by Lynn Painter
Oh. My. God.
OhMyGod! I glanced down, seeing that I was covered in the liquified remains of Ashley’s stomach. It was warm and thick and splattered across my outfit, making the top of my dress so drenched that it was sticking to my skin. In my peripheral vision I could see that there were wet chunks in the right side of my hair, over by my ear, but I couldn’t focus on that because I could feel a trail of hot vomit running down my leg.
Running down my leg.
I’m not sure if I made a sound or if I just looked victimized as I stood there with my arms extended, but Wes quickly handed the vomitous blonde off to one of the girls standing nearby, and then he was at my side.
“I’ve got clean clothes in my trunk, Liz. Let’s get you up to the bathroom, and you can clean up while I run to my car and grab them.”
I couldn’t even formulate words. I just nodded and let him grab my elbow and lead me through the gaping crowd—who seemed to think my situation was both disgusting and hilarious—and up the stairs. I was fighting back my gag reflex and trying not to inhale that god-awful smell as I died of mortification.
Not only was I a puked-on laughingstock, but Michael had witnessed the whole gruesome ordeal.
Talk about the opposite of a meet-cute.
I was seriously going to die of embarrassment. For sure. It was, in fact, a thing. My death was imminent.
When we got to the top of the stairs, Wes steered me to a bathroom that was right off the kitchen. He flipped on the light, led me inside, and bent his knees so he was at my level. He looked into my face so I could see nothing but him and said, “Get out of these clothes and clean up, and I’ll be right back, okay?”
I still couldn’t formulate words so I nodded.
Michael appeared at the top of the stairs, looking at me with his perfect nose crinkled up like he wanted to puke too, but in a sympathetic way. He said, “At least you were wearing your uniform and not your own clothes.”
Now I wanted to puke—and disappear—so I just said, “Yeah.”
“Is there anything I can do?” He looked queasy at the sight of me, but he still gave me a sweet smile and said in a Southern-comfort kind of way, “Need me to fetch you anything?”
Fetch. Aw.
I shook my head but felt—oh my God—something damp stick to my neck. I gritted my teeth and said, “No, but thank you.”
I closed the door and turned the lock. Looked around and cursed whoever had built this house for not providing a shower in that particular guest bathroom. “You have got to be kidding me!”
I glanced at the sink. And apologized to Ryno—whoever he was—for what I was about to do to his bathroom.
First, I tore off every little piece of clothing I had on, including my underwear, letting them fall into a disgusting pile on the white marble floor. Next, I turned on the faucet and started shoving body parts under the hot running water. Left leg, right leg. Left arm, right arm. I had to do a near-backbend to rinse my neck and torso, spraying water all over the vanity and the floor, before jamming my head directly under the water.
Such a great idea, Liz, going to a beer party with Wes.
Terrible judgement.
I could see the chunks slowing the sink drain as I rubbed my hair with a bar of soap, so I had to be careful to keep my head raised just enough to avoid re-contaminating my hair with sink-yack.
I straightened and wetted down one of the guest towels and slathered it with another fancy bar of soap before giving myself a full-body sponge bath.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the water-splattered mirror, wildly scouring my nude self in a stranger’s bathroom while humming tiny moans of disgust, and my brain added the next track to the album.
“Hello Operator” by the White Stripes.
The words weren’t particularly befitting my uniquely horrible situation, but the guitar riffs while I manically and nakedly scrubbed would have been perfection.
“Liz?” Wes was at the bathroom door. “Do you want me to hand the bag through the door, or should I just leave it here on the floor and go back downstairs?”
“If you could leave it, that would be great.” The fancy bathroom was like a fun house, with big mirrors all over the place, so there was no way I was opening the door with Wes out there. I would for sure end up showing him my bits. “Thank you.”
“No problem.” He cleared his throat. “Everyone is downstairs, so if you just reach your hand out the door and swipe the bag, no one will see anything.”
“Okay.”
“There’s a Target bag in the side pocket that you can put your dirty clothes in. And I’ve got your purse downstairs—do you need it?”
“No.” I’d totally forgotten I even had a purse. “Um—thanks. So much, Wes.”
He was being very un-Wesley nice to me. Or at least what I’d thought was un-Wesley. I guess the reality was that maybe I didn’t know who he was anymore. I mean, since we’d arrived at the party, he’d actually been… great.
“No problem. I’m going downstairs, then.” I heard rustling outside the door, and then it went quiet. I covered my front with yet another guest towel—totally didn’t cover enough, by the way—before I dropped to a squat, cracked the door, and stuck my hand through the opening.
I immediately made contact with the nylon string bag, thank God. I jerked it into the bathroom, then closed and locked the door. I needed to hurry and change if I was going to get another minute alone with Michael before Laney showed up and ruined everything. We’d been having a total movie moment before Blondie had rained her regurgitated foodstuffs upon me, and there was no way I was going to let that moment go.
I pulled the clothes out of the bag.
Aw, geez, Wes.
I don’t know what I’d expected him to have in the trunk of his car, but I was going to look like a goofball in his sports clothes. I stepped into the gray sweatpants and pulled them up, but they were huge on me. I had to roll the waistband down two times in order not to trip over the bottoms, and I still suffered from a likely-to-be-pantsed fate, as one tiny tug would send those babies right to my ankles.
I pulled the EMERSON BASEBALL sweatshirt over my wet head—again, huge—but it smelled like fabric softener and felt like a blanket, so I kind of maybe liked it a little.
A horrified giggle escaped me when I saw my reflection—a gray marshmallow in the soft, puffy, oversize fleece ensemble. My buff-colored Mary Janes with the square heels were going to look amazing with the outfit, especially since they were also splattered with brown vomit.
I sighed and pulled my hair out of the sweatshirt hood. I was just going to have to text Wes that we needed to leave and I’d meet him in the car. I hated leaving Michael and our Big Moment potential, but I looked too ridiculous to stay.
Only… where the? Nooooooo.
My phone was in my purse. My phone was in my purse, which was downstairs with Wes and Michael, not to mention the rest of the partiers. I rolled my lips inward and breathed through my nose.
Was I on a hidden-camera show?
* * *
I took a deep breath and opened the door to the basement steps. I’d ditched Wes’s hoodie, opting instead to knot the back of a ginormous T-shirt I’d found wrinkled up in the bottom of his bag. Since looking sophisticatedly adorable was no longer in the cards for me, I tried for the cool, casual, I-look-cute-in-my-boyfriend’s-oversize-clothing vibe.
It probably looked more like the middle-schooler-in-her-brother’s-hand-me-downs vibe, but since I was out of options, I preferred to be optimistic. I didn’t have a lot of time before prom, so I was going to have to stick it out and make Michael fall for me, vomit be damned.
The stairs were cold and dusty under my bare feet, and as soon as I reached the crowded floor, I looked around for Wes, desperate to get out of there before anyone noticed me. Something by AC/DC was blaring, but not loud enough for the words to be heard over the party sounds.
“Vomit girl!” Some bear of a dude wearing a too-tight Lakers
jersey grinned at me. “You came back!”
Why? Why in God’s name would I be “vomit girl”? Ashley should have been “vomit girl,” dammit.
I looked around the guy and spotted Wes. My handbag was dangling from his elbow as he talked to Michael next to the keg, and I forced myself to ignore all the looks I was getting as the newly crowned Vomit Girl and waved my hand in his direction.
Almost instantly, his gaze met mine. His eyes took a quick dip over my baggy sweats and T-shirt combo, and then his eyebrows went down before he walked toward me and pulled his keys out of his pocket.
“I’m assuming you want to go?”
“Yeah.” I turned my gaze to Michael, who’d followed Wes over, and I nervously ran a hand through my damp hair. But his eyes were looking directly at my belly button, not my hair. Oh God. The huge sweatpants hung so low on my hips that I’d just exposed a lot of my stomach to the entire party. I yanked down the bottom of the shirt, but it was too late.
He gave me a smile that turned my insides to mush and said, “I really like your tattoo.”
Oh God—he saw the tattoo.
At least he’d said it in a totally non-horny-bro way.
“Oh. Thanks.” I resisted the urge to tug on my top again as I desperately hoped he wasn’t being sarcastic.
Wes threw me a look of irritation, his jaw flexing. “Ready?”
Before I could respond, Wes took a handful of my waistband and wrapped it around his hand, pulling it higher so my belly was entirely covered. “Liz’s clothes are falling off, so it’s time for us to leave.”
I froze when I felt Wes’s hand on my skin. I looked at his face as he looked down at me, and I felt… off-kilter. I wasn’t sure if it was in response to his touch or his sudden cavemannish protectiveness.
I also wasn’t sure why it wasn’t pissing me off.
I remained tethered to Wes’s left hand as he and Michael shared a goodbye bro handshake, exchanging words I couldn’t hear over the noise. Once they broke apart, Michael gave me a little SOLO cup raise and a sweet smile before he turned and walked away.
“Bye,” I whispered under my breath, watching him disappear into the revelers.
“Come on, Buxbaum.” Wes hitched my handbag over his shoulder, passed the handful of my pants to me, and led me up the stairs. “Let’s get you home before you flash anyone else.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“You’re not as vile as I thought you were.”
—10 Things I Hate About You
“So?” I looked out the windshield as he pulled away from the house, where cars lined both sides of the street. It occurred to me at that moment that Wes and his friends totally lived the Superbad life. “Did he say anything about me when I was changing?”
“He did, actually.” He flipped on his blinker and turned the corner. “And it’s probably going to piss you off.”
“Oh God.” I looked at Wes’s profile and waited for the awful news. “What?”
He accelerated and switched lanes. “It’s just very clear that he still thinks of you as Little Liz.”
“What does that mean?”
His mouth curved a little, but he kept his eyes on the road. “Oh, come on.”
“Seriously. What? Like he still thinks I’m in grade school?”
He smiled an I-shouldn’t-be-smiling smile and said, “Like, he still thinks you’re a nice little weirdo.”
“Oh my God—are you kidding me?” I stared at his grin and wanted to punch him. “Why would he think I’m a weirdo now? I was charming as hell until your girlfriend puked on me.”
“It’s not that.” He reeled in his smile and shot me a quick glance. “It’s just that he assumes you’re the same person you used to be, because he’s been gone.”
“I wasn’t a nice little weirdo.”
His smile was back. “Oh, come on, Buxbaum.”
I thought back to the old days in the neighborhood. “I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were. You made up songs constantly, about everything. Terrible songs that didn’t even rhyme.”
“I was creative.” True, I was less athletic and more dramatic than the rest of them, but I wasn’t weird. “And that was my theme music.”
“You lied about boyfriends all the time.”
That was true. “You don’t know they weren’t real.”
“Prince Harry?”
Oof—I had forgotten about that one. “He could’ve been my boyfriend; there was no way of knowing for sure.”
He chuckled and pressed harder on the gas. “And the plays, Liz. Remember all the plays? You were a one-woman Broadway show every damn day of the week.”
Wow—I’d totally forgotten about the plays, too. I used to love creating plays and getting the whole neighborhood to act them out. And yes, I might’ve been the instigator, but the rest of them had always played along, so they had to have enjoyed it too. “Theater is a noble calling, and if you guys were too uncultured to recognize that, then I feel sorry for you.”
His chuckle turned into a laugh. “You begged Michael to be Romeo to your Juliet, and when he wouldn’t, you climbed a tree and fake-cried for an hour.”
“And you threw acorns at me, trying to knock me down!”
“I think the point here is that he sees you differently from other girls because of your history.”
I looked at him and wondered—holy God—had I been a little weirdo? “So I’m a weirdo to him forever and there’s nothing I can do about it?”
He cleared his throat. “Well, maybe not. But.”
He looked guilty, and I said, “What did you do, Wes?”
“I didn’t do anything, Buxbaum—you did.” He pulled to a stop at a red light and gave me full-on eye contact. “Michael and I were saying how bad it sucked that you got puked on, and he made a comment about your ugly uniform.”
My cheeks got hot as I remembered my beautiful outfit that was now ruined. “So?”
“So it was something about how it was classic Liz to wear a waitress uniform to a party and how you haven’t changed a bit.”
I sighed and looked out the window, suddenly feeling hopeless about ever getting a shot with Michael. “Awesome.”
“I told him that you’re completely different now.”
I glanced across the darkened front seat. “You did?”
“Yep. I told him that you sing less now and that you’re kind of considered a hot girl at school.”
My weirdo heart felt warm. “I’m considered a hot girl?”
“Probably. I mean, you’re not ugly, so it’s possible. I don’t know.” Wes kept his eyes on the road and sounded irritated. “I don’t make it a habit to discuss you unless it’s in the context of ‘Guess what my goofball neighbor did,’ so I actually have no idea. I was just trying to change his impression of you.”
I rolled my eyes and felt ridiculously bummed that he’d made that up.
“But here’s your problem.” He put on his blinker and slowed as we approached a yellow light. “As I was doing my best to convince him that you’re no longer a little weirdy, he took it the wrong way and said, like, ‘So you DO like Liz. I knew it.’ ”
“Oh no.” Shit, shit, shit!
“Oh yes.” He looked over at me after stopping for the red light. “He thinks we’re into each other.”
“No!” I dropped my head back onto the headrest and pictured Michael’s face as he’d smiled and watched Wes and me. He thought I was into Wes, and it was entirely my fault. I’d started the rumor, for the love of God. “He’ll never ask me to prom if he thinks you like me.”
“Probably not.”
“Ugh.” I blinked fast, not wanting to get emotional, but I couldn’t help it as I kept picturing his face. He was supposed to be my fate, dammit, and now Laney would have him in her clutches before I got my foot-popping kiss.
And I got vomited on for nothing.
“He did say something about you when we were leaving, if that makes you feel any better.”
“What?
When? What did he say?”
He accelerated around the corner and floored it. “All he said was ‘I can’t believe Little Liz has a tattoo’ when I told him we were taking off.”
I gasped. “Well, how did he say it?”
He glanced over at me. “Really?”
“I just mean did he say it like he was disgusted, or, like… like he thought it was maybe kind of cool?”
He kept his eyes on the road and said, “He definitely wasn’t disgusted.”
“Well, at least there’s that.” I stared out the window and watched as the lights of our neighborhood got closer. What am I going to do? If it were another guy, I might have just given up and called projectile vomiting a cosmic sign.
But this was Michael Young. I couldn’t give up.
Honestly, the thought of it made my heart feel a little pinched.
There had to be a way.
I ran my teeth across my bottom lip and pondered. I mean, technically, regardless of the self-inflicted rumor about Wes and me, Michael had looked flirty when he’d looked at my tattoo. It wasn’t much, but it was something, right? It proved that it was possible to change his “little weirdo” assumptions.
I just needed a chance to make him see all the things about me that had changed.
I felt hope bubbling back up. I mean, it wouldn’t take long to open his eyes if I could just get some time with him, right? Time and perhaps some help.
Hmmm.
“You’re so quiet, Buxbaum. Makes me a little terrified of what you’re thinking.”
“Wesley.” I turned toward him in my seat. With my winningest grin, I said, “Buddy. I have the BEST idea.”
“God help me.” He pulled his car into The Spot, took the keys out of the ignition, and said through a half smile, “What is your terrible idea?”
“Well,” I started, looking down at my hands and not moving to get out of the car. “Hear me out before you say no.”