by Megan Walker
And so, as I stand in line, I find myself pulling up the Home Depot website, and filling out an application online.
Eighteen
Gabby
I’m exhausted the next day when I arrive at the Ren faire. Like bone-deep tired. And not because of anything Will and I have done recently that would allow me to make some sort of joke about the words “bone-deep,” sadly. Not since the night I brought the sex painting kit home. Which was fantastic, and only four days ago, so I shouldn’t be worried.
Right?
Except I’m starting to get worried again, and not just because I think we need to be all up on each other every day—Will and I just aren’t those people, and that’s okay. But because that distance between us, that awkward uncertainty, is back. Or maybe it never really went away and only took a brief power nap while Will and I were artistically sexing each other up.
I don’t think the stuff with Sean has exactly helped the situation, but I think that’s the least of it. Will says he’s just been distracted, that he’s been unhappy with the work situation, and I get that. But I still can’t help but feel like there’s something more he’s not saying. If Will and I were having problems before getting pregnant—if he was already unhappy with us in some way that he can’t bring himself to tell me . . . what’s going to happen to us now?
I squeeze my eyes shut tight and try to banish the panic that threads through the exhaustion. I walk into my infirmary and set down the stack of pamphlets I’d picked up from the hospital the night before last. Beaming up from each cover is a lovely Asian woman in a business suit, who I’m guessing had no idea when she modeled for a stock photo company that she’d be on an STD pamphlet under the header “Pubic Lice and You.”
I wonder what this has done to her sex life. I prefer worrying about this poor girl (beautiful model though she may be) than worrying about myself.
Though the pamphlets make a nice little display on the wooden table, I doubt Mama Mags wants faire patrons who are coming in for bottles of water or axe-handle splinter removal to be aware of the crabs epidemic. So I put the pamphlets away for now in the medicine cabinet with the boxes of lice treatment, which I’ve been handing out the last few days with rather alarming frequency—hence the idea to start distributing pamphlets to the workers here.
I don’t know if this is true of Renaissance faires in general or just this one, but these people are having a lot of sex. Fortunately, they’ve stopped asking for personal inspections, which I appreciate.
The faire opens, but as usual, I don’t get much traffic in the infirmary in the morning, and as I sit on my stool and scroll through Instagram and Facebook for the twentieth time, I can feel myself starting to doze off.
My eyes drift over to the cot, which would be a much more comfortable place to fall asleep. I could set my alarm for ten minutes to make sure I don’t go full Rip Van Winkle here, and Mama Mags hasn’t stopped by unexpectedly to “see how things are going” for a few days now.
I can’t resist the temptation; I’m too tired. I leave the door to the infirmary open just enough that a passerby can’t see me lying down, and then I stretch out on the cot. It creaks under me and smells like old socks, but it’s still way more comfortable than the stool. There’s a small pillow that I flip over and rest my head on. I’ll just close my eyes for a few minutes.
I’m in the middle of a vivid dream in which I’m part of Taylor Swift’s entourage and am obnoxiously demanding free donuts at Krispy Kreme for her tour bus (“And none of those sad cake ones, either! Taylor does original glazed only, and they better be warm!”) when the door to the infirmary flies open and bangs against the end of the cot.
I jolt awake, my heart hammering, to see a guy standing in the doorway. “You’re the nurse, right?” he demands.
I blink and squint, my sluggish brain knowing I’ve seen him before. Good-looking, dark curly hair, peasant clothes . . . “Pickle guy?”
He sighs. “My name is Brett.”
Right. Brett the Pickle Guy. I wipe a bit of sleep-drool from the side of my mouth and try to get out of the cot, realizing as I do that my legs are tangled up in both my skirt and the blanket I must have pulled over me at some point while I slept.
“Okay.” I manage to free myself from the blanket.
“I need you to clear my name.” And with this declaration and one swift motion of his hands, he drops his pants to the floor.
Faced so unexpectedly with Pickle Guy’s pickle, mere feet away from my face, I let out a strangled yelp and then pitch off the side of the cot, still tangled in my skirts.
“What the hell?” I yell from the place I landed on the floor. “That’s so inappropriate! You can’t just flash me because I’m a nurse!”
Not that it hasn’t happened before, but it still doesn’t make it right. Besides which, I’m still dazed from the nap—god, how long did I sleep?—and have a powerful craving for Krispy Kremes and somehow that seems very very wrong with some random guy’s junk near my face.
“What’s inappropriate is that I’m being falsely accused,” he says, not moving to pull up his pants. “A bunch of the wenches are saying I was the one that brought the crabs here, but I don’t have crabs. Look.” He points to his dangling dick, as if I might be confused and start checking him for a new brand of foot lice.
I scramble to my feet, just as I hear a little kid’s voice from outside say, “Look, Mommy, I can see that man’s butt!”
Because the door is still open.
“Pull up your pants,” I hiss, and hurriedly push past him to close the door and protect the innocent eyes of America’s children (at least those who happen to be walking by my infirmary at the moment).
I’ve got the door almost closed when a hand stops it from the outside, and there’s Chris the hot knight, his face peeking in. “Gabby, right? Do you mind if I talk to you for a—”
He stops, looking past me to where Brett is standing, undoubtedly still with his pants pooled around his ankles.
Chris’s eyes widen. “Oh. Sorry, I can come back—”
“No,” I say, suddenly sure that word is going to get out that Pickle Guy and I are getting it on during work hours, and Mama Mags will get wind of this and I’ll be fired. I decide to take a chance on this knight actually having some chivalry in him. “In fact, why don’t you come in? Brett here decided to expose himself to me without warning, and I’m trying to decide whether I should be nice and check him for lice like he wants or report him for sexual harassment.”
Chris’s startled expression becomes a glower. “Dude. Pull up your pants,” he says, glaring at Brett.
Brett huffs but does so, possibly because Chris could probably beat the crap out of him and looks rather inclined to do so. “You’ve checked out everyone else!”
“Because everyone else has asked if I would inspect them before dropping their pants,” I say, crossing my arms. “There is a crucial difference.”
Brett looks slightly abashed. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m just worried if Mama Mags thinks I’m the one that brought the lice here, I’ll lose my job. Will you please inspect my dong for lice?”
Chris gives me a questioning look, clearly ready to toss Brett out if I ask him to.
But maybe I have a weakness for people worried about losing their job. I doubt she would fire him, even if it could be proven that he’s patient zero—she seems to understand how contagious this is, and how people are generally spreading it before they’re even aware they have it themselves.
But I understand the fear of something like that all too well.
“Fine,” I say. “But all I can do is tell you whether I can detect any lice right now. I can’t guarantee you didn’t have them before and had them treated, and I can’t guarantee you won’t see them show up later.”
He considers this. “And if Mama Mags asks, you’ll tell her I didn’t have
lice when you saw me?”
“Yes. If she asks.”
“Okay,” he says reluctantly, like he’s the one doing me a favor by giving me another glimpse. It’s almost enough to make me refuse entirely, but honestly, I just want this over with, and I don’t need this guy begging me to inspect his pubes until the end of time.
I indicate for him to drop his pants, and, with Chris standing next to me looking extremely uncomfortable, I do a quick check with my phone light, ask Brett a few questions, and then give Pickle Guy the news he’s hoping to hear. “As far as I can tell, you don’t have lice.”
He pulls up his pants with a grin. “Ha, I knew it!” He looks between Chris and me. “If anyone asks, you can both confirm. I’m clean. It wasn’t me.”
I’m pretty sure I expressly said I couldn’t confirm he didn’t start this, but whatever. He lopes out of the infirmary, and I don’t have to deal with him or his pickle anymore.
“Thank you,” I say to Chris.
Chris makes a dismissive gesture. “I’m not sure I did much, but no problem.” His gaze drops to the ground. “So, um, I was wondering . . .”
I groan. “I told you before, I don’t actually need to inspect people at this point. If you’re itching, you can take some cream and a pamphlet—”
“It’s not that,” he says, his brows drawn together, like maybe he’s concerned that I think every person who ever comes to talk to me is doing so about pubic lice.
Not that I don’t have good reasons for feeling this way. “So what is it?”
He shifts uncomfortably. He’s not wearing his armor now, but instead is in one of those long tunic things, white with a red lion on his chest. It looks kind of like the outfit King Arthur wears in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (one of Will’s favorites), minus the crown and chain mail hood.
“I, um,” he starts. “You’re friends with Delia, right?”
Definitely not what I was expecting, even with pubic lice off the table.
“Kind of,” I say. “I mean, I know her and we’ve chatted a bit, but it’s not like we hang out outside of work.”
“Do you know if, um . . . if she’s seeing anyone seriously?”
My eyes widen. “You like her! That’s why you’re a jerk to her and nice to everyone else!” Then I frown at him. “What, are you still in fifth grade or something?” I don’t mean it to come out as snappish as it does, but I’m not in the greatest mood lately.
Chris flushes. “I’m not a jerk, I just—” Then he cringes and sits heavily on the cot. “Oh god, I have been a jerk. I didn’t mean to be. I just get so nervous around her, and that makes me get all stiff—”
I raise an eyebrow, and his flush deepens.
“Formal, I mean,” he says. “Like it’s easier to be Sir Christian than just be me.”
“Okaaaaaay. But she seems really cool. If you don’t run off, and maybe tried to actually talk to her—”
“I want to,” he says, tugging at his perfectly-coiffed blond hair. “But it’s just—Here’s the thing. I was, like, in love with her back when I was fourteen.”
“What?” I pull over the stool and sit down. Clearly this is a story I need to hear; Delia said she didn’t think he remembered her, but she never mentioned a decade-long history with Sir-Stick-Up-His-Ass, and I never got around to asking. “So you guys knew each other before the faire?”
“Yeah. I mean, a little. I grew up near here. I met Delia when we were both doing this summer theater production of Guys and Dolls. I was too shy at the time to want to be on stage, but I loved theater, so I was one of the tech kids, and she was a Hot Box dancer.”
“Hot Box dancer” sounds like code for stripper, which doesn’t seem like a great part for a fourteen-year-old, but I’m pretty sure high schools across America perform this play, so clearly it’s not as bad as I imagine.
“Anyway, I had this crush on her the whole time,” he continues. “And we talked a little, but like I said, I was really shy. Then after the last night of the show, she was waiting for her dad to pick her up, and I guess he forgot and she couldn’t get a hold of him. So I sat with her to wait for him, and we talked for, like, two hours.” He smiles at the memory, looking a bit like a shy little kid himself in that moment, and not some full-grown, well-muscled knight. “She was so funny and smart, and . . . And it was just fantastic. I remember thinking it was the best two hours of my life.”
He pauses, and I lean forward. “And then?”
“And then her dad finally showed up, all apologetic, and I never saw her again. At least, not until I saw her at the faire last year.” His smile drops, and he studies his hands. “I went up to her to say hi, and god, it was like I was that fourteen-year-old kid again, all nervous and goofy. But it was clear right away she didn’t remember me at all. Which I get. Ten years is a long time, and I don’t look the same—I was this really skinny kid, this total dork with glasses and acne—”
“Really.” It’s hard for me to imagine Channing-Tatum Chris in this way, but I suppose it’s not unheard of for high school dorks to become total hotties. At least, I remember high school dork Gabby hoping that wasn’t just a myth.
I like to think I shed some of that unfortunateness—I lost the bacne, at least—but my transformation was definitely not as dramatic as Chris’s.
“Yeah,” he says with a shrug. “And I don’t know why, but I just acted like I didn’t know her either, and became all Sir Christian around her.”
“Why don’t you just stop and be a normal person? You don’t seem to be like this with anyone else.” Though, honestly, I’m hardly the one to judge on this. I can remember all too well my more spazzy moments around Will at the craft services table, years ago.
“I’m not. And it’s not even like I’m all that shy around women in general anymore. But her . . .” He sighs. “I don’t know, she just brings all that back. And she’s so gorgeous, and that smile . . .”
He trails off, and I blink at him a little incredulously. Because yeah, Delia’s pretty, but she’s no Jenna Dewan-Tatum (or maybe just Jenna Dewan now? I don’t follow these things as closely as Anna-Marie does.)
“You know you’re really attractive, right?” I can’t help but say. “And I say this objectively”—take that, Felix—“because I have a serious boyfriend and am not interested in hitting on you. But you know you look like—”
He groans. “Please don’t say it.”
“You don’t like being compared to a movie star?”
“Sure. Except that everyone calls me Magic Mike and won’t stop making stripper jokes.”
Yeah, okay, I can see the drawbacks.
He stands up. “I shouldn’t have dumped this on you. I just thought maybe you’d know if she might be interested, you know, if I ever grow a pair and manage to ask her out.”
I consider this. (Whether she’s interested, not his pair.) She clearly remembers him more than he thinks she does, but I don’t know if that means she’s into him, and I don’t want to give him potentially false hope. “I don’t get the feeling she’s serious with anyone,” I say. “And I don’t know if she’d be interested or not. Maybe one of her wench friends—” I wince at referring to them like this. Ren faire culture is apparently rubbing off on me.
He shakes his head. “There’s no way it wouldn’t get back to her then,” he says. “Anyway, I’ve got to get ready for my noon show. But thanks for listening.”
“Sure,” I say. “Thanks for helping me with Pickle Guy.”
He smiles and then leaves.
I sink back down onto the couch and hope for his sake he can get the courage to ask her out, and hope for her sake that she’s into that. Because that sounds like it could be super cute, and selfishly, I wouldn’t mind something like that to focus on over all the other stuff going on in my life.
My stomach rumbles and feels a little queasy all at once, reminding
me of the very biggest of the other stuff.
I sigh. It’s almost lunch time, and I’m definitely going to treat myself to some Krispy Kreme.
Nineteen
Gabby
After work, I just want to curl up and cry, so I call the only person I know will listen and not feel worse because of anything I’m going to say—My brother Felix.
“Can I come over?” I ask him.
“Sure,” Felix says. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” I tell him. “A guy dropped his pants in my infirmary today, and that’s not even close to the thing I’m most upset about.”
“Wow, okay. Yeah, come on over. I’m home.”
I figured he would be. Felix and Jenna are musicians, and while they technically have a studio in LA, they do most of their work from their home in Orange, only meeting at the studio when they’re going to practice with their bandmates, Leo and Roxie.
I drive out to Orange after work, and Felix opens the door. He’s barefoot and wearing a faded Nirvana t-shirt—Felix always did love bands from before he was even born—and a pair of basketball shorts. Felix isn’t sporty, and he doesn’t look like he’s just worked out, so I’m guessing this is just today’s lounging-around-the-house wear.
“Hey,” he says. “Someone really flashed you today?”
I groan. “It’s a long story.”
“Well, I have a couch, and it’ll be a while before Jenna and Ty come home,” Felix says. “Come on in.”
I collapse on Felix’s couch, which is a comfortable sectional with actual cushions. I am careful, however, not to disturb the part of the couch against which rests June, his super-expensive cello. His bow is out on the couch as well, and there’s sheet music splayed out on the coffee table.
No big surprise, a lounging-around-the-house day for my brother means catching up on cello practice.
“Oh my god, Felix,” I say, my melodramatic flopping onto the cushions ruined by needing to move a weird caped dinosaur action figure—is this the King K. Rool I’ve heard so much about?—to keep it from jabbing me in the back. “My life has fallen apart.”