How to Ruin Your Boyfriend's Reputation (13 page)

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"You also hate me," I blurt out.

"I can't believe you just said that."

"Why not? It's true."

Miranda huffs and walks over to talk about me or complain about me to Jessica. I just want Miranda to tell me what I did to piss her off so much. If I don't know what it is, I can't fix it any more than I can fix what went wrong with Avi.

Noah helps me pull more jars of jam out of the fridge. "What's her problem?"

"I wish I knew."

Noah shakes his head. "I keep my expectations low,
so
nobody disappoints me."

"Yeah, well, I have high expectations." I look toward Miranda. "I guess my friends do, too."

"Expectations make people miserable, so whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier." Noah waves his hand around, gesturing to the entire kitchen. "You think I wanted to be assigned kitchen duties? Nope. But to be honest, at least it's quiet and the biggest pests I have to deal with here are the bees. Besides, I'm only here for three months and then I'm getting transferred to another base to get trained as an instructor. It's all good."

"You're a better person than me."

Listen, I know who I am and what my strengths are. And my strengths do not include having little or no expectations. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, then, when people let me down.

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After Noah leaves me alone for a minute with instructions about how to ladle spoonfuls of jam into the plastic bowls, I'm having trouble fending off the four bees hovering around me. You'd think dropping globs of the jam would be easy, but it's not. It's sticky and messy and two of the bees just got stuck in the jam.

"Umm... Noah... I think there's a problem."

Noah is at my side. Miranda is right behind him, so I guess he was able to coax her back over here. "What's the jam?" he asks, then laughs. "Get it. What's them? You're scooping the jam"."

You gotta love it when someone laughs at their own jokes.

"Yeah, I don't know how to break the news to you, but a few bees are stuck in the jam," I tell him.

"Just pick 'em out before you set the bowls on the tables," he says, as if it happens every day. He doesn't even peer in the bowls to see the annoying stinging creatures struggling for their lives. That's what they get for hovering around the jam, I guess.

Noah leaves Miranda and me to fish out the bees while he helps Eli and David with the eggs.

I look down into the first bowl of jam. I can do this. I'm trying to think about the consequences of an IDF soldier, jam on his bread, biting into a little bee corpse as a bonus treat. At least they're not those fuzzy bees, because having a mouthful of that fuzz would definitely not go over well.

I spot a bee in the next bowl. With shaky hands, I slowly

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fish it out with a spoon and flick it into the garbage can. "This is so gross," I say to nobody in particular, since my partner Miranda is pretty much ignoring me and everyone else is doing other tasks.

Within five minutes I've inspected and de-bee'd eleven bowls. I look into the twelfth bowl and find the next bee. Seriously, don't bees have
eyes
and see their cousins and brothers drowning in the sticky stuff? You'd think they'd be smart enough to stay away, but no. Their little bee brains aren't equipped with street smarts.

I slowly fish out another bee and head for the garbage can. The bee is still alive--I can see it walking in the jam on my spoon. Eww. I suppress a gag. If it crawls anywhere near my hand, I'm dropping the spoon and running out of here.

I'm almost to the garbage can when I feel a sharp pain on my butt. "Ahhhh!" I scream, whipping myself around to see what or who was the cause. But instead of it being an insect like I suspected, it's Nathan. "With his thumb and pointer finger in a pinching position. My fake boyfriend just pinched my ass.

"How's my sweetie?" he asks, raising and lowering his eyebrows at me. Tori is beside him, giving me the evil eye.

Speaking of sweet mixed with evil, I examine the jam/ bee on the spoon in my hand.

Oh. No.

The jam isn't there. Neither is the bee. I quickly scan the floor, but it's not there. I frantically scan my shirt. Sure

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enough, there's a big glob of jam on my sleeve. The bee is stuck in it, creepily walking in the jam. "Get it off! Get it off! Eww!"

Nathan takes my elbow, looks up at me and says in a sexy voice, "Let me get that for you." He checks to make sure Tori is watching him be my hero. I expect him to flick it off me, but instead his tongue snakes out as he leans close to the jam... and the bee.

I quickly realize he thinks he's only licking jam off my sleeve.

"Nathan, don't..."

"I'm here for you, babycakes." Before I can pull away, he licks off the jam and struggling bee with the tip of his tongue.

My hand flies over my mouth. "Oh, my God. Nathan-- you just ate a bee!"

Nathan's face contorts in shock, and I realize I didn't have to tell him he ate a bee. He figured it out all by himself. "Ow! What the fu--"

He runs to the garbage can faster than I've ever seen him move and spits jam and the bee out of his mouth.

"Nathan, are you allergic to bees?" Miranda cries out over the commotion.

"No."

There's a sigh of relief that Nathan isn't going to die. I've never heard so many swear words come out of his mouth at one time since I've known him.

I rub his back as he rinses his tongue in the big metal kitchen sink. "I'm so sorry. I tried to warn you--"

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"It sthung my tung. Thit," he swears. He sticks his tongue out and points. "Take de sthinger outh."

"Okay." I examine his tongue. "What should I be looking for?"

"The sthinger!"

Is it white? Red? Black? I've never taken out a stinger before. I'm frantic with worry.

"His tongue is swollen," Miranda says. "I think he needs to go to the infirmary."

"Miranda's right," I cry out. "Nathan, I'm so sorry."

"You're thorry? Amy, thath's the lasth thime I'm pinthing your assth."

"Stop talking, Nathan. Your throat might swell up so bad it'll stop the oxygen."

Nathan opens his mouth wide and breathes in and out, proving his throat is letting enough air through.

"Close your mouth, Nathan," Tori says. "You look like a damn fish gasping for air, you dork."

"Uthually I'm thexy," Nathan tells her, then nudges me to intervene.

"The
sexiest,"
I agree, but I don't think Tori is buying it.

Noah leads Nathan, who's now screaming unintelligible obscenities, all the way to the infirmary. Great. Now I've ruined my fake boyfriend's reputation, too.

Tori finishes the task of piling plastic coffee mugs on a tray.

"Hey, Tori. I thought you said these were worker bees that don't sting," I say to her.

"I didn't say they won't sting if you
eat
them," she

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responds, then walks back out into the dining area with the tray of coffee mugs.

I follow her with a tray of jam-filled bowls. "It's too bad my boyfriend won't be able to kiss me because of his bee sting."

"Your problem, not mine," she says, attitude dripping from each word.

I set two bowls on each table, wondering how I'm going to make her go out with Nathan after we "break up" and I'm supposedly devastated. "Who do you like?"

"As if I'm gonna tell you."

Seriously, this girl is so one-dimensional you'd think when she turns sideways she'd be as flat as a piece of paper. She belongs on another planet. "You know, it wouldn't hurt if you acted a little nicer."

"Why should I? Acting nice didn't get me anywhere. It sure didn't keep my parents together, that's for sure."

"Are they divorced?"

"That's none of your business. Just leave me alone."

I'm shocked. Tori actually opened up to me. The good part is that I now know what her deal is. She's not mad at me, per se. Okay, so I'm sure I annoy her 10 percent of the time. But the real issue behind her pissy face and bitchy attitude is a daughter who wants her parents to get together and doesn't see it happening any time soon.

"Not that you care, but I know how you feel," I tell her.

"I doubt it. Are
your
parents divorced?"

"No, worse. My parents were never married. How

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would you like growing up knowing you were the result of a one-night stand? That's my reality. And no matter how much attitude I have, that will never change."

"But you have friends. I have nobody."

"If you'd act a little nicer maybe we could be friends. If you stop calling me a spaz every two minutes, that might be a start."

""What makes you think even if I wanted a friend, I'd pick you? Besides, you
are
a spaz." Tori tosses her hair with a flick of her wrist, showing me a flash of dark hair underneath her blond locks, and stomps back to the kitchen.

She ignores me the rest of the time as she busies herself with one task or another. I guess now is not the time to become buddy-buddy with her, especially when she's in charge of the hot coffee. It's not a level playing field.

Avi walks in the door and I almost drop a bowl of jam. I wish I could forget the long talks we'd have on the phone when he was on military leave. Or that his hands are strong enough to dig ditches in record time and gentle enough to caress my skin and make me beg for more.

"Where's Noah?" he asks in a businesslike tone, as if I'm someone he just met.

"He took Nathan to the infirmary," I answer back, just as businesslike.

"Why?"

"Nathan kind of ate a live bee."