna be late.”
“Yeah,” said
Nick. “See ya later.”
“See ya.”
They
exchanged smiles, and he left the apartment, trudging through the dreary
hallway and down the narrow stairwell until he reached the small parking lot,
where his SUV was parked. Yawning, he
climbed inside and started his engine, hoping he wouldn’t fall asleep on the
drive home. It was way too early to be
up.
***