Medically Speaking

Chapter 28

For a summer morning in South Carolina, it was surprisingly mild. There were a few clouds, but no rain in sight, not even enough from the night before to make the air even muggier than it had been over the past few days. The mosquito truck—truly man's greatest invention, right after the coffee maker—had been by a couple of days ago so all of the windows in my house were thrown open, my drapes fluttering in the light breeze. Cats were curled up in sunspots and the peacefulness of a quiet neighborhood was like a hug from someone you loved. It was picturesque.

And according to my cats, I was ruining all of it.

"UH HUH, THIS MY SHIT! ALL THE GIRLS STOMP YOUR FEET LIKE THIS!"

Mr. Darcy went sprinting under the couch with an angry yowl and a furiously swishing tail as I made my way back through the living room with the vacuum. My music was blasting from the speaker on my phone as I danced through the house in Marc's t-shirt, a pair of shorts that just barely peaked out under the hemline, and a pair of bunched up men's crew socks that were supposed to be extras for my brothers. Since I work 12-hour shifts, cleaning is generally relegated to dance parties on my days off.

If one is not singing obnoxiously loud to their cleaning playlist, what is the purpose of a cleaning playlist?

My first thought last night once the giddy high from kissing Gabriel had worn away was to worry. Not full on panic, but worry. I had been in my car, hazy streetlamps painting patches of musty light across the dash of my car as I turned into my neighborhood. There was an oak tree on the main street, more gnarled than the one on North's arm but it reminded me of that tattoo all the same. The family they have, the strength they find in each other. Something I was yearning for more than ever before.

I wanted this, I wanted them, but I didn't want to start acting like this was a sure thing when it wasn't. Hurting their family would kill me. I didn't want my desperation to cause irreparable harm. There are three other relationships happening inside the bigger picture and I don't completely understand all of them. I need reassurance. I need to know that I'm not going to fracture something that's already in place.

I need to trust that they're not going to break me.

Concern that I was accidentally leading them on hadn't kept me awake, but it sure as hell helped fuel my motivation to get my house under control. I always clean better when I should be focusing on something else. It used to be homework when I was in college but now, I've apparently graduated to avoiding thinking too deeply about a potentially looming relationship. I had laundry going, meals planned out for the week, the litter boxes deep cleaned, my bathroom deep cleaned, every nook and cranny dusted, furniture vacuumed, and my floors had finally stopped looking like I ran a grooming salon.

I had even put forth the effort to vacuum up the cobweb that had been forming in the top corner of my laundry room for longer than I care to admit.

The buzzer went off on the dryer and I stepped on the power switch on my vacuum before padding down the hallway singing, "This shit is bananas, b-a-n-a-n-a-s!" Bananas, that's what I needed to add to the grocery list. Mine had been too far gone even for banana bread. My store hardly ever had single people sized bunches of bananas.

I was throwing stuff in my basket when my playlist switched to Womanizer by Britney Spears. Instantly, my hips started shaking and I danced all the way up the stairs to my bedroom. I laid out my shirts so they wouldn't wrinkle but the rest of it was tossed unceremoniously onto the bed to be dealt with later.

Back downstairs, I started hanging up shirts to dry and threw the rest into the dryer, hitting the start button with a spin before I made my way back to the vacuum cleaner. When he saw me moving up next to it again, Mr. Darcy started meowing low in his throat, sounding like a demon straight from the pits of hell. It was a blatant threat. "I don't know what you want from me," I scolded him. "You're half the reason this house is covered in fur. Get over it." Another threatening meow came out from the depths of the couch. "You know I need to vacuum under there, too, right?"