Futures and Frosting (Chocolate Lovers #2)(50)

“Ooooh, I love Playgirl!” Jenny said. “I have a prescription to it. I learned how to deep throat while hanging my head off of the end of the bed last month. You know how in the movie ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ Steve Carell screams out Kelly Clarkson’s name when he’s getting waxed? Drew screamed out Willie Nelson’s name when he came. It was so hot.”

“Oh my God, Jenny. Too much information,” I tell her with a grimace as I cover my mouth with my hand and swallow back a little bit of vomit I burped up at the thought of that moment in time in Jenny and Drew’s bedroom.

“Hey, are you feeling okay? You look a little green,” Liz states as we opened our car doors and step out into the night air.

I take a few deep breaths and will my stomach to calm and not bring up dinner.

“And what the hell was wrong with you tonight drinking pop at Lorenzo’s? That’s like blasphemy,” Liz tells me as she clicks the automatic door lock on her keys and the car horn beeps once. “You’re not pregnant are you?!”

She and Jenny start cackling with laughter as they walk ahead of me to meet up with the guys who stand holding the door to the store open for us.

I trail behind them a few steps, the smile dying from my lips as I start doing calculations in my head. I stop in my tracks a few feet from the front door and stare in horror at Carter.

He gives me a heart-stopping smile and in response, I throw my hand over my mouth and run to the bushes on the edge of the sidewalk, depositing two slices of pizza, two glasses of pop, and my dignity onto the front lawn.





18. Benjamin’s Balls


As we walk up and down the aisles of Adult Mart, I keep a close eye on Claire. She looks better after throwing up her dinner, but I'm still worried. I’ve never seen her sick before, unless you counted hangovers, and it puts me on edge. I hate that she's coming down with the flu and there is nothing I can do to make her feel better.

“This has burnt nut sac written all over it,” Drew yells from the end of the aisle, interrupting me from my thoughts as he holds up a candle that doubles as massage oil when it's melted.

I reach for Claire’s hand and give it a squeeze as we make our way down one aisle, glancing at things as we walk. I watch her carefully out of the corner of my eye, looking for warning signs on her face in case I need to rush her out of the store to defile more shrubbery.

“I’m fine, stop staring at me,” she says without looking at me.

“Sorry, I’m just making sure you aren’t going to throw up on the carpet. Out of all the fluids that are stained on this floor, I’m guessing vomit isn’t one of them.”

“Oh that’s disgusting,” she says with a laugh.

Seeing her smile puts me at ease a little bit. If she can still laugh, she isn’t dying from some horrible, unnamed disease.

Claire suddenly stops and moves in front of me with a serious look on her face.

“You see?” she whispers conspiratorially. “This is why I have never set foot in one of these places,” she states, looking over her shoulder and then back to me. “Look at that creepy, old guy over there in front of the ‘Buy One, Get One Free’ bin. He is about one ‘Shaving Ryan’s Privates’ away from whipping his dick out in the middle of the store and throwing his goo at us like in ‘Silence of the Lambs’,” she complains.

She gives one last nervous look over her shoulder at him and lets go of my hand to go down a different aisle, clearly needing to distance herself from the guy who now has both of his hands in his baggy pants pockets and is jerking them at an alarming speed. The guy obviously hadn’t read the sign hanging above the movies that said, “Please do not jerk off in our store. Thank you!” There is even a smiley face on the sign. It's oddly disturbing, yet comforting all at the same time.

I turn to follow Claire, stopping at a random display and grabbing the first bottle I see and read the back of it to see what it does. I read a few words when the sound of Claire’s whispering brings my head up. I see her talking animatedly to Jenny a few feet away, most likely sharing her views about the DVD section and its inhabitants. I stand there for a few minutes just watching her when she suddenly throws her head back and laughs. It's one of those deep, full belly laughs that is impossible to stifle and it gives me goose bumps hearing it. It feels like someone punched me in the stomach and my heart starts pounding faster.

I love her so f*cking much.

This isn’t a revelation, but all of a sudden in the middle of Adult Mart I feel like nothing else matters but the fact that I love Claire. She is my dream come true, my life, and my everything. Does it really matter if I plan the best proposal in the world and spend weeks trying to come up with just the right words? She isn’t the type of girl who cares about that stuff and I know it. I want everything to be outlandish because it’s what I think is expected, not because it’s what I think will be perfect for her. Asking her to be my wife and to grow old with me – that’s what matters, not the amount of money I spend renting a jumbotron, or the meetings I have with the manager of a restaurant, or the stupid three-page speech I memorize. Waking up every morning next to this woman and tucking my son into bed every night is all that I care about. Claire and Gavin are my whole world, and I don’t want to wait one more second to ask her to make it official in the eyes of God and everyone we know.