ShameLess (13 page)

“I will. I promise,” I assert, elbowing him back. “Now, get out of here. Thanks again for coming to my aid last night, and nursing my cuts,” I add as we reach the door.

He steps out into the hallway. “See ya later, Renny,” he states, after placing a gentle kiss on my forehead.

Once I shut the door behind Tucker, I eagerly get in the shower, allowing the steam and hot water to cleanse me. I probably stay in a little too long because I look more like a shriveled prune by the time I step out, towel off, and get dressed. I am combing through my hair, as the door swings wide open.

“Hey you!” Jade exclaims.

“Hey,” I reply, still running the wide-tooth comb through some remaining snarls. I turn around to face her, and she stops in her effort to reply. Her mouth is open; her jaw seems to be lying on the floor.

“Oh-Mah-Gawd, Ren! What the fuck happened to you? Were you attacked? Holy shit, you look awful,” she rushes over to me taking a closer look.

I flinch past her attempts of touching my face, squirming my way around her, “Mmm, thanks! I feel awful. Some jackass jumped me last night in the parking lot. It was pouring, and he had me face down on the ground with his knee in my back so I couldn’t see his face. Tucker showed up and saved me.” Through a half-furrowed glare, I spit it all out, but without further explaining who exactly Tucker is.

I try to avoid what I expect and know is coming next. Without fail, Jade immediately starts mothering me. She tends my cuts with a cotton ball soaked in hydrogen peroxide, “Damn, this looks bad.” She rubs Neosporin on each one, “Hold still,” she demands, with every single cotton dab. I just let her, without interrupting or fighting her on it.

Several minutes later she stops. While still holding a cotton swab doused in anti-septic, states, “Wait! Who is Tucker? Is that the hot guy I just passed in the hall? He was here? Who is he? I never heard you mention a ‘Tucker’ before.”

Her eyes beam with eager anticipation. She is casually searching my face for confirmation, but I can also tell she is trying her best to distract me from how badly my face actually does look. Such a combination of nurse, friend, mother – repeat. I know she cares, but also senses my strong reluctance. My entire body language radiates, ‘leave it alone’.

Noticing I’m welcome her attempts to sidetrack, she dramatically exclaims, “It is! Oh, shit! It totally is him, isn’t it? Damn, Ren, you don’t play, girl! And, here I was feeling like a piece of shit for staying with Ian last night, leaving you to drive home alone. Hell, maybe I should get jumped so I can be saved by that fine piece of ass, too!” She is laughing through her failed endeavors of teasing. She quickly adds, “You know I’m joking, right. I’m just trying to make a really bad situation a little lighter. I’d never be serious about something like this. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to help you. I’m really sorry you got attacked.”

I shake my head at her, at first. Then, knowing she really is being sincere, and if it’s one thing I’ve learned about Jade so far, she isn’t serious very often. I begin laughing at her, and with her, completely side stepping her mention of last night. I bluntly switch gears, “So, how was
your
night? How’s Ian?”

She is all over it and is obviously picking up the fact I don’t want to talk about anything related to last night. Thankfully, Jade doesn’t push either. She drops it, and goes into a full-blown detail-by-detail account of her night with Ian, how he had her pressed against the wall, as well as all of the positions they tried. A little TMI, for me, but I pretend being the attentive friend. In truth, the distraction is a welcome necessity even if I’m not interested in hearing, “OMG! He just threw me down and took me right there,” or any of the other related details of how incredible Ian is sexually.

Jade finishes with my cuts, and her in depth story about Ian. She leaps right into, “Oh, and I met this rad girl last night, Debi Mason. She crashed at the house, too. She’s the one I got a ride home with this morning.” As usual, Jade is overly energetic as she breaks out into sharing everything with me about how the two of them met.

“I had to go pee, right before Ian and I went up to his room. FYI: Do not use that nasty ass group bathroom upstairs near the bedrooms! Gross!” She makes a wrinkled up facial expression sticking out her tongue, then goes on, “Anyhoo, there was this drunk ass mo-fo puking his guts out. Ew, it was so fucking nasty! I decided to squeeze-n-hold. So…I’m gripping my legs together, and hopping around. That’s when Debi appeared. She took me to the president’s private bathroom. Turns out, she’s been dating Zak Preston since high school. Get the fuck out, right?! We started talking and are like new BFF’s. I told her about you, and she totally wants to meet you. This is kind of awesome, don’t ’cha think?”

For a second time, I strain very hard to listen. Although part of me is resisting, there is a larger portion more sincerely focused. She is quite the storyteller. Naturally, my curiosity instantly piqued. In fact, as an avid reader, I reason she would make an awesome author.

Every so often, I offer a half-smile, a go-ahead gesture, a simple, “Really?”, or “Wow”, and even sporadically offer a little combination of all it together to express my interest.

“Yeah, she lives in our dorm, upstairs. So, the three of us are going to hang. I can see us being BFF’s. Like for reals, the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ or some shit! Hey, we’re actually going to Starbucks in a few to grab a coffee and study for a couple of hours. Debi is getting her shower now, and I’m grabbing mine, but you should totally come!”

Jade surprises me with the whole “Charlie’s Angels’ comment and I bust out in full laughter. She immediately looks at me, saying, “What? My mom watched it, so that meant I
had
to watch it, too. They kicked some major ass!”

She is laughing with me now. The fact I know perfectly well who the ‘Angels’ are, and that Jade does, too, cracks me up. It’s one more thing we have secretly in common. If she only knew how much more we share, she’d flip the fuck out.

Our chat is flowing so smoothly by this point that I am truly absorbed. Sincerely. I didn’t even realize she started braiding my hair. “Hand me that hairband over there,” she says motioning to the one lying on my nightstand.

I hand it to her realizing we’ve been talking for a few minutes already, and I have yet to answer about her reference to the three of us, or about coffee and studying, so I say, “Yes, they sure did. Love me some ‘Angels’. Hmm, about Starbucks…I don’t know. I seriously don’t want to go out looking like this. People will stare.”

Like a new brightly lit light bulb, her whole face sparkles. Her voice escalates further projecting her enthusiasm, “I have the perfect idea! I’ll have Debi come down and fix you up. I have mad skills, but not like her. Ren, you should see how she puts her make-up on. You’re going to shit! Trust me. She’ll have you looking brand-spanking new, or pert-near.”

She’s off the bed, not giving me the chance to respond, and is already heading toward the door. “I’ll be right back. Hold on…”

Before she exits, I stop her, “Jade, wait. Don’t tell Debi everything, just as little as possible, okay? I would rather not talk about it. I’m still pretty freaked out and unnerved by the whole thing. I just don’t want to get into twenty questions with someone I’m meeting for the first time.”

“You got it, girl. No worries, I got your back.” She darts off to get Debi to work her magic at concealing my attack, closing the door behind her. I have the impression I am right where I need to be.

My phone vibrates with an incoming text.

Unknown:
You will be mine

I stare at my phone, as my hands begin trembling. I’m frozen, unmoving. I drop my phone and start hyperventilating. This makes the fourth one I’ve received. I don’t know who it is or what it means, but after last night, my nerves are frayed. I don’t need this shit! I hear Dr. Bradford’s voice walking me through breathing technique. I close my eyes, taking deep breaths in, and letting each one release slowly. Eventually, I do start feeling slightly more at ease with my breathing, at least. I haven’t told anyone about getting these, and have no plans on doing so. They’ll think I’m crazy for sure. Hell, they really could be a wrong number for all I know. If I told Jade, she’d be too dramatic, no doubt.

Jade reminds me of Elle, and may be exactly what I do need. She seems like Debi, and that reminds me of a time when Elle introduced me to a girl, too. She had just transferred to our school. We were in the fourth grade, and Elle made it a point to befriend the ‘new girl’, Kimi. She insisted I had to do the same. During recess, we were on the playground, and the three of us played on the monkey bars, doing flip after flip until we each had blisters. We became the ‘three amigos’ from that day forward. We remained friends until Kimi’s dad lost his job, which forced them to sell their house, and relocate to Idaho to live with her grandma. We never saw Kimi after that. I would have never known Kimi that day if Elle didn’t encourage it, or force me. I owe it to her now, especially because of the eerie similarities between her and Jade, and the fact Jade is doing the same with me about getting to know Debi. At any rate, Debi had Jade’s back last night, just as Jade has mine, and how Elle used to. At best, maybe we will actually become BFF’s as Jade predicts.

Minutes later, both girls come walking through the door. By now, my nerves are more settled after that text, and Debi has showered. She looks like a runway model. My jaw-drops as I’m dripping with envy. She is gorgeous!
Holy balls!

She is tall and slender, with long wavy blonde hair, only hers is a lighter shade than Jade’s. Her loose curls fall over her shoulders, draping over her chest. She is much taller than Jade, by three or four inches, at least. She has a pair of booty shorts on with a snug fitting red tank top, showing her cleavage, of course, but without looking like a hooker. She has on a wide black belt with a thick silver buckle, and matching black cowboy boots with silver tips at each toe. Her silver bangles, hoop earrings, and silver Gucci bangle watch pull her whole look together. I’ve never seen such long legs or someone that pull off casual elegance. Debi glows a bronze shade of tan. Must be fake, I think, but it surely doesn’t look like it. She walks toward me with the cosmetic caboodle she is holding in her hand. It looks more like a suitcase versus just a bag only occupying make-up.

Jade introduces us, and we exchange our ‘hello’s’ before Debi instructs me to move into the light, which is brightly streaming through our wide dorm window. Jade slides a desk chair over in front of it, “Here, sit.”

I ease into position, and let this girl’s cosmetic charm take shape. I gave up truly caring how I looked or dressed after Elle was no longer here to have fun doing it all with. Also, to some degree, it’s just a natural part of the depression stage of being grief-stricken. My mom told me often that I would eventually move past this stage. I never believed her, until now. There are many things I’m learning, and I have more hope than before. Opening up, being strong, and making new friends is also part of it for me. Caring about my face, hair, and outfits means I am finally moving past it. Why not now? This is the perfect time to start, when my face needs it more than my heart.

Thinking about how my own face looks compared to Debi’s, and the fact I’ve watched her since she first stepped into the room, makes me thoughtlessly spit out, “Wait! OMG! Do you always look like this, like a model?”

I turn glimpsing straight at Debi, extremely curious to hear her answer. I have never seen such a walking fashionista. Elle and I would spend so many hours leafing through fashion magazines, drooling over the models, and trying to look exactly like them from our make-up to our hair and how we’d put together our clothes. She is the epitome of what we would slobber over.

“Only when my dad needs me to, but I guess the habit sticks with you because now I am more conscious of how I look, which I have a love/hate relationship with,” she says, as the color of pink transforms her cheeks, revealing her humility and sincerity.

This makes me like her even more. Another look of being stunned passes between Jade and I. We are friends with a model, really. Debi is getting cooler by the minute.

“What!” Jade interjects as Mariah Carey’s, “
I’m That Chick”
hums through my iPod that she just put on shuffle. Jade spins around, placing her hands on her hips in total shock, “You are that Chick, don’t lie.” We start laughing at the coincidence between the timing of this particular song playing in this exact moment. Now, we both stare patiently at Debi waiting and needing to hear more.

“Guys, it’s no big deal. My parents are divorced. My dad lives in New York, and is a top executive for an Ad agency that works closely with key designers. They do photo shoots for magazine covers, billboards, record covers, book covers, and even promotional stuff for NYC’s fashion week.”

Jade and I are like two little girls waking up Christmas mornings as we continue listening to Debi further explain. At one point, maybe our tongues are wagging. Debi just seems shy about it; modestly acting like ‘no big deal’ truly isn’t one, at all. It might not be to her, but it’s attention-grabbing for us, and leaves us both wanting to hear even more.