Gutsy, p.4
Gutsy, page 4
Hunger pangs streaked through me, impossible to ignore.
The drive was lined with cars more expensive than mine, and I liked good vehicles, so that was saying something. The holiday decorator had outdone herself this year because each blue shutter bracketing the boxy, white-silled windows was outlined in holiday lights, and large green wreaths with red bows hung in the center of each pane. Mum had grown up celebrating Christmas because her family were typical Anglicans, and Dad indulged her whims, which meant every year she had a huge holiday party.
Normally I loved it—yes, please, give me boozed-up men who thought it was a lark to schtup Arjun Baral’s son right under his nose in one of his dark spare bedrooms. The guilt on their faces later when they shook his hand before they left was almost better than getting off.
With the way I was feeling, I couldn’t even imagine playing the flirting game tonight.
Wincing, I rubbed at my stomach and sucked in a breath. I really didn’t want to be here. I trudged toward the front door and checked my phone, but last I’d heard from Noble he was on his way, and there was no reason to wait outside. He’d been here before and wouldn’t be shy about walking in. The fabric of my shirt felt snug and I wriggled to try to move it around. My suit wasn’t fitting right, either. My belt dug into my stomach because I’d spent the last three days gorging on anything in sight, and I hated how uncomfortable I felt in my own skin.
When I got to the front door there was a tasteful sign hung in the middle.
Please Come In
Ugh, if only I could simply go home, but then Mum would worry, and she’d be over at my apartment instead of enjoying her party. I pressed my hands to the sides of my face and swore my cheeks felt chubbier. I closed my eyes against the hunger pangs, although it didn’t help, only seemed to make them more ferocious. Swearing, I snapped my eyes open and forced myself to step inside—before someone else tried to come or go and it was an awkward issue. As I opened the door, a tantalizing, delicious scent hit my nose, carried out with the pleasantly warm air. I entered and took off my trench coat, hanging it on the peg beside the door I’d used half my life. Most other people had used a mobile coatrack the caterers had brought over, which went along the front foyer off to the left.
There was laughter, and I went right to follow it through the living room, where people sat around chatting. I nodded at the folks I knew and tugged at my gray suit coat, which wasn’t comfortable at all. My fingernails snagged on the fabric and I frowned at them—I’d cut them twice in the last two days. I shook my head at the strangeness as I went through into the formal dining room, the appealing tease of something delightful for the senses dragging me forward. There must be some tasty treat in here I was craving. I glanced around, but when I stepped over the threshold to the tables nearly groaning under the weight of all the finger foods, I couldn’t figure out what was calling to me and had my mouth watering, even though I investigated each tray.
Bugger.
Dissatisfied with it all, I grabbed a plate and loaded it up with some of just about everything, then got another one to be sure I didn’t miss whatever was sending that smell teasing through the air. If I could eat whatever was tormenting me, the maddening pangs in my stomach would stop and I could go back to life as normal.
I just knew it.
I retreated with my plates to a corner of the room, realized my issue immediately, and then promptly sat down cross-legged so I could balance one on each knee. The centerpieces on the tables were red-and-white candles in glass bowls, and the firelight flickered nicely, giving everything a happy glow. I sighed, unbuckled my belt to relieve the pressure, and glared at the food. I stuffed my hand into my pocket and held the warm rock that was part of the folk art Pious had dropped. Guilt washed over me, the same as it had been doing every day when I thought about how I’d acted.
Shrugging, I picked up a deviled egg and stuffed it in my mouth. The food tasted okay, certainly not bad, but I already knew whatever that delightful aroma that taunted me was, it certainly wasn’t the egg.
A tinkling laugh nearby had me glancing up—Mum put her hands on her hips and was shaking her head. Her black holiday dress clung to her figure and had white beads on it in snowflake designs. “You look like a little boy. I haven’t seen you do this since you used to sneak into parties when you weren’t old enough.” She hunkered down, smoothing her dress over her knees, and smiled at me. “You’re a bit undignified tonight, son.”
“Hungry,” I said with a shrug.
She beamed. “It’s good to see you eating your dinner instead of drinking it.”
“Oh, I still plan to get pissed. It’s Baral tradition.”
She laughed until she snorted, and I figured she’d already gotten into the ceremonial Christmas sherry. She patted my cheek. “Oh, you. Get out of the corner and go talk to some girls.”
“Mum.”
“Oh, some boys. I’m sorry, love. I really wasn’t thinking. Whatever makes you happy, you know. Are you feeling well? You look a bit peaky.” She tilted her head and swayed a bit, and I thought it was her who would wind up undignified if she kept it up.
“Brilliant, Mum.”
“Good. Happy Christmas, baby boy.” She kissed my cheek, almost fell on me, then tottered off to go talk to one of the neighbors.
I rolled my eyes and glanced around. Dad stood near one of the dessert tables, leaning far too close to one of Mum’s friends, a blonde lady who I thought ran the yoga studio Mum went to. The woman was svelte and dazzling in a short red dress, and Dad touched her shoulder. I thought about going over to tell him off, but it was too much work. He’d cause a scene if he wasn’t careful. Mum would only turn a blind eye to what she couldn’t see right under her nose, and she was fueled by punch and holiday spirits.
I cleaned both plates and felt miserable from overeating, but the tempting scent playfully scampered in the air, and I was still ravenous, or at least, my stomach hadn’t stopped complaining. I was contemplating getting to my feet when familiar yellow sneakers stopped in my line of sight. I glanced up a pair of black jeans until I could smile at Noble. His lips seemed brighter than usual under the chandelier lights, vibrant and nearly red. He held out his hand, and I was only too happy to set aside my plates and allow him to draw me to my feet and into a hug.
“Merry Christmas,” he murmured in my ear, and I felt warm and happy, the way I always did with him. He was one of the few people I knew who was simply friendly with no ulterior motive.
“Where’s Sage?” I turned my face and buried my nose against his neck, taking a deep sniff of him. My gut cramped with the sweet scent drifting from his clean, soft skin. It was so delicious. I felt mildly creepy as I straightened because who went around smelling other people? But he smiled and didn’t seem like he’d noticed or hadn’t minded if he did. I ran my tongue along my teeth, and for a moment I swore they felt sharper.
“Sage had some computer emergency.” A self-deprecating smile flashed across Noble’s face, and he stuffed his “unhelpful hand” into his pocket, something I’d noticed he did when he was embarrassed. “I’m not one-hundred-percent sure what Sage does for a living, you know? It seems complicated. And since he works remotely on his computer, his bosses don’t respect days off. But I’m here, all by my lonesome.” He waved his hand at me. “Is that still okay?”
“What are you nattering on about? Course it is. Can I ask you a question?” My heart raced as his brows furrowed and he nodded.
“Were you cooking before you came here? You smell amazing.” My entire body flushed hot because that sounded like a come-on, but he only laughed.
“Yes! Cookies to take in to Healing Hearts tomorrow—sugar, chocolate chip, those ones with the Reese’s cups stuffed in the middle of them. Uh, I also did peppermint gobs.”
All my irritation settled because the whiff of what he was carrying around from his baking had seemed like it would stop my stomach from growling. “Great.” I rubbed my hands together. “We’re working an eleven-hour shift because apparently I’m the only other person, aside from you, who doesn’t give a rat’s arse about the holidays.”
“Good. You can have some of each, then.” He squinted and touched my wrist. “Are you feeling well?”
Panic had my breath catching. I’d half convinced myself it was my imagination, but first Mum had asked, now him. “Why?”
“You look. . . .” He focused on my face and stepped closer. “Not right.”
“Green?”
His lips parted on a gasp and he nodded. “Yes! That’s it. Not much, but it’s there.”
“Come on.”
“Okay,” he said with a laugh as I grabbed his hand and dragged him after me through the party. He kept up and didn’t question me as we mounted the stairs to the second floor, and I took him to my parents’ room and locked the door after us.
“Are you okay? Are we in here because you need to lie down?” Noble rested the back of his hand on my forehead as if he was checking for a fever, and I brushed him off, and then his eyebrows flew high as I yanked on the front of my shirt and tugged it out of my suit pants. I lifted the material with little ado. My hard abs were. . . still there, but not quite as defined as they had been only days ago. I pinched a tiny bit of fat and winced at the pain. My normally tawny skin was discolored, almost like a healing bruise. “This is much greener than my face, but I think my whole body is changing color. It’s abysmal.”
Noble clutched my arm. “Oh my God. Maybe you should go to the hospital?”
My heart took off at a gallop. “Do you think? I talked myself out of it seven different times. I’d half convinced myself the green was just from banging into something, but I’m not imagining things, am I? My entire complexion’s gone green? Just a tad?”
“Yes.” His blue eye was huge and he shivered. “It is. So, hospital?”
“You think so?”
“People don’t turn green, Journey. We’re not frogs!” He looked ready to shake me but finally broke and cupped my cheek. “What the hell? When did this start?”
“The other night after the bar.”
He stepped back and glanced around as if checking to make sure we hadn’t magically teleported to the moon. When he was done, he fixed his wild gaze on me again. “And you waited till now to tell anyone?”
“Sounds stupid when you say it like that,” I muttered and let go of my shirt. “My stomach only started looking like this in the last couple of hours. I wasn’t sure what to do.”
“We need to go. Right now,” Noble said quietly. “You could be. . . .”
“Anything you’ve imagined, I’ve already thought it twice,” I said dryly. “Will you come with me? I can’t ask Mum and Dad, it’ll ruin their whole night.”
“Sure,” he said faintly. He rushed me and hugged me tight, and I wrapped my arms around him, holding on for dear life. “You don’t think it’s worth telling them?”
“You have no idea how hard Mum works on this party. If I don’t drop into a casket straightaway, she’ll murder me herself.”
After a few moments of contemplation between the two of us, he said, “This seems more like a doctor thing than a mom thing.” As if concluding some debate in his head, he nodded. “When you know what’s going on, you can call them.”
My stomach grumbled loud enough that Noble stood back to scowl at it.
“I’m simply starving all the time.” My face burned in embarrassment.
He raised my shirt again and I let him. “The green is bizarre. Maybe you’re septic or something?”
“No fever. I feel fine, just hungry. It’s an ache.” I rubbed at my traitorous stomach.
“And this has been happening for days?” He leaned closer to my belly and shook his head.
“Yes.”
With a long groan, he released my shirt and tugged on my hand, rushing toward the bedroom door. “Let’s go. If your mom stops us on the way out, we’ll tell her something came up at work.”
“Good man. Three steps ahead. I can always count on you.”
He glanced down at my stomach, and I didn’t like the terror in his eye. “Let’s hurry.”
The hours in the ER were never-ending.
We arrived at twenty past eight, and by midnight Noble and I were slouched together on top of the scratchy white blankets on my hospital bed. Always one to find contentment where he’s at, Noble had unearthed an old mystery novel in the waiting room when we’d first started this mess, and he’d dragged it along with him. He was halfway through the book when the third nurse bearing phlebotomy equipment came in to draw vials of blood from my arm. She gave me a sad smile, as if she thought I was dying, and that had my heart monitor scurrying to keep up with my pulse. About every half hour someone else popped in to ask about or check on something. A white-haired doctor arrived to poke my stomach around two in the morning—that’s it, simply poke it—then he left again.
Each time a new person visited me and didn’t say what they were doing or give any clues to my health, Noble’s frown deepened a smidge, though he kept his eyes on the page of his book. His body tensed against mine, and I figured it was bad that no one asked him to move away from me. Those on their last legs often got their wishes.
Another doctor, an Asian woman with her long hair up in a ponytail, came in. She at least introduced herself as Dr. Hong before she shoved a needle under the skin of my stomach and drew a vial of blood directly from there.
“That hurts,” I mumbled, and she smacked my fingers away as she withdrew the needle and I went to rub at the spot. She covered the tiny hole with a Band-Aid and patted the back of my hand in apology.
“I know, I’m sorry. We’re doing a thorough check of you.” Her smile didn’t seem quite so dire, and I returned it shakily. She left in a hurry.
“What if I have AIDs?” I asked darkly, staring in the direction of the closed door. “I’ve heard that can do funny things to a person.”
Noble shot me a look, startled from his reading by my moroseness. “You’re tested regularly. You don’t have HIV, which you’d need to get AIDs.”
“Cancer?” I whispered.
He rested his head against my shoulder. “I won’t guess with you, but I’ll wait with you.”
Sighing, I laid my head on his. We drifted for a while, slouched together on my small bed. “It seems greener than it did earlier this evening.” I lifted my gown and touched my abs. “But I don’t feel unwell, I’m just—”
“Starving. You’ve said. We’re not guessing,” he reminded me. “I’ll find you a snack from the vending machines. Can Sage come here?”
I snorted. “Why not?”
The night dragged past at the pace of a geriatric snail. Sage arrived bearing coffee sometime before five o’clock in the morning, and I happily took a large cup of steaming black joy and a small bag of doughnuts. None of it satisfied me. The sugar barely registered as a pleasure in my mouth. It was horrid.
“Should you eat and drink all that?” Noble asked as I tipped the doughnut bag up to get the last little flakes of sugar out of it.
“No one told me not to do it, and I want it,” I said simply. “And I don’t give a fuck.”
He sighed but didn’t argue with me.
“Sorry you’re sick. They haven’t found anything?” Sage held out his hand and I shook with him. His blond hair glinted in the overhead lights. The boy swaggered like a much larger man sometimes, and right now was one of those moments. It was almost comical to watch him try to take up twice the space he actually did on the chair next to the bed as he spread his legs, crossed his arms, and slouched in the seat.
“No.” I tugged the piece of art from Pious out of the folds of my blanket where I’d hidden it earlier when I removed it from my pocket. It was peculiar, but it had started to feel like he’d intentionally left the oddity for me. I knew that wasn’t the case, but somehow it felt right, and the thought made my insides glow warmer and the hunger pangs hurt less. I rolled the painted wooden circle around in my fingers, staring at it, and the warmth from the thing pulsed in my hand. As I held the stone, wood, and leather tight, a lonesome pang rang in my chest, and I was startled. It was like the feeling was distant and far away, yet in me.
“Where did you get that?” Sage asked, leaning forward and craning his neck for a better view. I slapped my other hand over the top of my prize, reluctant to share. “It looks like one of the hex signs people put on barns.”
“In Pennsylvania where you’re from?” Noble asked. I wasn’t exactly happy to be losing my warm, comfortable friend as he slipped from the bed and nudged Sage, who stood up so Noble could sit.
Sage plopped onto Noble’s lap with a grumpy frown while he hummed and pinned me in place with a deeply curious gaze. “Where did you get it?”
I shook my head and anger bubbled through me. “It’s mine.”
Sage cuddled back and covered Noble’s good hand where it was wrapped around his middle with both of his. “All right.” His tone was the type I sometimes used with people who were having mental health issues and came in to Healing Hearts, the homeless shelter where I worked around my school schedule. That rankled. “Did the trouble start when you found it?”
Noble cleared his throat. “Sage is, uh, pagan and believes in the power of the universe and stuff. Or something.”
Sage laughed. “Or something. Close enough.”
Tears welled in my eyes and I tried to blink them away. “I like it. It was Pious’s.”
Sage leaned so close to me he almost fell off Noble’s lap. “That guy you jerked around at the bar the other night?”
Noble poked him on the side and glared when Sage turned to look at him.
My heart squeezed. “So what?”
Noble whispered to Sage, who nodded, then said, “I think we should burn it—unless you’ve been eating weird things that would explain your skin and stomach problems?”
