Emergency Contact(34)
“What else?” asked Jude warily.
He then started crying about how the same thing had happened with his ex.
His Asian-ex, Penny thought.
“He ordered biscuits and sausage gravy.”
“And?”
“It was gruesome.”
“What was gruesome?”
“Biscuits and gravy. I don’t understand it as a food unit. It’s the most disgusting concept,” she said. “Congealed drippings over globs of flour and butter. How could anyone eat that in public?”
“Wow,” said Jude, staring at her.
Penny stared back at Jude.
“I ask you about a personal trauma and you tell me about the catering?”
Penny nodded.
“You’re bad at this.”
Penny nodded again.
“You need therapy.”
Penny nodded a third time.
“Are you sad?”
She was.
“Yeah.”
“You know you can tell me anything,” said Jude.
Penny regarded her roommate’s big, sorrowful eyes and knew it to be true.
“I’m going to hug you now,” Jude warned.
Penny nodded.
The pressure felt good.
SAM.
Sam stared at himself in the mirror of the medicine cabinet. He was wearing his second nicest button-up, a white dress shirt that he typically saved for weddings or funerals. His first nicest was the Ralph Lauren Lorraine had gotten him two Christmases ago, but he didn’t want to wear it. He didn’t want to remind her of the other memory. How he’d gotten her a bracelet so cheap it turned her wrist green. Sam buttoned the shirt all the way up to the top. Then unbuttoned the top button. And then buttoned it again. He sighed. He looked like a LinkedIn profile pic.
It wasn’t a date or anything. You can’t actually date someone you used to date and vowed to never date again. No way Lorraine would call it a date. Yet when she texted him for dinner upon ignoring his texts, he was nervous. She probably had something awful to tell him.
On the upside, he hadn’t had any panic attacks since the first and he imagined his body was saving up for just such an occasion. Sam pictured himself stumbling in slo-mo through the dining room of Mother’s Italian Restaurant, grabbing tables for support, sending plates of tagliatelle crashing to the floor. He’d ruin Liar’s expensive dress and wouldn’t hear the end of it. Sam wanted to shoot a selfie to Penny for outfit approval except they didn’t do that sort of thing. As if she could sense him thinking about her, Penny texted him.
Should I read Harry Potter from the beginning again?
He took a selfie in the bathroom mirror and sent it to her.
She wrote back:
Um
And then:
So I SHOULD read them or . . .
OK
wait
did you do that on purpose
I need advice
Help me
OK
Take the plea deal!
Ask me something else
my advice RN is en FUEGO
Stop
WAIT so you don’t have a court date?
I’m seeing Lorraine
Penny fell silent. Bubble. Then no bubble.
So he wrote:
It’s not a date
Sam didn’t know why he was explaining himself. After a long moment she responded.
So no bowling or Putt-Putt?
Ice skating
Then karaoke
Waterfall picnic at dusk Very cool
PS hay rides > karaoke
Don’t forget flowers
Carnations!
NO!
A corsage!
Dinner
Just dinner
I want to die
Why die?
Probably have a panic attack
“Calm down”
Ha.
So shirt? Y/N?
Shirt seems desperate
Dress regular
Sooooo . . . orange bell-bottoms
Yah and pink Uggs
Pls delete this foto
NEVER
Send n00dz
Sam took off the shirt and grabbed a black T-shirt. The blue veins coursed along his body like tributaries until they disappeared under the indelible black tattoos that his friends had carved into him. He had sixteen in all. Several crappy stick-and-pokes—crossed arrows, diamonds, snails, hands, and hamsas to ward off evil eyes—and the rest from an artist whose house he’d painted in exchange for twenty hours in his chair.
He stared at his chest, curving his shoulders inward and creating a golf-ball-size divot on his sternum. For a brief period during sophomore year, he’d tried to gain weight, filling gallon plastic jugs of water and using them as dumbbells, hoisting them above his head over and over in front of the mirror. The hopeful determination in his reflection as he stood in his underwear was embarrassing even in memory.
Growing up, the problem wasn’t so much the lack of strength training as it was food. Groceries were scarce and money for school lunches was a non-starter. Brandi Rose, who was not above collecting workmen’s comp on dubious grounds, was somehow too proud to fill out the paperwork for her son’s need-based meals. “We don’t do handouts,” she’d say. By junior year, Sam said to hell with it and forged the paperwork himself.
At first he’d gotten the tattoos to create a diversion from his slight frame but now he no longer hated his body. It was tidy. Contained. Efficient. Though Penny would probably be horrified if she ever did see him with his clothes off. Objectively, his body was alarming.