“Oh, right,” she says. She sits up and mimes zipping her lips and throwing away the key, but then she goes into another giggle fit.
She won’t stop wiggling around, so I put my forearm across her shoulders to hold her in place and quickly buckle the seatbelt over her. She reaches up and squeezes my arm and says, “So strong.” I pull my arm back like she’s burned me and run around to the driver’s seat before she can cause any kind of commotion in my truck.
My presence, however, does nothing to deter her from causing chaos. I’ve arrested drunks who were easier to contain than Millie is right now. I’m driving down the highway, and “her song” comes on the radio. She turns the volume up so loud that there’s now a horrible ringing in my ear. Seriously, I have tinnitus now, thanks to her.
She sings along to the song, and I’m sad to say that I’ve never heard such horrible singing in all my life. It’s like a dying donkey. I wish I could say that it’s only because of the giant cotton swabs in her mouth, but I get the suspicion that she would sound almost as terrible if she weren’t on laughing gas and partially gagged at the moment.
She really needs to stop singing and talking, though. The oral surgeon was very adamant that she remain quiet for a while. There’s no stopping her, short of muzzling her. She suddenly stops moving and watches me drive with a dreamy look on her face, and I think she’s about to fall asleep. That would keep her quiet! I’ve never felt such relief before, but my relief is very short-lived.
“You’re the most perfect male specimen I’ve ever seen,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone. I turn to glance at her, and she’s studying me like I’m under a microscope. Her mouth is puckered, and her eyes are squinty as her gaze roves over my face and down to my chest and legs.
How does one respond to that? I choose to ignore her and focus on the road, but she makes it impossible. She leans over and studies my face up close. Her face is literally two inches from mine. I can feel her breath on my cheek. I can smell her perfume. Why did she bother putting perfume on for dental surgery? It smells a little citrusy and a little like vanilla.
“Do you use facial creams?” she asks. “Your skin is flawless.” She rubs my cheek with her hand, and I hold my breath. I know it’s just the laughing gas making her goofy.
“Millie, sit down. You’re distracting me,” I tell her, praying she’ll actually listen to me. She hasn’t listened to anything I’ve said since shoving her into this truck, so I don’t have much hope.
“Distracting, huh? You know, you distract me. Sometimes I’ll be trying to work, and I’ll see you out in your driveway, working out. How’s a girl supposed to get any writing done when she has a view like that?” she asks and gestures to my entire body wildly.
My thoughts immediately snag on the word “writing.” That must be what she was doing at the coffee shop that day when I found her. She was embarrassed and hid it as fast as she could. She loves reading—obviously, she’s a librarian. It makes sense that she would enjoy writing too. I can picture her sitting at home, writing racy romance scenes in secret while wearing her glasses and her silly t-shirts.
“What are you writing, Millie?” I ask, hoping she’ll give me some details before she remembers she doesn’t want anyone to know about it.
“A romance novel. Duh! But that’s beside the point,” she says and points her finger in my face. “I have to tell you, even if you don’t want to hear it…” She takes a deep breath, and I’m a little scared about where this is going. Anything could come out of that mouth right now.
“Jameson, I have a major crush on you. I tried to ignore your sexy bod, but look at you!” she shouts while flinging her arms all over the cab of my truck.
My heart stops beating. Just completely stops for a solid minute, I’m sure of it. I’ve died. Once I’ve recovered from my shock, I say, “So, you’re only interested in me for my physique?”
“Of course not! I thought we could be friends because you’re so nice. You’re funny too…but I can’t ignore those muscles. My hands just want to run all over them every time I see you. And that would make our friendship weird, right?”
Yes, that would be a strange friendship, indeed.
This conversation is getting out of hand, and if she remembers any of this later, she’s going to be mortified. “Millie, I think the drugs are getting to you,” I suggest, trying to play it off. Maybe she does find me attractive and has a thing for me, but it’s not enough for her to want to act on it. She’s reminded me over and over again that we’re only friends. She’s not interested in pursuing a relationship with me—or anyone else, for that matter. Or so she says.
According to Millie, romantic relationships are more trouble than they’re worth. It’s pretty freaking sad that she feels that way. It makes me angry that the only examples she’s had of love have ended so badly that she wants nothing to do with it. I hate to think of her spending the rest of her life alone. Not completely alone. Of course she’ll have her sister and friends.
But Millie deserves someone to come home to in the evenings after a long day of entertaining toddlers at work. She deserves to have someone to snuggle with on the couch, because I know how much she loves snuggles. She should have someone incessantly reminding her how beautiful she is, how kind she is, how funny she is.
“What drugs?” she asks in outrage. “I have never in my life touched drugs, and how dare you suggest otherwise!” She’s trying to stand in the truck, but she’s buckled, and it’s hard to stand in a vehicle to begin with. She tries to get her seatbelt unbuckled, but I lay my hand over hers to stop her.
“I just meant the laughing gas…”
“Oh, okay. I love your hands,” she says, her momentary anger forgotten. She flips my palm up and runs her fingers over all of my callouses. She sends shivers up my arm and down my spine. I should stop her. She’s doing things to my heart that I know I shouldn’t allow her to do. She won’t act on any of these feelings once she’s back to her normal self, and I’ll be left in a weird limbo. I’ll know her true feelings for me, but her decision won’t change.
I pull my hand away from her and grip the steering wheel. She continues to ramble about nonsense mostly. I tune it out and focus on my driving.
“Jameson! Quit yer yappin’ and get up there to take your turn at bat!” Seth shouts from the pitcher’s mound. I’ve been wrapped up in my conversation with Colby, detailing all of the ridiculous things Millie said to me on our way home from having her wisdom teeth removed on Tuesday. I haven’t gotten to the part where she admitted she has a crush on me, though.
I grab my bat and walk to the home plate to take my turn. My heart’s not in the game anymore. It’s the last inning, and my team’s losing so badly there’s no way we’re coming back. Seth apparently wants to rub salt in the wound of our defeat, because he starts pitching fastballs. He pitched for our high school baseball team, and about ten different colleges wanted him. Much to all of the schools’ dismay, he didn’t go to college at all, because he knew he wanted to be a firefighter.
I strike out, which ends the game. My team breathes a sigh of relief that our torture is finally over for this week. Everyone gives back pats and handshakes as we gather up our belongings. I lie on the ground and stare up at the pink sky.
“What was up with those pitches?” I shout over to Seth, who’s laughing with some other guys a few feet away. He doesn’t normally do fancy pitches. We just play for fun, so he keeps it pretty simple. If he pitched like that all the time, we’d never get any hits.
“I figured I should put you all out of your misery. You’ve seemed distracted. What’s going on?” he asks and lies down beside me.
I haven’t decided if I am going to tell my friends about Millie’s drug-induced admission or not. It doesn’t feel fair to her to tell people about what she said when she wasn’t in her right mind. But on the other hand, I need advice. I don’t know how to act around her anymore. I tried to bring her a milkshake yesterday when I got off work, and it was so awkward. I was a bumbling idiot, and she definitely noticed. She asked me if I was okay at least a dozen times. And this morning will go down in history as the most embarrassing encounter of my life—or non-encounter, depending on how you look at it.