Unlovable (16 page)

Cole studied him for a moment. “Okay,
I know I’m going to hate myself for asking, but who is Ron?” Cole
leaned against the counter and folded his arms across his chest,
looking every bit the 6’3 3/4” that he was.

“
You know, Ron, as in Ronald
McDonald.”

I groaned. That was bad.

“
I can cook,” Cole said
indecisively.

“
Doc, you’re the only person
I know that can burn water!”

“
I have never burn– okay,
once. Are you ever going to forgive me?”

“
You ruined my favorite
pan!”

As they continued the horseplay, I
arranged the rest of dinner on the table, grateful the harassment
of me had ended, temporarily anyway.

While we ate, Cole shared with us the
details of a particularly gruesome bowel operation he’d observed
that day. He removed a pen from his pocket and drew a diagram of
the bowel on the back of his hand, something he habitually did
whenever a piece of paper wasn’t readily available. Booker turned
three shades of green before asking if he could talk about
something else.

“
Fine, someone broke into my
house last night. Is that better, ol’ weak stomached one?” He added
a few more details to the drawing as he spoke.

“
How do you know? Did
they
leave
something?”

“
Ha. Ha.” Cole set the pen
down and scooped the last of the meat onto his plate. Booker
frowned at the now empty serving platter.

“
The last time I was at your
place you had a twin bed, a dresser, and an 11 inch TV-black and
white, if I’m not mistaken, and that’s it.” Booker put his plate in
the sink before scrounging up a bag of sour cream and onion potato
chips from the pantry.

“
I don’t spend much time
there. The only reason I bought the dumb house was because you
insisted I needed a tax write off.”

Cole purchased the yellow Cape Cod on
Chestnut Lane after he completed his residency two years ago. He
got a great deal on it because the builder had only finished the
first floor before running out of money. Cole, with Booker’s help,
picked it up for a song. I’d be willing to bet he hadn’t slept
there more than a handful of times. Growing up with six brothers,
Cole hated being alone, something that was not a problem at Port
Fare hospital.

“
And it’s a color TV, for
your information.” Cole said, snatching the chips from
Booker.

“
We had better install one
of my security systems. They have never been hacked into, as you
well know,” Booker said, swiping the chips back.

Booker’s systems were top of the line,
I’d never seen so many backup alarms. It made them a real pain to
install.

“
If I had something worth
protecting I would. Whoever broke in didn’t take anything. They
probably just needed a warm place to sleep. It’s been a brutal
winter,” Cole said, walking over to the refrigerator. “You got any
dessert, Seth?”

“
No, sorry, ran out of time.
I have a huge English Lit test tomorrow, and I’ve been studying
most of the afternoon. I think there’s an ice cream sandwich on the
top shelf of the freezer.”

Cole looked at me strangely before
removing the ice cream. “Sounds as if you’re taking this whole
school assignment pretty seriously. Studying?”

“
It’s a good class,” I
answered defensively. He laughed.

“
Cole, leave our hottie
valedictorian alone and let’s go outside and have a game of Horse.
We need to work off dinner,” Booker said. He walked over to the
coat closet and retrieved the orange basketball from the back
corner and one of my fleeces.

Cole actually groaned. “Not
basketball. I suck, and you know it.” He wadded up his ice cream
wrapper, tossed it toward the garbage can, and missed. Booker
laughed. I cringed. No matter the sport, Cole somehow managed to
injure himself and usually someone else during the game.

“
Fine, hottie here and I
will play horse, you can play pig, and we’ll even spot you the P
and the I.” Booker dribbled the ball a couple of times and
pretended to shoot a hoop, then stopped. “On second thought, let’s
head over to Applegate Park and take a few laps around their
jogging trail.”

“
Good idea! I’ll get my
sneakers from the car.” Cole darted out the door before we could
change our minds. So far, jogging was the one activity Cole could
do without endangering anyone.

“
It amazes me that a man so
gifted at saving lives can’t manage to play a sport without killing
someone,” I said while Booker put the ball away. I rubbed an aging
bruise on my ribs where Cole had accidently elbowed me the last
time we’d shot hoops.

“
Sports? Heck, the guy can
barely walk without having to get stitches.” We both laughed. “Did
you see it? Left hand, little finger.” I nodded, Booker shook his
head.

“
So, why Applegate Park? Why
not the high school?” I asked, changing out of my boots. “The track
there is lit up ten times brighter than the narrow jogging trail at
the park.”

“
I don’t know,” he said, a
little too easily. “I just got a feeling.”

10

Maggie

It was the first time I’d ever seen
Bore the Snore genuinely excited, in a dull tedious kind of way. He
spent the first ten minutes of class blabbering on about the facts
and myths surrounding werewolves, speaking with such intensity you
would have thought he truly believed in them. When Dwayne from
culinary class tried contradicting him on something he’d said, Bore
gave him a week of detention for disrupting the class with
nonsense. Funny, I thought mythology was all nonsense.

After berating Dwayne, he
settled back down into his dull mode delivering a dry lecture on
the evils of SUV’s,
again
. What SUV’s had to do with
Mythology was beyond me. You sometimes had to wonder about the
man’s thought processes. I blocked out the rest of his droning and
instead rehearsed my little speech for Seth.

When the bell rang, I jumped out of my
seat and ran toward the parking lot in an attempt to beat Seth
there, my stomach churned the entire way.

I wasn’t fast enough. There he stood,
looking beautiful, waiting for me with the car door open, his usual
smile was nowhere to be seen.

“
Thanks.” My courage
deserted me, and we slipped quietly into the car.

“
You’re welcome,” he said,
flipping the radio on and maxing out the volume. We rode to the
elementary school listening to loud mind-numbing music. Once at the
school, he bolted inside, leaving me standing in the parking
lot.

On Thursday, he wasn’t in school, and
Friday was simply a repeat of Wednesday. When we arrived at the
school, I didn’t bother hurrying, I knew he would be inside before
I was out of the car.

“
Children, take your seats.
There’s an assembly later today and class will be ending a little
early,” Mrs. Mathews said. “I thought we could draw some pictures
for Mr. Seth and Miss Maggie, thanking them for the fun activities
they’ve done with us so far this year.”

They began wiggling around with
excitement while I gathered the art supplies from the cupboard.
Seth positioned the chairs around a big table in the middle of the
room. While the children worked on their projects, we circled the
table, carefully staying opposite of each other as we observed
them. Many drew pictures of themselves smiling or playing with a
toy, while some made pictures of the different activities we had
done throughout year. Zane drew a picture of Seth and me reading
books to him.

“
I like to pretend you’re my
mom and Seth’s my dad when you read to us. Is that bad?” A tear
slipped down my cheek. Zane had been in three foster homes already
in hopes of finding a permanent family, but so far nothing had
worked out.

“
No, Zane, that’s
wonderful.” How my heart ached for these kids, these innocent
victims who never asked to be born. I gave him a big hug and
continued looking over the children’s artwork.

Mrs. Mathews and I started gathering
up the art supplies when they’d finished. I hadn’t seen Elise’s
artwork yet and listened quietly in the background as she explained
her drawing to Seth.

“
This is Miss Maggie,” she
assured him, pointing to a stick figure with a large head and
mismatched eyes. “I didn’t know which Miss Maggie to drawed so I
drawed a sad Miss Maggie.”

“
What do you mean?” Seth’s
curiosity seemed as peaked as mine. I inched closer, looking over
his shoulder as best I could from six feet away.

With her cherub face deep in thought,
she began twirling a strand of her curly hair around her finger.
“Before you and Miss Maggie camed here together, she looked
different. Her eyes looked sad at first, but then she looked happy
when she left.” Seth sat down, and she climbed onto his lap before
continuing.

“
But when you camed
with
her to class her
eyes looked happy all the time. She peeks at you and smiles
sometimes.”

This was becoming embarrassing. I
wanted to stop her, but didn’t want it to look as if I’d been
eavesdropping either.

“
That’s why I knowed she
loves you and that’s why I locked you guys in the closet so you
could kiss her.”

“
So this picture is of
Maggie before we started coming here together.”

“
No, this is her today. She
has been sad for two times now, and she never gets happy. I don’t
like it. You should try to kiss her again. Do you want me to lock
you in the closet?” She looked hopefully up at Seth. “But you have
to promise not to tell Mrs. Mathews. She said if we do it again we
have to wash the desks instead of going to recess.”

Seth laughed. “No thanks, Elise. Miss
Maggie doesn’t want me to kiss her.”

“
Yes, she does!” She looked
genuinely shocked he would think such a thing. I quickly peered
around for the teacher, hoping she’d break up their little chat.
Elise took her small hands, wrapped them around Seth’s grown up
face, and looked into his eyes with all the earnestness of a
six-year-old. “She’s just scared.”

“
Alright, Elise, we need to
go. Our visiting teachers can leave early today.” Mrs. Mathews took
her by the hand as she thanked Seth and me for coming.

Did I really look that bad? I shut the
closet door and walked silently to the car, leaving Seth inside to
hang the last two pictures on the bulletin board. I had to tell him
about Hillary and Zack. I wasn’t sad. What Elise saw on my face was
nervousness, that’s all. She misunderstood.

Seth settled into the car several
minutes later. When he turned the key over in the ignition, there
was a loud crackling noise, followed by a popping sound. I jumped.
“What was that?”

“
I just blew my speakers.” I
tried hard to stifle my laugh, though I could’ve sworn I saw the
tiniest grin on his face.

I took a deep breath. I had to do
this. I had to let him know about Zack and Hillary.

“
I acted like a big jerk on
Monday, and I’m sorry for hurting your feelings.” That wasn’t what
I had planned to say at all! What was wrong with me? Apparently, I
had more to say because the apology continued to gush out of my
mouth. “I’m uncomfortable with the flirting, and I should have told
you instead of verbally attacking you. You’ve been very kind to me,
and I do want to be your friend, I hope I haven’t blown that. I
shouldn’t have judged you like I did either, and again, I’m
sorry.”

He sat there in stunned silence
looking at me. It felt like an eternity. Finally, he spoke. “I’m
sorry too. I shouldn’t have said anything about Zack, if I’d known
you two were dating again I wouldn’t have.”

“
Zack and I aren’t
together.” His eyes narrowed slightly as I made every effort to
tell him as gently as possible about Zack’s plan and about what
Hillary had said.

“
I told you, Hillary and I
are just friends, although I don’t know if I want to continue with
the relationship anymore. Zack can have her, and he doesn’t need to
go to the Winter Fest to get her either.”

“
Zack said if I didn’t go
along with the plan he would tell everyone I slept with him, which
is a lie.” My two fingers were tangled up around my hair again. I
hadn’t notice it until Seth’s eyes followed my hand.

“
I wouldn’t have believed
him. You have too much going for you to throw your life away on a
loser like Zack, though I would like to know why you ever dated him
in the first place.” He reached over and tucked the stray hair
behind my ear.

“
I don’t
know
.” I asked myself that exact question
many times.
“Besides, he kisses like a wet
fish. Come to think of it, his breath smells like wet fish.” He
laughed at my wrinkled up nose.

I smiled. “So, we can be
friends?”

“
Yes, and if I slip up and
start flirting just pop me upside my head,” he said with a goofy
grin.

“
No lecture?”