Page 8 of The Love You Hate
“Everything I say is eloquent,” Presley says. “What’s the highest-ranking popcorn?”
“Don’t humor her,” I tell the doctor. “This is her twisted way of repaying me for jumping in front of the dogs and taking this injury for her.”
“A kernel! Colonel. Hah!” Presley interrupts.
The man winces. “That’s an Army rank.”
“Great, you don’t have a sense of humor either,” Presley drawls. “Just trying to lighten the mood. This place is kind of…drab. Navy. Army. Military. It’s all the same.” My innards twitch from her last sentence. If only she knew how different they actually are. How Navy SEALs are the only group who were granted access to The Charge Men tryouts because of the skill set they possess.
Instead of roasting her, I say, “What should it be? It’s a doctor’s office.”
Focusing on her face as she scans the beige walls and outdated artwork from the eighties, I think how they couldn’t have chosen a place more different than where she came from. I have no idea how they select locations for Principals, but this time it seems they threw a dart at a map. Presley lifts and lowers one shoulder as the spark drains from her eyes. “I don’t know, I guess. The whole town is kind of drab.”
The doctor finishes suturing the fourth hole, tugging to close it. He’s quick, I'll give him that. “Do you need me to fill out paperwork?” I’d rather not, it’s another glaring difference between Gold Hawke and basically anywhere else I’ve ever lived so it may work in my favor this time. Is nothing official around here?
“What’s your name?” he asks, snipping the end of the thick suture with a pair of scissors.
“Nate Sullivan,” I reply, pulling my arm up to look at his handiwork. “Dissolvable?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. Stop by in a week and let me take a look.” He rolls his chair over to another shelving unit and opens it up and rustles around for an empty orange bottle and extends it to me. “Antibiotics. Take two a day, morning and night until they are gone. Those dogs are pretty nasty. I’ll call over there and find out when they last had a rabies shot.”
“He might have rabies?” Presley’s voice shakes as I eye the random bottle in my palm. No name, no dosage, just the name of the antibiotic and the milligram.
“No,” I reply. I hope not. “It’s a precaution. Their mouths are filthy and are filled with bacteria. I’m sure they don’t have rabies.”
“Gosh!” Presley exclaims, stomping out of the room and into the lobby. “What is going to happen next?” She says it to herself but both the doctor and I hear.
He nods at her. “She’s a strange bird. You know any of her backstory?”
I feed him the lies we created for her and he seems to hang on my every word. “She’s a little flamboyant, but she means no harm,” I add. I clear my throat. “If the dogs had bitten her, I knew it would have been the end of the world.” There’s a viable explanation for my misplaced heroic act. “No one would have wanted to deal with that. Especially a man as busy as yourself.”
“Agree. You did the right thing.” He narrows his eyes. “That’s because you’re a Navy man.” Ah, the other easy sell. “Even if you didn’t plan to take the fall, you would have because you’re a solid man.”
I nod. “Yes, sir.” I hold up my arm gingerly. “Thanks for sewing me up.” I tell him my address so he knows where to send the bill.
He grunts. A noise that I understand means he won’t be sending me a bill. “Take the pills,” he calls after me.
Presley is sullen, pacing around the gravel parking lot when I exit. Her head down, and curses molding around her lips as she hisses. She kicks a rock with her dirty Converse sneakers, then curses louder when the dust kicks up high enough that it’s near her face.
She’s waving her palm back and forth in front of her nose when I walk up. “You doing okay?” I ask.
“This place. This place. Are you ready to go or is rabies eating your brain and we need to go to the hospital?”
I slip my hands into my pockets. “No rabies.”
“Of course,” she says, sighing loudly.
“I’ll take you home then.”
“My home is far away from here, but if you’d be so kind as to drop me off up on the mountain, I’d be grateful.” My arm is starting to throb as the adrenaline wears off. “I could walk it if you have somewhere to be.” I smirk.
She scowls at me. “Real funny. Icouldhave plans. There’s a casino down the road. Maybe I have plans to play penny slots for the free, watered-down drinks all night long.”
Narrowing my eyes, I shake my head. “You don’t strike me as a penny slot kind of woman.”
I crank on the handle and get into the passenger seat as she scurries into the driver’s seat. Curiosity gets the better of her. “What kind of woman do you take me for then?”
Silence hangs in the cabin of the Jeep until she starts the engine. I purposefully stay quiet, as if I’m being thoughtful. I know every detail about her life and want it to look like I’m just now thinking about her personality. “Well, you agreed to befriend me to blend into our new town better so that makes you at least a little vain.”
