Magnolia Blossoms (11 page)

Finally, I realized that if I stayed in the shadows, I was left alone. Life was better because I wasn’t constantly getting hurt, but over thirty years have passed me by. I’ve missed out on so much because I was scared to stand up to people and say, ‘Yeah, I have buck teeth and I’m flat as a board, but so what!’ No school dances, no first date, no going shopping with the girls…” I suck in a shaky breath. “No slumber parties or
any
parties for that matter.

“Maggie, I had no clue it was this bad. Not to worry. You stay here.” She shifts the pile of clothes to the checkout counter where the cashier begins to ring up the merchandise. Honey summons me with her finger, so I dry the tears from my eyes and meet her at the register. Once we load the bags into the car, Honey drives us to a drug store. “I’ll need about sixty bucks, okay?” she asks.

I hand over the money without question or hesitation. She slams the door of the car once she gets out and gives it a solid kick to make sure the door is latched. Honey is definitely not someone to play around with. I admire her spunk. Maybe if I hang around her long enough, some of it will rub off on me. I can stand to gain some gumption.

She exits with a bag around each wrist and a bottle of wine in each hand. I push her door open for her, and she hands me the loot. “What’s all of this?” I ask.

“The essentials for a slumber party. We’re not going to play around with the kiddie telling-ghost-stories-in-the-dark bullshit. No ma’am. We’re going to fast forward to the high school years when you experiment with makeup, try on different clothes, talk about boys, and steal from your parents’ liquor cabinet.”

“What?”

“Look, you’re not the only person deprived of a childhood. Remember what I was doing at seventeen? I’m taking the night off, and we’re going to act like kids. You’re going to your first slumber party.”

It’s odd that a grown woman should get excitement from such trivial news, but my insides feel energized. A huge smile breaks across my face.

********

Honey stumbles from the kitchen, a soup spoon hanging from the corner of her mouth and a pint of ice cream in hand. She plops onto the sofa, plucks the spoon free, and points it at me. “You’re doing that wrong. Wipe it off and try again,” she semi-slurs.

Seated on the floor beside a coffee table laden with an arsenal of products, I pull back from the lighted mirror to see that I have mascara everywhere BUT on my lashes. Letting out a frustrated sigh, I reach for the cold cream and tissues so I can once again start with a blank canvas. “I don’t understand why this is so hard. You make it look easy.”

“I’ve had lots of practice. Don’t sweat it; you’ll get there.”

“I’m not so sure,” I say, trying to decide which tube to pull from the makeup pile first.

“This one,” Honey says. She leans forward to retrieve a permanent marker from the drawer of the shoddy end table to her left and begins to number the products for me. The spoon is once again hanging from the side of her mouth. She gives it a swirl with her tongue then plops it into the nearly empty tub of ice cream. “There. It’s like paint by number. Start with number one and keep going until you run out of numbers.”

I eye her curiously.

“What?” she asks.

“It’s nothing. I shouldn’t ask. It’s embarrassing and rude…”

“Well, being that I don’t get embarrassed, I think you should ask your question.”

I nervously pick at the label on the blush compact. “That thing you did with the spoon. I’ve seen it before in movies. I was wondering…”

Honey thinks about it for a second before giving me a knowing smile. “You’re curious about sucking dick?”

Still not used to Honey’s candor, I plop my forehead onto the coffee table. “Maybe. I guess. A little bit,” I say, refusing to look her way.

“Well, being that you can’t even look at me while talking about it, I doubt it’s something you’ll be attempting in the near future. Just be firm, in charge, and watch your teeth. Teeth are bad. Other than that, you can practice your swirling technique on suckers, candies—anything. I could give you step by step directions, but I think it’s best we save that for when you become more experienced. Stick with makeup application for now. Don’t want you going into information overload.”

I take the compact marked
2
and begin to apply it to my face. “Have you ever been in love, Honey?”

She’s topping off her wine glass, and as soon as the question escapes my lips, she swigs directly from the bottle. She tosses it over her shoulder, and it lands with a
kathunk
on the vinyl floor. “Yep. Once.” The memory is obviously painful, so I quickly scramble to explain my line of questioning.

“I just heard that sex with someone you love is different from… Well, I was curious to know if it was true.”

She gazes off into the distance. “It is. Very different.” A smile crosses her lips. “But that was a lifetime ago.”

“Will you tell me about it?” I inquire.

“There’s not much to tell. I’d been hooking for a few years. I was at my high dollar prime, so my clients were elite businessmen for the most part. I fell for one, and I fell hard. He promised to take me away from the life. Told me he was in an unhappy marriage and couldn’t wait to get out of it so we could be together.”

“What happened?”

“He was a fucking liar, that’s what happened. It was going to be like one of those romantic movies you see on TV. I was supposed to meet him at the airport for a six o’clock flight to the Bahamas. We were going to stay there for a few weeks to discuss where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do next. I showed; he didn’t. End of story.”

“Do you know what happened to him?”

“Don’t know. Don’t care.”

“Maybe he ran a little late? What if you just missed him?”

She let out an inebriated huff. “I sat in that terminal until six the following evening. That’s when security suggested I leave. I hopped a bus from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and been here ever since.”

“What if he was looking for you? What if he was in an accident and couldn’t make it? What if…”

Honey throws up her hand to stop my line of questioning. “What ifs will only drive you crazy.
If
he wanted to find me, he was in a position that he could have easily done so.
If
he was killed in an accident, then it’s obvious we weren’t meant to be together. I moved on and never looked back.”

I look to the floor.

“Mags, romance is a great notion, but it’s nothing like what you see in the movies. TV and movie people have writers whose sole intention is to wrap up the stories in neat little packages with pretty little bows. The real world is nothing like that. Same goes for the pornos, sweetie. The pizza man isn’t going to deliver a ten inch penis and multiple orgasms. It doesn’t happen like that. They’re meant to be reality escapes, not how-to guides. The sooner you realize that, the better off you’ll be.”

I feel a lump forming in my throat. “For thirty-two years, I’ve relied on the TV for everything, and now you’re telling me that it’s all lies. I don’t think I’ve ever been more terrified of living than I am right now.” My insides swell with panic. “Why am I feeling so intimidated all of sudden? I can’t go out there! I was crazy to think I could do this! I need to plead with Big Daddy to take me back in. I need to go back to my garage apartment! I can’t stay here. I can’t… I can’t... I. Can’t. Breathe,” I gasp.

Honey takes my face between her palms, looks me squarely in the eye, and then rears back to give me a solid slap on the cheek. “Snap out of it. You’re freaking for no good reason. I said life’s not like the movies, not that it isn’t worth living. Damn, girl. Get a grip.”

“You hit me,” I sputter.

“I did, and you’re not babbling like a fool anymore. You’re welcome.”

Rubbing my cheek, I shoot her a look. “I never said thank you.”

She pulls the half empty wine glass she’s chugging from away from her lips to place it on the end table. Red liquid sloshes onto her hand, and she rapidly laps it up before turning her attention back to me. “So you’ll thank me later. Whatever. I think you should lemme fix your face up real nice. Member how perty it was the first day we met? Gorgeous. I’ll show you how to do that. Now pay attention to what I do.”

She slurs her speech; however, I think she’s probably just slightly tipsy. My inebriation scale is obviously
way
off because she bursts into peals of laughter when the mascara wand she’s holding rolls across my eyeball instead of my eyelashes.

“It hurts! It hurts! Oh, my gosh, it hurts so bad!” I scream, covering the injured eye while doing a jig.

“Oh, come over here so I can see, you big baby,” she lisps. I refuse, so she charges at me like a raging bull. Once I land flat on my ass, Honey clumsily straddles me while trying to pry my hand from my eye.

“Get off! Now my back hurts, too. What’s wrong with you?” I squirm as much as I can with Honey on top of me, but I get nowhere.

“Let. Me. See!” I stop resisting at the same time she bears down to pull with all her strength. The end result is Honey, blood trickling from her rapidly swelling and slightly askew nose, out cold on the floor. Honey is making gurgling sounds, and I manage to call for an ambulance. It arrives in less than ten minutes, and of course, Jace is the first person through the door. He finds me sitting across from Honey, my head tucked between my knees as I draw long, slow breaths.

“Did someone call for… Magnolia? What happened? What are you doing here?” he says, dropping to his knee beside the unconscious Honey.

“Big Daddy kicked me out, so I live here now. We were fighting over mascara, and I accidentally knocked her out. Then came the blood. I got woozy, but I didn’t faint this time.”

Jace looked startled. “You knocked her out? Who knew you were such a bad ass? Is that why you’re covering your eye? What were you fighting about?” he inquires while assessing Honey.

“Nothing. It wasn’t like a fight fight; it was an accidental fight.”

Jace blankly stares with those crystal blue eyes of his. “Thanks for clearing that up.”

“You two know each other?” Jace’s partner questions.

“Sort of,” he answers.

I feel compelled to further explain the situation. “She had been drinking, and she wanted to show me how to put on makeup. The mascara got in my eye, and it burned like fire, so I went nuts. She wanted to see my eye, but I wouldn’t let her. She tackled me, pulled on my arm, and knocked herself out.”

Jace looks to his partner. “You take over here?” he asks. His partner nods and finishes strapping Honey to the stretcher while Jace approaches me. “Let me see your eye,” he requests softly. He reaches out to pull my hand from my eye, but like with Honey, I resist.

Jace slowly shakes his head from side to side. “Don’t fight me. I’m not walking out of here with a crooked nose. Relax. I’m not going to hurt you. Let me see, okay.” His voice is so incredibly soothing. My stomach begins to do back flips. I slowly lower my hand, and Jace touches the puffy orbital area with his fingertips.

“Is it bad?” I cautiously inquire.

“Terrible. Half of your eyeball is missing and the other half is painted black.”

“Liar,” I say, giving him a playful shove. I’m amazed by how rock-hard his chest feels against my touch. Trying to divert attention away from my embarrassment, I recover my eye with my hand.

Jace gives one of his famous grins and reaches in his medic bag to pull out some supplies. He gently pads and bandages my eye. In my mind, the moment is sweet and intimate. In reality, it’s probably nothing of the sort. Honey is still out when the guys load her into the back of the ambulance. Jace’s partner climbs in the back with Honey, while Jace insists that I ride up front in the cab with him.

“Are you going to put on the lights?” I excitedly ask while rapidly taking in the myriad of buttons, lights, and equipment littering the dash.

“No,” Jace answers. “I need you to put on your seatbelt.”

Once I’m clicked in, he says some gibberish into the microphone and puts the ambulance into gear. We slowly coast down the deserted street.

“Are you the only medic for this company or something?” I ask. “You always show up.”

“I’m sure it’s mostly coincidence, but I do work more shifts than the others.”

“Why?” I ask.

“I just like picking up extra shifts, I guess.” I can tell from the look on his face that the line of questioning is making him uncomfortable, so I let it drop.

“What about you? Why are you living in the worst part of town with whom I assume is Honey the hooker?”

“I told you. Big Daddy kicked me out. He said the only way to experience life is to go out and live it. I had nowhere else to go.”

“And the charges against you? Any word on a court date?”

“Two days. Big Daddy says the sooner we get this over with the better.”

“Well, Mags, your life is far from boring,” Jace proclaims.

“I’ve never thought of it that way. Unfortunately, it’s not really positive things that are keeping the excitement alive.”