So of course, what with my being such a decisive and take-charge kind of guy; I instead elected to do neither. Or maybe both depending on how you look at it.
I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. Looking at the sun helped focus me and ignore the look Talia was boring into the right side of my face.
“The night before I came home from the hospital, a girl snuck into my room in the hospital.” I answered, deliberately not saying her name or what she looked like.
“She said that she was sorry for my injuries, that I didn’t deserve to get hurt like that. And that she wanted to make it up to me that I’d been **** to fight by myself.”
I saw Talia shift a bit beside me as though uncomfortable with the reminder that I’d been jumped essentially for being friends with them.
Or maybe the grass was just itching her bare legs. Fifty-fifty chance one way or the other really.
“And then…” I paused here, unsure of how to say this without instantly raising the antenna and their trying to ferret out who it was that I was talking about.
“She… made me feel better,” I hedged.
“What do you mean by that, Ian?” came the immediate follow up. I’d kind of figured she’d foil my attempt at being cunning but damn, did she really not even have the decency to pretend it had gotten her for a few seconds?
“Exactly what it sounds like: she made me feel better,” I answered. “What does it matter?”
“When you start acting strange and moody around your friends, it matters to us.” She remarked.
I sighed deeply.
“She made me feel better by… by givingmeabj,” I mumbled the last part very fast and under my breath, hoping she would let it go.
Talia’s dark eyes were meeting my own abruptly as she brought herself around to my front, expression incredulous.
“Holy shit, some girl snuck in to blow you in the middle of the night?!” she exclaimed.
“Little louder, Talia,” I instructed, digging my left pinky into the corresponding ear. “I think there might be people a mile away who didn’t hear you.”
“Ian, it’s a pretty damn big deal!” She shot back, a wide grin stretching her face. “You dog you! Why didn’t you say anything?!”
“Because obviously she didn’t,” I said quietly, turning my face away from Talia.
“But what does… oh,” she brought herself up short while the grin abruptly faded, obviously now wondering the same thing I did in regard to the mystery girl’s silence on the matter.
“Yeah. Oh,” I said, figuring that now she reached the crux of my problem.
“Well, have you tried talking to her about it?” Talia asked, concern now leaking through her voice and what bits of her expression I could see in my peripheral vision.
I turned back to face her.
“Oh yeah, I know just what to say too: hey there, remember that time you blew me in my hospital bed and then spent the next two weeks pretending it never happened? Yeah, what was the deal with that?” I said, unable to help the bitterness that colored my tone. Hey, I loved the girls and I loved Corrine but most any guy is not going to be happy about not even warranting an explanation over you pretending you never did anything with him when you did.
“Who is she?” Talia asked, gaze calculating as she searched mine abruptly as though she wanted to figure out who she was. “Maybe one of us can find out something about her avoidance issues.”
“I’m not going to tell you who she is, Talia,” I declared, wanting to nip that in the bud. “If she wanted the world to know, I wouldn’t be keeping my trap shut like this.”
“But, Ian, if we could just talk to her-” she tried to say.
“The answer is no, Talia,” I cut in.
“Do not push me on this. It’s hot out, school is draining the life out of me and I just got out of being in the hospital. The last thing I need right now is getting into crap like this when the solution is obvious.”
As I stood up, I offered her my hand to help her up.
Her smaller right hand rested in mine as her mistrusting eyes looked right into mine.
“Ok, I’ll bite: if you’ve already figured out the obvious solution, what is it?” she asked.
“Bury and repress it deeply enough that it’ll only come back to me during my midlife crisis,” I answered with a faux cheerful smile.
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