Page 29 of Fifty First Times (Sharing You 0.40)
“You need to say good night, Rene. You have an early appointment at the ophthalmologist tomorrow.” She just can’t let go.
“Just give me a minute, okay?”
There’s a pause. “One minute.” The door closes, but doesn’t latch.
I step back into Rick. “Will I see you tomorrow?”
His smile glows in
the porch light. “And the day after, and the day after.”
I smile back. “Good.”
He kisses me again and I try to remember if anyone else’s kiss has ever reached quite so deep. “ ’Night,” he says when his lips leave mine.
“Call me when you get to your parents’?”
He leans close and I feel his cheek smile against mine. “Phone sex?” he asks low in my ear.
Sparklers ignite in my belly. “Maybe,” I say in my most sultry voice, but then I can’t stop the embarrassed giggle.
He gives me one last peck on the lips, then backs down the walk. “Give me ten.”
“Nine,” I counter.
He turns and jogs to his car. “Eight!” he calls as his car door slams.
Five
IN THE THREE weeks since Rick was home for spring break, my shrink says I’ve made “great gains.” I can’t really explain it, but opening up to Rick started something. It’s like that cliché about getting something off your chest, except this feels like something I needed to get out of my chest. There’s finally room in there for air. I can breathe again.
Rick’s come home every weekend since break. He somehow talked me into dinner with his family tonight. When he suggested I debut my new eye for his parents, I guess I was feeling overconfident. On the phone it didn’t sound so crazy, but now, in real life, I have every last dress I own strewn all over my room in my semi-panic. I finally decide on a simple blue one that I can throw a shrug over to cover the deep scars on my right shoulder and chest. I head to the bathroom and scrounge under the sink for my old makeup bag, but I’ve no sooner got foundation on before I decide it looks stupid, even though I can’t really see it. There’s no point in trying to hide something that can’t be hidden. I’m washing it off when the doorbell rings.
When I turn off the water and blot my face dry, I hear Mom in the family room, giving Rick the third degree.
“. . . still recovering from her procedure,” she’s saying, “so she shouldn’t be out too late.”
“I’ll have her home by ten,” Rick tells her in that voice that could tame the wildest shrew. It tamed me, after all.
I push through the bathroom door. “Stop trying to scare my date away, Mom!” I yell down the hall on my way to my room for my shoulder bag. When I come out a few minutes later, I see Rick in the doorway to the kitchen.
“Hey,” I say.
He turns and whistles through his teeth. “Wow, V.”
But then Mom pushes past him and stands between us. “I was just telling Rick you need to be home at a reasonable hour.”
“Because there’s a real danger of me pulling an all-nighter,” I mutter, annoyed.
“Tone, young lady,” Dad grumbles, emerging from the garage door.
“Hi, Mr. Vargas,” Rick says. He lays a hand on my back, guiding me to the front door. “I’ll take good care of her.”
The door closes behind us and I glare at him. “You too?”
He stops walking. “Me too, what?”
“You think I need to be taken care of?”
