***
Her therapy turns out to be nightly running. Not jogging. Not a leisurely stroll. Hard ass running. She’s been kicking my ass for three days in a row like a tiny, porcelain drill instructor. It’s miserable and exhausting. I’ve thrown up every time. I wish I could say I hate it.
I haven’t been able to keep up with her, at least not for any real distance. My legs are longer and I can take her in a sprint, but I have no stamina. She can go hard for miles, but the way she does it, nothing about it is for exercise. She runs like something is chasing her.
“It gets easier,” she says, standing several feet away while I purge in the bushes at some unfortunate stranger’s house.
“Only if I keep doing it,” I respond, thinking I should start running with a bottle of mouthwash. Or at least gum.
“You’re not going to?” Not surprised or curious. Disappointed.
I don’t do well with disappointment. Especially not hers. If she wants me to run with her, I will. Maybe she’ll eventually get tired of waiting for me to keep up and she’ll send me home where I can hide in my garage. Running away is her thing. Hiding is mine.
When we get back to my house, I jump in the shower immediately and offer to drive her home when I get out. I have to yank myself out of the water because I could probably stay in there all night. Every part of my body aches.
When I get out to the family room, there’s a note on the coffee table.
Had to run – no pun intended. Couldn’t trust myself knowing you were wet and na**d in the next room. Didn’t want to tempt fate. See you tomorrow.
P.S. I folded your laundry. Don’t worry. I didn’t touch your panties.
On the bottom, it’s signed with a little drawing of the sun with a smiley face in it which has to be the most out of character thing I’ve ever seen from her.
I head over to the utility room and there’s a perfectly folded pile of my clean laundry on top of the washer. When I open the dryer door, there’s nothing left in it but my abandoned boxer shorts.
CHAPTER 30
Nastya
“Ice cream.”
I know those words. I like those words. I look up from the Physics textbook that has been my close companion for the past three hours. I will never pass this test. I should never have even signed up for the class. I was reaching from the beginning. Josh is standing next to me and leans over, shutting the book. I have a feeling this may have something to do with the frustrated barrage of profanity that left my mouth moments ago.
Academics have never been my forte. I’m not very smart, a fact which I have no trouble proving to myself several times a day. Asher is the smart one. He checked off that box on the family rubric. Asher has baseball and school. I had the piano. Now I don’t have anything.
“You need it. We’re getting it. Now.” Angry dad voice again.
“Now?”
“Now. Remember when you said that bad things happen when you don’t get enough ice cream? Bad things are happening. You’re all stressed out and cranky like a teenage boy who’s not getting laid.”
“Nice analogy.” Do they get cranky?
“Sorry, it’s true. And nobody likes a cranky Sunshine. It goes against the laws of nature.” He pulls my chair away from the table with me in it.
“You make me sound like a petulant four year-old.” Petulant – sulky, crabby, peevish, moody, sullen. Picked that one up from Asher while he was studying for the SATs.
“You’re acting like one. With a more colorful vocabulary. Get your ass in the truck. We’re going.” He grabs his keys and stands in the entryway, holding the door open and waiting.
We pull up to a strip mall a couple miles away at eight o’clock and I follow him into an ice cream parlor that’s tucked away in the back corner of the plaza. If you didn’t know it was there, you’d probably never find it. It’s a Tuesday and it’s mostly empty except for a family at a corner table with a little boy whose clothes seem to have seen more chocolate ice cream than his mouth. I haven’t been in here before. I prefer to eat my ice cream out of the container at the kitchen counter where no one can watch me. Ice cream makes me happy. I like to concentrate on the joy.
This place is a little pastel paradise. It’s small and screams CUTE! at the top of its lungs from every direction. Six glass-top tables are scattered around the front of the shop. It must be a nightmare to keep them clean in a place full of melting sugar. The chairs have silver metal frames that match the table bases and padded vinyl seat cushions in pastel pink, yellow, blue and lavender. I look down at myself in black on black. I look like teenage Elvira walking into a Bonne Bell commercial.
There’s a girl I don’t recognize wiping down the tables in the front and a girl behind the counter that I do. She’s a senior named Kara Matthews from my ex-music class. She stares at us when we walk in. Then she must realize that she’s doing it, because she looks away, but it’s pretty obvious what she’s thinking. Nastya Kashnikov and Josh Bennett walk into an ice cream parlor together on a Tuesday night. It’s like the beginning of a bad joke. Or the apocalypse.
“What do you want?” Josh asks, knowing I can’t answer him here. I raise my eyebrows at him impatiently. He holds his hands out in surrender at the look I give him. “I didn’t want to be accused of being a chauvinist, but if you don’t tell me want you want, I’m just going to have to guess.” There’s mischief there and I don’t trust him. I shrug. I’m an excellent shrugger. It’s rivaled only by my ability to nod.
There’s nothing I can do. I sit down, facing the front windows, so I don’t have to look at Kara Matthews or let her look at me. I’m thankful that I’m still in my school clothes. Josh walks back to the counter and I can hear his voice but I can’t figure out what he’s saying. I do hear Kara Matthews.
“Seriously?” she laughs. I wonder what he’s said, but he spoke too low for me to hear. The thought of Josh Bennett flirting with Kara Matthews is outside the realm of possibility for my imagination. I trace my fingers around the beveled edge of the glass table and try to predict what kind of concoction he’s going to walk back with just to taunt me. Probably lime sorbet and peanut butter cup ice cream or some equally vile combination. The wait lasts forever. It shouldn’t take this long to order ice cream and I almost cave and turn around when I hear him walking back to the table with the uneven footfalls I have memorized by now.