Chapter 14
14
Hayden
senior year
I hover over Natalia as she holds the scalpel over the pinned down frog in the metal tray. I’m seconds away from gagging with the pungent scent of formalin filling my nostrils when Natalia slices into the grayish skin of the frog’s belly. As soon as her scalpel lifts, she smiles at me proudly.
“Did you name it?” I ask, swallowing the saliva pooled in the inside of my cheeks.
Her smile drops to a frown. “We were supposed to name it?”
I nod. “Or else it’s bad luck.” I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ll say anything to put off our disgusting little lab assignment for as long as possible.
“How about Frogothy?” she says with a suppressed giggle.
“Frogothy?”
“Yeah.” She shrugs. “Like Timothy, but with Frog.”
I laugh. “Or Frogathan?”
She snorts loudly. The back of her hand comes up to cover her mouth as her eyes twinkle with laughter. A couple of heads turn our way and when I look up, I see Alex Spencer smiling in our direction with his eyes focused on Natalia. I nod in his direction, to which he nods back before cutting into his own frog.
“I think Spencer’s checking you out,” I whisper low to Natalia’s ear as she uses forceps to pull back the frog’s skin. I stop another gag that forces its way onto the back of my tongue.
She looks back to where Alex is sitting, and his smile widens when they meet eyes. She looks at me once again before ducking her head closer to examine the frog.
“Not interested, I see.”
Her face deadpans. “How about helping me with this surgery instead of digging into something that isn’t any of your business?”
“I think it’s considered more of an autopsy at this point.”
She rolls her eyes as she shoves the forceps into my hand.
present
“Hayden!”
I walk into my apartment with the lingering thoughts of Natalia and apple picking in my mind, greeted by the sound of my name. When I look, I find Ashton Park sitting comfortably on my couch. He stands, walking to greet me with open arms and a rough hug.
“Carly finally gave you a break from all the wedding planning?” I tease as I pull away.
Ashton, Dexter, and I met during our first year at Penn State. While I stayed in contact through the occasional Skype call and emails from different time zones and cities, Dexter and Ashton remained close all throughout college. Ashton and his fiancée, Carly, are getting married in a couple of weeks. The wedding and all the tedious details that involve it are consuming every minute of his life, making him eager to get away as much as he can.
“He had to make a break for it when Carly started making centerpieces,” Dexter jokes, rounding the couch from the kitchen with an unopened bottle of beer in his hand.
Ashton shakes his head, picking up his own bottle off the coffee table. “If you two ever decide to get married, suggest Vegas right off the bat. Just make it easy and elope.”
“Aw, come on,” I offer. “It can’t be that bad.”
“Carly lectured me for an hour last week because I couldn’t tell the difference between roses and peonies.”
Dexter guffaws, his head thrown back against the couch as Ashton glares at him. “It’s not funny!” he defends. “I finally gave in and told her to get whatever flowers she wanted. Roses, peonies, the whole damn florist. Whatever she wants so she can have her dream wedding.”
I smirk.
“I have to admit,” Ashton adds. “She’s doing a pretty good job. If I did those centerpieces, it would look like I made them with my feet.”
“So what brings you to this side of the bridge? I thought the slums of Brooklyn were below your tax bracket,” I ask, poking fun of the fact that he used to be Dexter’s old roommate in this same apartment until he traded it all in for his fancy Upper East Side penthouse .
He smirks. “Carly’s parents are in town for the weekend, and I needed to get out of the house for a bit. I told her I had a wedding errand to run.”
“And she bought it?”
“What are you talking about?” Ashton asks teasingly. “I’m here on official wedding business.”
“Huh?” I ask, confused.
“You two never RSVP’d.”
Dexter rolls his eyes. “Who RSVPs nowadays?”
“Literally everyone except you two,” he deadpans. “You guys are going to be there, right?”
“Of course,” Dexter and I answer in unison.
Ashton nods, draining the rest of his beer. “Oh,” he says, turning to me, “Jacky’s been asking about you.”
“Ugh,” I groan lightly. I hear Dexter snicker from his seat on the couch.
Jacky is a friend of Carly’s. She’s also a member of the wedding party that I met during a Fourth of July gathering Carly and Ashton had at their penthouse rooftop. We hit it off after a round of beer pong and when I walked her home at the end of the night, she invited me in. Before we moved on to the actual hooking-up stage of the night, I explained to her that I wasn’t looking for anything serious. To which she said the word “same” before continuing to remove the rest of my clothes. But apparently, all of that changed when morning came, and she asked if I ever thought about having kids and my opinion on destination weddings. I’ve been avoiding her since.
“I thought you liked her,” Ashton says. “What happened?”
I shrug my shoulders. “It wasn’t supposed to be anything more than a hook-up. I told her that.”
“I guess she got a taste of the appetizer and didn’t get her fill,” Dexter teases. “She wanted the whole Hayden main course.”
I cringe. “You sound like a perv when you talk about sex in metaphors. ”
Ashton laughs. “Well, she asked if you were going to be at the wedding…and if you were bringing a date.”
“You know, she’s going to be all over you if you show up alone,” Dexter adds.
I haven’t even thought of bringing a date, or my dilemma with Jacky.
“I guess I’ll bring a date,” I say with a defeated sigh.
“I don’t mean to find joy in your misery, but this is going to be quite entertaining,” Dexter says through an evil grin.
Hours later, after Ashton’s time with us ran out and he had to go back home to Carly, I settle into my room, ready to go to bed. As I pull the sheets back, my phone pings on my nightstand.
It’s Caitlyn. Her number pops up on my screen with a quick hey bubble under the string of previous text messages. I can answer with a mimicking hey which will most likely result in another night of meaningless sex and the empty feeling of loneliness that Natalia was so apt to describe. Or…but that’s the thing. There is no or. There’s only Caitlyn. Or Jessica or Whitney. Or whichever woman, age ranging from twenty-one to thirty-five within a fifteen-mile radius, happens to match with me at the same time I match with her.
I don’t answer Caitlyn. Or go on to Cupid’s Bet, scrolling through messages from various women I’ve matched with in the past. Instead, I call Natalia, already missing the sound of her voice.
“Hey, Marshall,” she answers. “Miss me already?”
“Something like that.” I chuckle. “I was actually thinking about what I said,” I say and stay silent .
“About?” she asks when I don’t elaborate.
“You know.” I clear my throat. “About calling me when you’re lonely.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” I answer, my voice low. “And I meant it when I said I would do the same. If you’re okay with it.”
“Of course, Hayden,” she says. Her voice sounds so welcoming. So comforting that I can’t even feel bad about taking advantage of this offer I laid on the table, knowing that it’s a thousand times better than texting Caitlyn back.
“Okay…” My voice trails off, sounding a bit unsure.
“Okay.”
We stay on the line, remaining quiet and not giving any indication of wanting to hang up.
“Are you…feeling lonely right now?” she finally asks.
“A little.”
“Okay then,” she answers, “tell me your deepest darkest secret.”
“Whoa, I thought we would warm up to that kind of stuff. Maybe start with how you take your coffee,” I joke.
“Or if I say cara-mel or car-mul?”
“It’s obviously car-mul.”
“In what universe?”
“Everyone’s!”
And we stay on the phone for two hours before I realize that I don’t feel so lonely anymore.