Deep Fried and Pickled (Book One - The Rachael O'Brien Chronicles) (28 page)

I hadn’t brought winter-gear to school and used a pair of socks as hand warmers. Cupping my palm along the rail, I sliced through the mound of flakes like a jigsaw. When I reached the top of the stairs, I clapped the clumps that stuck to my mittened hands. Someone shoved my back, knocking me off balance. A second push launched me down a slope toward the dorm. Someone had powdered me like a pastry, and I’d lost a shoe. My attacker stepped in front of me. Heavy mascara framed crystal blue eyes, and auburn wisps of hair poked out from the neck of her ski mask.

“If ya talk to Clay again, fallin’ down a slope will be the least of your worries.”

I knew this southern snow demon even though I’d never been formally introduced. Rolling onto my knees, I asked, “Who are you? His mother?”

She-Devil unmasked and bored her eyes into mine. “Clay and I are involved, and I don’t need you runnin’ interference. Consider this your warning.” I shivered. What was I? A magnet for the jealous violent type?

Pushing to my feet, I balanced on one foot, and bunny-hopped to my missing shoe. She-Devil hadn’t budged. She stood with her hands on her hips. I pointed my water-stained leather flat at her and slung out fighting words. “Go plug your carrot head in manure.”

She-Devil must have grown up in a house with brothers. Before I finished my verbal comeback she shoved me again, but I didn’t go down without her. My game was on. My Aunt Gert was obsessed with Hulk Hogan, and over time I’d become a fan. I growled and mustered up my inner fight. It didn’t matter that she was six inches taller than I. She-Devil deserved to eat snow, and I wrestled her to make sure that happened.

Hugh slid down the hill in front of Grogan on a cafeteria tray and wiped out on top of us. “Hey y’all, can I play too?” he asked with a grin. I wiggled out from under Hugh and dusted caked clumps off my jeans.

She-Devil shouted, “Get off of me, you lug.”

He rolled off her and stretched a hand. “Can I help you out of those wet clothes.”

She-Devil huffed at Hugh, and a plume of her winter breath snared drifting snowflakes. Picking up her hat, she snarled, “Stay away,” and stormed off.

Hugh pointed to someone sledding on a toilet seat. “Well ain’t that clever? That fellow’s ridin’ with the lid down.”

“Quit admiring snow vehicles.” I smacked Hugh’s thigh with my hand and accidently hit him a low blow.

Hugh tugged his shirttails to shield his privates.

If he’d known the details Macy had told me, he would’ve realized the specifications of his jingly jangles were about as big a secret as a billboard. I was pretty sure I could identify his manliness in a line up.

“She-Devil’s on you like a fly on shit. What’d ya do? Hook-up with her boyfriend?”

The wind whistled, whisking powder off a drift. I held my sock mittens between my knees so I could smooth my hair into a ponytail

“Not yet.”

MIDMORNING THE HOWLING GUSTS gained momentum. En route to the cafeteria, Katie Lee and I dodged blowing snow that swirled in mini-tornados around corridors of locked campus buildings. Sitting at our usual table, I held a warm mug of instant cocoa. “The ice queen appeared from nowhere. I wasn’t even around Clay. I thought university would weed out the demented, power-hungry girl-bashers.” I started to giggle.

Katie Lee pulled an everything-bagel apart and smeared it with cream cheese. “What’s so funny?”

“She-Devil thinks I’ll seduce Clay. Me,” I whispered, “a virgin.”

“Rachael, you don’t need experience to seduce someone.” Taking a bite, she garbled, “You may need a restraining order.”

“I don’t even know her name.”

“Clay must like you, otherwise why would she care?”

“What if Clay’s a player?”

“Do you want to play?”

“I want to be with him, but not if I have to fight a half-roasted nut.”

 Hugh slid next to me on the bench and reached across the table, helping himself to half of Katie Lee’s breakfast. He draped his free arm around me. “What are your plans for the afternoon?”

“Taking a nap. For some reason, I woke up before the sun.”

He squeezed me tight. “Daddy’s here to make things better.”

Katie Lee tsked. “Oh Lord, what do you have planned?”

Hugh tucked blond wisps behind his ear and knuckle-knocked the table twice. “Y’all make yourselves available around two.”

She stopped chewing. “Why?”

He interlocked his hands behind his head. “It’s a surprise, and if I told you, that’d ruin all the fun.”

SNOW CONTINUED TO FALL
,
and the blustery morning pattered into afternoon. Besides a shower, I hadn’t moved from the top bunk until a Southern accent shouted, “Incomin’. O’Brien get some clothes on.”

Katie Lee had disappeared somewhere, and left our door cracked open. “Hugh, this better not become a habit.”

His cowboy boots clunked nearer to me until he parked them next to the loft. He removed his snow hat and held it to his chest. “O’Brien, I’d love nothin’ more than to wake you up every mornin’.”

I knew Hugh had already dined at Macy’s. Desperate virgin or not, I wasn’t open for his business. “I’m fully dressed under my comforter, and I’m not removing any layers, so get your mind out of the gutter.”

Hugh slipped his boots off before climbing onto the dresser. “Damn,” he swore when he peered into my high-rise bed. He clicked his tongue. “You, my dear, get to spend the afternoon with amazing company.”

“If you’re the surprise, I’m going back to sleep.”

Unzipping his jacket, Hugh used magician-like fingers to remove a paper bag from an inside pocket.

“What do you have in there? A rabbit? Some pigeons?”

“Even better.” Hugh pulled out a bottle of dark golden firewater. “Rachael O’Brien, meet a good friend of mine, Jack Daniels.”

“You want to spend the afternoon getting plastered? If this is a ploy to get me naked, forget it.”

“Do you have any better ideas?”

The digital clock flipped. It was three minutes after two. “I’ll get the cups, but I’m not getting naked.”

Hugh took his jacket off and rubbed his shoulder.

“Did you injure yourself on the cafeteria tray?”

“Smartass. If you haven’t had the pleasure yet, Macy’s in a snarly mood. When I knocked, she opened her door and smacked me with her hair dryer. I’m guessing she doesn’t want to play today.”

It wasn’t the way I’d greet someone I had sex with, but I wasn’t as experienced as Macy. I figured she’d change her mind and join us. Seeing she and Hugh around one another would make for a fascinating afternoon theatre production.

Katie Lee and Bridget returned from a vending machine raid for 7Up and Coke. I’d had a rough early morning, and being threatened hadn’t changed my feelings for Clay. Spending an afternoon with Jack Daniels seemed harmless and after a few sips of J.D. and Coke, I forgot to obsess that he hadn’t asked for my phone number and that what could’ve been a moment in the sunflower house wasn’t because of She-Devil. If anything, the early morning snow-encounter with Miss Looney Tune fueled my inner-fight.

It didn’t matter that the mercury was dropping outside. I perched on my loft while Katie Lee, Bridget and Hugh hung out below. When my drink neared the bottom of the twelve-ounce cup, someone on ground level Hugh refilled it. As he handed to me, he whispered, “Rach, I gotta get perspective.”

“About what?”

“Macy,” he said.

“What kind of perspective exactly?”

Katie Lee and Bridget seemed distracted throwing ice cubes out the window at targets below. He lowered his voice. “I might have slept with her.”

“Y’all come over here and see if you can hit anything,” Katie Lee said.

“I killed a dozen squirrels with a compound bow one afternoon over Christmas break, I should be able to peg somethin’ down there. ”

Katie Lee threw him a look of horror. “I’m going to report your ass to animal cruelty. Let them arm the squirrels with bows n’ arrows so they can roast your savory bits in a nutty soufflé.”

Uncontrollable giggles took hold, and I dropped my drink overboard. I didn’t see it splatter, but heard Bridget shout, “O’Brien,” which sent me into waves of hysteria. In my fit, I rolled near the edge of the bed where a gravitational pull swept me in a free fall, and I landed at Bridget’s feet. She hopped back before I crushed her. She looked over me and asked, “Are you alive?”

Like a bird that’s flown into a window, the fall had stunned me. Unable to speak with open eyes, I shut them and sputtered, “Enough with Jack Daniels. I’m over him.”

When I opened them, Hugh sat on a stool to my right, and Clay stood to my left in blue scrubs.

I’D SWUM INTO NEVER-NEVER LAND until a familiar New Yorker’s voice brought me back. “When can she get the fuck out of here?”

Bright lights seared my pupils and ice packs numbed my shoulder. I awoke fully clothed in a bed with railings, and a clipboard rested against my bare foot.

Walls, bedding, and furniture were mauve. The décor reminded me of a hair salon except you didn’t lie in a bed to get a perm and a trim. In a soothing drawl Clay Sorenson told Macy, “Her right shoulder absorbed the impact from the fall. She has an anterior dislocation.”

Maneuvering to sit upright, I pressed onto my bum left shoulder where fireballs played pinball, and I whimpered. I wanted to get back to the dorm, in my own bed so I could slather myself in self-pity.

“Why am I here?”

Hugh tapped his head, as though we were playing charades. He waited ten seconds for me to guess. I gestured defeat. “When you fell out of the loft, we didn’t know how hard you’d knocked your noggin. We brought you to the campus infirmary.”

There weren’t any windows, and I asked, “What time is it?”

Hugh pointed at a clock on the wall. I squinted. It was just past ten. I recalled a still-image of our linoleum floor and another of Bridget’s frozen face, but nothing after that. Embarrassed and groggy I scoffed, “I’m fine. It’s just a bruised shoulder.”

Macy handed me a water. “You weren’t fine. You couldn’t get off the floor.”

Defenseless, I grimaced. My shoulder, frozen on the outside, bubbled like hot lava on the inside. I was mortified by my klutzy mishap and that Clay had witnessed me in a self-induced, comatose state.

Slouched in a chair next to my bed, Hugh tugged at Katie Lee’s polka-dot scarf. She spun as he unraveled it from her neck. “Does she need surgery?”

Clay lowered the bed rail and shook his head. He reached in his pocket, unwrapped a peppermint candy and lodged it in his cheek. “Since she was so—relaxed—the resident nurse and I popped it back into place. With ice packs, ibuprofen and a sling, Rachael can leave when she’s steady on her feet.”

Even with dulled senses and slow reflexes, I felt tingly when I heard Clay’s voice. A musk scent lingered around him and greedily I drank him in through my nose.

A man with a beard peeked his head around the corner. He told Clay, “Alene needs you. 3C.”

Excusing himself, Clay collected his clipboard off my foot and before he turned on his heel, brushed my ankle.

Like an actor in a play, Katie Lee whisked a privacy curtain aside. She’d secured a facemask and donned rubber gloves. Holding metal doctor implements, she arcked her arms and crab-shuffled toward me. “Lay still. I promise you won’t feel a thing.”

“What’s with the mask? And please don’t come near me if you found those gloves in a garbage pail.” Hugh plucked the sharp scissors from Katie Lee’s grip and tucked them in a drawer.

I whispered to Macy, “Why is Clay in scrubs?”

Macy stood next to me and adjusted my ice pack. “He’s in the physical therapy work-study program.” She clucked her tongue. “He’s been taking care of you.”

A chill swept through me. What had I said and done to embarrass myself and ruin my chances of Clay ever finding me attractive? Making air quotes with my fingers, I asked, “What exactly do you mean, ‘taking care?’”

Katie Lee flung herself across the foot of my bed, and Hugh stifled his giggles with her scarf. Hanging her head and feet off opposite ends, she asked, “Anyone hungry? Let’s order pizza.”

“And nachos,” Hugh shouted.

“I tried to encourage Pixie and Dixie to go home,” Macy said, but Dixie wouldn’t hand over the car keys unless I let her stay.”

Katie Lee almost toppled Macy in a bear hug. She blurted, “Classes are cancelled tomorrow.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

Clay stepped back into the room. “The storm has shut down Greensboro. How’s the shoulder?”

“It’s okay,” I lied.

“You need to keep it on ice as much as possible for the next two days. When you’re not icing it, wear a sling. You should have x-rays taken to make sure there’s no fractures. With the snow n’ all, our technician didn’t make it to campus. She should be back tomorrow. I have some paperwork for you to sign. You can go when you feel up to it.”

The potential of my shoulder being fractured wasn’t as large a concern as my appearance. I didn’t need a mirror to confirm that I looked closer to my worst than my best. Running my non-injured hand through my hair, I felt my cheeks warm and I babbled. “I didn’t realize you worked in the infirmary. Will I need physical therapy?”

Eyes down, Clay smiled, concentrating on filling out a form.
Did he think I’d concocted this injury, so I could see him? A painfully ingenious scheme I should have thought of months ago, if I’d known he worked here.

Katie Lee clutched Clay’s arm. “Have you provided adequate medical attention? Have her wounds been cleaned and bandaged?”

Macy gripped an empty plastic pitcher and pretended to guzzle.

If the JD and Coke I drank had affected me the same as Katie Lee, maybe I wouldn’t have been embarrassed by the dufus-intellect she thought she’d acquired.

“Hugh, help me remove Katie Lee, so Clay can have a word with Rach.” A task not easily accomplished, Macy had to negotiate a vending machine visit to convince her to leave.

Clay rested the clipboard under his arm and sat on the edge of the bed. “May I?” he asked adjusting my sling. His hand lingered on my fingers. “You have the hands of an artist.”