The Kiss Test (11 page)

Our motel was far from the heart of Nashville. Not even really in the suburbs. A tiny little thing, but I’d saved my money for the better (read: Elvis-oriented) hotels in Memphis and Las Vegas, and pinched my pennies everywhere else. So, this one was nothing special and nowhere special. One would have had a hard time telling flashy Nashville, Tennessee, wasn’t too far away.

We each dumped our bags on our respective beds, and I made a beeline for the bathroom. “I look like a Heffalump!” I cried, peering at my face in the less-than-crystalline mirror.

“A heffa-what?”

“A Heffalump.” I turned to the left to see how far around my neck the welts extended. “Or a Woozle.”

“Again, a what?”

I turned off the light and came out of the bathroom. Chris was pawing through his duffle bag.

“You know, like in Winnie the Pooh? His nightmare was Heffalumps and Woozles. They were elephants. Spotted elephants.”

Chris raised his shaving kit in triumph, before giving me a once-over. “You’re safe then, unless you pack on a couple tons.”

He headed for the bathroom and I peered at myself in the dresser mirror, drawn to my reflection like a narcissist who couldn’t get enough of his image. A depressed narcissist, because if these bites didn’t disappear by tomorrow, my photo on the cover of
Today’s Country
would frighten away whatever prospective employers I might attract with my fifteen minutes of fame. Somehow I doubted anyone would want to hire a DJ who looked like she had leprosy.

Staring at the spots made them itch more, and I delicately scratched through the calamine lotion, trying not to flake it off. I’d need another layer soon. Not that it was helping. I still itched like a son of a gun. There had to be a better way.

Hearing the shower come on in the bathroom, I dug through the drawers of the bureau trying to find a phone book. Finally locating it, I thumbed through until I found the number for the local hospital and dialed the emergency room. Hey, it was a dermatologic emergency in my eyes.

Ten minutes later, I hung up the phone with a list of what to do for mind-numbing itching. They included such props as uncooked oatmeal and Benadryl, which I’m pretty sure weren’t on the room-service menu, especially considering this motel didn’t have room service. This required a trip to the store. Now. I tiptoed toward the bathroom door. Chris sang to himself over the rush of water. I smiled. How cute. I’d never known anyone but me who actually sang in the shower. Giving the room a quick once-over, I looked for Chris’s keys.

Of course, I wasn’t supposed to drive, but I hadn’t felt dizzy for a long time. Hours, at least. And I remembered seeing a grocery store close by. Surely I could manage to get that far without running into anything.

Biting my lip as I spotted the keys on one of the bedside tables, I threw up a promise that if I felt even the slightest bit dizzy on the way to the parking lot, I’d come back to the room. I wouldn’t take a chance on wrecking Chris’s car.

Keys in hand, I headed outside, figuring I had a good twenty minutes before Chris even realized I left. Driving the Jeep was fun. I didn’t drive much, only borrowing Kevin’s little Honda if I needed to go so far that a taxi ride would require a bank loan or the bus or subway would need more than five transfers. However, Chris’s Jeep was a stick shift. It had been years since I’d driven a stick. Thankfully, Chris didn’t see my first whiplash-inducing attempts to leave the motel parking lot.

I made it to Kroger, ignoring the stares at my spotted state, collected my purchases and was back in the car with no mishaps. My equilibrium troubles seemed well behind me. Stowing the oatmeal and Benadryl—as well as snack food and foundation to cover up any bites that still existed tomorrow—in the miniscule back seat, I climbed in and slid out of the parking space.

The motel was almost out in the country. I sped along, enjoying the breeze coming in the open driver’s window, taking in the unfamiliar scenery, feeling free and light for the first time in days. I was
upright,
driving by myself instead of being driven—which, I suppose, was a rather silly thing to be proud of when I rarely drove myself anywhere, dizzy or not. Still, after being taken care of for the entire last week, it felt great to be independent. My confidence soared. I’d park the Jeep and be back in the motel room before Chris even missed me.

That is until another Jeep went by and the driver waved. Surprised, since I’d been under the assumption all the waving going on had been Chris waving at hot chicks, I swung my head around to see what could possibly have possessed the driver to wave at me. All of a sudden, my stomach lurched, my vision blurred and the passing trees darted into the road, as dizziness flooded back in a huge wave.

Another car passed and laid on its horn when I swerved into the oncoming lane. Panicked and nauseous, I dragged the wheel to the right, pulled over to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, throwing my head forward as I came to a stop. I rested it against the steering wheel, willing the world back to stillness. No such luck. I stumbled out onto the pavement, probably giving the car coming up behind me a heart attack, as they, too, swerved to miss me. Using the hood for balance, I groped my way around to the ditch and promptly lost my lunch.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed before my brain fog lifted enough to remember that if Chris got out of the shower and found me gone, I was a dead woman.

Reversing my previous path around the car, I inched my way back to the driver’s seat and started the car again. Did people get tickets for driving too slow? The five-minute trip took fifteen by the time I pulled into the thankfully still-empty spot we’d occupied in the motel parking lot. It took another ten minutes to be able to lift my head off the steering wheel again. And, even then, I had to be prompted.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“Damn straight I’m going to yell,” Chris shouted back. “What the hell are you doing driving?”

I decided it was now or never, so I groped for the grocery sack in the passenger seat and shoved the door open, swinging it wildly toward Chris, who backed up, cursing, to avoid getting a black eye.

“Don’t worry,” I muttered. “I didn’t wreck your precious car.”

“Jeep,” he corrected, slamming the driver’s door and following me toward the open door of our room, as I tripped and swayed my way back to the sanctuary within. “And I wasn’t worried about the goddamn Jeep.” He gripped my elbow and practically lifted me up and over the curb, which may as well have been a mountain for my inability to negotiate my way over it.

“Okay, yes, I was, but you could have killed yourself.”

Glancing out the corner of my eye at him as I fell face-first onto my bed, I took in his beet-red face and narrowed eyes, and didn’t believe for a minute he’d been worried about
my
skin. Shoving my bag onto the floor, I attempted to maneuver myself farther onto the bed, as the room took a turn around me.

“What was so damned important that you couldn’t wait until I got out of the shower?” Chris picked up the bag and opened it. When he figured it out, the heat of his anger practically radiated off him. “Benadryl? Oatmeal?
Make-up?
”

“For the itch. The oatmeal and Benadryl. Doctor’s orders.”

“What doctor?”

I opened my mouth to reply, but when my stomach lurched I clamped my jaw shut and waved him off. It didn’t matter what doctor.

“So what are we supposed to do with it?”

Surprised at his suddenly calm voice, I opened one eye and looked at him. He stood beside the bed, reading the label on the back of the oatmeal box. His anger was gone.

“I’m supposed to take a bath in it.”

“A bath?” He looked incredulous for a moment, and then shrugged and headed for the bathroom. “Hot or cold?”

Pushing myself up on one elbow I stared at Chris through weary eyes. “What?”

“Hot or cold water? I’ll run the bath. Obviously it’s important.”

Ten minutes later, I lay in a warm bath filled with floating specks of beige breakfast food, drifting in a Benadryl-induced haze, and wondered about the guy I’d called my best friend for twenty years.

How had he gone from zero to furious and back again in such a short time? I could have wrecked his car, stranding us in the middle of nowhere, leaving his insurance record in tatters, not to mention possibly being the cause of a lawsuit or worse, if I’d actually hurt someone. Why’d he forgive me so quickly?

Absently rubbing my skin with the softly rough oatmeal water, I remembered once fighting with Kevin. I somehow crashed his computer and he’d been furious for weeks. Even after it was fixed—no harm done to any of his files or programs—it took a while for him to forgive and forget. Over a computer. I could have destroyed Chris’s
car,
and it took him less than five minutes to forgive me. And draw a bath for me.

Kevin had never drawn a bath for me.

He’d never taken care of me, despite his assertion that was one of our problems. Once I’d had walking pneumonia. Instead of taking the day off to make sure I was okay, Kevin had been out the door as usual, by eight-thirty, headed for the office. After all, he had an important meeting and I was merely running a hundred-and-three-degree fever and coughing up a lung. No doubt if I’d had the strength to call Chris, he’d have been at my door with chicken soup and Tylenol before I hung up the phone.

Not that I needed or wanted to be taken care of. I took care of myself, sick or not. This showed the obvious difference between the boyfriend who thought mainly of himself and the best friend who cared enough to make sure I didn’t scratch myself bloody.

Chris tapped gently at the door. “You okay in there?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I turned my head toward the door and opened my eyes, which promptly misted over. Geez. I was turning into a sap just because Chris was sick of watching me scratch. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Did it help much?” Chris laid down the magazine he was browsing and looked up as I came out of the bathroom a few minutes later in jeans and a clean T-shirt, a bit less itchy but feeling like a wet noodle from the warm water and last vestiges of dizziness.

Nodding, I made my way over to the second chair at the tiny round table by the window. “It’s better.”

“Where’s the calamine?”

“No more dots. I’m starving and I thought maybe you’d take me out for dinner.” I stuck out my lower lip and tried to look pitiful, in case he was still angry and wanted to make me suffer by starvation.

He stood and stretched his arms above his head, revealing a few muscled bulges beneath his T-shirt. I hadn’t felt any muscled chests in a while, and I wondered if really wild sex might knock back into place whatever was loose in my head. Too bad I had no prospects to test that remedy.

“There’s a little bar next door,” Chris suggested. “I called the front desk and they said it serves pretty good burgers.”

“Sure.” My stomach gave a little leap at the thought of grease and salt. Could you be hungry and nauseous at the same time? If not, I was forging new territory.

Country music blared from the old-fashioned jukebox, and a half dozen old-timers had a line dance going in a corner cleared of tables. The fresh air revived me a bit, taking the edge off the nausea and bringing out my appetite. Chris and I took a couple of empty places at the chipped and scarred wooden bar. The wall behind the bar was a collage of faded black-and-white and color photos of various country music legends, some signed, some not. A woman as old as dirt polished a glass with a cloth tucked into the waist of her apron, and then filled it from the tap before passing it down the bar to a guy who looked like he’d been at it for a while. That or he suffered from vertigo like me.

“Two beers, please,” Chris told the bartender.

“Make mine Coke,” I amended, adding to Chris, “I don’t think my balance can take any more abuse today.”

“What caused the dizziness to come back?” He automatically scoped out the room and rolled his eyes at the line dancers in the corner. Country music wasn’t his thing. I, on the other hand, would have loved to join, had I been able to participate on my hands and knees.

“Someone waved at me.”

He frowned. “What?”

“I felt fine. Driving along. Almost back to the motel. When some guy in another Jeep waved.” I shrugged and took a grateful sip of the Coke the bartender set in front of me. Maybe the jolt of caffeine would wake me up. “I turned too fast to see if it was someone who knew me or something.”

“Of course they didn’t know you. It was the Jeep Wave.”

“Like the wave at a ball game?”

“No.” He rolled his eyes as he swigged his beer. “It’s the Jeep Wave. Everyone who owns a Wrangler waves at everyone else who owns a Wrangler.”

My turn to roll my eyes. “You mean, like a fraternity handshake.”

“Exactly. Haven’t you noticed all the waves since we left the city? What did you think I was doing?”

“Waving at hot women, who just happened to be driving the same car.”

“Jeep. It’s not a car. It’s a Jeep.”

“It has four tires, an engine and a steering wheel. It’s a car.”

“A riding lawn mower has four tires, an engine and a steering wheel, too, and it’s not a car. A Jeep is a Jeep.”

Obviously I wouldn’t win this argument. I wasted my breath if I thought I’d come out the victor. Chris picked up on that and returned to giving the room a once-over. He swiveled his barstool around to get a better view. I left mine the way it was. I didn’t want to risk any sudden circular movements.

“Possibility at ten o’clock,” Chris muttered.

“
Possibility?
Are you kidding?”

He turned an incredulous eye on me. “I haven’t had sex in over a week. No thanks to you.”

“I haven’t had sex in almost
four
weeks, and you don’t see me trolling for strangers.”

“Guess you don’t like sex as much as I do.”

“Yes, I do,” I replied, drawing funny looks from several other patrons at the bar. I continued in a quieter voice, “I just don’t need strangers to fulfill my urges.”

Chris grinned. “Take care of things on your own, do you?”

“No!” Geez. Like I’d fly solo with Chris in the next bedroom—or bed, as the case was now.

He just laughed and left it. Probably knew he’d never get me to admit to even
needing
to take care of things myself. Instead he went back to staring at his
possibility,
who turned out to be a tiny little blonde in a cropped T-shirt that said Babe on it, leaning over the pool table, lining up a shot. As she bent over, the guys she was playing with moved to stare at her ass, encased in Daisy Duke shorts, or at her boobs, which were probably peeking out from under the edge of her T-shirt.

“Looks like your possibility already has other possibilities. Better luck next time.”

The bartender delivered the burgers we’d ordered and Chris gave up his watch to concentrate on his food. Neither of us had eaten since this morning and it showed in the speed with which we consumed the drippy burgers. I found myself relaxing, with the brunt of the dizziness abating and the itching slightly relieved by the oatmeal bath.
May end up taking another one of those baths before the night is over,
I thought, biting off the end of a nearly foot-long French fry and trying not to think about scratching, which would inevitably start up the itching again.

Periodically, the bar door opened, bringing in a draft to clear out some of the smoke, which was oddly comforting after so much fresh air in the last two days. We finished our burgers and sat silently digesting for a few minutes. I glanced at the door as it opened and shut again, this time admitting a group of women, who immediately set to looking about the room.

Chris noticed too, because he let out a low whistle. “Sex at ten o’clock.”

“You wish,” I shot back, under my breath. All this talk of sex—or lack of it—made me itchy, and it didn’t have anything to do with mosquito bites. I
did
like sex just as much as Chris. Maybe more. I just kept it under control. But the past couple of days—without the sedative effects of pollution—I’d been feeling exceedingly antsy. Lack of exercise or sex and being cooped up in a car, on top of an entire week relegated to the couch in Chris’s living room, was creating a lot of tension. I needed a good run. Or a man.

The chances of either were slim.

“Hey.”

Chris and I turned simultaneously at the sound of the demure little voice behind us. A small brunette pressed herself practically into Chris’s lap.

“Hey, yourself.” The hitch in his voice probably matched the hitch in his crotch.

“My name’s Candy.”

Of course it was. She was small, olive-skinned and built. And not like a linebacker. Her endowment made me look like I had two pancakes hidden under my shirt.

“Are you from around here?” she asked, licking her lips in an exaggerated manner.

“Passing through.” Chris turned on his thousand-watt smile, which was totally irresistible to most women, present party excluded. I’d seen Katya, as well as countless other women—and men, in Adair’s case—collapse under the high gloss of Chris’s smile.

“Passing through is good. I’m just passing through, too. My friends and I are from Phillie.”

“New York. I’m staying at the motel next door.”

He
was staying at the motel next door with
me.
No mention of me was made.

“Me, too!” Candy replied in her best blonde bimbo voice. She obviously wasn’t a natural brunette. “Do you have your own room?” She glanced at the group of girls she was with.

I almost groaned aloud. How completely obvious could she be?

Chris’s hesitation was brief, but still punctuated with a silent question aimed in my direction.
Do I have my own room?

I coughed.

Chris and Candy both looked at me.

I shrugged innocently. “Fry in my throat.”

Chris sent a narrow warning glance at me before turning back to his prey. “My sister,” he lied. I coughed again. “She doesn’t like to be ignored.”

“Oh, well, maybe I should leave.” Her words lacked any kind of sincerity.

“No, don’t leave. Unfortunately, I don’t have my own room. But maybe we could work around that.”

What? The back seat of the car—excuse me,
Jeep
—wasn’t big enough for extracurricular activities. That left someplace outdoors. Behind the bar Dumpster? In the woods behind the motel? Lance and I once had sex in the woods when we’d gone to an outdoor concert, which was surprisingly exciting, so I certainly wouldn’t put it past Chris to go that route.

“Want to dance?” Chris asked Candy, running a hand up her bare arm.

Sensing I was about to be deserted, I couldn’t let him sacrifice himself by dancing to country music. “You hate—”

“I
love
dancing,” Chris barked, and I shut up, knowing when a man began thinking with alternative body parts, there was no deterring him.