I looked up at the clock on the wall. It was seven. Time for me to jet.
"Well, I should be going," I told Jesse, who looked at me with the saddest sad face I have ever seen.
"I thought we were going to dinner?" he asked in that sexy, deep voice.
"I thought you had to work," I said, and tried not to sound so pleading.
"Not until nine," he said quietly.
I groaned inwardly. Sometimes I hate love. "Well, I'll stay for fifteen more minutes. Then I have to go home; I promised my mom I'd come to dinner." I paused, then added, "I would have asked you to come if I knew you didn't have to work until nine."
He smiled his breath taking smiled. "That's alright, Susannah. We can go to eat tomorrow."
I reached out and kissed his cheek, then found his lips.
Maybe I should stop here and explain, and save you the details of this part of our evening.
I'm still the same old Suze, only eight years older and a half-cup size bigger. And Jesse is still the same old Jesse, eight years older and...no bigger anywhere, I guess. Not that I know, but I'll go into that later.
So what all have you missed? Nothing really. I'm out of high school and in my last year of nursing school. And sometimes I do wonder if I picked the right job. I mean, people do annoy the crap out of me most of the time. But hey, I get to work with Jesse. That makes up for a lot.
Jesse, now a resident doctor here in Carmel, with only a few more years until he is a MD, works night shifts three times a week and makes enough money for the rent on his little apartment, his food, some of his clothes (since I do most of his shopping), and a savings account. And while three nights a week might not seem like much, I saw his pay check once and man, was I ever wrong. In fact, I suspect he makes just enough for a down payment on a two bedroom house and oh, say, the engagement ring I saw on the Tiffany's website last week. But whatever. It's his money.
Me? I have no money. I know, it's sad. And I still live at home, which is sadder.
But I mean come on! My mom is paying for my food, board, clothes...everything I would be paying for if I was out there on my own. Besides, I'm not even home most of the time. I'm with Jesse.
And it's not like I haven't tried to move in with him. But no, no, no, Jesse is a fanatic about morals and "waiting until we're married" and all that crap. It sucks. All my friends have done it! And I'm the only virgin in the house, too. But he just can't see that.
So now that you're in the know, let's continue.
Jesse and I went on kissing for a while, and when I pulled away enough to make out the hands on the clock I thought only twelve, then, twelve?, then realized I was looking at it from upside down on the floor. Oops. It was seven-thirty. Crap.
"Uh, Jesse." I really hated to stop his wonderful biting on my neck, but I kind of had to be somewhere.
"Querida," he breathed, then went back to his biting.
"I, uh, got to go."
He looked up at the clock and sighed. "I guess you do," he said, and got off me. "Would you like me to take you home?"
"Um, no, I'm fine. I've got my mom's car." That's another thing: no car. But I have a very good idea from the history tab on my mom's computer that that might change this Christmas.
"Alright, querida," he whispered, and pulled me up beside him to give me one more awesome kiss. "Call me tomorrow."
"I will," I panted, on account of that great good-bye kiss, and made my way outside to my mom's car.
Parked beside my mom's car was Jesse's car: a 2000 black BMW. Seriously. So what if it was a gift from some rich old dead lady who we helped move on to her place...which I can only think of one place an old bag like her could go. It still wasn't fair. I mean, I was the one who called the old lady's son in the first place to tell him she had kick the bucket. All Jesse did was open a storage closet on whatever floor he had been working that night and, after hearing her sap story, told her were to find me. I should be the one with the BMW, not him.
But at least I get free rides.
I got in my mom's car and pulled onto the street the opposite way of my house. Yeah, I lied. So what? I would take care of my little problem, stop by Taco Bell, and be home by eight-thirty. Piece of cake, or so I thought. Man, was I ever wrong.
It was super cold when I got to the old house that my little problem had been hanging around, and I had to dig through the trunk for a jacket. But I only saw one of mine, a Juicy Couture sweat jacket. Not only was it too thin, I had just spend ninety dollars on it and was not about to have it messed up. So I dug further, and found an old sweatshirt.
Just do it! it said, only it didn't mean in the Nike way, since it was under a very nasty picture of two stick people. I smelled it and sighed. My stepbrothers were so gross.
Better than freezing though, I guess.
My little problem was waiting (for me, no doubt) in the old metal swing that hung from a tree limb in the front yard. She looked up at me with piercing blue eyes, then stood up and came over to me.
She was a lot taller than me, and under her basketball sweatshirt was long, strong arms. Too bad the sport she had lived for had killed her.
"You know what you have to do," I told her, trying to keep my voice down so her family inside wouldn't wake up and she some weird girl in a provocative sweatshirt talking to the wind.
"What?" she asked, not bothering to keep hushed like me. Not that she needed to, or anything. "Put the pills out for her to see? Why can't she just think it was a heart attack? Those kinds of things run in our family."
"Because if she doesn't find out, her thinking she pushed you to death is going to keep you here forever. Even after she's gone. Don't you want to at least get the chance to see her again, maybe?"
She kicked at the dirt with her basketball sneakers. "But she will hate me."
"You're dead! It's not like you're going to get grounded or anything!" Oops. That did it.
She glared at me as the wind picked up, blowing some hair loose from her ponytail. I saw tears stream out of her eyes, then the limb that held the swing, which was now shaking frantically, broke and landed with a loud boom! and pieces of it went flying. I ducked the biggest, but felt the biting pain of a sharp-edged chunk hitting me in the arm.
And to my surprise, the ghost-girl yelled, "Fine! I'll do it!", and disappeared.
I sighed. That's ghosts for you.
Looking down at my arm for the first time, I noticed a big rip in the sleeve and that the black jacket was kind of turning darker...I pulled up the sleeve and saw the wood had cut the important looking vein in the crook of my arm. I sighed. Fantastic. Another trip to the emergency room.
And then I groaned. Jesse was working tonight. Maybe he wouldn't be in the emergency room, though. God, I hoped not.
It took me forever to make it to the hospital, and even longer to find a parking space. The whole time I kept the sweatshirt wrapped around my arm (which was probably really unsanitary) and tried to remember all the bones of the face for my quiz the next morning in Anatomy.
I finally found a parking place and went to put my name down with the front desk. And then I waited. And waited.
But not for too long. Because the next time I looked up to see the clock I saw Jesse coming around the corner, and the expression on his face told me I'd better not go anywhere.
He came over and glared at me a minute before he leaned down to looked under the jacket.
While he looked, I took a deep whiff of his hair. It smelled so good. And he looked so hot in his black scrubs with the white shirt underneath. God, I wanted him!
But instead of taking me to a closet to make out like in my fantasy, he instead took me into the emergency room and had me sit on a bed while he got out some stuff. I tried to ignore the needle and metal thread he had.
"So," I said, in a truly conversational voice, "how has your evening been?"
He looked up at me, then back at the stitches he was carefully sewing into my forearm.
"You can't just say nothing, Jesse," I told him. And he did say something. Only it was in Spanish. "I'm sorry," I mused, but that didn't help.
Once he was done he wrapped my stitches up tight and stood up.
"That's all? You're done?" I asked.
"Not at all," he said quietly, and, after holding out the sweatshirt to read it, threw it in the trash. "I still have to call your mother."
"My mom!? Why? I can drive myself." Which was a lie, seeing at how I couldn't even bend my arm past 90 degrees. But whatever.
"No, you cannot," he told me sternly. But I guess my pout kind of worked, since his face softened and he sighed. "I guess I could take you on my break."
"Yeah! Break. That sounds good."
He looked at the clock and sighed again. "I have fifteen more minutes. Go sit in that chair and don't move. Understand, querida?"
"Yeah, yeah, of course. Won't move an inch."
He looked at me for a few more seconds and walked off, saying some more Spanish stuff.
Oh well, he'd get over it. I went and took my assigned seat. The only problem with this seat was that I got a great view of everyone coming into the emergency room. Which was OK, until the first ambulance came. Then it got a little gross.
I was about to ditch my chair for another one on the other side of the room when Jesse came up, keys in his hand and a little blood on the white long-sleeved shirt under his scrub shirt.
"Ready?" he asked, and I nodded quickly and followed him out the automatic doors.
I turned up the radio since that "We Got More Bounce In California" song was on, but Jesse pushed the mute button. "Please," he almost whispered. "I have a headache."
I glared out the window. Jesse always had a headache when songs like that were on. Or maybe it was because me seemed pretty peeved, but whatever. Like I said before, he would get over it.
Only he didn't seem over it when he pulled into my driveway, or when he turned off the car and gave me a warning glance when I went to open the door.
"What?" I asked him. "Are you mad because I got myself hurt?"
"No," was the loud answer. "I'm angry because you told me you were going home to eat with your family, and you went somewhere else. Somewhere else to do something I have told you a thousand times not to try by yourself. That is why I am angry."
And then he added, more softly, "What if something had happened to you, querida? I would have no clue where you were. You don't know what that would have done to me." He looked over at me, the moon hitting his face just right. "I love you so much, querida, what would I have done? You are my life, and my only..." He drifted off for a minute, then leaned over to reach into the glove compartment and grab something...
...something little, and black, and square...
"Querida," he started, setting the little box on the dash board in front of him. "Susannah, I love you so very much, and we both have done so very much to get each other and, well," he looked out the window for a second, and then back at me, "I was going to wait until after you where done with school, and I had this long speech I was going to tell you, but I think this is the time for it."
He took that little satin box that had Tiffany's&Co etched on the front, and opened it to show me the very ring I had looked at the other night on the computer.
"Susannah, querida, will you marry me, and please be my family? Please?"
I never was one to cry, and really didn't expect myself to, but by the time he was done with his little speech I was bawling. So much all I could do was nodded my head throw my arms around him. But I think he got the message.
I didn't go into my house until Jesse stopped our frantic kissing to tell me he was going to be late. I hid the ring and the little box in my purse and made it just in time to catch my mom coming out the door to "check on us". But her disdain for our kissing was replaced by freaking out over my arm, and I made up a story about breaking a plate a dinner, or something. After she made sure I was alright a fifth time she let me go upstairs to take a bath.
While I soaked in the hot water, I could help but to get happier. I mean I was getting married! And my own house, and my own life...not to mention a sex life.
I thought about that for a minute and laughed out loud. Suddenly my crappy day was getting a lot better.