November 7 #4
“Sure.” Bella said and turned to him. “And for you?”
“Do you have chocolate sauce?” he asked.
She nodded.
“I’ll have vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.”
“Coming right up.”
Jasmin waited for her to walk away before she crossed her arms over the table and glared at him. “Can I tell you something?”
“No. I prefer it when you’re not talking.”
She ignored his comment. He honestly hadn’t expected it to deter her. “Have you watched the movie Inside Out?” she asked.
She was going to carry on anyway, so he decided to indulge her. “Yeah.”
“So that movie is obviously fictional, but it’s actually based on a lot of fact. People have emotions, moods and personalities. There are six basic emotions. That movies only shows five. Joy, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust. The missing one is surprise.”
He had no idea where the hell she was going with this, so he just sat back and listened. He really didn’t have much of a choice.
“When something happens, the body triggers a chemical response, which is generally one of those six emotions, and turns it into a feeling.”
She spoke about the release of peptides and adrenalin and whatnot, describing in very accurate detail exactly how those chemical responses work and which part of the brain triggered such responses.
Her home-schooling had certainly paid off because she was incredibly smart.
He was barely paying attention, though. His eyes were following the cute waitress.
“Now, you can’t control the chemical response,” Jasmin continued, “but you can control your reaction to it, and possibly stop it from becoming a feeling. Like, when my gran up and died on me last year, I didn’t even cry.
I haven’t cried in, like, eight years. I’ve learnt how to control those chemical reactions and stop them from turning into feelings, which is why none of your comments bother me, even though they are extremely rude.
” She didn’t even take a second to breathe, just kept on spewing out all this information.
“But, anyway, I digress. So every person has their own way of dealing with those emotions. Some people will cover their eyes during a horror movie, others will love every gory detail. It’s the way they react to fear.
Some people will scream when someone sneaks up on them, some may burst into tears—it’s their reaction to surprise. ”
Bella returned, placing the waffles, ice cream and chocolate sauce in front of them, and even then Jazz didn’t let up. His eyes zoned in on the waitress’s round ass as she walked away.
“Those chemicals make your body turn emotions into feelings and sometimes it’s fleeting, but sometimes it stays long enough to become a mood.
Like a wife trying to call her husband while he’s out with the boys and he doesn’t answer.
She’ll stay angry until he gets home and she can let out her frustration.
Her anger stays long enough to become a mood.
But sometimes it stays so long it becomes part of your personality.
There are some people who are always happy and some people who are always depressed.
It’s their personality. Now, something tells me that your grumpiness is just a mood, but, Kevin, if you’re not careful, it’s going to become an inherent part of your personality. And that would be a shame.”
His eyes immediately met hers as everything she said hit him with clarity. “Wait. Wait. Hang on a second. Did you just tell me all that to reiterate the fact that I’m…grumpy?”
“Yes. I thought maybe if you were consciously aware of it, you could do something about it.”
He didn’t want to do anything about it. He was perfectly happy being miserable all the time.
The whole situation could have been funny.
It could have even been cute, but as she pointed out, he was grumpy, thus it was just irritating.
He wasn’t going to take advice, emotional or otherwise, from someone who probably hadn’t experienced anything of substance in her entire sheltered existence.
With a quick shake of his head, he reached for the chocolate sauce, covering his ice cream until he couldn’t see a spot of white.
“That’s a lot of chocolate sauce,” she said.
“You can never have too much chocolate sauce.”
He said it without thinking. Over the years, so many people had commented on the amount of chocolate sauce he and Perry consumed that now it was a standard response.
It had been their favorite dessert, their favorite anytime meal, really, and eating it without him was both comforting and excruciating at the same time.
“So I saw you checking out Bella,” Jasmin said, wagging her eyebrows at him.
He thought she’d been too engrossed in her biology lesson to notice, but this really wasn’t something he wanted to discuss with her. Remaining silent, he dug into his ice cream.
“I thought you had a girlfriend, but whatever happens on the road trip stays on the road trip. Amiright? Huh?” She wagged her eyebrows at him again. “Huh? I could be your wing-man. Chat her up for you, ask her if she’s single.”
If he had a girlfriend, he certainly wouldn’t be gawking at another woman.
He didn’t know what made her believe he did, but he felt no need to correct her.
He did, however, need her to get that stupid idea out of her head.
Bella was cute, but that didn’t mean he wanted to chat her up. He was merely appreciating the view.
“I don’t need a wing-man,” he stated firmly.
Without asking, she reached over the table, scooped a dollop of his ice cream and smeared it over her waffle. She had absolutely no social etiquette and he had to bite his tongue to not make a comment about it.
“Oh, wow,” she said, taking a bite. “I see why you like the chocolate sauce so much and it tastes amazing with these waffles.” She reached over again and took a bigger spoonful from his bowl. “This has just become my new favorite thing to eat. I love it!”
Bella came back to the table. “Can I get you guys anything else?”
“No, we’re fine,” Jasmin replied with a wide smile. “Bella, do you have five minutes to chat with us? We’re not from around here and we just want to find out a few things.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure. What do you want to know?”
“Well, firstly, is it safe here?”
Bella shrugged flippantly. “I guess. I mean, it’s a city. There’s crime in every city, but I haven’t had any trouble. I walk home every night after my shift and it’s been fine for me.”
“Oh, so you walk home?” Jasmin gave him a smug smile before turning back to Bella. “And you’re a girl, right?”
“You’re a jackass,” Kevin said. He looked up at Bella and noticed the confused expression on her face. “Don’t mind her. She’s just trying to prove a point.”
“What time does your shift end?” Jasmin asked, but it didn’t sound like she was genuinely interested in the answer.
“Midnight.”
“Shame. It sounds like a strenuous job. So, Bella…don’t you think Kevin is super-hot?”
Kevin kicked her shoe under the table to discreetly let her know that he did not need a wing-man.
Bella’s cheeks turned pink and he smiled at her apologetically. “You don’t have to answer that.”
“Well, you are…you are pretty hot.”
Another smug smile was thrown in his direction. “See, Kevin? It’s not just me.”
“Two opinions don’t make it a fact,” he pointed out.
The situation was becoming unbearably uncomfortable and the only person who didn’t feel an ounce of embarrassment was Jasmin. She really didn’t see anything wrong with her behavior.
“Are you single?” Jasmin asked and that’s when he decided he’d had enough.
“Jasmin, we’re leaving.”
Standing up, he handed Bella a few bills to pay for their desserts. He didn’t wait for Jasmin to pull on her jacket. He walked straight out the door and didn’t look back. Her hurried footsteps behind him told him she was running to catch up.
“What is wrong with you?” she shouted. “Here I am trying to help you and you just get up and leave mid-conversation. You’re so rude!”
He stopped dead and turned to face her. “Me? I’m rude?
Was I the one asking a complete stranger personal questions?
Was I the one making inappropriate and embarrassing comments?
No, Jasmin. That was you! I don’t need your help when it comes to women.
We’re not frat brothers. We’re not two buddies having a night out on the town and picking up chicks.
” He turned on his heel and carried on walking to the motel. “You are not my wing-man.”
“Yeah, you’re lucky I’m not,” she said from behind him. “With my big shlong, women wouldn’t even give you a second look. You wouldn’t stand a chance competing against me, Son.”
He stopped again, but didn’t turn around.
Something happened whenever she called him Son.
It softened him, instantly, immediately.
How strange. She could rile him up so quickly and calm him down just as fast. The anger and aggression simply melted away and he couldn’t understand how it happened.
Maybe it was the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
She used a condescending tone, like she was older and wiser, and her penis envy only made it more absurd.
It got him every time and he found himself grinning as she closed the gap between them.
“Oh, wow!” she gasped. “Either that’s another face spasm or…you’re smiling again. Told you, your grumpiness is just a mood.”
He rolled his eyes. “I can’t tell you how many times I think about strangling you.”
“Triple S. It’s understandable. It makes a lot of men aggressive.”
“What’s triple S?”
“Small Shlong Syndrome.”
That actually earned her a small chuckle. Credit needed to be given. No one except Kay had been able to get a smile out of him in three months.
They stopped outside her motel room and he felt like stalling the inevitable for a little longer.
A few minutes ago, he couldn’t wait to get away from her and now he wasn’t ready to say goodnight.
He didn’t want to be alone just yet. As soon as his brain registered the silence, the memories came back, the guilt started eating at him, and he just wanted to feel something else, anything else.
She could do that. In fact, she did it effortlessly.
Whether it was good or bad, she made him feel something other than pain.
“I thought mine was kinda average,” he teased.
“Pffft! Compared to mine, it’s tiny.”
He smiled again. “You have a serious identity crisis.”
“Well, we have a long road ahead of us. Maybe I’ll find myself along the way.”