Vamps: Human and Paranormal (30 page)

Suddenly I realized the kid was smiling goonishly at me.  “What?”

“You’re the chick from the coffee shop on Madison, right?  The fainting lady.”

I felt my whole body tighten up.  I was holding my breath.  What were the odds that a patient here would witness my humiliation?  I was about to open my mouth to explain, maybe just to lie, because the actual reason would be a much larger humiliation to admit to.  But just then another voice spoke up from behind me.  And older woman that Ricky was working the hip abductors on joined in.

“Was that you dear?  My niece was bringing me here and wanted to stop for some ghastly concoction they’ve got her addicted to.  I thought you might’ve died.  I’ve run into dead bodies every day this week.  I’m so glad you didn’t pass away.”

“Thanks.”  I think.

“That was you?”  Denny looked like a hyena, a smile drawing up his lips and making his teeth look mean and sharp.  “Radiology has been talking about that all morning.  Said some chick in scrubs fainted at the coffee shop on Madison, that she was there on a date with a freaking mortician!”

Oh god... “He’s a funeral director, not a mortician.”

“Babe,”  It was Bret, coming up behind me and slinging his arm around my neck, drawing me in to him.  “If you were desperate for a date--”

“I’m not desperate!”  I elbowed him in the ribs but he wouldn’t let go.

“Or if you needed some recreational way of relieving stress ...”  he continued.  “I would be more than happy to give you a hand, or whatever part you needed.”

I stomped on his foot and he finally let go.  “You’re a pig!”

“I was just offering to help, Lucy.”  And then he pulled out his cell phone and started texting.

“You wouldn’t!”

But with a fury of thumbs and then a completely satisfied look on his face, I knew he had.  He’d messaged radiology that I was “pass out girl.”  It would be all over the hospital by lunch.

As Brett high-fived some of the guys I caught myself checking out his ass.  It was tight and dimpled and really looked good in scrubs.  Just the right amount off jiggle. 

Ugh!  I was desperate, totally pathetic!

Denny tapped me on the shoulder.  “Don’t worry, lady, my mom’s dated a bunch of freaks too.”

*****

Chapter 8

Right before lunch I was sitting at the front desk filling out some forms for insurance when someone rapped their knuckles against the countertop.  I looked up and a rather well coifed woman in her early thirties smiled at me.  “Hi, I’m Linda Johnson from accounting.”

I held up my paper work and smiled.  “I swear I’m filling out the right forms.”

She smiled and looked at what was in my hands.  “You need to fill out the box on top.  You guys never do that.”

I shook my head.  “But it says ’for office use only.’”

She raised her eyebrows without losing her sunny smile.

“We’re the office, aren’t we?”

“Smart girl.”  She leaned in a little closer.  “But I didn’t stop by to give your paperwork a critique.  I’m a friend of Bess’”

“Me too.” If I don’t end up killing her first.

“She told me I should umm...see if you’d like to go out sometime?” 

I stared into her radiant smile for a moment not comprehending what she was saying.  I was about to ask if she was wanting me to fix her up with one of the goons from the therapy department when I suddenly got it.  I gulped and felt my mouth turn as dry as the freaking Sahara.

“You mean on a date, don’t you?”

“Just something casual.”  Her smile hadn’t dimmed a bit.

“I’m really sorry,”  I cleared my throat and tried to stay calm.  “But Bess has the wrong idea...she gave you the wrong idea about me.”

Linda cocked her head as she waited for me to go on.

“I’m not gay.” 

Her eyes squinted and her brow furrowed. 

“I’m just desperate.”  It almost felt good to just admit it allowed.  “You see I asked Bess to set me up, and I’ve gone through four guys in less than twenty-four hours.”

Linda looked alarmed and repulsed at the same time.

“I don’t mean I went through them.  I didn’t sleep with them!  Three of them I only talked on the phone with.  I just ...”  I was running out of honesty.  It was exhausting to tell how desperate I really was.  “They were all just psycho.  So Bess must have thought that maybe what I needed was ... a woman?”

Linda stared at me with no emotion showing on her face.  A full minute passed by before she moved a muscle or even spoke.

“You don’t need a woman,”  she said turning on her heal to leave.  “You need a psych consult.”

I tried to call Bess, but only got her voice mail.  I texted her “You’re a dead woman!”

*****

On my way home that day I turned off my cell phone and enjoyed a slow, leisurely walk--trying to forget the coffee shop incident, the work incident and the Linda Johnson debacle.

I stopped and ate a gyro at Tosas.  I perused the tabloids at a news stand, and then bought another pair of sunglasses.  I’d left mine somewhere between the hospital and home--maybe they’d gone MIA at the coffee shop, so embarrassed that they just had to escape from my possession.

I stopped and stared longingly at a cute little puppy in the window of a pet shop.  But I was just barely past killing off my plants, I didn’t need to push my luck with something furry and cute that pees and poops everywhere.

I suddenly found myself coming up on Gus’ store.  I’d just mentally registered this fact, and felt a strange desire to go in and talk to him when I heard a banging sound from the narrow alley just beside his store.   I peered down it and about twenty feet away stood a shirtless very well built man--he was loading pots of plants onto a wooden flat.

I thought for a thrilling moment that Gus had hired this hard bodied stud to help around the shop--a new perk for coming to talk with Gus ... or to get talked down to.  But no sooner did I think this the brute turned around and I saw the beautifully put together stud was no other than Gus himself. 

And he saw me the instant he turned around.  We stood gawking at each other for a beat before he reached for his button down shirt and pulled it over his brawny shoulders.  He was buttoning it as he came into the light and stood beside me.

“Beautiful day,”  he said, his eyes crinkling sexily against the brightness.  And I was suddenly reminded how very, very blue they were.  Get-lost-in-my-blue-eyes blue.

“Yeah, beautiful.”  Felt my heart beat a little faster as I watched him button the last button--I longed to tear all those buttons off, and his shirt. 

“Playing shirtless in the alley weather,”  I said before I could stop myself.

I saw some embarrassed blush appear around his jaw line.  “I don’t like my shirts to get ruined when I’m handling flats of plants.”

That’s when I suddenly got it.  It all came together like one of those algebra problems in high school that you never think you’ll get through.  The great body, him never once ogling me, the bit about not wanting to “ruin” his shirt--and that only retired old men and farmers would ever touch a plant or flower.

Gus was gay.

“Oh!”  I said with a shock.

He looked at me, his pretty eyes almost smiling. 

“I-I forgot...I have a thing in...”  I made a show of looking at my watch.  “Well, like now.”  He was looking at me like I was a mental patient.  “I’ve gotta run.”

My cheeks were burning as I strode away, bumping clumsily into strangers, my mind a jumble of lust and shame.  How didn’t I know?  It should’ve been obvious!  Thank god I hadn’t flirted with him!

By the time I finally quieted down the voices in my head I realized I’d breezed right past my apartment building and was now three blocks away.  At that very instant I stopped right in front of a bakery.   Two éclairs, half a dozen glazed donuts, half a dozen with sprinkles and three double chocolate brownies the sales lady called “Death by Chocolate” and I finally started my journey back home. 

*****

Be it my pastry binge or the lingering sight of Gus--the stud I hadn’t notice and now couldn’t have--but I had the dream about the hands again.  This time I was in a bed overlooking the beach.  What parts of me the hands weren’t caressing the ocean breeze was taking care of.  I was shaking with desire by the time the hands pulled me onto my back again.  But this time the hard male body they were attached to was attached to Gus’ face.

I shivered and moaned as he moved himself atop me, his body, and his naked flesh sliding over my own.  He looked deep into my eyes as I felt his manhood push against my hungry opening.  I groaned as he pushed into me, and just as he leaned down to kiss me...my goddamn alarm clock went off again!

I lay there in my upturned sheets, every inch of me wet with sweat--my loins burning with need.

Oh god
, I thought pulling my pillow over my head
.  I’m in lust with a gay guy!

*****

Another cold shower ensued.  I was starting to get used to them, which was utterly pathetic.  Actually, this time I was yearning for it.  My skin was burning me alive.  I needed to be cooled down.  The spray from the shower head wasn’t nearly as cold as I needed it to be.

After my shower, wrapped in a towel and dripping water all over my kitchen floor, I stood in front of the open refrigerator, the freezer part open too, holding a handful of ice cubes to the back of my neck.

I needed the kind of relief that no amount of cold showers or ice cubes could give me.  I saw that now.  Bess was right--not about the blind dates she’d tried to fix me upon, but the fact that I needed to get laid. 
The hell with waiting for love or Mr. Right.

I pulled my scrubs on over my sensitive, still smoldering flesh, raked a comb through my hair and fastened it back into a ponytail.  I watered Ozzie and realized I hadn’t named the violet yet.  I felt guilty and negligent as I poured some water on her.  Alright, I thought as I stared out my window, the window with Ozzie and our yet to be named African violet.  I was considering just naming it the obvious Violet and being done with it, but in the short time I’d had her in my apartment I could tell she wasn’t a “Violet.” 

I just needed to be patient.

Then her name hit me--Harriet.  Like Ozzie and Harriet!  I whispered her name to her as I turned her in her sling, so that she got some sunlight on her other side.

Standing back from my window and its two newly coupled inhabitants, I was consumed with jealously.  They were a couple now.  How was it so easy for everyone else but me?

*****

The next day what was really on my mind were the horrendous phone calls from would-be suitors.  The scene at the coffee shop and at the hospital.  They had all been disasters!  Bess wasn’t kidding when she’d said she knew a lot of strange men.  Those had been some of the strangest denizens of New York City I’d ever come across.  More perverse than the businessman with Turret's I met in Central Park one day in June.  He’d seemed nice until suddenly he’d asked me to blow him. 

“What?”

“You know!  Suck my cock! Lick my balls!”  He’d made this vulgar gesture with his rather long tongue.  I’d walked away, but he followed, lobbing even more profane requests at me, every eye in a hundred-foot radius was watching as I was verbally molested.  Finally I’d started running.  I lost one of my shoes in my haste--thus another reason I had for owning just the one pair of boots.  I kept losing the others.

And I had to admit the Agoraphobia guy wasn’t as crazy as the homeless guy that loitered daily by the entrance to the subway terminal on fifth.  That guy spoke in tongues most of the time, sometimes grabbing hold of you and telling you things like, “You’ll be fired today!” or “Don’t eat the birthday cake, it’s poisonous only to you!”

That last part had been the advice he’d told me, the part about the birthday cake.  It wasn’t my birthday, so I forgot all about it.  Then when I got to work I found out that it was Matt’s birthday, and that his girlfriend had baked him a cake.  It was Chocolate cake with peanut butter icing, and it looked absolutely to die for.  So I weighed my options: heed the warning of a crazy kook from the subway; or enjoy Matt’s birthday cake.

I decided to partake of the cake.

It’s a good thing I work in a hospital, because not five minutes after I took my first bite I broke out in head to toe hives and by the time they carried me down to the ER I was starting to wheeze.

So I guess homeless guy’s not really all that crazy, but he’s definitely not boyfriend material.

And the Agoraphobia guy was probably not crazy, just clinically, mentally ill, and I cringed at the thought of dating a hermit.

So when the phone rang again I jumped, shook my head whilst cursing under my breath.  I wasn’t going to answer.   I’d just go to work and forget my cell phone today.  But then I looked down at Ozzie and Harriet.  There was a good reason to keep trying.