Good Vibrations

by Elizabeth Parrish

  However, I was 99.99% sure that if I ever found myself in Elyse’s ‘predicament’, my own tears would be slightly more joyful than the ones still silently streaming down her cheeks.

  “Look at it this way,” I continued, “you’re happy when you’re with him, right?”

  Elyse silently bobbed her chin in response.

  “Okay, and you’ve met your fair share of guys and had some adventures. Are you at all worried that amongst all the toads out there and in there,” nodding towards the bedroom and her acquaintance from the night before, “that there’s going to be a prince who is going to make you happier than Sam?”

  Letting out a short giggle, Elyse shook her head and said “No, I know what’s out there and Sam’s the only guy I’ve been with who makes me feel special. That’s what scares me,” she responded hesitantly, before gazing up at me.

  “If he ever kicks my butt to the curb, what if none of the toads out there ever make me feel the way he does?” she continued, the fear very much evident on her face.

  “That could be devastating, no question. I’m sure you would be mainlining Ben and Jerry’s for a while and your Dad’s VISA would be begging for mercy before you felt human again, but you already know he only wants to be with you. Plus, if you don’t give it a chance, you lose him anyway and every time you wake up next to someone else, you’re going to be comparing him to Sam,” I replied, silently praying that I would be able to console Elyse and be out the door before her conquest from the night before awoke from his rather noisy slumber and brought my point to life.

  As if on cue, Elyse’s fury companion chose that exact moment to emerge from her bedroom, yawning deeply while he vigorously scratched his outrageously hairy chest.

  From the neck down, he appeared to be more Sasquatch than modern man.

  As he strolled past us, naked as the day he was born, I whispered to Elyse, “Yeah, it would keep you warm in the winter, but I bet the groomer would charge you a fortune to keep his coat nice and shiny.”

  It’s a strange world of language in which skating on thin ice can get you into hot water – Franklin P. Jones

  20. Later that day, I found myself on the horns of a dilemma. Having begrudgingly acquiesced to Jonathan’s cute, yet mildly terrifying, request to go skating, the countdown was now into its final hours.

  I hadn’t been on skates since middle school and my only skill at the time had been to latch onto my hockey playing high school crush for a tow around the rink. It seemed unlikely that the intervening decade or so was going to do much to improve my chances for survival.

  As I rummaged through my closet, it immediately became apparent that nothing I owned was going to provide the sort of protection required for my inevitable close encounters with the ice whist still imbuing me with the sort of ‘I’m sexy even sliding across the ice on my butt’ look that I was hoping to exude.

  Praying that Jonathan was either going to keep me upright or at least be enough of a gentleman to let me land on him, I eventually headed out the door in my favourite Silver’s, a mid-thigh length wool coat, a cute scarf I’d picked up on Boxing Day and my Olympic mittens.

  Feeling somewhat winterized, I arrived practically on time and, spotting Jonathan by the rental booth, I quickly scooted over to snuggle into his warm embrace.

  Being a bit distracted while en route, I took absolutely no notice of a wayward patch of ice, thus enabling me to complete a spectacular pirouette, arms flailing wildly, before sliding right into Jonathan’s waiting arms.

  “Phew, nice catch!” I noted breathlessly as I righted myself and gave him a kiss. “That was just a test to make sure that you’ll be able to catch me out there on the bigger sheet of ice as well,” I continued, laughing at my own clumsiness.

  “I can safely say that holding on to you is not going to be a problem but, since I can’t skate to save my life, how we end up stopping is going to be another story,” Jonathan replied with a grin. “You look cute all bundled up like that by the way.”

  Bundled up!? This was supposed to be my dressed to impress outfit!

  How about, you look fantastic in those jeans? Or wow, it was brave of you not to borrow some padded hockey shorts for this little adventure!

  “Well, that’s just what I was aiming for,” I replied, doing my best to keep any bitterness out of my tone as I pushed him towards the rental booth before he unknowingly lodged his foot in his mouth again.

  Once we’d gotten ourselves laced up, we stumbled towards the ice, arm in arm. Stopping at the edge of the rink, I let Jonathan step out onto the ice first, giggling as he flailed his arms wildly while he attempted to get his balance.

  Once he had managed to come to a complete stop, he gallantly held out his arms, giving me an inviting target to aim for.

  As I stepped out and onto the ice, I immediately teetered backwards. Jonathan reached out to steady me, but I lurched forward into him, sending us both crashing to the ice in a heap.

  As I lay there in his arms, trying to recover my senses, he said, “Well, I wasn’t lying about catching you, but we should have put a bit more thought into who was going to catch me.”

  As I lifted my head to retort, he gently brushed the hair out of my face and kissed me softly, saying “You know, I think that this has been the hardest I’ve ever fallen for someone.”

  As Jonathan gingerly rubbed the back of his head, I took one look at the pained expression on his face and I burst out laughing, tears rolling down my cheeks.

  “I bet it’s pretty rare that a girl can make you feel lightheaded on a second date,” I replied, giggling mischievously.

  Having regained our senses, we very carefully both got to our feet and slid over to the railing, holding on for dear life as we caught our breath.

  Once we both had had a chance to recover, Jonathan eventually said, “Okay, we’ve got to give this a better effort,” firmly clasping my hand in his before he led us away from the rail.

  Several minutes later, we had managed to successfully navigate the rink a couple of times without ending up back on the ice.

  However, our obvious lack of skills had led to some incessant mockery from a pre-school aged band of miscreants who were skating backwards in front of us, sticking their tongues out and snickering to each other every time Jonathan or I teetered awkwardly.

  Sadly, we were giving them lots of material to work with.

  Who would have thought that a pair of Canadians could be so awkward on skates?

  As we slid back to the rail near the door to the rink, Jonathan said, “I think we’ve earned a hot chocolate, what do you think?”

  “Hmm, yeah, I don’t think we have anything left to prove to anyone out there. Let’s do it,” I huffed as I struggled to regain both my breath and my dignity.

  How Kate Beckinsale and John Cusack made this look so easy I’ll never know, but lying in his arms hadn’t felt too shabby and at least he was a man of his word, having let me land on him, as promised.

  Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter – Mark Twain

  21. Having shed our skates at the rink, Jonathan and I headed off in search of refreshments. We soon found a cozy looking coffee house and, spotting a couple of seats together, we exhaustedly collapsed into them.

  As we sipped our hot chocolates, we snuggled up against each other (truly a well-deserved reward for our efforts on the ice), physically drained from our attempt at skating. As we sipped in contented silence, Frank Sinatra’s ‘The way you look tonight’ began to play softly in the background.

  “I think his version of ‘My funny Valentine’ has got to be my all-time favourite song,” I pointed out to Jonathan as I leaned back into him, enjoying the companionship.

  “So you’re into the classics, eh? I don’t know if that bodes well for me,” he retorted playfully as he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me closer.

  “You know, I played the sax in my youth,” he continued. “I used to love some of the jazz classic
s.”

  “Have you ever serenaded a date?” I inquired, optimistically.

  Hope springs eternal but, to date, the closest I had ever come to being serenaded was by a very drunk admirer who had approached me at a bar one night, gotten down on one knee, and starting belting out “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’” in a horribly slurred, off key voice.

  I’ll give the guy credit for stepping up, but sadly for him, it didn’t resonate with me quite as much as Tom Cruise’s version in Top Gun.

  Either way, I was ready for someone to step it up a notch.

  “To be honest, I stopped playing before I hit my dating prime, but that probably would be a good skill to have. It’s not quite the same as having a guitar around the campfire but I did get a kiss after I did a solo for ‘The Rose’ at a Valentine’s Day assembly,” he replied, the memory bringing a grin to his face.

  “Maybe it’s time to dust it off and see if your lips are still in shape,” I replied, batting my eyelashes coyly.

  “I don’t know if I need a saxophone to prove that, but I’ll bear it in mind,” he replied as he leaned towards me and adroitly proved his point.

  “Hmm, well counsellor, you present a pretty strong case.” I replied, our faces still just inches apart. “But before I render my verdict, I don’t think you’ve ever told me how you ended up going to law school?” I inquired, curious to find out a bit more about what made him tick.

  “Good question. I figured that it would be a great fall-back in case my looks fail me. Based on all the stereotypes about us, you would think that no lawyer would ever want to rely solely on personality to have to meet women, but yet all the partners I know always seem to have gorgeous ex-wives” he replied with a self-deprecating chuckle.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you the truth, but I’ve got to warn you, this probably isn’t the best reason a person’s ever had for making a career decision and it probably goes against everything you assume about lawyers,” he continued.

  “So, I was completely smitten with this girl that I was seeing in undergrad. I thought I was going to be an archaeologist or teach history at the time, but we came back from spring break one year and, completely out of the blue, she tells me that she has decided to go to law school. I thought about it for all of maybe five seconds or so and I somehow blurted out that I had decided to to as well. A few minutes later I found myself a computer, signed up for the LSAT and I never looked back,” he concluded, looking at me rather sheepishly.

  Turns out the boy was not lying. That most definitely was not the answer I was expecting. But, I guess it worked out okay for Reese Witherspoon and at least he isn’t commitment-shy.

  “That’s so romantic!” I exclaimed, thinking to myself that a story like that almost had to be true, unless he had spent an awfully long time crafting it as a pickup line.

  “It seems like as good a reason as any, really,” I continued. “So what happened between you and the girl?”

  “You know, she was a great person, but I realized by the time we were picking law schools that she probably wasn’t the one for me. She ended up going to a school out east and I got an offer from my first choice of schools out here, so we kind of went our separate ways. We kept in touch for a bit but I don’t have any regrets. I’m pretty happy with my job and I seem to bump into a lot of interesting people in this line of work,” he concluded lightheartedly, kissing the top of my head.

  Yeah, I’m probably not going to live that incident down anytime soon, am I?

  It’s so unfortunate that, if this happens to work out, I’m going to have to hear about that incident for the rest of my life. Then again, I suppose life is all about making sacrifices.

  Hmm, I wonder what it would take to persuade him to tell people that he slammed on his brakes first and it was really his fault as much as mine?

  “That’s the spirit. Admitting to being at the root of that incident is the first step towards moving past it and never mentioning it again,” I replied impertinently, reaching back to mockingly slap his cheek a couple of times.

  “Exactly how do you remember things happening that morning? I just realized that I never thought to ask if you were checked for a concussion. I’m a bit worried that you might be having some short term memory issues,” Jonathan replied with a playful grin.

  “Well, I assumed that you slammed on your brakes after glancing in your rear view mirror and being so dazzled by the sight of me that you were rendered incapable of scooting on through that yellow light,” I retorted, glancing up at him and doing my best to look utterly adorable.

  “Maybe the snow flakes or the massive coffee cup that you were holding up in front of you blocked out my view a bit at the time, so I’m not sure that your argument holds water. However, I would be willing to stipulate that a certain amount of dazzling has occurred since then,” he said as he leaned in and proceeded to return the favour in a most thoughtful fashion.

  There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face – Bernard Williams

  22. The next day was a painful plunge back into the dreary doldrums of reality. The typical Vancouver forecast of overcast skies, with the possibility of rain which could turn to snow later in the day, was doing nothing to make my Monday any less gloomy.

  On that note, boy do the weather forecasters around here ever have an easy job. Just slapping up every symbol in their arsenal is not a helpful means of prognostication when one is trying to plan out what to wear for the day.

  As per usual, I braced for Maggie’s steely gaze as I entered the office. However, instead of being safely stowed away in her office, today I found her standing behind my desk, grasping tightly onto a leash which was attached to a tiny ball of black and yellow fur, and doing her best to keep the puppy as far away from her as humanly possible.

  “I believe that we have previously discussed the requirement that you are to be here promptly at 8,” Maggie noted coldly as she shot me a disapproving glare.

  And hello to you too. My weekend was lovely, thank you.

  It was all of 8:02. I thought I deserved a medal for my promptness in light of the weather and it being a Monday.

  “Anyway, the Cheadles are in a session this morning and they brought their dog along. It can’t be in there with them, so you’ll have to deal with it until they are done. Just keep it out of sight and don’t let it make a mess on the floor,” she concluded as she handed me the leash and disappeared down the hall before I could protest.

  What do I look like here? A glorified pet sitter? On second thought, ‘glorified’ might be a bit of a stretch. On the other hand, it beats fetching coffee and he is a cute little fellow…

  “Ouch!” I yelped involuntarily, looking down at the now slightly less cute little ball of fur that was currently gnawing at what had once been a lovely pair of Nine West pumps that I’d had to nudge a spoiled teen out of the way for on Boxing Day.

  “You have got to be a little boy. No lady would ever treat a pair of shoes that way,” I said to the puppy as I attempted to pry him away from my feet before picking him up and perching him on the desk in front of me.

  “I think we need to get you some water and some newspapers just in case, because like most boys, you appear to still be in the training stages,” I said to him as I scratched the top of his head.

  “Who is this little cutie?” Veronica asked as she stepped through the door, glancing around to make sure Maggie hadn’t noticed her own tardy entrance, before dashing over to the reception desk.

  “Well, we haven’t been properly introduced, but I do know that he belongs to the Cheadles and that he has excellent taste in shoes,” I replied as I lifted my foot to show Veronica the results of our fury little buddy’s handiwork.