Page 19 of Off Script
"Sibling rivalry," she guesses.
"Yeah," I agree without elaborating.
"I would have loved having a sibling when I was growing up. Being an only child was lonely." Carlisle's wistful tone quietens, and I know she's probably missing her mom or thinking about her half-brothers. "What about your parents? What's your relationship with them like?"
"Pretty good, all things considered." Fighting a yawn, I decide to head up to bed. I walk while I talk, turning off the lights downstairs and arming my security system before climbing the stairs to my bedroom.
"All things considered?" she parrots. "That sounds ominous."
I chuckle. "I didn't mean it that way. I just meant growing up and moving away. I don't get home to visit them often."
“What were your high school years like?"
“High school was okay. Socially, I survived mostly unscathed. I always had a group of friends, but my circle grew a lot during my junior year when I went through a big growth spurt and made the varsityfootball team.” Which is what helped me land my role inFriday Night Gridiron, but of course, I don’t offer up that information. “Up until that point, I’d been a theater geek who dabbled in sports, but once I made varsity, that boosted my popularity quite a bit.”
"I should've known that you were a popular kid." Carlisle teases, and I feel more at ease now that I can tell she isn’t acting perturbed. “Who were your best friends?”
“I hung around with other football players—Will, Fletcher, Brock, and Cole.” A memory floods my brain, and I smile thinking back on those happy, carefree years. “This one time, we drove to a construction site and stole one of their port-a-potties."
“That’s disgusting!” She interjects, aghast.
“It was."
"Why would you do that?"
"It was for our senior prank. Our plan was to load the port-a-potty into the bed of Fletcher’s truck and then deposit it in our principal’s driveway, blocking his car in the garage so he couldn’t drive to school the next day. Unfortunately, we didn't think to tie it down, so when Fletch took a turn a little too fast, the port-a-potty fell on its side and all the sewage spilled out. We were such dumbasses that we thought running through a car wash would fix the problem.”
“Let me guess—it didn’t," Carlisle surmises with a laugh, sounding delightfully horrified.
“It might have if we’d been smart enough to open the tailgate beforehand. But we didn't. When we got out of the car wash, his trunk bed was filled with several inches of dirty water. It was a bubbling mess of piss, shit, toilet paper, and probably the bubonic plague."
"What'd you do?"
"We played rock, paper, scissors to see who had to be the one to stand at the back of the truck and open the tailgate. Poor Will lost andgot drenched in that toxic sludge. Then he promptly started throwing up because of the smell. We still got the port-a-potty to the principal's house though, but Will had to ride home in the bed of the truck.”
Those were good times, long before my life got complicated. When my biggest problems consisted of things like failing a math test or wondering which girl to make out with at a party.
“Do you still keep up with those guys?”
Carlisle’s question is innocuous, but like the dangers of a glacier, there is a lot lurking beneath the surface, so I succinctly answer, “Nah, not really.”
"Okay, tell me a funny story about your college years. Oh, or even better, tell me an embarrassing story!"
"Sorry, Carlisle. I didn't go to college, so I don't have any stories to share," I reply, glad to have an excuse to get the attention off of me. "Which means that it's your turn to tell me a funny or embarrassing story. I'll let you pick if it's from high school or college.”
“Umm, haven’t I done that with every single one of our conversations?” Carlisle deadpans. Smiling, I acknowledge that she has a point, but I continue to harass her until she succumbs. “Fine,” she growls. “But if I tell you this, you must promise to never bring it up again. Deal?”
“Damn, this must be good. Deal.”
“While I was in college, I took the class Human Sexuality as one of my humanities electives. In addition to the hardcover, I also had access to the audio version to the textbook. Most of the chapters were pretty dry and clinical, but there were several chapters that were a little racier. Those covered sexual kinks.”
“Getting material for your second job as a phone sex operator?” I kid.
“I hate you,” she replies without any heat behind her words. “Anyway, so I needed to do my grocery shopping for the week, but I also needed to finish my class readings. I have the brilliant idea to multitask. I'll complete my grocery shopping while listening to the chapter we were discussing that week in class. That week’s topic was on bondage and autoerotic asphyxiation. Unfortunately, my cheap wireless earbuds weren’t working well, and I had to keep turning up the volume higher and higher so I could hear my textbook over the noises of the grocery store." Carlisle pauses and I can practically feel her embarrassment through the phonelines. "About this time, an older woman, who turned out to be the store manager, taps me on the shoulder. I pull out one earbud so that I can hear what she’s saying to me.” Carlisle exhales a deep breath. “And at that moment, I realize, to my utter horror, that the reason I had to keep increasing my volume was because my earbuds weren’t paired with my phone. My phone was just blaring my textbook for all the grocery shoppers to hear. I was mortified. Absolutely mortified!”
Laughter rolls through me. “No! What did you do afterwards?”
“What do you think I did? I grabbed my purse, abandoned my cart full of food, and ran out of there as fast as I could. And for the rest of college, I drove twenty minutes to the grocery store in the next town over to do my shopping.”
