Our Place in the Food Chain: Part XXXII

Kim dug around in the quart container, trying to get the last little bit of her favorite ice-cream, fudge ripple, out of the bottom corners. The dark chocolate streaks were extra-sticky and the carton didn't want to surrender that last little bit. It didn't matter there were two more containers in the freezer, she wasn't going to leave anything in this one before she started on the next.

This time he mother wasn't about to take it from her. Sometimes a woman has to do what a woman has to do. If that meant plowing through a quart of ice cream in one sitting, so be it. She could be allowed such an indulgence once and a while. Oh, she did give it a try, but one look from Kim sent her back off to the kitchen to clean up after breakfast.

Her left foot was propped up on the coffee table in a temporary cast. By the time she found Cary's cell phone and called the police it was starting to hurt worse and worse. An x-ray proved she had indeed suffered a slight fracture, putting her in the cast and shelving her Cheerleading career for the next few weeks.

Sadly it also meant she couldn't ride Ron's motorcycle for a while. It was nice having her own transportation around, at least for a while. Maybe it was time to get an actual job and start saving money to buy her own car.

Yeah, right, like that was going to happen. First day on the job and the Kimmunicator was going to go off. Won't last too long that way, now will I?

The older, clunkier Mark 1 Kimmunicator sat on the coffee table, serving as her main means of communication until Wade could whip her up another Mark 2. He was even thinking of making up one built into a bracelet, though he couldn't get all the features into such a small space. For now she'd have to do with another hand-held.

She saw Monique coming up the patio steps and put her busted foot down under the table. She had tried to call her last night when she finally got home from the hospital but her cell kept going to voice mail. One look at her bubbly attitude and she had a strong notion why.

"Girlfriend, what on earth are you wearing?" She said, pointing directly at Kim's belly.

She picked at a fold near where her friend was pointing. "You like?"

"As a night shirt? Real cute, but to wear out anywhere, leave that to your sweetie. Tell me we're not going out with you wearing that."

Kim smiled sweetly, pulling the collar of Ron's jersey to her nose and breathing in deeply. "No. Don't know how much running around I'm going to do today. I've only been up long enough to have breakfast."

"Breakfast of champions?" Monique asked, holding up the empty ice cream container.

"Well, desert." She admitted.

Monique sat down beside her. "So, you're just going to be moopy and sit around the house all day long. Girl, I've got to get you out of here so we can dish about last night."

"Dish all you want, Monique, I'm going to sit right here." Kim said resolutely.

Monique looked around conspiratorially and leaned close to Kim. "Girl, from here on out, let nobody…I mean nobody say anything about Felix being half-a-man. Let me tell you, child, he is one hundred percent man."

Kim gasped. "You didn't…"

Her friend just nodded vigorously.

Kim shifted a little closer to her. "So, details? Come on."

"All I'm going to say is that he has some really strong arms. Then he started doing tricks."

"Tricks?" Kim asked dubiously.

"I mean later. He has this other chair he likes to use around the house. It's one of those really expensive looking aluminum ones with skinny bicycle tires on it and he showed me wheelies and nose-stands and he even showed me how he could get up short flights of stairs."

"Whew, I thought you meant he had some tricks somewhere else."

"Nah, that'll come along with experience. Still, he was damn good for his first time."

"Monique, sounds like you plan to let him practice some more."

"Don't you know it. I can't wait. It's been too long since I've met a guy worthy of me and let me tell you, he blows the door right off its hinges." She was grinning from ear to ear as she spoke, still remembering the night before.

"So, details, Mon. I want the juicy details." Kim said, her own grin starting to mirror her friend's.

"Not too much, or you're probably going to kill that poor boy when he gets home." She warned with a giggle.

"Oh, let me tell you, Mon, I am so going to rock Ron's world when he gets back. I may not even be able to stop myself with him this time." She said with a sly grin.

"Maybe we need to get the two of you apart more often. You sure you're going to last the next two and a half weeks? Sure we don't need to babysit you, just so you don't catch the eye of some random hotness?"

Kim's smile turned deeper as she shook her head. "For Ron, I'd wait a hundred years." She sat back crossing her arms over her chest, imagining they were wrapped around Ron instead.

Monique shook her head. "I am so glad I've got a boyfriend now, girl I would so have to try and take him from you. Damn you are such a lucky girl to have a guy you feel like that for."

"Mon, you know him, you know what he's like. You know how he kisses." She added, a playful growl creeping into her voice, not quite ready to let that faux pas go.

She let it pass. "Well, here's hoping I can some day feel the same way about Felix, though right now I'm probably coming pretty close."

"So, are you going to give me details or am I going to have to kung-fu them out of you?" Kim laughed.

"Don't get your panties in a wad." She glanced at Kim's bare leg. "You are wearing panties under that, I hope?"

Kim lifted the hem, displaying a pair of white tennis shorts. "Yes, I'm dressed. Like I said, though, I'm not planning on leaving the house today."

"Kim, that is so not like you. I would have thought you'd want to go to the mall at least, of something. Unless you saw enough of the mall last night." She raised an eyebrow as Kim's expression darkened considerably.

She shook her head. "No, we never made it to the mall." She said, the humor going out of her voice.

"Uh oh. Girl, did Cary try something with you? Was that all a setup just to get you to go out with him?"

"Worse." She said, pulling her foot out and putting the cast up on the table.

"Oh no. You got called on a mission? See, that's what happens when you run off without Ron like that. So, were Cary and his friends upset?"

"Um, I don't think he had any of those friends he was talking about and Cary's in the hospital right now."

"Dayum, so he did try something…and you put him in the hospital?"

Kim shook her head again and told her friend everything, about Cary actually being Carrion and what he said he was going to do at the warehouse. Then how he was found later, battered but alive. Apparently, so the police thought, he ran into some of the city's less savory elements after he fled the scene. It had been known to happen in that part of the town, though Kim thought it couldn't happen to a more deserving guy.

Monique was the very first person besides her parents she could actually tell about Ron.

"…and you still don't know how he got there? Wow."

"I'm not totally sure he really was there, at least completely. It's like one minute he was hugging me, the next he was just disappearing. He barely got 'I love you' out. The ferociously coolest thing is when Carrion started taunting me about having an angel watching over me, there was Ron."

"Oh, that is sooooo sweet!" Monique cooed. "So, how long are you stuck in that?" She asked, pointing to her foot.

"A couple weeks, then I've got to wear a brace for a couple more. At least it should be off when Ron gets home." She added hopefully.

"Kinda going to be hard to 'rock his world' if it isn't."

"Monique, Monique, Monique. For somebody who has so much experience, which, BTW, you still haven't given me the details about, you don't seem to understand the male animal too well. I'm still literally going to knock his socks off."

"Well, that's good, cause I'd be knocking some other clothes off if I were…" Monique suddenly found her lips covered by Kim's fingertips as her father drifted by the entrance of the den. "Girl, this is why we need to get you out of this house, cast or no."

"Come on." Kim forced herself to her feet, wary that her shoulder was still tender from when she had thrown the jerk. She was lucky her whole shoulder hadn't been dislocated by that maneuver, though he wasn't expecting it. It was a good thing, too, considering what he said he wanted to do. That thought alone had her wanting to retch and she had spent much time in the shower scrubbing the spot on her neck where he had kissed her.

She clumped up the stairs, regretting for the first time she lived on what was essentially the third floor of her home. There were crutches leaning on her desk up there but she found it a lot easier just to haul the walking-cast around. She was supposed to sit as much as possible for the rest of the weekend anyway, a stricture her mother was very likely to enforce. Anne did eye her warily as she mounted the iron-framed stairs to her room.

Once they were certain of their privacy, Monique finally filled her in on the gory details of her date, still leaving certain details in more general terms.

"So are you and mister Knight-in-shining-armor ready for that?" Monique asked finally.

"To be honest, I've been ready since the day after the prom, or at least I thought I was. Ron wasn't and in hindsight I guess I wasn't really either."

"But you still wanted to."

"Oh, so badly. I've told you about the dreams I have about him, haven't I."

"On several, separate occasions. As in lots." She responded, sitting at the desk and playing with the wing-nuts on the wooden crutches. "I still don't know how the two of you hold out."

"Like I said, I don't know if there's going to be any holding out once he gets back for real. This time if he pulls a disappearing act on me, I'm kicking his biscuit."

"Sounds to me like dude-boy didn't have much choice in the matter about going back. He's sure got some freaky powers. I wonder if they even missed him. What time of day would it have been there?"

"Morning, I think. They probably did miss him, they usually have him up at four in the morning for training."

"Four in the morning? Girl, what kind of school is he at. I'd be opening my own brand of Smack-Monkey if anyone tried getting me up at four."

"Um, it's kinda intense. They believe in getting an early start."

Monique shook her head, looking up at the sloping ceiling. "I am so glad your boy doesn't like being normal, cause that's so not!"

"He'll never be normal. He's weird and I love him that way." Kim said, laying back on her bed and crossing her hands over her stomach.

"I feel bad now about last night, considering what happened to you." Monique said.

"It's no big. We won, he lost, it's just another notch in the win column for Ron and me."

"You think you would have learned your lesson after all of this." Monique said, rummaging around in her purse before finally coming up with a sharpie marker.

"Lesson? What lesson?" Kim said, looking up as her friend kneeled at her foot, writing on the cast.

"This one." She said, pointing to her work.

"This is what happens when you don't listen to your friends." Was written right across the front.

"Ouch." Kim said, letting her head fall back again.

"I can't believe that you had me telling you how off kilter that boy was, but the real kicker is that Ron could see it too and you didn't seem to want to listen to it." She chided, shaking the marker at her.

"Well, Ron I was kinda figuring to be just jealous. I swear to you, though Mon, if he ever says somebody's 'bad road' again I am so going to listen to him. He's right so often, despite himself."

"So, you gonna tell him that?"

"Tell him what?"

"That he was right and you weren't."

"I think he already knows that. He heard part of what that jerk had to say."

"No, Kim, I mean you've got to tell him straight up front. You've got to tell him so he knows you trust him."

"But I didn't trust him, Monique. I don't want to rub that in."

"So you're now miss perfect? I guess I'll call Bonnie Rockwaller and tell her she's been right all this time about you. Yes, you blew it, but you've got to let him know you learned from that. Kim, that boy loves you, he's not going to up and leave you for something like that, but if you don't clear the air about it it's going to poison you eventually."

"I guess you're right. It just seems so wrong to have to bring it up again."

"My advice, you do it after you 'knock his socks off' or whatever other bits of his clothes you pick."

They sat quietly for a bit, both of them grinning, thinking about their respective boyfriends.

"So, wearing his shirt help in the dreams department?" Monique asked finally. She was thinking to herself that she might want to get one of Felix's green shirts away from him.

Kim pulled the collar up to her nose again, breathing in his scent. "Don't you know it." She said, dreamily.

"Uh huh. You sure you don't yank it off and stick it on a pillow so you can pretend?" She grinned maliciously at her friend.

"Mon! I so do not!"

"Just funnin' ya girl." Her smile softened, just a bit.

"That's why I've got extras." Kim said, rolling her eyes slightly.

Ron sat alone on the side of the road, every so often checking his watch. The bus was late, but not by too much, at least not yet. He told himself that he would have to be patient. It was a long, winding road getting here from the nearest large town and there were plenty of reasons the vehicle could have been tied up.

It was just that he wanted to get this over with, patience or not.

Where was that bus?

Kim Possible and all related characters © Disney