“No taxes!” I cry out, earning a ‘halleluiah’ from the other two.
“No pap smears,” Holly adds.
“Hmm . . . I don’t know about that one,” Pam says. “My gynecologist was hot!” Holly and I laugh at her as Amanda walks back in.
“Oh, my turn,” Amanda says. “My new hot bod is definitely a best!” She runs her hand down her body, displaying it like a model from a game show. “The blackout diet is the best damn diet I’ve ever been on.”
The rest of us giggle and nod our heads in agreement.
Holly turns to Pam. “What’s your worst, Pam? What do you miss the most?”
“Diet Coke,” Pam says. “I’ve had some since, but warm DC is just not the same.”
Amanda says longingly, “God, I miss ‘The Bachelor.’ What I wouldn’t give for a night of TV.”
I try to think of one I haven’t used before. “Well, in keeping with Pam’s beverage theme, I’d have to say Starbucks. I love Claire and all, but that coffee she mass produces in the mess hall is just not worthy.”
We all look to Holly, who has a smirk on her face. “Oh, this is too easy. My vibrator.”
Sweet Jesus, she never fails to come up with one that has the rest of us blushing. The last time we played this game, she said something about her pulsating shower head.
After one last hand of poker, Holly is all smiles, having ‘won’ a week-long borrow of my so-called porn. I roll my eyes and try not to think of how she plans to make use of it.
We pack up our winnings and head over to The Oasis for some late night music. The bonfire is in full swing when we get there. My eyes close and a smile invades my face when I hear the familiar guitar sounds of Mitch, who has become quite a regular entertainer around here. He spots me and when our eyes meet, a blush heats up my face as this is the first time we’ve laid eyes on each other since we were together in the meadow yesterday. He winks at me, prompting a few heads to turn in my direction to find the recipient of Mitch’s gesture, which does nothing to ease the redness of my face.
We join a few other girls at a table in the back and pass around the remainder of Pam’s liquor.
“So,” Amanda wonders out loud to the rest of us, “I wonder what they have planned for the anniversary.” She nods over to a table where Claire and Evan and a few others are sitting. They have formed a committee of sorts to plan an event for the upcoming one-year anniversary of the blackout. They’ve not revealed any details about it, other than we’re supposed to all come to the center of town at dusk on Monday.
We are trying to speculate what they are planning when John walks over and stands in front of my chair. He says, “Dr. Parker . . . er, Kay, how about a dance?”
Not that I would dance with him under any circumstances, but certainly not when a slow song is playing—at the hands of Mitch, no less. “Uh, John,” I say, giving him a weak smile, “thanks, but I don’t think I’m up for a dance tonight.”
He inches closer and leans down and I can smell the alcohol on his breath. “Aw, come on, Kay. It’s just a dance.”
“I’m flattered, John, but my answer it still no.” I lean back as far as I can into my seat, putting more distance between us.
His eyes quickly flash to Mitch and back before he continues. “Why not, honey, don’t you want to have fun?”
Honey? Alarm bells go off in my head and I glance over at Mitch who continues to play, but raises his eyebrows at me in question. I give him a little shake of my head. The last thing I need is for Mitch to go all caveman on me and create a scene.
“She said no, Major,” Holly interjects. “Could you please leave now?”
Anger flashes across his face and he loses his footing when he tries to stand upright. He’s more than a little drunk. He tells Holly, “Well, in my experience, no doesn’t always mean no, now does it?” He looks back at me. “Isn’t that right, Mikayla? Sometimes it means yes.”
Gasps can be heard around the estrogen-laden table, but before anyone can properly react to his words, he grabs my arm and forcefully pulls me up against his chest. I hear chairs tumble over behind me as my friends quickly stand up to lend their assistance.
Turns out, however, they don’t need to help because apparently, my caveman is already on top of things. “Want to get your fucking hands off her . . . sir!” Mitch yells, having come up right behind John.
I could swear I see a smirk on John’s face before he releases me to turn around and take a swing at Mitch. Mitch dodges John’s drunken attempt to assault him and in about two seconds flat, John is laid out on the ground, courtesy of Mitch’s fist.
A crowd quickly gathers behind us, watching the excitement that our calm little camp has been devoid of for some time. So much for not creating a scene.
John sits on the floor of the deck and looks up at Mitch with a bloodied face. “Don’t get too comfortable,” he says. “I hope you’ve enjoyed your brief stay because you are so out of here. You can’t hit an officer, you stupid prick.” He doesn’t even bother to wipe the bloody drool coming from his mouth.
“I didn’t hit an officer, you low-life shithead. I hit a goddamn loser,” Mitch says. Then, seeing that some men have come over to collect John, he walks away, holding his hand, muttering, “Fuck!”
I don’t miss the fact that Mitch locks eyes with the colonel, who had apparently witnessed the entire debacle from the back of the deck. The colonel lifts his chin at Mitch as he walks by him and says, “You might want to have that hand looked at, son.”
“Yes, sir. I’ll do that,” Mitch says. He throws a glance back at me as he walks away.
I see the colonel shake his head and chuckle as Mitch disappears into the darkness.
Craig comes up to the table all wide eyed and says to Pam, “What the hell did I miss?” Then he plants a very big, very publicly inappropriate kiss on her lips.
I narrow my eyes at them and say to her, “Fighting, huh?”
She shrugs her guilty shoulders at me as I replay the earlier events of the evening in my head. I turn around and point a finger at my three best friends. “You lost the hand on purpose, didn’t you?”
Holly’s jaw drops as she half-heartedly pretends to be insulted. “What? We have no idea what you are talking about, Kay.”
Pam nods her head towards the dark shadow of the apartments. “Are you going to fix up your guy’s hand, or what?”
My guy? Is this why they all conspired to put condoms in my hand, so I could sleep with Mitch? I look at Amanda. Surely she wasn’t in on this. But she wrinkles her nose and looks anywhere but at me. “This is not over,” I tell them.
I go by Mitch’s apartment only to find it empty. I then try the clinic, thinking that maybe he wanted to fix up his hand himself, but I find it deserted as well. Unable to locate him, I walk out to the grassy courtyard by the apartments and plop myself down. I look for the constellation I was reading about last night.
I feel a hand on my arm and it startles me, especially after what happened with John earlier. I look up and smile. “Mitch! I was looking for you. I wanted to check out your hand.”
He sits down and holds his arm out for me. I put it in my lap and I gently feel around all the bones in his wrist and hand. There’s some swelling, but nothing feels broken to me. I go to lie back down and pull my hand away, but he grasps my hand in his and then I hear him draw in a sharp breath, indicating the true level of his pain when he intertwines our fingers. Still, he won’t let me pull away.
“You didn’t even hear me walk up,” he says. “You must have been really deep in thought. Want to tell me what you were thinking about?”
“Pleiades,” I tell him.
“You were thinking about that yoga crap?”
I giggle and he squeezes my hand. I make sure not to squeeze back. “No, silly, not Pilates . . . Pleiades. You know, The Seven Sisters constellation.”
“Ahhh . . . so you’ve been reading the book I gave you.” I can hear his smile in the darkness.
�
��It’s actually pretty interesting. I could get lost in all the stories that have been told about the sky.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. Tell me about The Seven Sisters.”
I gently take his hand and point with our joined fingers to the place in the sky where the constellation is visible. “Pleiades, or The Seven Sisters, is among the star clusters nearest to Earth and is the most visible to the naked eye.” I try to draw it out for him with our entwined hands.
I close my eyes and try to remember the entire story. “There are many different versions of the mythical legend, but I’ll tell you the one I like the best.”
Mitch removes his hand from mine and I instantly feel the loss. He inches closer and lifts his arm and I instinctively cuddle into his side as he wraps his swollen hand around me. It’s the first time we’ve lain like this out here on the grass, but it’s as if we had maneuvered this way a thousand times before. My head nuzzles perfectly between his strong bicep and his chest, and his arm comes around me to rest on my waist. I breathe in his musky, manly aroma that has me swooning. Being with him is comfortable. It’s relaxing. It’s . . . right.
“I’ll give you the Cliffs Notes version of it,” I say, wondering how long I will even be able to speak coherently with his arm hugging me and his hot breath flowing across my hair. “The sisters were the daughters of Atlas, you know, the one with the weight of the world on his shoulders. So, Orion, the hunter, who also happened to be the most handsome of all men, saw the sisters and instantly fell in love with them. He chased them and pursued them relentlessly causing them to get frightened so they pleaded with Zeus to save them. Zeus turned the sisters into doves that flew up into the sky. He placed them in the night sky where Orion could see them, but could not touch them. In fact, legend is you can see his constellation chasing that of The Seven Sisters. But I haven’t figured out which one is his yet.”
Mitch is very quiet when I stop talking. I crane my head around to see that he is studying the sky. “Isn’t it a great story?” I ask.
“No, it’s not,” he whines, petulantly. “So, Orion, stud of all studs, who fell hopelessly in love with them could look, but not touch. That is not a great story. Can’t you tell a better one, like about the guy who rides the flying horse to stop the sea monster from eating that goddess?”
“That goddess would be Andromeda,” I tell him, “but I think we have to wait a few months to see her constellation.”
“Do you believe that?” he asks.
“What, the mythical legends?”
“No. Do you believe all that stuff about love at first sight? Like how Orion fell instantly for The Seven Sisters?” He squeezes my hip and I wonder if we’ve moved on from speaking of mythology.
“I don’t think so,” I say. My mind desperately wants to wander back to med school when I first saw Jeff, to when he became my mentor and shared his wealth of knowledge and skills with me. But my heart . . . my heart has me thinking of when I first laid eyes on Mitch.
“I think real love takes time,” I tell him. “I mean, I guess you can love the way someone looks at first sight. But how can you truly love all of them without more concrete information to go on?”
“Concrete information . . .” he mutters, mulling the words over. “Always so scientific, doctor.” He leans down to push my hair behind my ear and whispers, “Just because you don’t believe in it, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.”
My heart skips a beat.
It skips a thousand beats.
It may have actually stopped.
Did he just declare his love for me? Blood is rushing through my ears and I’m sure if Mitch looked closely, he would actually see my heart beating through my chest wall.
“Breathe, Mikayla,” he says, laying his head down and glancing back up at the stars as if he didn’t completely turn my world inside-out.
“You never did tell me about your family,” he says, running his thumb in little circles on my hip, sending all-too-familiar sensations through my body. “Can I ask about them?”
When I am once again capable of putting enough words together to complete a sentence, I say, “You can ask, but there isn’t much to tell. I’m an only child, raised by the world’s best parents who died in a hit-and-run car crash when I was twenty.”
He blows out a long breath and places a kiss on the top of my head. “I’m so sorry, Mikayla.”
I know he understands, having just remembered the death of his own mother. He knows there is nothing else to say when you’ve lost such a huge part of your world.
“I dream about them a lot now,” I say. “It’s funny, but I think they would actually love it here. My mom was always talking about how technology was poisoning the health of society, and my dad loved to take us camping—you know, real camping in the middle of nowhere. We’d simply pitch a tent and see what we could scrounge up for dinner.” I stretch my neck back and look at him out of the corner of my eye. “Have you ever eaten squirrel?”
He laughs, shaking his head. “They sound like great parents.”
I nod, lost in the memories I’ve evoked speaking of them.
He brings me back when he starts talking about his own dreams. “I wish I dreamed of my parents. But, I’m still having weird dreams about cereal. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why. I never even liked those colorful ones with the marshmallows when I was little.”
“Well, maybe you need to try some now,” I say. “You know, every once in a while a stray box will show up at the PX. Sometimes they haven’t even gone stale yet.”
“I guess it couldn’t hurt,” he says, “especially if it will get rid of these ridiculous dreams.”
We lie here for hours, talking of parents, his brother, and our childhoods. He even lets me talk about Jeff and how we met. Before I realize how long we’ve been here, radiant streaks of red, pink and orange slowly overcome the dark-blue twilight of the horizon as dawn breaks. And I bask in the warm knowledge that we’ve just spent our second night together.
As I head back to my apartment, I wonder why he didn’t make a move on me. Not one move other than holding me all night long.
Then a little voice in my head tells me that he was giving me concrete information to go on.
Chapter Fifteen
I haven’t stayed up all night since my residency days before the blackout. I had almost forgotten what a toll it takes on a body. Luckily, I’m not expected at the clinic today. Still, it’s not like I’ve been sleeping the day away. More like I’ve spent hours analyzing every conversation from last night.
I learned so much about Mitch. I’m not sure I even knew that much about Jeff after knowing him for almost six years. Goosebumps dot my skin when I remember Mitch’s whisper in my ear about love at first sight. Was he talking about us? We’ve only known each other four weeks. Is that really enough time to love someone? It took almost a year for Jeff and me to admit our feelings.
I try to recall if I felt the same sensations when Jeff held me in his arms, but it’s just been so long. We were great together weren’t we? We were compatible, agreeable, safe . . . content.
I shake my head and realize that I could be describing my relationships with any of my friends. Were we merely a relationship of convenience? Surely not. I think I’m making things up in my head to justify my feelings for Mitch. I love Jeff. I was going to marry him one day for Christ’s sake. How do I simply turn that off?
“Kaykay!” Little wet kisses cover my face as Rachel tries to wake me. “Unka Autin heya,” she says in her adorable squeaky voice. For a one year old, she speaks incredibly well. I guess with nothing else to do but read books to kids these days, they develop a far better grasp on language.
“Uncle Austin is here?” I ask, happy to see my friend that I haven’t spent time with in days.
“Up up!” she squeals.
“Alright, I’m coming, sweet girl.” I throw on a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt. I emerge from my room with Rachel on my hip to find Austin and Amanda sitting at th
e kitchen table, staring at me.
“Everything okay?” I ask, looking between their serious faces.
“Yes,” Amanda says, plopping Rachel on the floor with a Sesame Street puzzle to keep her occupied. “We wanted to talk to you about Mitch.”
Mitch?
Oh, of course. They probably know I was gone all night and they assume I’m sleeping with him. God, they probably hate me for contemplating switching teams from the have-nots to the haves. I lower my head in shame and ask, “Is this an intervention? Are you guys pissed because I was with Mitch all night? I didn’t sleep with him, I promise.”
Austin laughs. “Intervention?” he tries out the word. “Okay, yes, I guess that’s what this is, just not in the way you think, Kay.”
I look at them with a furrowed brow, confused by his words.
“Listen, Kay,” Amanda says, “we see the way you guys are together. And Austin rooms with Mitch, so he hears things.”
“Hears things?” I snap my eyes to Austin. “What does that mean, you hear things?”
Austin smiles suggestively and says, “Just because we’re dudes doesn’t mean we don’t talk about shit. And sometimes he says your name in his sleep. He really likes you, Kay. The guy has it bad.”
Once again, I recall Mitch’s words from last night, Just because you don’t believe in it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. I close my eyes as guilt washes over me for the millionth time in four short weeks. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry for?” Amanda asks me. “And why the hell didn’t you sleep with him?”
I look up at her smiling face, still confused as to the direction of this conversation. “What? You want me to sleep with him?” Then I remember the condoms from our poker game last night. “Oh . . . you do want me to sleep with him. But, why?” I ask, looking between them for answers.
“Why?” Austin repeats. “Let’s see, because you like him. Because he likes you. Because you guys are smokin’ hot together. Because you are like two peas in a fucking pod. Do I need to continue?”
“But we’re waiting. The three of us,” I say, pointing my fingers between us. “We are some of the last ones to still have hope.”
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