Notes from the Blender

by Trish Cook

  Sam shook his head as if to clear it. It seemed to work, at least a little bit, because when he opened his mouth again, the slurring was under control.

  “Yeah, see, here’s the thing, Neilly,” he said, lifting his index finger to the sky, like God himself was about to make the pronouncement. “My dad is really not cool with me going tonight. In fact, he forbids it. I tried to talk some sense into him, but he said it’s a crime against nature, and that I can kiss the season good-bye if I do.”

  “It’s a crime against nature to escort me to my dad’s wedding?” I demanded. “And he won’t let you play any more football this year if you do? That’s the stupidest thing I ever heard!”

  Sam put his hands on my shoulders. The fact that he leaned too much of his weight on me reminded me once again of his ultra-inebriated state. “Neils, I can’t not play.”

  I was losing my patience. “I really don’t think your dad would go through with it, Sam. Be realistic.”

  Sam shrugged. “You know I’d do just about anything for you, Neilly.…”

  “Clearly not,” I said quietly. “I mean, you won’t even stand up to your dad for me.”

  Sam stared down at his shoes, then back up at me. His eyes were all watery, but I couldn’t tell if he actually felt bad about doing such a horrible thing or if he was just glassy-eyed from all that drinking. “Neilly, please. I already stood up to him, and he wouldn’t budge. I love you. But I just can’t go.”

  “You don’t love me,” I growled. “You never did. Love isn’t a part-time thing, where you get to be around for the easy stuff, the fun stuff, and then completely bail on the hard stuff. Love isn’t cheating and hoping you won’t get caught. Love isn’t showing up in some stupid freaking seventies sweat socks when you’re supposed to be in a tux. And love isn’t having to get shitfaced so you can tell me you don’t have the balls to take me to a same-sex wedding, because you and your dad are freaked out that you’ll somehow become gay by association. You don’t deserve to even talk to me, much less tell me you love me.”

  That’s when I slammed the door in his face. Sam knocked on the window a few times to try to get my attention, but I pulled the curtains shut. Eventually, he shrugged and walked away, taking swigs off his Bud every few steps.

  I knew I was really going to have to suck it up and put on a happy face, despite the fact that all I wanted to do was scream and cry and freak out. My dad and Roger were counting on me, and I was due at the church in fifteen minutes.

  I texted my mom from where I stood. The prospect of walking up all those stairs to her and Thomas’s room was just too overwhelming at that moment. Can I grab a ride with you guys?

  Sure. Won’t even ask why, she shot right back.

  I plunked down on the couch, my chin in my hands, and tried just to breathe. In, out, in, out. It was a humongous effort, but eventually my anger started to fade a little bit.

  And who knows how long later, I felt a plop on the couch next to me. I glanced over, expecting to see my mom, but it was Dec. In a tux. “I’m not afraid of your dad’s gayness rubbing off on me, so if you still need an escort, I’m all yours.”

  I gave Dec a pathetic little smile that probably looked more like a wince. “You heard, huh?”

  He nodded. “Every last word.”

  “That’s just icing on the humiliation cake,” I said, closing my eyes like maybe that might make me invisible and, therefore, not publicly mortified.

  “The only person who should feel humiliated is Sam,” he told me. “Well, and his dad, too. But you? You should be proud of yourself.”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, I am. Proud of you, that is,” he said. “And I take back everything I said last week. You really stood up for yourself with Sam. And I loved your whole ‘love isn’t’ spiel. It was, like, straight out of a romantic comedy.”

  “Except those usually have happy endings,” I pointed out.

  “So maybe this will, too.”

  “Hey, Dec? I’m really sorry.”

  “Me, too. About everything. I was a complete asshole.”

  “Me, too,” I said, grinning. “Friends?”

  “Friends,” he said, grinning right back at me.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DECLAN

  SO LIFE IS PRETTY WEIRD.

  I yelled at Neilly for being spineless, and then I was the one too chickenshit to apologize first.

  “Listen,” I said, “I just…If I…I don’t want you to worry all the time about my perviness or anything.”

  She laughed. “I’m not worried about it. I’m just aware of it. I think it’s probably better that way, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. So, um, I’ve got a lot to catch you up on. I just…I’ve…I don’t want this to sound creepy or anything. But I’ve just missed you. I know I went off on you, but you are a good friend. Actually, you’re probably the best friend I’ve ever had. And I want you to still be my fri—no, I want you to be my sister.”

  She smiled. “Yeah. We can do that. But if we’re going to be real siblings, we have to be able to hug once in a while without you getting all …”

  “Erect?”

  “Yeah. Exactly.”

  “I think I can handle that. I’ve got a couple of…Well, I have to start at the beginning.”

  Just then the car pulled up, and Dad honked the horn. “Okay, well, we have to go,” Neilly said. “Come on. You can tell me in the car.”

  Into the backseat we went, and Dad was all fretful. “Everything okay? I mean, are you guys all right? I thought—Dec, you were supposed to…And Neilly, what about—”

  Carmen put a hand on his arm. “They’re here. They’re fine. We’re fine. Now let’s go watch my ex-husband marry a dude.”

  God, Carmen is so cool.

  “So,” Neilly said. “You were going to tell me the whole story.”

  I looked nervously at the front seat. “Uh. Well. Maybe you should, um, ah, maybe when we get there”—I kind of nodded my head at Dad—“I can talk more freely, and—”

  “Dec, just spill it,” Carmen said. “He’s got to find out some time.”

  “Find out what? What are you guys talking about? Is this…Oh God, what is it. Dec, did you get arrested again and not tell me?”

  I laughed. “Keep that image in your mind, Dad, so when you hear the real story, it won’t freak you out so much.”

  “Freak me out? What? What’s going to freak me out?”

  “Dec, you’re making it worse. Tell the story,” Carmen said, smiling.

  “Okay. So last Sunday, after having been a total dick, I was crying in the kitchen, and Carmen here talked to me, and Dad, you got a bargain here, ’cause I got better therapy from her than I have gotten from Dr. Gordon, but anyway…I told her how I was tired of being mad all the time.”

  “Yeah, we’re all tired of your being mad all the time,” Dad said, smiling. Score one for the old man.

  “Anyway, Carmen had this great idea, so she used her graphic design mojo to help me make this mock-up of what I wanted, and then she signed the form as my parent, even though, you know, legally—”

  “What form?” Dad asked.

  “Honey, watch the road. Let Dec tell the story,” Carmen said. She was enjoying this almost as much as I was.

  “I really wanted to sign my name as Stig Costello, which I’ve decided to adopt as an alias should the need ever arise, but Carmen said I should just do it in a completely aboveboard way.”

  “Do what?” Dad and Neilly both screamed.

  “Jinx,” I said. “Dad, Neilly, you owe me a vegan smoothie. I prefer mango. Anyway…Dad, watch the road, for God’s sake, will you? I lost one parent in a car wreck, let’s not make it two or three.”

  “Sweetie,” Carmen said, patting Dad’s arm, “just pull over for the end of the story.”

  “Did you just make a joke about your mom’s death?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I said.

  “Wow. So now you’re admittin
g it happened, if only in a sort of twisted way. Good deal.” Damn it. Score another one for the old man.

  “So, Stig,” Neilly said. “What form did you sign?”

  “So glad you asked, my sister. The form that one signs when one goes to get a tattoo.”

  “A what?” Dad and Neilly both screamed again.

  “My new friend Anastasi—aka veganchick17, who, by the way, I’m meeting for coffee before the SOI show at the VFW next week—is, as you recall from the SuicideGirls comparison you made, Dad, rather heavily inked, in addition to bespectacled and delicious, so I inquired of her where one might go for such a thing. She sent me to a very nice place—all vegan, by the way. Did you know some tattoo inks have animal products in them? How gross is that?”

  “Let’s see it,” Neilly said. “That’s why you’ve been babying your arm all week, right? Let’s see it!”

  I looked forward at Dad. He kept looking back at me and sideways at Carmen. “You knew about this?” he asked Carmen. “He’s sixteen! Dec, when you get to be my age—”

  “I’m still gonna be stoked as hell to have this on my arm,” I said, removing the tuxedo jacket and rolling up my sleeve.

  “Oh my God,” Dad and Neilly both said, but I’m not sure if that one counted as a jinx, since Neilly’s was, like, “Oh my God, how cool is that,” and Dad’s was more in the “Oh my God, my kid has a big ass tattoo on his arm vein.”

  I looked down at my tattoo. No skulls, no demons, nothing anybody would remotely expect from me. Instead, a single lily, and above it, PATIENCE. Now I’ll always be connected to Mom because her name is on my arm. And yeah, if it reminds me to take a deep breath before I get mad, well, I guess that’s okay, too.

  “You are the coolest person I know,” Neilly said.

  “You act like you don’t know your own mom,” I said.

  “Apparently, I don’t!” Neilly said, laughing. “Knocked up, hanging out at tattoo parlors…Mom, do you want me to drop you guys at the mall so you can hang out by the fountain and go shopping at Hot Topic?”

  “Not tonight, sweetie. I have to watch your father marry a dude, remember?”

  “Right.”

  “Dad?” I said. Dad still had this stunned look on his face. At least, I think it was stunned. I realized it might be something else when I saw the tears start leaking out of his eyes.

  “It’s really beautiful,” he choked out in this semi-crying voice.

  “Aw, sweetie, I’m sorry,” Carmen said, stroking Dad’s arm.

  He takes a minute to collect himself. “Don’t be,” he says. “I just…I just got overwhelmed with how lucky I feel. That’s all.”

  There was a moment of uncomfortable silence, which I was trying to think about how to break when Dad—Dad! What’s the world coming to?—suddenly collected himself and said in a chipper voice, “Now, are you ready to go watch your ex marry a dude?”

  “Totally,” Carmen said, and the two of them gazed at each other so lovey-dovey that I thought I might puke.

  “Hey, Dad, try to keep it in your pants till we get home, willya?”

  Neilly hit me really hard on the tattoo—which was still kind of tender—when I said this, and I was yowling in pain, and Dad said, “Thank you, Neilly. All right, family. Let’s go to a wedding.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Neilly

  MY DAD WAS PACING NERVOUSLY IN THE BACK OF AUNT Sarah’s crazy little church—pretty much where this whole story started—by the time we got there.

  “Neilly!” he exclaimed, running his fingers through what was left of his thinning hair. “Where’ve you been? I was so worried—”

  “I’m here now, Dad. You know I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

  While my mom, Thomas, Dec, and the rest of the stragglers found seats in the crowded pews, I stayed behind in the vestibule with my father. He’d asked me to be his person of honor, and, quite frankly, I was extremely honored by his asking me to do so.

  I could feel a lump rising up in my throat as the opening bars of Pachelbel’s Canon rang out, but I tried to joke my way out of totally losing it. “So how’d you get to be the bride in this equation?” I whispered to my dad as we step-together-step-togethered down the aisle.

  “Have you seen my husband-to-be?” he whispered back, and we both had to stifle really inappropriate giggles.

  Roger stood waiting for my dad at the front of the church, looking like he was about to faint. And so his person of honor—Griffin—put an arm around his dad to steady him, and I thought it was the sweetest gesture an unconventional wedding had ever seen. Especially knowing how long it had taken both of us to get where we were, emotionally speaking, about the whole thing.

  When we finally made it to where they stood, my dad and Roger fell into this huge embrace. And when the hug ended, Roger held both my dad’s cheeks and gave him a kiss. That’s when everyone in the church kind of exploded in applause, hooting and hollering and woo-hoo-ing.

  “Love makes a family!” I heard someone yell.

  “Go Dad and Roger!” Lulu piped in. She’d known my dad since we were little, so she was entitled to call him that.

  “Down with labels, up with love!” her date, Andy, the SOI guitarist, added.

  Dec put two fingers in either side of his mouth and whistled.

  “And I didn’t even say, ‘You may kiss your spouse’ yet,” Aunt Sarah quipped.

  Things calmed down considerably after that. Aunt Sarah said all the usual great stuff, like how God loves everyone regardless of race, creed, nationality, or sexual orientation—she was preaching to the choir here, as probably three-quarters of the church was packed with same-sex couples—and how special my dad and Roger’s love was. And then she really did say “You may kiss your spouse,” and then they smooched, and everyone went crazy again, and it was just the coolest thing ever.

  At the reception, Dec and I were dancing to some totally corny eighties song when I just had to get back to the subject of his ink. I felt like his moment of glory had been cut short in the car, and he deserved some serious props. Well, he and my mom, that is.

  “Dude, have I told you lately how awesome that tattoo is?” I asked, patting his arm more gently this time.

  Dec just grinned. “Uh, I don’t know if you know this, but my mom’s name was Patience. So it kind of means a lot to me. Like, I know I won’t ever forget her, ’cause she’ll always be here with me.”

  I nodded, the tat even cooler now that I knew how much meaning was behind it. “You know, I’ve been thinking. Would you mind it very much if I copied you?”

  “I wouldn’t mind, but I also don’t think you’d look very good with a flowered tattoo that says ‘Patience’ on your bicep,” he said.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got my own message and spot in mind,” I told him. “You’re just the inspiration.”

  “So you’re saying I inspire you?”

  I nodded. “I guess I am.”

  “If you had asked me at the beginning of this year what one thing I never thought I’d hear you say, that would’ve been it,” he said. “Come to think of it, I guess I never thought I’d hear you say anything. To me, that is.”

  “Well, I’m glad I did.”

  “Me, too.”

  Bret Michaels was just about taking it home, singing about some chick who had a thorn in her rose, when Griffin tapped Dec on the shoulder. “May I?”

  It was déjà vu all over again. Except this time Dec surprised me by agreeing to bow out with a smile.

  But I shook my head. “We’ll finish out this dance, and then I’ll come find you, okay?”

  Griffin nodded. “I’ll be out on the balcony.”

  “You didn’t have to do that, Neilly,” Dec said once Griffin had walked away.

  “Yes, I did,” I told him. “You ripped me a new one about not being a good friend last week, and I don’t want to make the same mistake twice.”

  Dec opened his mouth and closed it a few times, but nothing came out.

&n
bsp; “What?” I asked him.

  “Uh, except when it comes to Sam, I guess,” he finally spit out, totally cracking himself up.

  “Huh?”

  “He was the same mistake twice, wasn’t he?”

  “Touché, brother. Touché. I won’t do it again.”

  “Don’t,” Dec said. “He doesn’t deserve a great girl like you.”

  I smiled up at my new stepbro. “Thanks. For everything.”

  “Right back at ya, sista.”

  When I finally found my way back to Griffin much later on, things were just about wrapping up at the reception. “Sorry we didn’t get to talk much tonight,” I told him. “It was so crazy in there with my dad wanting to introduce me to all his friends, you know.…”

  “Totally. So maybe we can hang out tomorrow afternoon instead? Grab a coffee or something?”

  “Sure,” I said. But then remembered I already had afternoon plans. “Actually, can we make it tomorrow night?”

  By the time I met my very hot, not-really-stepbrother-since-gay-unions-are-still-not-legally-recognized-in-the-backward state-I-live-in the next night for coffee, I was a changed woman. And I couldn’t wait to show Griffin the new me. So right after giving him a big hug hello, I peeled back the gauze protecting the new tat I’d just gotten inked on the inside of my wrist.

  Griffin broke out into a huge smile when he saw what it was: a delicate little pink heart surrounded by the words Love will find a way in fancy script.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” he said, and proceeded to plant the most warm and soft, sweet and lingering kiss in the world on me.

  And let me tell you, it was totally smokin’.

  EPILOGUE

  DECLAN

  THINGS DIDN’T EXACTLY WORK OUT WITH ANASTASIA. Somebody got a little too clingy after things got physical. And yeah, that somebody was me. I may have professed my undying love. The details are a bit hazy. Or, anyway, I’m trying to make them get hazy, because otherwise I can still feel the humiliation.

  But it wasn’t all bad. For one thing, please note that I said after things got physical. Five times. The fourth and fifth of which actually lasted longer than thirty seconds. For another, we had a great time together for the couple of months we were together, and being seen in public with a girl, especially one as completely smokin’ hot as Anastasia, announced to the world that I was boyfriend material. Neilly tried to explain this to me, but I didn’t understand it at all because it has to do with the way the female brain works. But in a nutshell, if a guy sees a girl with another guy, he gets annoyed because she’s off-limits. If a girl sees a guy with another girl, he automatically goes into the potential boyfriend file.