Page 66 of Own the Eights
She looked over her shoulder. “Is your dad asleep?”
He entered the room and took in the faded comic book posters on the walls and the plastic glow-in-the-dark stars his mother had helped him stick to his ceiling on his tenth birthday.
“Yeah, he likes to conk out in front of the TV. He’s slept in his recliner since my mom died. I got him settled, turned on the Home Shopping Network, and he was out like a light.”
She glanced down at the Superman shirt. “I hope you don’t mind.”
He shook his head. “I’m glad you found one that works—and you can never go wrong with Superman.”
Her gaze flicked to his top dresser drawer, and his heart dropped into his stomach. “You saw them.”
“I didn’t mean to. I was just looking for some shirts.”
He went to the dresser, pulled out the drawer, littered with straws and photographs of a skinny, awkward, Jordy Marks. His pulse slowed, and strangely, relief washed over him.
“I wasn’t always a Marks Perfect Ten kind of guy. At eighteen, I was six four and barely one hundred sixty pounds wet,” he said, touching the corner of his high school graduation photo.
She stood next to him, her shoulder brushing against his arm. “Why do you have so many straws?”
“That’s what the kids used to call me.”
She frowned. “Straws?”
“Yeah, it started in middle school. All the douchebag jocks would steal them from the cafeteria. They’d stuff them in my locker and throw them at me in the lunchroom.” He picked up two straws and proceeded to make them walk. “They teased me and said I walked like this. The morons weren’t clever enough to come up with anything better.”
Concern shined in her eyes. “That couldn’t have been easy to endure, but why’d you keep them?”
He stared at the frayed white paper wrapper. “I don’t know. Maybe because I needed them to be just straws, and not me.”
She took the straw from his hand and peeled back the paper, then smiled up at him. “See, you’re right. It’s just a straw.”
He cupped her cheek in his hand, gazed down at her, and couldn’t remember what life was like before this blog contest started. Everything centered around this woman, this embracer of the eights.
A little frown pulled at the corners of her mouth. “Can I show you something?”
“Sure,” he answered.
She pulled a slim wallet from her pocket then sat down on the end of his bed. “You have to promise not to laugh.”
He joined her. “I promise.”
She nodded to herself, then slipped a photo out from behind her driver’s license and handed it to him.
He gasped. “Holy hairspray! That’s you?”
She plucked the picture from his hand and pressed it to her chest. “You said you wouldn’t laugh.”
“I’m not laughing. It’s just…”
Georgie glanced at the image of a young girl with enough makeup spackled on her face to outdo the most dolled up newscaster by a mile.
He leaned in. “What’s the sash say?”
“Little Miss Cherry Pie. It was for some pageant at a cherry festival in Michigan.”
He tried to hold it together, but when he caught her gaze, they broke out laughing.
“You really did that “Cherry Pie” song justice tonight.” He snorted, trying to hold back a full belly laugh.
