Rash and Rationality

by Ellen Mint

  The stained kerchief drifted against the top of her breast, his fingers pressing and swiping into the start of her padding. “That, uh…” Marty stuttered, shifting on his toes.

  She felt the same secondhand embarrassment rising and tried to slide away. But he raised his head and the handkerchief. Rolling it to a clean spot, Marty pressed the surprisingly soft fabric to her cheek. His thumb and the kerchief dipped into her smile line. The rubbing gave way to a gentle swish of his finger back and forth, Marty’s gaze locked on hers.

  Somehow his fingers curled around her chin, holding Brandy, propping her up. Keeping her mouth in line with his. She swallowed deep, instinctively licking her lips and finding a dab of paint on them as well.

  But there was no time to worry as he wrapped his fingers around the small of her back. No, they didn’t just hold, they pulsed against her skin. Marty guided her closer, a serene smile on the lips about to press to hers.

  “Marty,” Brandy breathed, her mind at war. One faction wanted to give in, to let him dab and wash every inch of her body. Another kept screaming that he had a girlfriend, one she couldn’t find the courage to tell him was a cheater.

  A wet chill crawled up her spine and she frowned. “Did you get paint on your other hand?”

  He whipped free the palm that’d worked its way under the back of her tank top and, sure enough, brown streaks were smeared over the fingertips. Marty stared at it in shock while she tried to tug up her shirt to keep it free of the paint. Not too high, maybe an inch or two, but whatever moment they’d almost had evaporated. Now it was just awkwardness and uncertainty.

  “Would you mind…” Brandy spun around to show him her smudged back. “Fixing this?”

  “Um, sure. No problem,” he said and wiped the handkerchief against the small of her back. This time there was no accidental slip down to the curvy part of her ass, no warm palm cupped against her stomach to keep her in place. It was hard and industrious scrubbing. Nothing more.

  What was she thinking? Of course it wouldn’t be anything more. They were friends. And even if she started to feel differently, he never would. Not about her.

  “I’m starting to think you’re right,” Marty said, causing Brandy to gulp in shock. She glanced over her shoulder at him, pain drawn across her face. But his goofy smile lessened it. “I can’t be trusted to do delicate work.”

  “Yep. Told you so,” Brandy said.

  “Hm.” The scrubbing increased ten-fold, causing her to gasp.

  “Ow. Are you trying to set my skin on fire?”

  “There’s a drop here that isn’t… Wait.” Marty leaned closer, his face nearly flush with her naked skin. “Did you know you have a mole back here?”

  “I do?” Brandy asked and tried to turn in a circle to see. It didn’t work, but it spun her around to face Marty, who kept his gaze level with where her back had been.

  “Pretty big too. Like size of my pinkie.”

  “What, are you going to tell me it’s got a hair coming out of it too?” she said and the buried pain snapped free.

  That caught him, Marty staring at her as she struggled through a thousand emotions at once. It didn’t matter that he could have kissed her. He didn’t. And he wouldn’t. That was obvious.

  “Just, you might want to get it looked at. You never know,” he said softly. Then in his boisterous voice, he shouted, “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Who would I have to talk to every day?”

  She knew it was a joke, a little laugh to lighten the dark turn. But Marty’s eyes didn’t hold the smile. He darted them around her body as if he was weighing the idea of her vanishing off the earth.

  Brandy shivered at the focus, letting her tank top drop. “I think that’s enough painting for one night. I still have that horror collection…”

  “Ooh. Does that have the 1970’s version of El Silbón? Did you know they used a real heart for that scene?”

  And with that, they slammed back on the friendship wall thanks to a whistling demon. Marty hunted through her DVDs and Brandy touched the edge of her lips. A single drop of chocolate paint stained her finger and she frowned.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Did you see there’s another one?” Marty asked, scanning the price of a book box set for Dinosaur Men on Pluto.

  The mom holding the credit card sighed. She looked the type to want her precious baby to only read Proust, but the kid’s eyes lit up at the thought. “Mom, did you hear…?”

  “Yes. We’ll just take this, then see what you want to get.”

  Marty knew better than to argue with the customer, because it usually ended in him bleeding from his ears. But as he ran her card and waited for the slow internet to add the money into their till, he reached under the counter. “I just so happen to have a Sabertooth Man from Neptune bookmark,” he said and dropped the piece of PR buzz from the publisher into the bag.

  He ignored the mother angrily stuffing her wallet back into her purse and handed it all to the kid about to explode. Just as she gripped the bag, Marty said, “That one has a Mammoth princess in it.”

  “Mom, Mom, did you hear…?”

  “Yes. Let’s go. We have to get you to piano lessons.”

  The kid deflated in an instant, clearly preferring to fly around in space riding triceratops over playing Chopin. But that was the extent of the influence Marty could have on the people who walked into the shop. When the bell jangled for their exit, he called out, “Have a nice…” and didn’t bother to finish. They never heard the last part anyway.

  Humming to himself, he heard a special phone chime, and a smile wrapped around his lips. There was his lovely princess, her hair ethereal and skin pore-less. His heart soared while opening up her text.

  Hey, Babe, was a full orchestral symphony to his eyes. If eyes could hear, at least. Either way, he flexed his fingers and began to tell her about how he couldn’t wait for their next special date. She’d only got in the day before, but needed a full twenty-four hours to overcome the jet lag. It had left Marty scheming in lover’s pain until he could see her again.

  She responded with Sounds great. Then two heart-eyes emojis.

  Another bell, the evil one, interrupted his text romance. Marty didn’t glance up, only raised his hand and said, “I’ll be with you in one minute.”

  “Take all the time you need.”

  His head shot up and he found Brandy standing awkwardly by the ‘redecorating your life’ display. Dropping his phone in his pocket, he danced around the counter to her. “How did it…are you…?” It had taken her a week to even get in to see a doctor and, judging by the look on her face, it wasn’t good.

  She scratched at her arm, most of which was hidden by the elbow-length sleeves of their terrible work polos. Is there a bandage under it? Did they take blood? Or give her an IV? That’s serious, right? IVs?

  “They said that it is potentially serious and I should have it removed for biopsy. So I’m going to a dermatologist.”

  “When will they fit you in? Christmas?” Marty asked.

  “Wednesday, actually. There was a cancellation,” she said with a strained smile on her face. He knew she was faking it, the worry clear in her pale skin and watering eyes. “At least I won’t have to wonder for long. Probably. Only twenty-six and I might have… That doesn’t help.”

  “Do you need anything? Should I get you a glass of water? Some hot towels?”

  Brandy glanced up at him, her lips twisted in an almost smile. “Do you think I’m preg—”

  His phone buzzed loud enough in his pocket to jangle his keys, interrupting her. Certain it was Janeth, he took a quick peek. Instead of his angel, another gushing approval of his last date appeared.

  Marty sighed while liking the comment and responding. “Sorry about that. It’s been doing that all day.”

  “What?”

  “Blowing up with people liking things of mine, commenting on things of mine. Following me like I won’t lead them into the sewers.”

&nbs
p; She snickered. “You have a, what, Instagram account now?”

  “Also Facechat, Tweetsnap, Gootube, and whatever that music thing is.” Marty adored having attention lavished on him, but he preferred it in a more one-on-one setting. And preferably where pants weren’t required. The lack of an instant response to tell him if he was straddling the line of bad taste kept him off social media, save for a small account he’d made to pick on Eldon.

  To be fair, somehow his brother had wound up running the Twitter account of a local bread bakery. It hadn’t lasted long. Only Eldon could make bread epically boring.

  “What are you even doing on it? They didn’t give your brother the chocolate factory to watch over, did they?” Brandy asked, causing Marty to laugh.

  “Sadly no, though that would be fun. I could make so many ‘candy bar in the pool’ jokes if he did,” Marty crowed at the idea, bringing a bright smile to Brandy’s face. Then he turned back to his phone and said from the side of his mouth, “Janeth requested it. Said it’d help her out, so… There, all caught up.”

  The scratching increased, Brandy clawing along her shoulder. Did they douse her in itching powder at the doctor’s? She worked her nails past the shirt and onto her poor skin. In a matter of seconds, dark red lines appeared.

  Marty reached out and was about to grab her hand. At the same time, Brandy began to drop it, as if she realized the damage she was doing. That left his hand, still on a heat seeking course for hers, heading straight to her, um, chest region. Very unmanlike chest region.

  Which he couldn’t stop noticing now. Despite his earlier thoughts, the polo didn’t really hide her overflowing bounty, so to speak. It didn’t do her justice by any means, but there they were. Existing all this time. And he’d somehow kept missing them.

  Until he’d gone to her place late at night, stripped to his pants, and almost… It had been the beer, of which there’d been a lot. So much consumed that he’d had to come back the next day to get his car. Drinking always made him extra friendly, which had birthed the idea of pressing his lips to hers…in a greeting of friendship. To caress the small of her back, which holy macaroni does it swoop out in a serious ass. Missed that too.

  Not helping, Marty. The trick was to not think about it and wait for it all to go away. Which left them dancing around each other as if they’d actually fucked.

  “Hey, you know what we should do?” he shouted, as much to distract Brandy from her potential health problem as to shut up his libido. Who gave that damn thing a bullhorn? Blindly, Marty snatched at the first two books he could find. “Excerpt time!”

  Brandy accepted what looked like a nonfiction book about Iraq and he thumbed through one on English gardening. This would go well. She too seemed to stare at him with incredulity. But in for a penny and all that.

  “You get to start first this time,” he said and licked down his finger in anticipation of flipping fast.

  This was probably a bad idea. He always picked lighthearted affairs. Not affairs. Stories. Books. Things that don’t have anything to do with cheating.

  He needed an intervention. Maybe if he dunked his head in holy water during mass? It’d solve the problem, because his mother would kill him.

  “Okay,” she said, shaking him from his panic. “Forty.”

  Marty cracked open the book. “‘Before you can expect a vibrant garden, it is vital to prepare the soil lest you waste your seed.’ Oh, I’m sorry. I think I grabbed the gardening erotica by mistake. I wonder how much plowing is in here?”

  She laughed at his madness and raised her head. “Your turn.”

  “How about…?” There went the damn phone. He whistled exasperation through his teeth and pulled it out.

  While scanning through the giddy girls all wishing he could be their boyfriend, Marty glanced over to find Brandy wilting. “How about fifty-three?”

  She nodded, trying to force on her smile, and opened the book. Even as he did his boyfriend duty, Marty watched her with lowered lashes, her lips a juicy pink as she said, “‘Within the confines of history, both everything and nothing is true. When the winner dictates truth, it must be viewed as a lie.’”

  “Morbid,” Marty said. “I’m sticking with my sexy English retirees getting horny with the gardener in their housecoat, thank you very much.” He clasped the book tight to his chest as if he adored learning about daisies and azaleas. Eldon had tried to give him a house plant once. Marty had thought it was plastic until his brother had yelled at him. Surely the wilting yellow leaves are all part of the experience to make it look authentic.

  “All right, what shall we learn next between preparing soil and ignoring history?” he asked, squaring his shoulders for more hot troweling action, when his phone went off again. “Sorry, just give me another…”

  “You know, if you’re…” Brandy placed her book back on the stand. Her endless brown eyes drifted to him and his pit of despair opened wide. Marty flinched, prepared to take the knocks of ‘terrible friend,' but Brandy shook her head. “I should get back to work. My appointment ran over and you know Mr. Fensin.”

  “He threw such a fit about you asking for time off, I stuck a coat on a chair and balanced a basketball wearing a wig on top.”

  She snickered at the bald-faced lie, but walked past him, leaving Marty alone to deal with the work of having a girlfriend. He wished he knew what to say to make everything go back to how it was. But as he watched her jeans cupped tight to her buttery buns sashaying away, the devil on his shoulder laughed at him.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Living with Eczema. When It’s More Than a Rash. This Ringworm Is No Diamond.

  Coping with Cancer.

  Brandy’s finger lingered over the shiny brochure with an image of a late-fifties woman staring at a sunrise. She looked at peace with her life, accepting whatever was to come—no doubt the long litany contained inside the three-fold paper and in bullet points. It looked as if that woman already saw the best of her past and was ready to face an uncertain future.

  “Do you have a grandparent, dear?” a kindly voice asked from behind her shoulder.

  She whipped her head around to find a roughly seventy-year-old woman watching her like a hawk. “Yes?” Brandy answered, confused why a stranger would care.

  “It’s always hard to deal with losing them to the big C,” she said, freezing Brandy’s heart cold. Her hand paused in tugging out the brochure as she stared in shock at the old lady. “But if they lived a good life, then it’s God’s will.”

  A flush burned across her cheeks. Brandy abandoned the pamphlet and scuttled back to the plastic chair she’d been relegated to for the past fifteen minutes. What was she going to do if it was cancer? She couldn’t exactly bike her way back and forth to treatments. And the money was…

  God, just thinking about dealing with insurance had twisted her stomach into so many knots she hadn’t been able to eat for a day. It was already awful, with a deductible that’d require a third job just to meet the minimum. She’d survived with it thanks to being young, healthy and having no dependents to take care of. It could all come crashing down in one fell swoop.

  What had she done wrong?

  Okay, so maybe she wasn’t religious about using sunscreen. And there was that one summer in high school when she’d gone white water rafting and burned her back to a crisp. But she ate well. Well enough. It wasn’t all junk. She gave to charity when she could. And she tried to be friendly.

  Did none of that matter? Was it another cursed twist of fate, just like losing her husband?

  The lump in her throat expanded and sank deeper into her chest. Two years after the worst day of her life, here she was back on the brink again. And who could she call on?

  Would her parents even answer the phone? Her in-laws sure as shit wouldn’t. Mel had her own busy life and the same empty pockets as everyone else. There was no husband to hold Brandy’s hand, to bring her soup when she was sick, to brush back her patchy hair and tell her she looked good bald.r />
  Loneliness never grew sharper than when death stalked outside the door. Worst of all, it was her fault. All of it. If she hadn’t gotten that sunburn, she wouldn’t have grown a weird mole. If she hadn’t been trapped in the familiar but empty trap of mourning for two years, she might have had someone here to help.

  If she hadn’t been driving that day, he’d be here.

  That doesn’t help, Brandy.

  “Excuse me, miss?” the receptionist called from the desk.

  Brandy shot to her feet and, stiff-legged, walked over. Was she prepared for this? Did she have a choice? “Yes?”

  “I’m afraid the doctor is running late and it’ll be another half hour.”

  “Oh.” She should be angry, or at least annoyed, but Brandy felt numb. “Okay.”

  Her adult life had seemed to have started so early. Married young. Owned a tiny bakery at twenty-two. Widowed by twenty-four. Dying from cancer by twenty-six. She’d hoped that at the end of the dark tunnel of grief, the light wouldn’t be an oncoming train.

  And who would care in the end? Who would even come to her funeral? Or plan one for her? It had been maddening trying to pick what was best for Kevin with a thousand vendors hounding her for answers. No random friend or estranged relative could be expected to handle all that stress and cost for her.

  Would they just toss her body into a ditch and let the wildlife chew it to bones?

  Light bounced off the shiny front doors as another soul walked into the dermatologist’s office, which sat next to a pizza parlor in the strip mall. She winced at the assault, prepared to shrink back into her green polo’s collar, when a familiar smile replaced the glare.

  “Marty?” she whispered, moving to rise.

  He gave a little wave, then darted to sit in the chair beside her.

  “What are you…?” She wanted to ask him why he was there, but in that moment, she was too joyful to care.

  “I thought you could use someone to wait with you. Sit here and do the magazine mazes or watch your purse. Doctor offices are the worst. Never know who’s hoping to steal your stash of tissues.” He made threatening eyes at the kind old lady with cancer opinions. It was only a moment when she glanced up from her knitting, but the look of indignance brought a chuckle to Brandy.