Beautiful Tragedy (A Standalone Romance Novel) (7 page)

“Oh, man. I forgot. Does Molly know?”

“No, Jake. Same plan as before okay? No one knows.”

“Sure,” Jake said. “Of course, no one knows.”

“Good,” I said, “Help me clean up?”

Jake was reaching for his cereal bowl. When I said
that he looked around and said, “Clean up what? It looks fine.”

“It’s a sty, Jake.”

He shrugged and said, “Okay, I guess.” He’s a good
friend.

By the time Megan dropped off Molly, the apartment was
clean, the medications were hidden and the ingredients for dinner were bought
and prepped. I hoped she wasn’t expecting steak or seafood or something fancy
like that. Not that I minded fancy, per se, but my nutritionist had me on a
pretty strict diet, and if I faltered on that even for one day, it can make me
pretty sick. Not even the day four of my experimental meds could rival how sick
I got when I go off my diet. Something about the fat content of a lot of foods
just no longer sat well with my stomach.

Molly knocked on the door. I knew it was her, because
she had texted me before they left the dorms. I wanted to run over to it, but I
made myself wait a decent amount of time before I did. When I opened the door I
said, “Hi, I’m glad you’re here.”

She smiled, “Thanks, me too.”

She didn’t look glad though. She looked nervous. She
was glancing around like she was looking for the dungeon and the chains that I
would use to cuff her to the wall.

“Have a seat,” I told her. “Do you want something to
drink?”

“Just some water, thanks.”

My heart actually went out to the poor girl. She
really looked about ready to crawl out of her skin. I didn’t know what to do to
put her at ease, but I knew that sometimes keeping busy helped me when I felt
anxious so I said, “Do you want to help me cook?” She smiled.

“Nice trick, guy. Invite a girl over for dinner and
then get her to cook.” I laughed; she was loosening up a bit.

“Oh you don’t have to help me. I think I can cook the salmon
without burning it, and you fry asparagus, right?” She really perked up then.

“Salmon and asparagus, really?” she said. “I’m
impressed.”

“I’m kind of on a diet.”

She did something then that sent a jolt of electricity
down my spine. She looked me up and down. The she cracked me up by mimicking
what I had said to her that first day that we’d met.

“Looks like it’s working for you,” she said with a
grin. “I’ll do the asparagus.” I got the asparagus and the steamer out for her.
She also seemed surprised by that. “You have a steamer, really? Did you buy
this today just to make yourself look good?”

“No,” I said as I seasoned the salmon. “It’s Jake’s.”
That made her laugh.

“No offense, you know I love Jake right? But I doubt
if you hit him in the face with that thing he would know what it was.”

“No offense taken and I bet you’re right,” I told her.
It was fun, cooking with her. She was so different from the other girls that
I’ve dated. Since I was sixteen, girls always seemed so worried about their
looks or how cool they sounded that I would find myself incredibly bored by the
end of the first date. With Molly, she was so natural. She didn’t look like she
was trying. I don’t know if a woman would take that as a compliment or not, but
it was absolutely one. She didn’t wear much make-up, and her hair looked like
it just fell into place without trying. She wasn’t always running to check that
it wasn’t messed up, or that her lipstick was reapplied. It was refreshing. She
probably wasn’t even wearing any.

When dinner was ready, we sat in the living room and
ate off the coffee table. Jake and I have an island in the kitchen and some bar
stools, but no dining room table. Molly said she didn’t mind, and she didn’t
seem like she did.

“You want to watch a movie while we eat?” I asked her.

“Sure,” she said. “What do you have?”

“What do you like?” I asked her. “Between me and Jake
we have every comedy and thriller that has come out in the past few years.”

“Comedy like Laurel and Hardy, or comedy like Adam
Sandler and Jim Carrey?”

I laughed, “I said the last few years, not the last
few hundred years. Laurel and Hardy, really? How old are you?”

She laughed and said, “My grandmother says I was born
thirty five.”

“Well if that’s the case that would make you about
fifty-three or four. Laurel and Hardy make sense,” I said. “But I’m sorry, no
Laurel and Hardy here.”

“Okay, I’ll take Adam Sandler then. Which ones do you
have?”

I named them off and she picked
Fifty First Dates
. It was his
chicky
-est
movie, so I wasn’t surprised. Is that a word?
Chicky
-est?
I don’t think so. I’m glad I didn’t say that out loud. I put it on and then I
took our plates to the kitchen. “Do you want seconds?” I asked her.

“No, thank you, I’m stuffed. You did a good job on the
salmon.”

“Thanks,” I said. “The asparagus was divine.”

“I think divine is laying it on a bit thick, don’t
you?” she said with a grin. “I mean, I might have gone with heavenly, or
celestial.”

“And divine is laying it on thick?” I asked with a laugh.

I put the plates in the sink and reached into the
freezer to get the desserts. “I can’t really eat dairy,” she said. I guess she
thought I was reaching for Jake’s box of Dreyer’s.

“Me neither,” I told her. “It’s lemon sorbet with
crushed raspberries. Is that okay?” She grinned and said, “Bring it on.” We ate
our dessert and watched the movie. I suddenly couldn’t believe my ears as I
heard my own voice announce out loud that this was Adam Sandler’s “
chicky
-est” movie. When did my brain give my mouth permission
to speak?

“
Chicky
-est?” she said with
a grin.

“I’m sure you would have gone with a better adjective,
perhaps?” I said, smiling back at her.

“I’m sure anything I went with would have been a
better adjective,” she said.

“Are you sure you’re not an English major?” I asked
her.

“Yes,” she said, “but I’m not sure why.” That made me
laugh until I felt that old familiar rise of nausea from my stomach, to my
esophagus and into my cheeks. Damn it!

I excused myself and headed down the hall to the
bathroom. Sometimes I puke once and it’s over, and other times I literally
can’t get away from a toilet, or a bucket. Please God, I prayed as I walked
down the hall. Let tonight be the former.

I went inside the bathroom and as I closed the door I
leaned up against it and took some deep breaths. Sometimes if I slowed my
breathing, and didn’t allow myself to get too anxious, I could make it go away
before it even really started. As I took my third breath, I could feel the
vomit in the back of my throat and I knew that tonight wasn’t going to be one
of those nights. I quickly pulled up the toilet seat and bent over it. Within a
few seconds, the entire beautiful meal that Molly and I had cooked and ate
together was in the toilet. I had meant to turn the water on before I puked. I
hope the television was loud enough that she didn’t hear that.

I flushed the toilet and turned around to the sink and
turned the cold water on. I splashed some on my face and then reached for my
toothbrush. I hadn’t got as far as the paste before I had to turn around again,
this time ridding myself of our dessert…I think. I leaned there for a few
minutes with my knees against the toilet and my forehead against the wall. I
didn’t usually feel pity for myself. In spite of having cancer, I live a pretty
normal, full life. But tonight, all I wanted to do was spend the evening with
Molly. I wanted to look at her pretty face and talk to her about…everything.
Yet here I was with my head in the toilet, and now I’m having a pity party in
my head to boot.

I tried it again, turning slowly this time and keeping
my eyes I one spot. That’s what my doctor had always told me to do when I got
really nauseated. No quick movements of the head or the eyes. It makes you lose
your equilibrium which makes you a little dizzy or lightheaded, which makes the
nausea even worse.

I washed my face again, this time with a washcloth,
and slowly. Then I reached again for my toothbrush. I hoped that the paste
wouldn’t make me want to throw up again, but I’d be damned if I was going to go
out there with puke breath.

I made it through the teeth cleaning, flushed and
washed once more, and then headed out the door and back down the hall, the
whole time trying to come up with an excuse for why I was gone so long. As soon
as I saw her face, I knew she had heard me throw up. I felt my face going hot
with embarrassment and the anxiety stirring in my chest was probably going to
make me want to puke again. Then she smiled and said, “Are you okay?”

I smiled back. How could I not? “I’m good, thanks. I
have a really…sensitive stomach. That’s what the diet’s about.”

“Me too,” she said. “Believe me, I understand.”

“If anyone else said that, I would think they were
just being nice. But somehow I believe that you really do understand.”

“You don’t think I’m being nice?” she said.

“No, I mean…That’s not what I meant, I said it wrong.”
She laughed then. She was just yanking my chain. I loved the sound of her
laugh.

“I think you’re nice,” I said.

“I’m a wonderful person,” she said with a grin.

CHAPTER
SEVEN

MOLLY

“So, is this a real date?” Megan asks me that every
time I see Brock. We have been hanging out a lot for the past month or so, but
each time she asks me that I say, “No,
Meggs
. We’re
still just hanging out.” She grins at me, like she knows something that I don’t
know. Maybe she does. There are a lot of things I don’t know. I mean, I did
tell her that I didn’t even want to meet this guy in the first place. Now I
look forward to his phone calls and even to the times I go over to his
apartment and help him with his homework. Sometimes he even helps me with mine.
He’s very “right-brained” and I’m not. I work from the left side of my brain
almost always. If it doesn’t have a logical equation, I’d prefer to not have
anything to do with it. So, when I have to draw an abstract sketch in art
class, Brock is my man. Well, not my man, more like the man. Anyways, he’s
awesome with creative stuff and I’m better at the logical things like math and
science. Maybe together we make one brain?

Are we dating though? It’s still a no. That one brain
thing isn’t like two hearts make a whole. I’m sure every two people who work
well together are like that. But it’s not dating. We don’t hold hands, although
the one night we danced at the club and he held my hands and pulled me in
close, I have to admit I had a hard time catching my breath. He looked down at me;
like he was afraid I was going to pull away. I did think about it, but I didn’t
want to. It felt…comfortable, so I stayed there until the song was over and we
went back to our table. We held hands for the dance, but we don’t walk around
holding hands.

Another thing that proves we’re just hanging out and
not dating is that we have never kissed. Megan and Jake are dating, and they do
an awful lot of kissing. So much it kind of makes me sick sometimes. I mean,
there is such a thing as too much PDA, am I right?

Have I thought about kissing him? Oh, yeah, I’ve
thought about it. That night when we were dancing, sometimes when he leans in
close while we’re working on our homework, or in the middle of Benny and
Joon
last weekend when he quoted
Joon
,
“Having a Boo Radley moment are we?” I mean really, what nineteen-year-old guy
knows Benny and
Joon
that well? It’s one of my
favorite movies; Grandma and I used to watch it together all the time. That one
and
Untamed Heart
. I think I would
have to kiss him if he quoted Marissa Tomei, “He doesn’t make sense. I don’t
make sense. Together we make sense.” Yeah, I’d probably kiss him full on the
lips for that one… Maybe I’ll rent it next week…Anyways, I’m pretty sure that
the fact we’ve never kissed still means we’re not dating.

“He’s taking you on a haunted train ride for
Halloween. That’s pretty romantic for a couple that’s not dating,” Megan was
still going on. I sometimes wonder if Megan wishes she was dating Brock.

“It just sounds like fun,” I said. It’s Halloween.
What are we going to do, trick or treat? Go to some lame sorority or fraternity
costume party? I found out, since we’ve been hanging out so much together, that
Brock doesn’t drink either. The fact that he stays on a really strict diet and
doesn’t drink alcohol helps me out a lot. That’s what happened with my first
and last college boyfriend. They were the same guy. He kept taking me to
parties and I finally told him I didn’t want to go to anymore parties where the
main focus was the keg in the middle of the room. He told me that maybe if I
had a beer every once in a while, I wouldn’t be so uptight. I admit I played
the cancer card that night. I was pissed and I wanted him to feel bad. He felt
bad alright, all the way out the door.