Hysteria
Tom Sez: Okay. For all those who might have come in late, a little exposition before the show...
I started this series last year - yep, 2007 - with the intention of making something that would be (a) fun, (b) quick, and (c) something that would be done - DONE - by the end of the summer. The story you're about to read was flowing out of me, and I had about four others in progress, and I was unstoppable.
And then...
...well, then, I got sidetracked...
(cough)
Fast forward to last month when I finally got back to where I left off, and honestly, I didn't know what to do. The story had not advanced or evolved in my imagination - it had suffered from my lack of attention, from my being sidetracked.
I sat and stared at it occasionally for the last few weeks, hoping I'd find the inspiration I needed to finally make something out of it.
And then I saw it. The thing. The thing that made the plot thread come together. It was practically jumping up and down and waving at me.
So I grabbed hold of it, and got down to business.
The result follows...
Rocket
It was nine o'clock and George still hadn't popped out of his rabbit hole. This was getting ridiculous to Izzie. She had been up since six. Showered much quicker than usual. Brushed her teeth, combed her hair. Left the house and came back. And here she was at nine - nine-oh-two, actually - in the morning, waiting at his bedroom door. And why? Because he promised her he'd be up by now. He promised he'd look at her baby this morning. That new-to-her '99 midnight blue Civic she'd brought home yesterday was waiting out front to go through his promised 'sixty-one point inspection'. Still.
Finally, she could stand no more. She flung open the unlocked door and sprung into his quarters.
And there he was. Still asleep, curled up in his blankets like a puppy. For a moment, the word adorable pinged through her mind, and then she remembered that she was slightly peeved at him. So she took two steps, then two more up, and that put her standing on his bed, towering over him.
Then she began to jump. The creaky bed frame holding the squeaky mattress and box spring reacted as should have been expected.
George awoke with a start. And bedhead. "Izzie?!"
At that, Izzie stopped. "Good morning, sunshine!"
"What - " he tried to say, his voice thick with sleep.
"You said you were going to be up before nine," she said. "You promised, in fact."
George craned his neck to see his alarm clock. "Oh, for Pete's sake...it's nine-oh-three."
"Last time I checked, nine-oh-three was not before nine," she replied, a hint of triumph in her voice. "It was, in fact, three minutes after nine. That's a full one hundred eighty seconds past the nine o'clock hour."
"Izzie..." he tried to protest.
"Get up, sleepyhead. Otherwise, I start jumping again, and I don't think the frame's gonna want too much more of that."
"Fine," he grumbled. "Just get off the bed. And get outta my room."
"You're not going back to sleep, are you?"
"What answer gets you to leave?" George whined.
Izzie bent her knees into a half-crouch. "You know what I like about your bed? It's springy!"
George shifted in his blankets. "Yes, yes, okay! I'm getting up, I'm not going back to sleep, just get out!"
And she did. She walked all the way to her previous post outside his door. A few moments later, a rumpled George shuffled out in a T-shirt and boxers. He stopped, shot Izzie a sneer, then headed down the hall to the bathroom. As soon as he closed the door, she took up a new post, just outside that door.
"Are you mad at me?" Izzie asked.
Silence.
"'Cause you promised, you know."
There was a squeal of hot water flowing through the pipes. She walked to the kitchen to freshen her coffee.
Meredith was there, engrossed in her Rice Krispies. "I thought you two were supposed to be gone by now."
"No," Izzie moaned. She grabbed a granola bar. "George overslept."
"It's a day off. People oversleep on days off." Meredith closed her mouth around a spoonful of cereal.
"Yeah, but he promised he'd look at my car. I have places to go, people to see."
"A hot date tonight..." Meredith teased.
"Yes," Izzie replied. "A very hot date. So I have a hair appointment, and I have to pick up my dry cleaning, and then I have to get home so I can put myself together. So George checking out my car is...well, it's important. And his word has to be his bond, right?"
Meredith looked up. "So there was a stenographer and a notary on hand?"
Izzie frowned. "You know what I mean."
"Unfortunately."
"Fine. Be that way. See if I ever give you a ride in my baby." Izzie stuck out her tongue and headed back to her post.
When she returned, the bathroom door was still closed, and the pipes were still whining.
"Nine twenty-six, George," she said.
Silence.
"You fall asleep in there now?" Izzie laughed.
"Nope," George's voice in her ear. His breath tickled a little. "I'm thinking Meredith's latest guest might have."
She looked over at George, his still-wet hair obviously combed in a hurry. "Another one?" Izzie asked.
"Yep," he replied. "Wandered in while I was drying off."
"Got an eyeful of you, huh?"
"Nope. But I wasn't so lucky." He shuddered, then glanced at her mug. "Is there more coffee?"
"About half a cup, maybe," Izzie said.
George blew out the tail-end of a yawn. "Well, we're going driving anyway. Might as well stop at Starbucks, spend more of the money I don't have." He held out an open hand to her.
Izzie's eyes narrowed at him.
He merely grinned. "Not to worry, Iz. I don't expect you to hold my hand." He looked at the keys in her hand. "But I kinda need to drive. All part of the famed O'Malley inspection service."
The shopping plaza parking lot had begun to fill up as the duo came out of their nearest Starbucks, thermal cups in hand. As they approached the car, George stopped for a moment, and squinted a little in the hazy early morning sunlight. His gaze was somewhere underneath the vehicle, Izzie noticed.
"Do you see something?" Izzie asked.
"A spot on the concrete," he replied, then made a beeline for it.
Izzie took a swig of coffee and studied George as he took off. He was surprisingly cute to her now, in a zip-front navy sweatshirt and faded blue jeans that – and she couldn't believe her mind went this direction, but it did – fit him quite nicely. He took a knee next to the front driver's side tire, and she couldn't help see a flash of his lower back as his sweatshirt and white cotton tee rode up just a bit. The exposed flesh looked soft – not flabby, but a little round, like the rest of him. His body looked comfortable, that was it. Something that, if you were snuggled close to it, would be warm and welcoming and receptive and responsive – and what in the world was she thinking?
She tried to turn, but he caught her looking. "What?" he asked, standing up and tugging his shirts down.
"Nothing," she said, hiding her eyes from him. "Just wondering about the spot."
"Oh," he replied absently. "It's nothing. I thought the radiator might be leaking, but it's not coolant, so..."
"Hm," Izzie said.
"Did, however, notice that your tires are kinda light on tread," he said, fishing the keys from his pocket and pressing them into her hand.
Even with the metal teeth poking into her palm, the way his hand cupped hers was tender. "I'll get new ones," Izzie said, a bit startled by how nice his grip felt.
George shook his head and let go. "Well, don't do it now. That's a three-hundred dollar investment - minimum - and you've got a good ten thousand miles before you'll need to change 'em. Just don't go peeling out at intersections and you oughta be okay."
As he continued his path around the car, she found herself following him. "How do you know all this stuff? I've known car guys and - no offense - you don't look like one."
George snorted. "I'm not." He looked back at her, and with a little shrug, seemed to decide that it was safe to share with her. "When I hit eleven years old, if I wanted to be able to talk about anything with my dad or my brothers, I had to prime the pump, so to speak. And that involved one of two things - cars or sports." He smiled a little. "With sports, it was kinda easy. I started memorizing stats and percentages and win-loss records, so if I needed to, I could pull one out." He smoothed his hand over some scratches on the rear fender. "Cars? That took a little longer. I'd go through magazines and read test-drive results, but they might as well have been written in Chinese." Something caught his attention for a moment inside the wheel well, and he reached an arm around the tire. "I tried hanging around Dad's garage while he'd be working on something, but Ronnie or Jerry, they'd tease me or bait me or do whatever they had to do to crowd me out." He shrugged. "I kinda gave up."
"Gave up?" Izzie asked, crossing her arms. "So how'd you learn?"
"When I was sixteen, I bought this - this rust-bucket that resembled a 1985 Caprice station wagon. For school, and whatever else, you know?" George eyeballed the spot he'd been fingering, then chuckled, and moved on. "Cost me six hundred bucks cash, and ran great…for exactly three days." He shook his head at the memory. "Then my dad spent hours and hours fixing it. It'd run for a while, break down at the worst times. And he'd always come out and help me get it home. At first, Mom had to make me sit out in the garage with him - 'he's fixing your car, it's the least you can do,' she'd say. 'Cause I felt - useless - out there. But I went. And I'd ask a bunch of stupid questions, and he'd actually be patient enough to answer 'em." George's voice was so warm now, he was practically aglow. "Didn't take too long for her to stop having to tell me to go help him; I'd go out there on my own."
Izzie felt a plume of joy in her stomach in response to his tone. It was a strong enough sensation that she couldn't keep from smiling. "That's nice," she said.
"Yeah, it is," George replied, the memories of time with his father still obviously in the forefront of his mind. "I mean, I'm not much of a mechanic, but I know when something doesn't fit right or feel right."
Izzie leaned against the door. "So how about my car? Does it, you know, feel right?"
George rose to his feet again, apparently not realizing that his front would brush against her front – which it did – and that they would be nose-to-nose – which they were. His eyes were meeting hers, and his cheeks were reddening just a hair. "Well, it's – it's – " He bit into his upper lip a little, which twitched in response. "It's a good car," he stammered. "Just – you know – keep an eye on those tires."
She could feel this kind of soft heat building between them, reflecting how his body was touching her body. Her nerves were awake and alert under her layers of cotton clothing, but not aggressive – they were hanging back, waiting for something to happen. The word adorable came back to her brain, and in an instant she was thinking about his cheeks and his eyes and his lips and how it must feel to kiss them. But then he said, "Um. Don't you have a hair – thing – to do?"
Izzie took a step back from George, disconnecting her energy from his. She felt herself slump a little, and she could've sworn he lost a little height, too. "Yeah," she said, and pretended to look at her watch. "Veronica gets cranky if I'm late," she added, digging into her brain to find something to say. "A cranky hairstylist means a cranky hairstyle."
"Well, you don't want that," he replied. "Especially since you've got a hot date tonight."
"Yeah," Izzie said, searching her brain for her earlier mindset, and not finding it. "A very hot date."
George glanced over at Meredith, sitting across the kitchen table from him, and shaking the Yahtzee cup with the mindset of a person whose life depended on rolling a pair of twos, when his cell phone buzzed. "Whoever it is," Meredith said, "tell them that they're going to have to wait. I'm about to beat you for the first time ever, and then I'm going to gloat, and you don't want whoever it is to know what a sore winner I am."
George laughed. "Just roll the bloody dice," he said, flipping open his cell.
"Hey, George," he heard Izzie say.
"Hi," he replied. "Meredith's trying like a maniac to beat me at Yahtzee, so make it quick."
Her voice was a frown. "My car's dead."
George's eyebrows furrowed. "Dead? What?"
"Near the Bridge Street exit. It jerked, it died, it won't start."
"Dammit." George's tone made Meredith set the shaker on the table.
"And I've been here for about forty-five minutes, waiting for a tow truck."
"Forty-five – do you need us to come get you?"
"If you could," she replied.
"No problem at all," George said. He looked at Meredith, who was already grabbing a light jacket and her handbag. He found his feet and started heading for the door with her. "Aw, Iz, I'm sorry," he said.
"This is not your fault," she said.
He sighed. "I know, but I was there this morning, checking everything…"
"George," Meredith commanded. "What's dead?"
"Izzie's car," George said. "Tell me again. What happened?"
"Timing belt," the tow truck driver said, as Izzie, in her skirt and high heels, watched him raise the front end of the Civic off the ground, the winch whining. "That'd be my guess, way you describe what happened, miss." He scratched his head, which made him have to adjust his baseball cap. "It's one of those things you can't see and can't predict. But when it goes, it goes." The driver looked over at George, who had managed to get there at the same time, and was grimacing at the sight of the car on the hook. "So don't kick yourself over it."
George looked at the man. "I know. But she has a date tonight."
"Had," Izzie replied. "Had a date. Now I just wanna go home."
"You sure?" George said. "You still look nice. The hair's - you obviously didn't make Veronica cranky."
That made Izzie giggle. She looked up at his eyes, which radiated kindness, even under the hard street light. Again the word adorable popped up, but she didn't try to shoo it away, because it was the right word.
The growl of the truck driver's voice broke through. "Did you have any particular garage you wanted to take it to?" he asked.
George smiled. "Yeah. My dad's."
The driver eyed him suspiciously. "Is it a business or a private residence?"
"Residence," George replied. "I'll just call him and tell him we're on the way."
The driver was still unsure. "That okay with you, miss?"
Izzie grinned. "Only if I can come along," she said.
George blinked at her bright expression, then looked over at the truck driver, who shrugged as if to say your call, buddy-boy, just before he climbed into the cab. "Okay," George said, and added, "But don't blame me if you get bored," as he parked himself on the bench seat.
"I'll take my chances," Izzie replied, climbing into the tow truck's cab, her body crushing into George's. And as they drove into the night, her nerve endings seemed to find his, even through the layers of clothes. Every once and a while, she thought he would look over at her with an expression that wasn't simply friendly concern, but had a little more joy in it. It was then she decided that she'd been right after all. Being this close to George O'Malley was quite comfortable.
More coming, I promise...