Chapter 14 #2
“I wasn’t going to suggest that. I know you’re passionate about your job. You’d never call in because your clients would be the ones who suffer.”
“Exactly. It may seem silly to say a dog would suffer if I don’t spay her, but I know that dog’s owners have fixed their schedule to be here today. And my second surgery is a dental cleaning and lipoma excision. For all I know, that dog actually is suffering. I could make a big difference today.”
Jamie yawns. “Any chance I could take a power nap on your couch? I’ve got a workout mid-morning with a few teammates, and a meeting with my agent at lunch. I could use an hour to recharge.”
“Can we both nap for an hour? I didn’t sleep well last night. Or the previous night, honestly,” I admit. Jamie bends to rest his forehead against my shoulder. “If it’s alright, we can nap in my bed. No funny business, though.”
Jamie chuckles. “Absolutely not. There’s one thing you should absolutely know about me, Doc. I don’t mess around when it comes to sleep.”
My phone rings as I’m climbing out of Jamie’s lap, and I point toward the hallway leading to my bedroom. Seeing that it’s Chelsea, I pick up. “Hey. What’s up?”
“Your surgery this morning has been canceled.”
“Oh. Why?” I ask.
“Stomach bug ransacked their house last night. The mom said she doesn’t think she can make it to the clinic without pooping her pants or puking.”
I grimace. “Yuck. Alright. Don’t charge her a cancellation fee. I’ll be in for the second procedure around lunchtime.”
“I figured you’d be thrilled you can take a nap,” Chelsea says with a laugh.
“I’m very thrilled with napping.” Ending the call, I look up to find Jamie watching me with an amused expression. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Your friend even knows how much you like to nap?”
I nod. “I also value sleep over most things. And now I don’t have to be at work until lunchtime.”
“You cool if I grab a change of clothes from my car? I was afraid to leave, so I know I must smell.”
“Of course. Would you like to shower?”
He lets out a long exhale. “A shower sounds perfect.”
“Let me go get my things out of the shower, and then it’s all yours. Just come in when you’re back.” I need to go hide my vibrator, which I usually only use in the shower. Since no one comes into my house besides Chelsea, it’s taken up residence on the side of my tub. I’d prefer he not see that.
Jamie extends a hand to me, pulling me up. “I’ve never looked forward to a nap more.”
Two and a half hours later, I wake up sprawled across Jamie, apparently having no concept of personal space.
Head on his chest and one leg over his pelvis, I try to carefully slide my body off of his, but his arm immediately tightens around me.
That’s when I feel his opposite hand grasping my hair, which is no longer in a messy bun.
Jamie’s body is turned slightly toward me, his nose against my hair, and a large chunk of it is wrapped around his fist. “I’ve never been attracted to hair before, but I’m absolutely obsessed with yours. ”
I can’t help the giddy smile that covers my face as I snuggle deeper into his chest. My hair is almost always in a bun.
My mother forced me to keep it shoulder-length all throughout childhood, and once I was able to control its length, I rarely cut it.
It’s down to my waist, but I obviously have to keep it up at work.
I choose to wear it up whenever I’m around my parents, because it’s easier than fighting all the time about it.
Apparently, according to my mother, respectable women don’t have super long hair.
It seems that I’m uncovering more and more trauma, courtesy of my upbringing, as I get older.
I only recently realized painting my nails anything other than pastel pinks, shades of white, or a ‘classic’ style like a French manicure wasn’t really a sign that I was a whore.
Lipsticks were to be in neutral shades, and definitely never ‘whore red.’ All skirts and shorts were to be longer than the tips of my fingers when my arms were hanging straight, and no heels over two-point-five inches.
Three inch heels were only allowed if I happened to be escorted by a man over six feet tall.
Other than that, I’d be called a whore. A whore, for three inch heels and red lipstick.
It appears my mother’s favorite word for explaining anything about womanhood was the word ‘whore.’
And my mother wonders why I stopped allowing her to play matchmaker. I quickly learned her ideals were virtually interchangeable with those of her friends, which meant any of the men they’d match with me would expect the same thing. No, thank you.
“My mother hates long hair,” I murmur as I trace the letters of his Colorado Coyotes tee shirt.
“And since she hated it, you rebelled,” he muses.
“There wasn’t much I could have power over when I was in college, because I was still living at home part of the year. But I could definitely control the length of my hair.”
“Your parents sound like they’re barrels of fun.”
“Not by a long shot. It might have been nice to have a closer family, but I don’t regret growing up like I did. They paid for my college, even though they hated my major. They put up with some of my more unique extracurricular activities. It could have been so much worse.”
“That’s how I view my parents as well. I know everything they did was out of love for me, but they began living vicariously through me.
They wanted me to go to the same university as they did, and pushed for me to look at the same fraternity my dad was in.
I didn’t even want to be in a fraternity!
So I picked the farthest college I could go to that wanted me for their football team. ”
“That’s how you ended up at Oregon?”
He nods. “They wanted me to stay in Florida. I knew it would mean they’d show up every weekend.
They’d want to tailgate, push me into that fraternity, and hover over everything that I did.
It wasn’t that I wanted independence so I could party or be out of control.
I just wanted to get out from under their thumbs. ”
“Did it work?”
“For the most part, yeah. My dad had an epiphany my freshman year of college, but my mom took much longer to understand. It became a really big sore point between the three of us. My dad cheated on her a lot, and I think she threw herself into raising me as a coping mechanism. It all became too much. So much so, in fact, they ended up getting a divorce. My junior year, my mom showed up in Oregon right before the second game of the year, and told me she was moving there.”
“What?” I gasp, tilting my head up to gaze at him. “I hope she didn’t!”
He shakes his head sadly. “She did. I was in an off-campus apartment, and she slept on the couch for a few weeks. I didn’t have the heart to kick her out.
But then she began showing up at practices, and the coaching staff was pissed.
They encouraged me to kick her out, and if she didn’t leave, they wanted me to file a restraining order against her. ”
“Oh, wow,” I say quietly. “I can’t imagine how hard that must have been for you to think about. Regardless of her actions, she’s your mom. It’s difficult to view a parent-child relationship objectively when you’re one of the participants.”
Jamie is quiet for a moment, twirling a lock of my hair around his finger.
“I think I’m the opposite. It wasn’t difficult for me to comprehend why my mom was struggling.
I’m their only child, and I’d moved three thousand miles away.
She’d been a housewife for my entire childhood, and didn’t know how to remove that aspect of her life.
She had no career aspirations, and didn’t know how to survive without depending on someone else.
She took her dependence on my dad and transferred it to me. ”
I don’t reply. In some ways, our moms are similar.
My mother certainly has no professional skills to speak of, unless you count designing floral centerpieces, setting an extravagant table full of fine china, or convincing rich people to bid on absurd items at a silent auction.
She still won’t tell me who donated the full-size taxidermy black bear, and what stupidly rich person won it.
“My mom had an affair with one of my coaches,” Jamie blurts out suddenly. “Broke up a family. I cut all ties with her after that.”
“When you were in college?”
“Yeah. It was a big story because the wife of my coach was previously an athlete herself, and she wasn’t shy about telling everyone what happened.
I still get tagged occasionally in some text message screenshots.
” His face is devoid of any emotion. “I haven’t spoken to her in close to fifteen years.
I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”
“Do you want to talk to her?” I ask carefully.
He sighs. “No. I spent a lot of time in therapy after college, and it helped me to realize what a toxic person she is. When I told her about my autism diagnosis, because I wasn’t actually diagnosed until I was twenty, she made it about her.
Honestly, I’m surprised my dad didn’t leave years before he finally did.
I think me being away at college forced him to see her for what she truly was, because I wasn’t there as a buffer. ”
“Do you still talk to your dad?”
“Occasionally. He comes out once a year for a home game, and we always have a game somewhere near him, so I usually see him then as well. I’ve talked him into coming out for Christmas once or twice, but he doesn’t like to travel.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I guess.
He has his area that he’s happy in, and he doesn’t enjoy deviating from it. ”
“I’m the same way. I like schedules. Expectations. I know what I want, what I like, and I don’t go off to do things differently. The only thing I do enjoy is trying new food, but even that is within limits.”
“Oh yeah? What are your limits for food?” Jamie asks as he pushes up onto his side. Removing his arm from around me, he props his head on his hand and looks at me.
“I don’t want to see it alive before I eat it.”
“I support this,” he says with an exaggerated shudder. “Did you know when you boil a lobster, it screams?”
“I would scream, too, if you shoved me in boiling water!”
“Valid,” he says with a laugh. “What else?”
“If I associate an animal with any kind of children’s movie, cartoon, or television show, I can’t eat it.”
“Give me an example.”
“Ever seen the movie Babe?”
His mouth drops open in horror. “You don’t eat bacon? What kind of sick and twisted person are you?”
“There’s an entire religion that doesn’t eat bacon, Jamie. Or any pig for that matter. I assure you, I’m surviving just fine without it,” I say with a giggle. “I had a much harder time giving up marshmallows than bacon.”
“Why marshmallows?”
“Gelatin.”
He looks confused. “So?”
“Gelatin is made from pork collagen. There are Vegan marshmallows, but they aren’t the same. I really only miss them in Rice Krispie Treats.”
Jamie grips the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know which thing horrifies me more: you not eating bacon, or the fact that gelatin is actually pig collagen. This is a lot to process on a Monday morning.”
I gasp. “Shit! It’s almost noon! I have to get to work. Didn’t you have a practice or workout this morning?”
I roll over and jump up from the bed. Jamie stretches, his long legs over the edge of my mattress, as his hands touch the headboard. “No, as soon as you fell asleep, I texted my teammates and told them I wouldn’t be there. I needed the sleep too. Besides, you’re much prettier than they are.”
I giggle as I frantically get myself organized and ready for work.
Jamie leaves the bedroom as I get changed, and when I walk into my living room, I find him carefully setting Flash into her wheelchair.
He’s mumbling to himself about the contraption as Flash faithfully licks his face. “There! Got it!”
“You should know that Flash hates just about everyone,” I comment. “She wasn’t even that fond of Chelsea when they first met, but Chelsea just smothered her and wore her down.”
He chuckles as Flash licks him again. “I don’t know Chelsea well, but that sounds about right.”
Jamie looks up at me triumphantly as he attaches the last strap, and Flash gives him an excited bark. Grabbing my bag, I motion for him to walk to the front door. “I have an attached garage, so I go out through the kitchen. I need to lock up after you leave.”
Jamie turns and gives me a shy smile. “Are you busy tomorrow night? I thought maybe I could bring over some dinner, and we could watch a movie or something.”
I nod eagerly. “I’d like that.”
He bends down to apply a soft kiss to my lips. “Good. I’ll call you later, Doc. Bye, Flash.”
After he leaves, I look down at my dog, and I swear she nods at me. “I know. I like him too.”