Pandora to CHICKENS: Cinnamon ice cream.
Kayla to CHICKENS: Bread with crunchy crust, good bread. And butter.
Anna to CHICKENS: I’ve got ghee, it’s like butter only healthier.
Kayla to CHICKENS: Butter.
Victoria to CHICKENS: NO JUDGING, Ms. I’ve got ghee . . . Cheddar cheese spray.
Victoria to CHICKENS: Oooh and that cotton candy crap I like.
Anna to CHICKENS: Sis, cheddar and cotton candy, am I going to be an auntie soon?
Victoria to CHICKENS: Only if I was impregnated by the Holy Spirit.
Anna to CHICKEN: You mean the Holy Spirit of Rock and Roll?
Kayla to CHICKENS: I think it’s my turn to come up with the monthly challenge thing, right?
Pandora to CHICKENS: Yes, Drummergirl, you’re the master of all universe this time. Use your power wisely.
Kayla to CHICKENS: Do something ballsy and report to the group.
Morning you,
Just a heads up for the radio silence today. I’m going to be locked away with fifty other bleary-eyed colleagues, enriching our knowledge on the phenomenon that is Acute Cholecystitis. Living the life!
Later,
“Life’s too short for fake cheese, butter, and people.”
She reports, he was charming and handsome, his arm in an arm sling. He asked her to help him carry the case to his car. He was, of course, the murderer, rapist, psychopath Ted Bundy.
Absorbed in the podcast chatting in my ears, I roam through the aisles, getting stuff for tonight. The girls are coming over to chill later and watch an episode of The Handmaid Tale. I get the cheddar cheese spray for my sister, eyeing it with disgust like the poison in a canister that it is. My basket already contains nuts and cheese, the butter and bread for Kayla, the other variations of toxins for my sister. I grab a few bags of kale chips and move on to get hummus and veggies. I laugh out loud to the gems spilling out of the hilarious duo chatting in my ears about brutal crimes. I’m not twisted. Okay, maybe just a little. True crime fascinates me, and the way it’s delivered in this podcast is pure brilliance.
An older lady who passes by me frowns at my vocal amusement. I’m not sure if she notices the earbuds stuck in my ears. She probably thinks that I’m a bit unhinged laughing to myself in the otherwise boring dairy section. My phone buzzes with an incoming message. I pull it out of my pocket and check the screen.
Pandora to CHICKENS: Reporting balls prowess. I just called Jonathan the Ranger Hottie and asked him out. Monthly challenge is my bitch.
Anna to CHICKENS: Panda bear, I bow to you. I want to hear everything tonight.
Kayla to CHICKENS: Respect.
Victoria to CHICKENS: PANDA! You go girl!
A smile is stretching my lips as I reach for the ice cream Pandora requested for tonight. I’m in my own little bubble when something makes me steer my attention to a profile. I squint at it, searching my mind for the familiar, yet unfamiliar handsome face. It’s like I know it from somewhere but I’m not entirely sure how or from where. I stare at him till he shifts his face to look at something, and that’s when I see the whole face. That’s when I feel like the air is sucked out of me.
Slowly, my eyes drag down his body and the feeling, the tension in my stomach, intensifies at the view of blue scrubs. Not sure what possess me to hide. Maybe the element of surprise. But I hurriedly move on to the produce section where he is in full view, yet I’m hidden. I grab something to hold in my hand, not even sure what, just to look as if I’m doing something and not just staring like a weirdo. My heart is pounding in my chest as I run my hands aimlessly over the object I’m holding. And it hits me, hard. The guy, he looks just like one of the Liam options from the photo. It’s the one that looks a little like a QB with the square jaw, tall and athletic, mischievous, boyish glee in his eyes. But it can’t be. It just can’t be. I mean, what are the chances!
The alleged Liam moves on to a different aisle, disappearing from my line of vision. That’s when I finally get back to my current situation of fondling an anonymous object. I pinch my brows to the disgusted look I’m getting from the older lady who gave me that why-are-you-laughing-to-yourself-weirdo frown earlier. Her unpleased eyes bounce from my face to my busy hands and back. I drop my eyes to where she just zoomed her attention and flinch. To my horror, I find my hands running up and down a sizable banana like I’m in the middle of giving it a memorable sexual experience. I toss it away like a hot yam.
The lady shakes her head in contempt. I can literally see how she just mentally cataloged me as the freak/perv she met today, the one she’ll tell her husband all about over dinner while holding her pearl-necklace and sipping on a chilled glass of imported chardonnay. “You should have seen her, Richard. Young people today, no shame,” she’ll say with a haughty twist of her mouth.
I smile awkwardly, hoping to transmit, “Hey, no need to bother Dick with this, I don’t usually molest innocent fruits.”
I know that this is completely bananas territory but I tilt a little, trying to catch another glance of my object of stalkery. All I get is a wide back and a wide, manly neck. It’s lightly sun-kissed, bordered by closely cropped, light-brown hair. It’s a nice neck. And yeah, I’ve officially lost it. Now I daydream Liam is in retail food stores. No way he lives in the same state, let alone the same town as me. Seriously, what are the chances!
I deliberately stay back, avoiding a closer encounter, not even sure why. But the gut feeling that I’m not altogether insane doesn’t leave me. What-are-the-odds-logic fights back. And then, on an impulse, I pull out my phone and reply to his email from earlier this morning. Opting for casual, I go with,
Good evening, or good tomorrow, or good undefined space of time, not sure when you’re going to see this,
I hope that the acute cholecystitis workshop was as fascinating as it sounded.
So, I know we haven’t done this till now, but . . . and you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to . . . and I promise it’s not out of any psycho stalker tendencies that I might poses . . . which I don’t, by the way. Just out of curiosity, where do you live?
Bye,
A
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
I’m more than a little blown away by what I’m feeling. I don’t really know the guy yet, just the thought of accidentally meeting him colonizes my stomach with a breed of Amazonian butterflies. Insanity.
“So what did Ranger Danny say?” I ask Pandora the moment she steps into my apartment. Victoria, Kayla, and I eye her expectantly.
“Oh hi, Chickens. Nice to see you too. All good?” She throws her purse on the sofa. “Where’s my ice cream?” she says with a wicked smile while snatching a kale chip from my hand. Her face crumbles as she grabs a napkin and spits the contents of her mouth ever so elegantly into the napkin. “Yuck! What was that?”
“Why do you shove stuff into your mouth before asking what it is?” comes from Victoria.