Only Uni (30 page)

“She’s your grandmother, not God,” Venus said back.

Well, that put things in perspective. She’d call Grandma tomorrow and tell her no. Would she have decided the same course of action if Venus hadn’t kept her accountable? She was so weak . . .

“Well, I’ll keep looking for housing.”

Jenn finished washing up the few dishes. “There are new listings on the Internet every day.”

Trish nodded, her spirits rising. “There’s got to be something near work and in my price range opening up soon.” She stuck her hand on her hip and chirped, “I mean, it’s not like God doesn’t want me to find an apartment, right?”

Trish needed to go to the bathroom. She was at work — it shouldn’t have been a problem. No scary bathrooms here.

Except that twenty minutes ago, with her arms coated in orange-brown cell culture disinfectant, she’d put it off because she didn’t feel like going through a major wash cycle to get the super-detergent off her skin. Now, with her bladder ready to explode, she set the stainless steel sheet down, whether half-scrubbed or not, to make a run for the ladies’ room.

Her gaze landed on her cell phone, resting on the dry countertop, out of reach of the detergent and water. With stomach gurgling painfully, she had called Grandma, but her nausea had only gotten worse when she got Grandma’s voice mail. Trish had left a quavering message for Grandma to call her back. She wouldn’t call right this moment, would she? Trish would only take a second to go to the bathroom.

She stripped off her gloves. They hadn’t protected her forearms, but they allowed her to give her hands a quick rinse so she could touch doorknobs without fear of smearing orange Betadine all over them. She scrunched paper towels to dry her hands, then turned around.

Spenser stood directly behind her.

“Aaaaaaaaah!”
Her scream made the glass windows to the biohazard hood resonate in counterpoint.

She tripped backwards, but her flailing arm knocked into the plastic pan filled with orange-tinted soapy water.
Whoosh!
The water cascaded onto the floor.

“The incubators!” Trish grabbed a stack of paper towels and raced to the edge of the puddle that lapped near the cell incubator units on the far wall. If water got to them, they might break or compromise the cell plates of studies inside.

The throbbing in her pelvis intensified in protest that she wasn’t headed for the bathroom. Trish gritted her teeth and laid down more paper towels. “What were you doing there? Trying to give me heart failure?” She didn’t look up at him as she spread smaller stacks of paper towels on the edges of the mini ocean to try to stem the flow toward the several-thousand-dollar incubators. “I didn’t even hear the door to the room open.”

No answer. She turned around to an empty cell culture room. Had she dreamed he was there?

Nope. He’d been smart. His head and a mop handle appeared in the glass window in the door. When he re-entered the room, he slammed the door with a deliberate flourish.

“Ha, ha. Very funny.” Trish ran for more paper towels to border the edges of the spill. “Did you hear me just now?”

“No, but I knew what you were going to be saying. Something about how you never heard me come in.” He reached out with the mop and caught an orangeish rivulet that made a run for the far incubator.

She scowled at him but couldn’t deny it. How did he do that? He must be able to do that with all the girls. Well, except that they’d have to be invisible if he’d been talking to any lately, since she hadn’t seen him playboy-ing around.

Don’t go there, you dummy.
She’d already blown her chances with him.

The Betadine water was also heading — although more slowly — toward the biohazard hoods on the opposite wall. She needed to stem that while Spenser saved the incubators, but the floors there were disgusting. She knew because she’d been intending to clean them.

She
really
wanted to go to the bathroom. She danced from foot to foot as she slapped on another pair of gloves, which stuck to her damp skin so she couldn’t fit her fingers in all the way With glove fingers flapping, she grabbed a stack of paper towels and ripped off the paper wrapping, made slightly difficult by the half-on glove. She stopped the closest finger of water creeping toward the equipment.

They worked in silence. She happened to glance behind her and caught sight of Spenser’s rather nicely muscled back.
Oh, my.

And he had to see her now, like this.

She detested Betadine. It got rid of anything resembling a germ or mold, but it foamed up so much that she needed to do numerous wet swipes when she cleaned. Inevitably, Betadine, suds, and water ended up all over her.

She already had huge water splotches on her faded T-shirt — selected in anticipation of this thankless chore — and her jeans sported dollops of suds. Her hair had escaped her ponytail, so wisps stuck to her cheeks and probably stuck out of her head at wild angles. She usually had orange streaks across her face, and she saw an orange smudge on the bottom edge of her safety glasses.

Trish felt about as attractive as Shrek.

Plus her bladder screamed bloody murder at her.

She knew she really shouldn’t be staring at the attractive sight of Spenser’s backside moving while he mopped up the water . . .

He turned and caught her staring.

Heat rushed to her head and she knew she must be an interesting purple color, clashing with the orange goo on her skin.

Spenser gave her a wink before he turned back to mop more of the water.

Aargh!

She threw a stack of towels at another flank of invading water. “Since you’re here, I might as well tell you. I decided to volunteer for worship. I already called Olivia, and I’ll start next week.”

He grunted. “I knew you would, eventually.”

She had to stem a rapidly moving pool so she couldn’t turn and give him a swift kick in that nicely shaped behind.

“What changed?”

“Singles Group on Wednesday night.” Yuck, this floor was grimy with spilled cell culture reagent. “I couldn’t help myself during worship.” And might have condemned a poor boy’s eternal soul, but that was between him and God, right? “I knew I was pleasing God doing it, because I was being myself.”

“It’s kinda cool when you get into worship, you know.”

Trish jerked up but bonked her head on the underside of the cell culture hood table. “It is?” She rubbed her crown with her forearm so she wouldn’t get detergent in her hair.

“It’s . . . I don’t know . . . inspiring.”

She liked being inspiring. “Thanks.”

Her cell phone suddenly blared. She took small satisfaction that Spenser jumped a few inches. He actually had a couple moments of hang time.

Then the realization that the call was from Grandma slammed into her chest and stopped her breathing. She tried to strip off her gloves, ripping the nitrile cuffs, as it rang again.
Breathe, come on, you have to breathe to answer it.

She splashed water on her hands and blotted her orange-dyed forearms with paper towels. Her entire arms had started to shake like she had palsy. The room began to spin. She couldn’t make her diaphragm work to suck in some air . . .

“Are you breathing?” Spenser’s concerned voice came up behind her. He whacked her between the shoulder blades.

She coughed, hacked, and wheezed in a painful gush of air. She flipped open the phone. “Hello?”

“Trish, it’s Grandma. Was there something you needed?”

My life intact once you find out what I’m going to say
. “Grandma. I, uh . . .” She crossed her legs and jiggled her foot in mid-air. She so needed to
go
. “I’m not going to take your apartment.” Something to be said for a teeny weeny bladder, it made that almost easy to say.

Silence on the line.

“Grandma?”

Click
. Dial tone.

The sound screwed into her chest with wrenching twists. Grandma must be completely and utterly ticked off.

Trish rarely upset Grandma like that. Hardly ever. She’d always secretly sighed in relief when Grandma’s wrath fell on Lex or Venus without touching her. And now . . . She was going to throw up, because her stomach felt like she’d drunk sulfuric acid.

Spenser reached in and took her cell phone away. His hands were so warm, they burned her fingers. Then his arms, clothed in an orange-streaked lab coat, wrapped around her and pulled her close.

Expensive cologne, undercut by the fresh scent of Lever 2000 soap and a deeper thread of musk. He even blocked out the harsh tang of the Betadine. For a moment, she felt completely at peace.

She suddenly noticed her heart beating harder — funny, she thought it had stopped. The ache in her chest didn’t go away, and she still wanted to hurl, but both feelings had dimmed as if Spenser had turned down a stove burner.

Then she had to pull out of that warm scented embrace. She grabbed her stomach even as she headed for the door.

“Are you okay?” Spenser’s finger plucked at her sopping wet T-shirt sleeve before she moved around him.

She didn’t even pause on her way out. “I need to go
bad.
”

He’d enjoyed holding her. At the same time, he’d felt like a fraud.

He sprinkled paper towels to hold back the slower edges of water, then went to tackle the water inching toward the biohazard hoods until Trish came back. What a mess. Both this, and this thing — this strange, existent yet non-existent thing — with Trish.

Originally, he’d liked her a little — enough to ask her out. Then she assumed he wasn’t Christian, which pretty much socked him in the gut and made him back off real fast.

He’d gotten to know her better. They’d become coworkers, comfortable with each other. Then he discovered she’d dated Kazuo, and his brain started messing around with him, like thinking the plan to pursue her just to mess with Kazuo was a good thing. She hadn’t bit, at first, but once he toned down the flirting, she’d been more receptive, especially lately.

How weird. He’d never had to stop being charming to get a woman’s attention.

Now that he was realizing that she was different — that this was different from what he’d felt for anyone else — he realized he’d shot himself in the foot. He had to tell her about his ex-wife and Kazuo. The fact he’d kept it from her was not only going to royally hack her off, it would ruin any chance of her believing that his interest in her was real.

She’d realize that his earlier, heavy-handed attention had been with ulterior motives. She’d never trust him. She’d never believe he was different now.

Lately his actions, originally motivated by his history with Kazuo, had brought him to a place where he could hear a still, small voice tell ing him to get back with God. He had to tell Trish about his ex-wife, Linda, and Kazuo. It wasn’t right for Trish not to know, even if she never forgave him for his actions.

He needed to gain her trust first.

TWENTY-FOUR

T
he living room light in the empty apartment flickered wildly, creating an eerie effect with the dingy walls and stained carpet. The combination grease-animal-puke smell didn’t make Trish gag like George’s house had, but it wasn’t something she wanted to breathe for longer than a minute.