Chapter 5 An Unnamed Side Character in a Scorsese Movie #3
She unwrapped her ice cream bar and took a neat bite. “So now we have ice cream. Are you satisfied?”
“Not yet.” His back leaned against the empty counter, his eyes roving her face. Her hand wiped the corners of her mouth for crumbs, only to drop it the instant his lips seemed to twitch with amusement.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he responded, too satisfied for her comfort. “Actually, there was something I wanted to discuss with you. Can we find somewhere to sit? It’s important.”
“Is Sebastian dead? I won’t be your alibi.”
He sighed at the gold-hued sky as if she was the one asking something of him. “Can you stop for, like, two minutes? I have a proposal for you.”
Her skin prickled. “A proposal? That is important. Let me set down my ice cream for this.” She took a large bite, tucked the ice cream bar into its wrapper, and set it on the counter.
His eyes widened and twitched, like an agitated animal. “I was thinking more about our situation…”
He watched her for a moment as though waiting for her to interrupt. When she didn’t—mouth full—he almost looked disappointed.
“And I’ve come to the conclusion that the only solution is for us to get married. To each other.”
Lainey choked on a hunk of frozen Oreo cookie.
And not in a cute cough-cough-then-on-with-her-day kind of choking but a lodged-so-deeply-in-her-windpipe-that-her-loved-ones-flashed-before-her-eyes fight for her life.
“Oh my god,” Elliot said, appropriately urgent, considering the way she was silently dying on a street corner between a bait, tackle, and toys shop and an ice-cream shack painted to look like an igloo.
Part of her always knew it would end this way.
“Are you—do you need an emergency abdominal thrust maneuver? You should know, my Red Cross certification has lapsed.”
If she’d possessed the ability to, she would’ve scoffed. Instead, she nodded.
He positioned himself behind her so he could wrap his arms around her middle with a stiff, firm hold.
“I’m going to press in with the heel of my hand, okay?”
His breath brushed the tip of her earlobe. She couldn’t breathe.
“Okay?” he repeated with greater urgency.
She nodded, the movement inadvertently pressing his mouth into her hair.
He pulled her body into his chest, pressing his hands in and up at the spot just below her ribs. Once, then twice, until a hunk of partially chewed cookie shot out of her mouth and onto the ground.
Coughing, followed by silence.
“You okay?” he asked, spinning her around to face him.
She wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she went with the first thought that popped into her head.
“Did you just propose to me next to the Dairy Cave? There’s an opossum eating a Push Pop ten feet away from us.”
“I’m not proposing proposing,” Elliot explained, a bit more offended by the prospect of genuinely proposing marriage to her than she would’ve liked.
“I was thinking more about what you said on the drive back from Pottery Barn, and though I don’t have the cash to pay you the monthly rent you need to cover your medical expenses, I work for the federal government, and as bleak and soulless as that may be right now, I get great insurance benefits. ”
Lainey coughed again, not yet fully recovered from his Heimlich maneuver. “I get it. You have a job. I’ve dated plenty of men with jobs.” She’d also dated many more men who were “between” employment opportunities, but she didn’t need to get into that with him.
She had insurance, too. It was expensive and, due to corporate greed, somewhat useless, but she had it.
If she wanted to marry a man who didn’t like her just because he had a different but equally useless health-care plan, she’d do what sensible women did and enter into a lavender marriage with a gay grad assistant who had an expiring student visa.
“And I called my provider, and the migraine medication you got the other day—the eye-wateringly expensive one—is covered. Thirty dollars a month.”
Now that had Lainey’s attention. She’d gone down enough internet rabbit holes to know that his was clearly a unicorn insurance plan. It would be at least another eighteen months before generic versions could force the price of the medication down anywhere close to that.
But she couldn’t marry Elliot, right? The notion was ridiculous. “I can’t marry you. I barely even like you.”
The shrinking daylight glowed against the lines of his face as it melted from serious to coy. “Oh, I think you like me plenty. You liked me enough to give me your number.” His smile was so annoying. And honestly kind of hot, which thankfully looped it back around to annoying.
“You were soaking wet in a gas station parking lot and hitting on your rideshare driver. That was basically a Make-A-Wish.”
He raised a challenging brow. “It wouldn’t be about liking me. It would be an arrangement. A mutually beneficial one.”
“I’m sure.” She let out an icy laugh that seemed to crack him down the center.
She picked up her half-eaten ice cream and tossed it into a nearby trash can.
“I have to meet Bree and walk her back to my car—I’m her ride—but this has been…
eventful.” She moved in the direction of the dimly lit coffee shop.
Elliot called out after her through cupped hands. “Did you make that pregnant woman climb into your car through the driver’s-side door?”
“She likes it!” Lainey wheeled around and walked backward without breaking pace. “It’s prenatal yoga in the wild. Very flexible, very Zen. Even you have to admit that if both doors were operational, that car would be chic as hell.”
“But both doors aren’t operational. Are they?” He tilted his head and stretched his lips into a smirk.
“Our ice creams were only ten dollars, by the way. I pocketed the twenty.” She spun away from him and doubled her strides in the direction of the coffee shop, eager to have the last word.
“I know. I saw you do it,” he shouted at her backside. “You should really work on your palming technique.”
“Spoken like a man whose childhood best friend was his magic set.” She lifted her hand in a demure little wave, refusing to turn her head even as his glare seared the back of her neck.
“But best of luck on your whole ‘marriage’ thing! I really hope you find someone willing to take you up on that. I don’t think I’ll ever be that desperate. ”
And the thing was, when she said it, she really thought she meant it.