The Other Fish in the Sea (35 page)

She followed Tristan out of the kitchen with a distinctly ambivalent air and crawled onto the couch/bed next to me when he set the bed-tray and my breakfast before me. When I saw the offending piece of fruit I looked at her—she wasn’t smiling but I could tell she wanted to—and then I looked at him, not quite knowing how to respond. I don’t wanna be rude here and demand that it be removed from my sight, however I really don’t want it in the vicinity of my much loved bacon either. I know it might be an odd comparison, but I almost feel like I would if he’d given me a “nice” gift that I hated. I was rescued from having to lie, though, because he totally picked up on my mild discomfort.

“What?” Tristan asked, looking back and forth between me and the plate of food.

“Um, it all looks great! Except for um…well, I hate bananas.”

He looked at me and then in consternation, he glared at Jillian, whose smile
 
of course had finally cracked. “You knew! Why the hell would you let me give her something she doesn’t even like?”

“Well, Florence, since you were so insistent on making her breakfast, I didn’t think you wanted my help. Besides, there are some things you just have to learn the hard way,” she replied with a good-natured grin, the first one I’ve seen from her since yesterday afternoon.
 

Then Jilly swiped up the banana, peeled it and getting up from the bed, she began to eat it while disappearing upstairs. By the way, she meant Florence as in Florence Nightingale and I’m having a really hard time controlling my mirth at the mental image of Tristan wearing a nineteenth-century nurse’s dress, hat and cape.

“Baby, how can you hate bananas?” He asked, sitting down in her place.

“I don’t hate them, hate them, I just never liked them so I don’t eat them. I like banana bread though.”

“
Humph.
Alright, well you should have some fruit and lay off stuff with a lot of refined sugar for a while…I think I might get you some potassium and vitamin C supplements…it might help with your bruises…I’ll ask the pharmacist about it...” Tristan rambled, almost like he was talking to himself as he went into the kitchen.

    Having retrieved and peeled an orange for me, he gave me a gentle kiss on the good side of my head and told me he’d be back in a couple of hours. This week is his turn to have Phineas and Ferb and we
were
going to make the transfer yesterday but, well, you know…that didn’t quite work out so he’s doing it today. I think he’s also going home to get cleaned up and packed for another night because I have the sneaking suspicion my sleep talking last night is kind of bugging him. I’ve never done that before and he knows it, so I’m sorta thinking he wants to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
 

My mom spent the morning in bed making doctor appointments for me. I have a dentist appointment on Friday, the day before Christmas Eve (Ugh). Friday also happens to be when the gang was going to take Kate out to dinner for her birthday, but now I’m not sure if we’ll still be doing that. In fact, I haven’t heard anything about how she’s doing. Hell, she could be dead for all I know. So yeah, let’s not think about
that
right now!
 

I also have an appointment next Tuesday to, hopefully, get my stitches out. I’m really praying they do get to come out then because living with them for nine days will be
quite
enough, especially when you consider that keeping up on my personal hygiene is gonna be tricky since I can’t get my stitches wet. (
Ugh, Ugh, Ugh!
) Also, they’re already starting to itch. Actually though, the itchiness isn’t confined to my stitches. Pete had bought and washed the sheets he made my sickbed up with in a different laundry detergent from what we normally use, so later today, Jillian’s gonna rewash them for me. I guess you could say I kind of have sensitive skin so anytime we make a change like that, there’s a chance I’ll react, but whatever. What he did was super thoughtful so Jill and I made a deal to not say anything about it.

When Tristan came back a little while later with a pillow and an overnight bag, he had news about Kate. She’s gonna be fine, but she has a few bruised ribs from the impact of the hit that jammed her door. He got all of this from Jeff, who, from what Tristan said, sounded like a stranger. Jeff also didn’t say one word about the baby. Tristan’s guessing that the airbag deploying combined with her seatbelt cinching up on her the way it did is what probably induced the miscarriage, which makes sense I suppose. As far as Kate’s birthday dinner goes, they’re playing it by ear depending on how she and I both feel. I’m kind of leaning towards no at this point though. I’ll most likely have dirty hair and I can’t imagine Kate being up for much of anything. I have a feeling they’re both gonna be grieving for quite a while, but who knows…they could totally shock the hell out of me. It wouldn’t be the first time. Obviously.

I didn’t talk in my sleep again so, sadly, my phenomenal bunkmate went back to sleeping at his house on Tuesday night. Tristan still spent his waking hours during the week watching movies with me though, so that’s something I guess. Well, aside from Thursday afternoon. He was at my house bright and early but then around noon, he said he had some things to do and would probably just see me the next day. His departure felt odd to me though. I can’t quite put my finger on what it was about his behavior, but he almost seemed distant. I’ll admit I stressed out about it for the rest of that day and the next because he didn’t show up on Friday morning like I thought he would. Okay, if I’m being honest, obsessed and made myself sick is more accurate than stressed out. I’d forgotten (he hadn’t) I had that damned dentist appointment (let me just say, it sucked), so it was late afternoon before I got to lay my eyes and numb lips on his gorgeousness and even then, Tristan only stayed long enough to watch an episode of Buffy with me. May I remind you that it’s date night too, so this is really freaking me out. The episode we
were
going to watch was when Angel, Buffy’s vampire love, broke up with her even though he truly loved her. Although when Tristan realized which one it was, he immediately vetoed it, saying it’s a downer of an episode and that we should watch one of the more lighthearted ones. I agreed with him (I still do,
but…
) so we watched one from the second season instead. He wasn’t detached or remote really, but rather a little reserved, or maybe contemplative would be a better way to describe his frame of mind. Again, it was nothing specific but just a general vibe I was getting. Yeah, I think it’s safe to blame that
much uber-evil
vibe for making me feel a little sick and almost short of breath all day.

Kate’s birthday dinner was cancelled.

The following day was Christmas Eve and this time when Tristan came over, he was back to being himself. Unbeknownst to my dad who was at the store picking up a few things that we were gonna take to my Aunt and Uncle’s house that evening, my mom let Jillian and me leave the house for a short time with Tristan to go get the girls. I’ve been cooped up all week and it was bugging the crap out of me, but my dad has kinda been a pain about not wanting me to “over exert myself,” thus my fatherly imposed house arrest.

Now, normally, I love going to Tristan’s regardless of whether his parents are home or not (I really do adore them.), but I haven’t really seen his mom or dad since before the accident. So not only do I have all this new, very personal, very emotional information about them, but my hair is stringy. Rationally I know they couldn't care less about that, considering the circumstances and why it is, but still, I feel like a hobo. Besides that,
both sets
of his grandparents were gonna be there! I mean come on, can you blame me for maybe wanting to drag my feet a little on this one?

We’d been there for about an hour and everything was going just swimmingly. Tristan’s grandparents are really great and I got a giggle out of when his dad’s dad gave me a compliment by saying he could see why Tristan had chosen to spend all his time since they came to town at my house. Tristan’s response was some eye rolling and a request of his grandmother to get his grandfather to stop flirting with his girlfriend.
 

We were all chatting about random things when his mom’s parents started lightheartedly bickering about something, although I didn’t really hear what prompted the whole thing; I was still being flirted with. She knew she was right about whatever “it” was, though, and set out to prove it by asking to see Tristan’s baby book.
 

I got a little giddy. He didn’t.

“Oh, would you look at the time…well, I better get them back home. Camie’s dad’ll freak out if she’s gone too long,” Tristan said with some serious sarcasm while helping me to my feet.

“Tristan dear, could you at least tell us where you put it? The last time I saw it, it was locked in the liquor cabinet and now it’s not,” his mom asked, not questioning at all why his baby book was locked in the liquor cabinet in the first place.

“It’s in the crawl space of the roof,” Jillian replied before Tristan could.

He just looked at her, rolled his eyes and threw his hands in the air. Then shaking his head, he looked at me like he was asking, “Can you believe this?” I responded with a look of my own that said, “I’m sorry, what do you want me to say?” His parents were softly chuckling at him.
 

“Jillian, seriously, what the hell?”

“I. Know. Everything,” Jilly said with a pleasant, but smug smile. All four of Tristan’s grandparents then joined his parents in their snickering.
 

“Fine, whatever, you freak of nature. Guys, I really do have to get them home so if Dad doesn’t wanna go up there, I’ll surrender the book to you when I get back.”

We got back to my house and said a somewhat guilty “hi” to my dad. He didn’t look mad, but he didn’t look all that happy with having been trumped by my mom either. Then Tristan followed me to my room with a bag of our babies’ stuff in one hand and their leashes in the other. After unpacking, which only takes us like five minutes now since we’ve been doing this for almost two months; he caught me off guard when he tossed a long, flat box wrapped in “No Peeking” Christmas paper at me. I did catch it, but just barely.
 

“Can I open it now?!” I asked in outrageously curious excitement.
 

Really, I have NO clue what this could be. The box isn’t long and flat like a box containing jewelry, it’s more like what a tie would come in and whatever’s inside weighs practically nothing. Also, it doesn’t really make any noise when shaken. For all I know it could be a freaking empty box and that’s the gag.

“No! It’s not Christmas…Jesus, Camie, we have to keep at least
some
things sacred and we already turned a date night into a spy night, so no opening Christmas presents until it’s fuckin’ Christmas, got it?” The big party pooper decreed.

“Fine, you big party pooper,” I pouted and plunked down on my bed.

“I am
not
a party pooper, you big whiner,” Tristan argued and then plunked down next to me.

He spent the next fifteen or twenty-ish minutes trying to orally—but without words—convince me that he is, in fact, not a party pooper and by the time he left with his gift from me in hand, I believed him. I was also able to completely rid myself of that foreboding feeling he’d given me a couple of days ago that’d been lingering like a specter. In fact, while we were lying on my bed still alone and snuggling, we shared a particularly quiet and deeply intimate moment just looking at each other, and what I read in his eyes was
far
from anything like him wanting to break-up, which was sort of what I’d been thinking that vibe I was getting from him was. I know, right? My stomach’s been in knots for days, but now I’m wondering if he was just still trying to come to grips with Jeff and Kate and his reaction to the Buffy episode was simply due to it being a kind of an emotional one. Because in all honesty, I’m pretty damned certain he was silently telling me he loves me.
 

I know that was what I was telling him.

Christmas Eve at my cousin’s house flew by in a blur of holiday rejoicing. We didn’t stay nearly as long as we usually do; being that my mom and I were pretty worn out, but we both really did have a good time. Like during Halloween time when we compete in a pumpkin carving contest, our family competes in a gingerbread house contest during Christmas so my parents, Jillian, Tristan and I had been working on ours all week. We really should’ve won, but we were robbed by my Uncle Bob’s family, who, in my opinion, cheated. I say that because they used a mirror to make an ice skating pond, a model of a car and fake trees.
Everything
on ours was completely edible aside from the song we had playing on one of Jill’s iPods (yes, she has several), which you couldn’t actually see.

Let me just give you a quick description of what our gingerbread house looked like, only because I find it flippin’ hilarious. We made our own gingerbread for one thing, but we used graham crackers to make a lean-to carport that housed a graham cracker, broken down vehicle that was up on “blocks” which were actually Pez. The car had a Hershey’s syrup oil leak running down the crumbled Oreo asphalt driveway too. There were dead, dried-out trees made out of ice cream cones covered in oregano in the front and back yards, in the backyard there was a dilapidated graham cracker “barka lounger” that was covered in melted Tootsie Roll to make it look like the vinyl upholstery was separating, along with an “inflatable” taffy pool filled with blue jell-o that had a gummy Santa lying in it. He’d been electrocuted having flown into the black licorice string of electrical lines that were held up by pretzel rods. Santa’s bag filled with gummy bear toys was a hollowed out marshmallow and it was spilled all over the backyard. There was also a clothesline made in a similar way to the electrical lines, but with different candy and taffy. In the front of the house we had gumdrop bushes that a black gummy Scottie dog had urinated on (we used yellow food gel for that), he’d also peed on the sucker fire hydrant amongst other things in the yard, and there were several little piles of chocolate frosting “poop” here and there as well. The front door was covered in yellow “crime scene” sugary candy strips and all the windows were waffle, or grid type pretzels which we added silver cake sprinkles to, making it look like the windows were not only barred, but covered in tin foil. And Jeff Foxworthy’s “12 Redneck Days of Christmas” playing on a loop completed our “White Trash Gingerbread House!”