SWAY (Part 1) (21 page)

29

Pam called to tell me that Justin would be home for winter break earlier than she’d thought and invited me over for dinner. He would be home for ten days before Christmas.

I was excited about getting to spend time with him. I hadn’t talked to him since Thanksgiving.

I’d barely made it to the front porch when Pam swung the door wide open. “Oh Annie, thank God you’re here,” she gasped, and then turned up a glass of red wine until it disappeared.

“What’s wrong? Is Justin okay?” I asked. She looked so freaked out that it scared me.
Pam clutched my arm. Her jaw was clenched so tightly it sounded like the words were being forced to bore through her teeth in order to escape.

“He brought a girl home, Annie.”

“What?” I heard her; I just didn’t want it to be so.

“I don’t like her, this girl,” Pam said, shaking her head. “You have to help me talk some sense into him,” she said, her teeth clinching together again as she guided me toward the living room.

I wasn’t happy he’d brought someone home, either. I’d wanted to have him all to myself for a while. I thought it was too soon to be serious enough about another girl to bring her home. He used to wait until he was ready to commit before introducing me to a girl. This one had to be just awful for Pam to be so upset.

Speaking of Pam, she decided to deliver the evil directly to me. She was nearly shoving the girl in my direction. I was shocked at the sight of her and had to work hard to conceal it. She looked like a 1-900 ad straight off the back pages of a men’s mag
azine—the polar opposite of Eve. I knew exactly why Pam wasn’t thrilled.

The girl
was wearing a truckload of makeup and enormous hoop earrings that were poking through her stick straight bleach blond hair. Her top was tight and she was apparently unable to button it past her waist. The elastic in the cami she wore underneath was stretched to the absolute max, and poorly covered her enormous boobs. Her frame was too small for them to have been that big naturally. I wasn’t looking forward to having to stare at those things spilling over her top during dinner.
Ew
.

Her lips were glossy, her eyelids frosted, her cheeks s
everely blushed, her skin baked from overdoing it in a tanning bed and to top it all off, she was actually wearing clear, plastic stilettos. The kind that legend had it only strippers wore.

I scanned the room for something that I could vomit in, if nece
ssary.

“Denise,” Pam announced. “This is Annie, Justin’s closest friend.” She glanced back and forth between us. “On earth,” she added, winking at me. “I just don’t know what they would do without each ot
her.”

I gave Pam a look to knock it
off. She was seriously overdoing it.

“Hi Denise, it’s nice to meet you,” I lied.

“You, too.” She lied worse.

Denise wasn’t thrilled about me either, but I was sure she’d at least been given advance notice of my existence. It seemed Ju
stin didn’t have a problem warning his girlfriends about me, while I didn’t receive so much as a hint when he was seeing someone.

Justin came toward us with a big smile and I know I lit up when I saw him. Less time had passed since I’d seen him last and my memory of him hadn’t changed. He had shaved, but hadn’t cut his hair, which was good, I thought. I liked it longer. I couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him.

He hugged me and I thought he released me too quickly. I wanted to hang on to him, but didn’t, to keep from embarrassing myself in front of Denise, which should have been extremely difficult since it seemed she wasn’t mortified over arriving for dinner looking like a low rate call girl.

Denise wrapped herself around Justin so tightly that the Jaws of Life wouldn’t have been able to remove her.

“You met my girl?” he asked.

His girl?
Really
. I felt lightheaded, nauseous, but my sickness was beginning to switch to disgust aimed toward him. What was he doing with her? Well, I guess I knew what he was doing with her, which made the thought of her turn my stomach even more. “Ew,” I mumbled, disgusted. I didn’t want Justin doing
that
with
her
.

“What?” he asked. My eyes widened as I realized I’d said it out loud. I hoped they hadn’t made out the word. “Yes, I did.” I acknow
ledged the fact that we’d been introduced, and forced a smile for his benefit, because that was all I could manage to say.

Pam rescued me by asking for my help with something. She dragged me to the kitchen and hastily refilled her wine glass.

“Are they staying here tonight?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she moaned. I stuck my hand out and swiped her glass of wine, taking a long drink.

“Where the hell did she come from?” I griped.

“He met her on campus when he got back after Thanksgi
ving. She lives in Linden,” Pam whispered. Linden was only about an hour away from us.
Way too close
. My posture slumped, my stomach churned. “Ugh, I don’t like it.” He’d spent roughly three weeks with her and had already brought her home.

“Huh,” she growled. “You don’t like it.” She pointed
toward the living room. “That is the scariest thing about having a son. Sometimes they think without the use of their brains, and this is what happens. He’s brought home Ms. December from Penthouse.”

“Yuck,” was all I could say.

“He doesn’t know this yet, but they
are not
sleeping in the same bed in this house.” I high fived Pam. I just hoped they didn’t wait until she was asleep and meet up. The revolting thought caused my nausea to return.

Pam and I drank obscene amounts of wine during dinner. Larry finally cleared the bottles from the table, giving us a not so subtle hint that it was time to slack off.

It was painful watching Pam try to make conversation with Denise, and Justin seemed oblivious to our mutual hatred of her, which was frustrating. I didn’t like the way he was looking at her and I decided I had had enough.

“You know, my dog recently passed away,” I announced. Justin whipped his head in my direction. He knew I hadn’t ever had a dog. I had a goldfish once for about two days and that was
it. “He was my childhood pet. He was such a sweet dog.” I offered up my poutiest face ever. “His name was Barclay,” I sighed. And yes, I totally swiped that from Sesame Street. “Did you have a pet when you were a kid, Denise?”

She looked around as if she was being punked before she answered. “I had an Iguana when I was thirteen.”

My eyes widened, struggling to keep from laughing. “What was his name?” I asked.

“Oodles,” she said reluctantly.

I felt like I was going to lose it. “Oodles is a fantastic name for an Iguana,” I lied.
Who names an Iguana Oodles
?

Justin narrowed his eyes, watching me contemplate how I would ask her the name of the street she grew up on in order to find out her full stripper name, which she probably already had ta
ttooed on her lower back alongside a rose or a cross.

Larry had to excuse himself from the table, faking a cough. He’d obviously picked up on my intention, and let’s
face it, Oodles with any street name would have been hilarious, but I decided to leave it alone. No matter how funny I thought it would be, it wouldn’t be worth making Justin mad, so I kept quiet.

I stared at Justin a couple times hoping to advise him tel
epathically to get rid of Denise. It didn’t work. I was glad when dinner was over. I got up from the table and went out to the backyard. I needed to breathe clean air—air that Denise wasn’t drawing into her plastic body, contaminating, and then heaving back into the room.

I stayed out longer than I should have I guess, because Ju
stin came looking for me.

“What are you doing out here by yourself?” he asked.

I really didn’t know how to tell him the truth; that I was angry and disappointed that he’d chosen to be with a girl like that. So I lied—
sort of
.

“I just needed some air.”

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

I noticed Denise watching us from the living room window, so I dove into Justin’s chest and wrapped my arms around him, mainly because I wanted to, but also because I knew it would annoy her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ve just really missed you.” I started to cry. I think it was the result of my anger and frustration with him, mixed with actually missing him.

“Hey, don’t do that. I hardly get to see you and I don’t want to watch you cry. I want you to be happy. ”

“I am happy, right this minute.”

Justin stroked my hair. “So stop bawling then.”

His tone made me laugh.

“That’s better.”

I leaned back in his arms and looked at him. He wiped the tears from my face and I stared desperately at him for a moment. I did miss him. I hated that he was so far away and I hated this new girl. I wanted her to go away. I didn’t want him leaving me again for someone else—especially someone with a tanning bed addiction and a leopard print purse.

“So?” he asked eagerly.

“So, what?”

“What do you think of Denise?”

My expression instantly soured. I hated having to say this to him, but I had to. “I don’t like Denise.” My lip automatically curled up as her name came out of my mouth.

Justin froze, pausing for a long moment before he r
esponded. “Why not?”

“Because she’s not…you,” I said gently.

He unwrapped my arms from his waist and studied my face, holding my wrists in his hands; his expression a mixture of anger and confusion.

“You spent all of thirty minutes with her. How do you know
she’s not me
?”

“Because I know you, Justin.
You don’t belong with a girl like that.” I jerked my wrists free from his grasp. “And it only took me two seconds to make that determination,” I added.

“What do you expect me to do? Drop her because you don’t think she’s me—
whatever that means
.” His voice was louder now.

“Of course not!”
I pointed at him. “You asked my opinion! And that’s all it is—my opinion. You can do whatever you want with her,” I snapped. “Although I’m sure you already have.”

“Oh,” he moaned. “So, that’s what it is, then,” he barked. “You think badly of her because she’s a girl doing what she wants when your boyfriend did the same thing before he met you—” He abruptly stopped. “No, wait.
I’m sorry, meeting you didn’t stop him. He screwed his prom date, remember?”

I blew out a hard breath. “I’m not going to argue with you about Katie.”

“You’ve never punished him for his behavior. Not even when he deserved it.”

I threw my hands up. “You are not seriously comparing
that
to Ryan, are you?” I pointed toward the house, glaring at him.

“That!—That!” Justin’s eyes widened, his face flushed. He was so angry. “I can’t believe you, Reynolds. You are seriously pissing me off right now.” He paced back and forth in front of me furiou
sly. “You’re judging her based on how she looks.”

“Didn’t you? When you met her, I know you didn’t think, wow that looks like a girl who can carry on one hell of an interes
ting conversation. You thought, that girl looks like a porn star, maybe she acts like one, too,” I broadcast frigidly.

“You’re right.” He glared cruelly at me. “And she does.”

“Ughhhhh,” I groaned, exasperated.

“Well you asked for it. It’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?” I guess I had provoked him into saying that, whether it was true or not. Either way it still repulsed me.

“What the hell are you trying to do to me? I don’t want to think of you with
her
like that!” I screeched, smashing my eyes closed, trying to keep the thought out of my head.

“Why not?”
He threw his hands up. “I have to think of you with
him
like that!”

My head automatically jerked back. What the hell did that mean? We glared at each other for a minute. Then he shook his head and let his arms fall back to his sides. He turned to walk away from me.

Pam came out in time to hear his final words. He swung his body back around, facing mine, angry again. He pointed at me as he spoke, his tone riddled with disgust.

“You, Annie, are such a tremendous judge of character that De
nise has to be perfect for me if you don’t like her. I should probably propose to her right now.”

I was in tears again before he finished speaking. He i
gnored them and disappeared around the corner. He was so riled up I was afraid he might actually propose to Denise just to punish me.