Gina and Mike (12 page)

“What? What? Tell me.” Sue said, jumping up and down like a kid at an ice-cream truck.

“Tom likes you.”

Sue’s jaw dropped. “Tom, as in the Tom who was just here and went to get us drinks Tom?”

“Yep, that one. So what do you think?”

“Think? I think he’s incredibly sexy but I had no idea he was interested in me.”

“I know. That’s why I’m telling you now. So you can warm up to him. He’s a little on the shy side. He confessed his feelings earlier when we chatted in my car. He told me that he’s liked you since high school but that he never got the chance to ask you out because you always had a boyfriend. I told him now’s his chance.”

“Omigod. Do I look all right? There’s nothing hanging out of my nose or sticking on my teeth, is there?”

Sue smiled so I could see her teeth and leaned toward me so I could check her nose. “You look great. There’s nothing hanging out of your nose and nothing sticking to your teeth.”

“What about this pimple?” Sue pointed to a small bump on her chin. “Is the cover-up still on? Of all the freakin’ days to wake up with a zit on my chin!”

“The pimple looks great.”

“Sure?” Sue asked. “It seemed to grow a lot today. I wanted to pop it.”

“The pimple is perfect,” I told her. “Besides, everyone has a few flaws. It’s what makes us human.”  

Sue lowered her head to her armpits and sniffed. “Good. Deodorant’s still working.”  

****

Mike

“So what do you think of the girls?” Tom asked.

“They’re as gorgeous as ever. You and Gina aren’t a…”

Tom made a stop sign with his hand.  “Oh, no. We just walked in together. We pulled into the parking lot at the same time.  Thinking about asking her out?”

“Not sure she’d go out,” I told him.

“That’s what I think about Sue.”

“You’re interested in Sue?”

“I’ve always been interested in Sue. It’s just that she’s always had a boyfriend. And when she got divorced and I’d see her, I was always too shy to ask her out. She always seems to be hurrying somewhere.”

“That’s Sue.”

“Funny, that’s what Gina said.”

“So Gina knows you like Sue?”

“Kind of spilled my guts to her earlier. Just sort of came out.”

“Well, my guess is that by now Sue knows.”

“That quick?”

I nodded. “They’re not soul sisters for nothing.”

We were at the front of the line. “Two gin and tonics. Make one diet.”

The bartended scanned the bottles. “Sorry, no diet.”

Tom nudged me. “Just get the regular. Gina won’t know the difference.”

“Are you kidding me?” I said. “Gina will know the difference. She’s not someone you can fool. I would never want to be on the other side of the courtroom.”

“One gin and tonic and one Miller Lite draft,” I told the bartender. I turned to Tom. “If she doesn’t want the drink, I’m guessing she’ll go for the beer.”

Tom smirked. “And how confident are you about that?”

“I have zero confidence,” I said. “With Gina, just when you think you have something figured out, she throws you a curve ball. I’ve never been sure why. I always thought that it’s because she could, not because she really wanted to.”  

By the time we got back to Gina and Sue with the drinks, they were decades deep in conversation with Jeremy and his wife, Teresa. 

Jeremy nodded at me. “I wondered when you’d get here. I was afraid you’d change your mind and not come.”

“Well, I’m here,” I said. I held up both drinks to Gina and explained about the diet.

Gina pursed her lips, her eyes drifting from one glass to the other. “Hmm. I think I’ll get a wine.”

The damn curve ball, I thought.

Lynn turned on the microphone and it made a high-pitched squeal that got everyone’s attention.

“I grabbed a table near the dance floor,” Jeremy said. “There’s enough room for all of us.”

We all followed Jeremy to the round table. Sue and Gina sat next to each other. I ended up on the other side of Gina and Tom ended up beside Sue.  I winked at Tom. He and Sue looked good together.

“I want to welcome everyone to our 20
class reunion,” Lynn said.

Woots and applause thundered in the cavernous ballroom, decorated in our school colors, orange and black.

“I can’t believe that we’ve been out of school for 20 years,” Lynn said. “It seems like only yesterday that Eric was luring Mrs. Hoffman into telling stories from her childhood.”

People shouted “Yeah, Eric!” and clapped.

“And it seems like only yesterday Gina and Sue were leading the cheerleading squad,” she continued.

Jeremy, Tom and I whipped our napkins in the air and cheered. Gina and Sue looked at one another and smiled.

“And we can’t forget the time Jeremy, aka Bean, brought vodka to school in a soda bottle and passed out in the bathroom.”

Teresa hit Jeremy. “You did what? If our kids ever did that you’d go berserk!”

“And good old Frank who drove the teachers crazy because he slept through most classes but somehow managed to get A’s.”

Lynn reminisced a few more minutes, telling some stories we’d probably rather forget, and then the meal began.

“That was nice that Maggie said the prayer and Cookie remembered all those who had died,” Gina said. “I knew about Julie and Doug, but I didn’t know about the other two.”

One of our classmates had died of leukemia and the other from a brain aneurysm. He dropped over one morning. His wife found him on the bathroom floor, and he was kept on life support until they could harvest the organs.

Cookie explained that his wife got to meet the man who got her husband’s heart and how much it meant to her to feel it beat again. I don’t think there was a dry eye at our table after that story.

“I wondered why there were pamphlets on organ donation at the sign-in table,” Sue said. 

Sitting beside Gina was ten times tougher than I thought it would be. After all these years, she still turned me on. Damn, my groin ached. I couldn’t believe that she still had this effect on me. I watched her slender fingers reach for her water glass. Her wrist was so tiny I could wrap my thumb and index finger around it and overlap them. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, which I liked. I hated when women wore so much makeup you couldn’t see their skin. I preferred the natural look, like Gina. A touch of eye shadow and mascara emphasized her gorgeous green eyes.  

I smiled when I saw Gina start to eat her salad. Some things never change. She always ordered her salad dressing on the side and dipped her fork into the dressing and then stabbed the lettuce. She said you didn’t use as much salad dressing that way. Me, I’d pour the whole cup over the salad and then mixed it with my fork.

I leaned over to Gina. “Still take the dressing on the side, eh?”

Gina smiled. “There are some things that never change.”

And she dipped her fork into the dressing and stabbed a cherry tomato. I watched as she bit the cherry tomato and sucked it before taking it in her mouth.

Christ. Watching her eat gave me a hard-on. God, I had it bad for this woman.

****

Gina

I was a little nervous when Mike pulled out the chair for me. I mean, it wasn’t like we were a couple or anything. But I guess pulling out the chair doesn’t mean we are a couple, I just wouldn’t want anyone to think we were. I know I’m not making sense, but that’s what he does to me. I get flustered.

I can stand in front of a jury and judge and be confident and cool and commanding. But when it comes to Mike, just being next to him makes me wobbly and weak in the knees. And horny as hell. No guy has ever made me feel the way he does. It’s like my insides are being tickled.

“So, Gina,” Jeremy said. “Sue tells us you’re one hell of a prosecutor.”

I looked at Sue. “I guess I’m not bad.”

“Not bad,” said Sue, her voice rising. “Gina’s being modest. She’s one of the best there is. And she’s also going to make the best mommy.”

I glared at Sue.  She still blabs when she drinks.

Sue put her hand to her lips. “Oops! I wasn’t supposed to say that.”

“Do you have something to tell us?” Jeremy asked. “Does this call for a toast?”

“No,” I said. “I think what Sue meant was that I would like a child. I’m exploring options.”

“Like adoption?” Teresa asked.

“Perhaps.”

“Artificial insemination?” Teresa asked.

“Teresa,” Jeremy said. “I don’t think Gina wants to talk about it.”

“It’s OK. Really. I’ve always wanted to be a mother so, you know, I might just do it a different way than you all have.”

I didn’t even want to look at Mike. My face felt hot so I knew it was probably fire-engine red. I wondered what he was thinking. He had a son. He got to be the dad he always wanted to be. In a way, I guess that made me mad. Stupid, I know. But that’s how I felt.

Sue changed the topic before it went any further. “Hey, did you hear about the new wing they’re building onto the high school? I can’t believe how this area has grown.”

“Yeah,” said Tom, trying to keep the conversation going and away from me and baby talk. “And our taxes keep going up. Unlike some school districts, we have very little industry to support us.”

Thank God the school expansion became the topic of conversation. I excused myself and went to the bathroom. My face felt like it was on fire and I needed to splash some cool water on my cheeks.

I was standing at the sink when Sue walked in. “Me and my big mouth. I’m sorry, Gina. It just came out.”

“Don’t worry about it. It was bound to sooner or later. I just wish it had been later after I was pregnant. What if it doesn’t take?”

Sue hugged me. “It will. You just have to believe. And you’ll be the best mommy ever.”

****

Mike

I choked on my steak when Sue spit out the news about Gina having a baby. It didn’t surprise me that Gina wanted a baby. She always wanted kids. And Gina wasn’t the type of girl who’d let not being married stop her from becoming a mother. When Gina made up her mind to do something, she usually did it. But I wondered about the whole sperm thing. Like how it all worked. Did she get to pick the sperm? Or did she get what she got? I made a mental note to research the process online. I had never thought about it before, but now I was curious.

When we were in high school, we talked about what we thought our lives would be like. If things would have rolled the way we both had planned, our kids would be in junior high by now.  I couldn’t imagine having a newborn at my age. When Lisa and I split, I figured that Jack would be my only kid. He’s a great kid and all that I’ve ever wanted so I’m cool with that. I had thought about having a vasectomy, especially after someone I hooked up with for a while thought she was pregnant. I was so relieved that it turned out to be a false alarm. She broke it off soon afterward. Guess she figured that if she ended up pregnant, she didn’t want it to be to me. I was fine with that. It wasn’t like the sex was great anyway. We were both just lonely.  

When Gina and Sue returned from the bathroom, Gina’s face didn’t look as red.

“Everything OK?” Tom asked.

The girls nodded.

“Here comes dessert,” Jeremy said. “And it looks delicious.”

The waitress set a plate of bananas foster in front of each of us.

Sue licked her lips. “One of my favorites.”

“I don’t even want to know how many calories are in this,” Gina said.

“You look great,” Tom said. “A little bit of ice cream, brown sugar, butter, rum and banana liqueur won’t hurt you at all.”

“It really has all that in it?” Gina asked.

Sue waved her hand. “Oh, who cares? This is one night when we’re not going to worry about our figures. Eat up, girlfriend.”

“Do you remember the time, Mike,” Jeremy laughed, “that you put a banana down your pants and walked up to the Palma-nator. It looked like you had one hell of a hard-on.”

Everyone laughed.

I nodded. “It was one of my finer moments. Especially when she suggested that I should perhaps go to the bathroom and I reached down and pulled out the banana, peeled it and took a bite.”

“Then she sent you to the principal’s office,” Gina said. “I remember that because you were grounded and we couldn’t go out.”

Gina bit her bottom lip. I had forgotten that quirk of hers and how sexy I thought she looked when she did it. I asked her about it once and she had no idea what I was talking about. She never realized that she did it. 

For a few minutes, it seemed like old times. Like we were back in high school, just kids flexing our muscles and ready to take on the world. Not nearly 40-year-olds with mortgages and a slew of bills that come faster than the income to pay them. How does it happen? One day you look in the mirror and you’re a pimply-faced teen with braces and the next day you’re an adult with gray hair, wrinkles and a crown or two. It’s a bitch getting older. My back tells me that every day. I know that I’m not as young as I used to be, but I don’t feel old. I still feel like that pimply 17-year-old who couldn’t put a condom on gracefully if it killed me. Thank God I had Gina. She took care of that.

Chapter 11

Gina

“While you’re finishing your dessert, we have some prizes we’d like to give out,” Lynn announced. “The first one goes to the classmate with the oldest child. And the winner is Karen Hollinger.”

Woots and applause echoed throughout the ballroom. “It just so happens,” Cookie continued, “that Karen also has the youngest child, a 14-month-old. So this prize is for both.”

Karen walked up to get the black bag with orange tissue paper peeking out of the top.

“And the award for the most kids goes to Keith Oberlander. Keith has five kids, two sets of twin girls and a boy.”

The crowd roared.