Friends Without Benefits (Knitting in the City) (6 page)

“H
e probably wanted to remove you from a place filled with reminders.”

I nodded
. “Yeah. He took an adjunct teaching position at Trinity—or their version of an adjunct position—and I discovered an abiding passion for Guinness since the place we stayed was basically down the road from the Guinness factory. I think I did that brewery tour seventy times.”

“Guinness is
good
.”

Our apparent shared love for Guinness
warmed my heart, and I glanced over at Sandra. She was watching me with a look that I could only define as restrained.

“What? What is it?”

“Do you—” She catapulted the words at me, paused, scratched her chin then turned as far in her seat as the seatbelt would allow. “Did you two—before he—did you . . .?”

“You’re asking me if we had sex?”

She nodded.

“No. Garrett and I never had sex.
I was only fifteen when he was diagnosed and almost sixteen when he died. Besides, we wanted to wait until we were married and—then—when he got sick—I never thought he wouldn’t get well until it was too late.”

She expelled a loud breath.
“That sucks.”

“Yeah.”
I frowned. “Yeah, it sucks.”

~*~

I soon discovered that Sandra was a badass.

Road trips can either suck monkey balls or, with the right person, they can be awesomesauce with cheesy fries. Sandra was that right person. She regulated the car to make certain a constant comfortable temperature was maintained; her music selection
—although not my typical preference—was high quality; she ensured conversation flowed and waned at appropriate intervals.

And she was very skilled in the art of unwrapping my sandwich and arranging my
French fries/ketchup such that I could effortlessly eat while driving.

Yes, we’d been knitting together for going on two years
, and yes, I infrequently met her for lunch at the hospital. But our interactions until this trip rarely deviated beyond those situations. I’d been operating under, and interacting with Sandra based on, my initial superficial impressions: funny, smart, loud, and opinionated.

I should’ve known better
, that a person is never just funny, smart, loud, and opinionated without a whole lot of awesome behind it. 

Furthermore, something about being trapped in a car together for five hours
—the shared experience of synchronized pit-stop peeing and suffering through roadside fast food—will bond two people for life.

By the time we arrived at my childhood home
virtually all of my earlier missing Janie melancholy was replaced with self-recrimination for being so narrow-minded. I was also experiencing newly minted good-friend euphoria.

Sandra noted with a squeal that we were late as we exited the car and rushed into my childhood home.
We hurried through showering and dressing; I realized I was excited about going to the reunion, because I was going with Sandra, and Sandra was badass.

I still missed Janie. I still lamented that she wasn’t able to come. But I found I didn’t need to be so diligent and determined about having a good time with Sandra. I was just, simply, having a good time with Sandra.

With Sandra’s insistence and help, I wore my hair down in impressive loose curls over my shoulders which were left bare in my black and white polka-dot strapless dress. I loved this dress even though it wasn’t at all my typical haphazard style. I wore a wicked black petticoat under the full skirt so it flared above the knee. I rounded out the look with red lipstick and borrowed—from Janie—black and white zebra print stilettos.

Sandra
—always a bombshell—wore a long, clingy blue and white maxi dress and turquoise sequenced high heels. She left her short red hair down, falling in soft waves to her chin. Her eye shadow was also sparkly blue and I coveted her ability to apply makeup. All my attempts at eye makeup—other than mascara—left me looking like the loser in a bar fight.

We drove through the
high school parking lot only one hour late and, despite my obvious bias, felt that we both looked amazing. Even though I returned home with some frequency to visit my dad—less often in recent years due to my crazy schedule at the hospital—I hadn’t visited my high school since graduation.

Everything looked essentially the same except trees were taller
, and the main building had recently been painted. I didn’t feel much of anything, no nostalgia or twinge of apprehension, until I stepped through the doors and the smell—of pencils and bread and Glass Plus cleaner—slapped my brain backward in time.

Memories and accompanying thoughts and anxieties assailed me without warning.

I was suddenly thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen all at once. I was short, angry, quiet, and flat chested. I was Skinny Finney trying to blend into the lockers, sitting in the back of the classroom, and avoiding eye contact with all the kids in my class who were older, bigger, and louder.

I was looking at my past
self through the one-way interrogation window of my current self; this caused me to experience the strange sadness that accompanies helplessness. If only I could have told teenage Elizabeth that none of it actually mattered. It all seemed to matter so much at the time.

A half laugh, half gasp escaped my chest
, and I paused just inside the door of the main entrance to catch up with the onslaught.

“What is it?”

I glanced at Sandra—her red eyebrows raised in confusion, her eyes wide with concern—and shook my head. “It’s—it’s nothing.” I continued to shake my head as I walked a few steps forward and allowed the door to close behind me. “It’s just really weird to be here.”

Sandra smiled wryly
. “Yeah. My reunion is this year too. I haven’t decided if I’m going to my high school reunion. I don’t know if I should grace those people with the gift of my presence.”

“Did you have a hard time in high school?
Did you hate the prom queen?” I strolled forward feeling a bit easier and acclimated. I glanced at my surroundings; blue lockers lined gray walls. The floor was white-and-blue linoleum, peeling and scuffed.

“Oh
heavens no. I
was
the prom queen.”

This revelatio
n made my steps falter, and Sandra monopolized all my attention; “You were the prom queen?”

She nodded; her grin was immediate
. “Yes. I was the prom queen. Don’t look so shocked.”

“I’m not shocked. I’m
. . .” I waved my hands through the air trying to locate the words as my feet automatically led the way to the gym. “I’m surprised.”

“You’re a doofus. Shocked and surprised are synonyms.”

“No, not really. Shocked means that something is hard to believe; surprised means something is unexpected.”

Sandra’s eyes narrowed; they were glittery green, the color intensified by her long
blue-and-white patterned maxi dress. “You sounded just like Janie when you said that.”

She was right. I did. The thought made me happy
-sad.

“She’s rubbed off on me despite my efforts to remain unaffected. I’ve spent all these years trying to wash off the stank of my
own social ineptness—and, believe me, I had my own special brand of social incompetency—but I know I’ve adopted some of her mannerisms. She has this thing about words. . .”

Sandra’s e
xpression was plainly skeptical. “In what ways were you socially incompetent?”

“I was really, really shy.”

Sandra pushed my shoulder. “Get out. You? The queen of hospital pranks and hot-man conquests? I call shenanigans.”

“Are you surprised?”

“No. I’m shocked.” She wagged her eyebrows which made me laugh. “Why were you shy?”

“Actually, I don’t know if I was exactly shy. Rather, I
just had this overwhelming disdain for the world and everyone in it.”

Before Sandra could respond to this revelation a super
-duper cheerful voice interrupted our conversation, “Hi there! How are you!?”

I hadn’t noticed that we’d walked all the way to the entrance of the gym. Early decade dance music pumped through the open doors, specifically
“Let’s Get it Started in Here” by the Black Eyed Peas.

I blinked twice at the image in front of me. Stephanie Mayor, our class president, smiled at Sandra and me with extraordinary force as though trying to convey expediency. She stood behind a long,
empty, rectangular banquet table covered in a navy blue tablecloth, and she looked exactly the same. Even the length of her hair—cut, color, and style—was identical to how it had been ten years ago.

The only difference was, instead of her usually casual cheerfulness, there seemed to be a
radioactive, 1000 watt light of sunny glee radiating from her every pore.

“Hi
—yes—hi.” Sandra returned her smile with a bracing, unsure one of her own; like the force of Stephanie’s grin had temporarily made Sandra question the intelligence of attending my high school reunion. “This is Elizabeth and I am her friendscort, Sandra. We would like our table assignment please.”

Stephanie’s eyes
jumped to mine, and I noted a lack of recognition there. Her brow wrinkled although her smile remained firmly affixed. “Hi. . .”

“Hi.” I waite
d a minute for some follow through—like telling me where I could find my name tag or table.

Sandra filled the silence, “This is the class reunion, right?”

Stephanie’s eyes ping-ponged between us. Finally she asked, “Did you go to school here?”

I glanced at Sandra briefly
, then cleared my throat. “Yes. I’m Elizabeth Finney.”

Stephanie blinked at me for several protracted moments, her brow pulling comicall
y low. I thought about pulling down my strapless dress and flashing her or slapping her across the face just to see if a Jerry Springer style wakeup call would make a difference.

“Oh! You
—you’re
Skinny Finney
! I remember you!! But you look completely different, and your hair is really long!” She cocked her head to the side and gave me a reproachful smirk. “You should have just said so!!!”

“Yes, what was I thinking?” I deadpanned my response
, but she didn’t seem to hear me.

“It’s a good thing you caught me, I was just about to go in!
I don’t want to miss any of the excitement. . .” Stephanie’s voice was muffled as she busily reached under the table and rustled through some unseen items.

It took her maybe a full four minutes to find what she was searching for. Sandra gave me a questioning glance which I answered by shrugging.

“Here you go!” Stephanie bolted upright and handed me my name tag with a booklet. “Your name tag has your table number. And you cannot change tables so please don’t. And the brochure has a listing of—well almost—all attendees with their contact information.” She paired the word
almost
with a clumsy double wink.

Sandra eyeballed her and crossed her arms over her chest
. “Can I ask—what is with the stealth placement of the name tags? Why not just put them on top of the table, and let people pick their own?”

Stephanie’s mouth curved into a small
O
and, again, her eyes again ping-ponged between us. “Oh! You don’t know!!”

We stared at her expectantly, waiting for her to continue. After a long pause Stephanie leaned
over the table and motioned for us to do so as well, even though we were basically alone in the hall. “We didn’t know if we were going to have problems with people trying to get in since Niccolò is here. It was all very unexpected, and he has quite a security team with him, but. . .”

I didn’t hear anything else she said.

Cold.

Ice.

Frozen.

The shock
caused temporary peripheral neuropathy in my ear tips, fingers, and toes.

Hot.

Fire.

Blaze.

And the anxiety was going to send me into cardiac arrest.

Sandra’s attention mo
ved from my face to Stephanie’s; she blinked at us both. “Okay—what am I missing? Who is Niccolò?”

Stephanie
chuckled, it sounded lick a hen’s cluck. “Uh, only Niccolò Manganiello, aka Nico Moretti, aka
The Face
.”

“Wait, wait, wait
,” Sandra held her hands up, foisted a slightly hostile glare upon me. “You mean that hot guy on Comedy Central who has that show where he tries to talk celebrities into getting naked, but mostly he just gets naked and they end every show with him Jell-O wrestling with hot ladies? You went to high school with
that
Nico Moretti?”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t get a chance.

“It’s actually Nico
Manganiello
, but I changed my last name when I moved to New York.”

Startled by his voice
I instinctively half-twisted toward the velvety sound. The first thing I noticed was that his unshaven stubble from last week had grown into a haphazardly trimmed, close cut beard. And, looking like sex on a stick—if sex were Italian and the stick had an unfair amount of charisma—he sauntered toward us.

His smile was big, open, warm, but his eyes were shuttered, cold; and they were focused squarely on me.

I experienced a head-on collision of involuntary sensations and recognized the strongest one for what it was: intense attraction. My chest swelled, my stomach flipped, my knees locked; my organs were competing in the lust Olympics. At the same time, I was immediately repulsed by my body, by the uncontrollable reaction. I could only stare at his overwhelming omnipresent magnetism.

I was annoyed that I noticed how exceptionally fine he looked in a
slim cut black suit, white shirt, and skinny black tie; his black hair was mussed with scientific precision. It looked like Hollywood quality postcoital hair.

“Oh! OH!!” Stephanie, our hostess, exclaimed with undeniable vigor. Then she giggled.

The sounds of her female-flail were enough to snap me out of my haze. I straightened my spine and turned completely to face him; my chin lifted an inch. I noted one of his eyebrows raise, as though amused by me, and his smile shape shifted into a smirk.

He nodded at me once. “
Hi friend.”

“Nico.” I suppressed a Marge Simpson growl of frustration and instead
returned his single nod, attempted cool detachment. Awareness of him, his closeness, made the surface of my skin hot beneath my curtain of hair, from my neck down my back. I felt cold everywhere else. I fought the urge to shiver.

Sandra stuck out her hand. “Hey there big guy, I’m Sandra.”

Nico’s eyes slid away from mine, and he gathered Sandra’s small white hand in his olive-toned, much larger ones. He didn’t shake it. He just held it.

He was such an ass.

“Hi Sandra.” He bit his bottom lip which made his smile crooked, small, and completely charming. He kept his voice low, intimate. I could practically hear seduction in it. “It’s really nice to meet you.”

Sandra’s gave a breathy laugh; I fought the urge to roll my eyes.

“What are you doing here?” My voice was accusatory, because I meant it to be. It didn’t make sense. He had no reason to be here, in Iowa, at my high school reunion. I narrowed my eyes. Maybe he would look less appealing and edible if I narrowed my eyes.

In truth, I didn’t want to deal with him, with my Nico-guilt, when I wanted to be petty and childish instead. He was a reminder of my historical immaturity. His presence made me feel less justified in my self-indulgent endeavor to wow the graduating class with my perceived impressiveness. He deflated my bubble of adolescent angsty vengeance. This left me feeling silly and adrift.

The single eyebrow lifted slightly higher in an attractive arch. “Well, I did go to school here—”

“But you didn’t graduate.” I immediately cringed as the words left my mouth. It wasn’t my intention to
be rude, but likely, the blurted words would be interpreted as a slight. 

“No. No I didn’t graduate.” His mouth twisted to the side. A flicker of what looked like bitterness burned momentarily beneath his cool gaze. “Some of us don’t need to graduate three times in order to feel successful. Some of us don’t need to graduate at all.”

It was
exactly
like old times. We were standing in the hall of our high school, trading insults, throwing hateful glares like grenades.

I blinked, flinched, opened my mouth to say something nasty, but Sandra interrupted my poised insult.

“I’m such a fan of your show, but you must hear that all the time. I especially love it when you have the girls do that game show skit,
Are You Smarter than a Bikini Model
, where they make those guys look like idiots.”

“Well, all the girls on the show are really smart and, honestly, the guys usually are idiots.”

“Debbie is my favorite. I love that she leg-wrestles, she’s so strong. Thank you for the show, I never miss it.”

His eyes twinkled. I’ve never seen anyone able to
eye-twinkle on cue quite like Nico. I suspected he must have perfected said eye-twinkling in front of a mirror at a young age.

“No, thank
you
. I never get tired of meeting fans. I
love
fans of the show.”

I quietly snorted. It was a scoff-snort. But it must have been loud enough for him to hear
, because his eyes returned to mine as he released Sandra’s hand.

“Do you watch the show, Elizabeth?”

I shook my head, disliked the way he said my name, looked everywhere but at his aggravatingly handsome face; I tried to sound bored instead of irritated. “Nope. Can’t say that I have, what with all the
graduating
I’ve been doing.”

I felt his gaze on me, stud
ying me for a very brief second, really a half second. Then he said something entirely surprising and yet—for Nico—not at all shocking; “Right. Why would you? You’ve already seen everything up close.”

Oh.

My.

God.

I heard Sandra’s small intake of breath at my side.

My eyes widened and met his. Again a spark of triumph
ignited behind his glare.

Nico
was trying to bait me into a fight. He
always
used to do this in high school—the unkind nickname repeated at every opportunity, insults flung down the hall at my back, knocking books and folders out of my hands, introducing me as a boy to new students.

He was just a mean person.
 

Freaking
Niccolò Manganiello.

Nico had
been tormenting me from the moment he put a dead and road-flattened toad down my dress in Sunday school when I was four. Despite our mothers’ close friendship and the time we spent playing, growing up together, my aggravation with him—and therefore avoidance of him—increased yearly.

In kindergarten he cut one of my braids during nap time leaving me with long hair on the left, short hair on the right.

In third grade he gave me what I thought was vanilla pudding, but it turned out to be mayonnaise; of course I didn’t realize it was mayonnaise until after I had a huge spoonful in my mouth, and, of course, I couldn’t spit it out, because we were at his parents’ restaurant for dinner. I still hated mayonnaise with an unholy fire.

In
fifth grade he gave me the nick name Skinny Finney which stuck with me until college.

W
orst of all, in sixth grade he became best friends with Garrett.

And even through all of it,
the baiting when I was a kid and the persecution when I was a teenager, I couldn’t seem to force myself to loath him like he’d apparently despised me.

I was so confused—his outburst at the hospital then later apology, his request to be friends, and now his flirting with Sandra as well as the arrogant and flippant retorts. I had Nico-mood-swing
whiplash.

I clenched my jaw and glanced around the small hallway, over Nico’s shoulder toward the door of the gym. I was
officially flustered. I wanted to scream at him, indulge my instincts, give in to the spiteful verbal sparring match—as was our typical pattern. Instead I clamped my mouth shut.

I was determined to let the old habit die
. I didn’t want to be that person anymore.

My voice was a bit higher pitched than normal as I tried to literally and figuratively avoid the minefield of his last statement.
“Well, Sandra and I are going to head in, so . . .  See you later.”

I stepped to the side, hoped to walk around him
, but he mirrored my movements, effectively caused me to collide into his chest. Nico’s hands lifted to my bare shoulders and he held me in place. It was one of those moments where my body ceased listening to my brain.

My brain said:
Step away from the naughty hottie.

My body said:
. . . I like cookies.

“Wait, where are you sitting?” He dipped his head such that only eight to
six inches of air separated us, “Where’s your table?”

Nothing is more frustrating than being attracted to someone who is a complete jerk
—except for maybe also caring about that person despite continued abuses. I was such an idiot.

I cleared my throat and my eyes—the traitors!—focused on his mouth
. “We’re, uh—”

OhMyGodYouSmellFantastic
.

“—we’re at table ten
, I think.”

“You should sit with me, with us.”

Sandra and I responded at the same time, talked over each other.

Me, shaking my head: “No, no, we’re not supposed to switch tables—”

Sandra, nodding her head: “Yes, we’d love to. What table are you?”

Nico smiled warmly at Sandra. They both pretended like I hadn’t spoken. Matters weren’t helped by his thumb dancing little sweeping caresses over the exposed skin of my shoulder, rendering me mute.

“I’m at table two, right next to the dance floor.”

“Well then, we’ll just see you inside.” Sandra hooked her arm through mine, pulled me out of Nico’s grip and toward the gym. “But first we’re going to go to the ladies room so we can talk about you.”

The sound of Nico’s laughter followed us only as far as the inside of the gym where it was swallowed by loud chatter and dance music.

Sandra leaned close to my ear and semi-shouted. “Where is the bathroom?
Lucy! You have some
‘splaining
to do.”

I frowned—
not at her, at the entire situation—and pointed in the direction of the girls’ locker rooms. She grabbed my hand and maneuvered us through the crowd. My once carefully coiffed waves of blonde tumbled over my shoulders in a messy mass.

No sooner were we
inside did she open her mouth. I clamped my hand over it and with the other raised a finger to my mouth. Her eyes grew large and her eyebrows lifted. I motioned with my head toward the showers, silently asked her to follow.

Once we were tucked within
the last stall in the last row, I closed the curtain then covered my face and breathed out forcefully.

“Please don’t ask
.”

“Oh, girl, I’m gunna ask.” She
cut me off with a calm whisper. “And you’re going to tell me and you’re going to describe every intimate detail—do they shave his chest? Because, on the show, he has no hair on his chest and I think they must because he is Italian. And what about his—”

“Stop
. Please stop.” I shook my head, still in my hands, and started to laugh. The sound was slightly frantic.

Sandra pulled my palms from my face and waited until I met her eyes
. “Why are you so mortified about this? He is h-o-t hot. I would’ve thought you’d get T-shirts made that said ‘Yeah, I hit that.’”

“Oh Sandra.” I smile-frowned
. “It’s so complicated.”

“Um, no it’s not.
It’s simple really. Nico Moretti, or Manganiello or whatever, still has the leg humpies for you—”

I started
laughing and shaking my head again. “No, it’s not like that. He—he’s—”

“No, girl, it is like that. It’s
exactly
like that. I thought he was going to grab you by the hair and drag you away caveman style. Instead he man-handled you, just a little, and it was hot. I bet if we go to his table he’ll—”

“No,
we can’t do that. You don’t understand. Nico was Garrett’s best friend.”

Sandra’s mouth snapped shut
, and she blinked at me. “Wait, what?”

I couldn’t believe
this person was me. I was a grown woman, standing in a shower stall, whispering about high school drama. I didn’t even do this when I
was
in high school.

I stepped back, leaned against the
wall; let my head fall backward, rest on the tile; “Garrett and Nico were best friends.”

“And you were
 what?” Sandra lifted her eyebrows. “And you were the girl that came between them?”

“No. Not at all.
Nico and I—we used to play together when we were kids, like, all the time. Our mothers were best friends and he would tease me
constantly
. But then my mom died the same year Garrett moved to town. The next year, by the time Garrett and Nico became friends, Nico hated me and I didn’t like him much either. He started all kinds of rumors about me when I was in middle school—dumb, kid stuff. He used to follow me down the hall whispering
Skinny Finney
—his nickname for me, by the way, which ended up being adopted by everyone.”