Page 11 of Double Trouble
“What that asshole did was not your fault,” I assure her.
“Yeah,” Penelope scoffed. “But I still feel horrible that I was the one to set you up with him.”
“It’s ok,” I said, biting into the muffin I’d gotten from the coffee shop downstairs. “You didn’t know.”
Penelope’s horrible instincts when it came to men were notorious, probably because she was so focused on having fun that she didn’t bother to look deeper. One time, it had taken her several months to find out that not only did the man she was dating have a wife, but he’d been wearing a wedding band the whole time.
What I’d been thinking allowing her to set me up in the first place was beyond me. I had simply wanted to get her off my back and had caved in a weak moment.
“So, tell me again,” Penelope prompted.
“You were right,” I admitted. “I liked the boxing match. And seeing Jake and Owen like that-”
“Awakened your loins from their slumber?” she finished.
When my incredulous look found Penelope’s, we cracked up.
“Exactly, Grandma Penelope,” I joked. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
“Seriously though,” Penelope continued. “Seeing as there’s two of them and you’re torn about who to choose… mind helping a girl out?”
“What, you mean set you up with one?”
Penelope nodded. “That Miami guy I told you about ended up hooking up with his cousin again.”
“Ew,” I said.
She smiled sadly. “Ew is right. I’m seriously considering getting another cat.”
“Penelope,” I counselled her. “Do you really want to be a stereotype?”
Lately, Penelope’s way of dealing with her romantic upsets was to buy another cat. Right now, she was ‘only’ at six.
“Set me up with the hot twin you don’t want then,” Penelope said petulantly. “Or let’s go to Paris!”
“As overdue as I am for a trip, I don’t have my dad financing them,” I reminded her. “And I am still paying off school. As for the twins, I don’t know who I like yet.”
“But you’re going on a date with Jake, right.? So just invite me and Owen too.”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you at least think about it?” she practically begged.
“Fine, I’ll think about it.”
“Hyacinth,” Viola said sharply, sticking her head into the break room. “Aren’t you due back on the floor?”
“Oh yeah, sorry.” I glanced at the clock, noting that indeed the minute hand was one tick away from the time I should’ve been done.
“Well, chop chop. You’ve had enough time to gossip,” she snipped.
“Cin works harder than anyone here Viola and you know it,” Penelope declared. “So shove it.”
Viola hovered in the doorway, her face working with the impossibility of her dilemma. She couldn’t directly talk back to Penelope, whose father was the hospital’s largest financial donor, but she couldn’t just take being talked back to like that lying down.
Finally, she decided on storming off, while Penelope and I dissolved into giggles.
“You’re terrible,” I told her. “She’s going to schedule you for Saturday nights for weeks.”
“Just let her try,” Penelope said with a wave. “Anyway, she is a bitch to you when you’re the hardest-working one here, it drives me nuts.”
“Thanks,” I said, smiling.
“Now get back to work!” she joked.
The rest of my shift was a blur of patients. Some suturing, some tests, lots of recording. By the time I was finished, I was about ready to collapse in bed, although sleep didn’t come so easily. The question gnawed at me, growing with my sleeplessness: Who to choose – Owen or Jake?
7
Owen
The next day I had off, so I made the most of it. I went out, just me and my camera and Pearl Harbor. It was nice being out there while most people were at work, getting odd angles and unique shots of things that would’ve been way trickier had there been lots of people around. Although I couldn’t stop thinking of Cin.
Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and I called her up.
“Hey you.”
“Hey,” she said, sounding surprised and, was I imagining happy?
“Just been taking pictures and thinking how much better they’d be if you were in them,” I said, nearly groaning out loud at my attempt at a cheesy pickup line.
She laughed. “I’m flattered, but I do have to work.”
“After work, then. We can top everything off with a movie at Cineplex and grab some feed.”
A long pause, and then, as if she were choosing her words carefully: “I’d love to.”
I paused, waiting for the ‘but’. The tone she’d used wasn’t the one you used when you were agreeing to go somewhere.
“I already have a date with Jake.”
“Ah, figures.”
“Maybe tomorrow?”
“Maybe,” I said, “Hang on. I’m just going to put you on hold for a second.”
“Ok.”
I called up Jake. “You have a sparring session at the gym tonight at 6.”
“Yeah, so?”
“So you can’t go out with Cin then.”
Silence, then, “How’d you know?”
“I have my ways.”
“C’mon man, it’s one time.”
