Part 7 (1/2)
Standing, he went back into the kitchen and returned with a gallon of milk. The women laughed and proceeded to dig into the burritos.
”Hey, how did your test go today?” Lynn asked Chris.
”Great. Thanks for the help. And the care package.” Chris smiled at Lynn.
Recovering from his choking attack, Matt set up the game board, picked his first set of letters, and offered the remainder for Chris's choice.
”Too bad we're not playing for points!” Matt said as he lay down all seven of his letters.
FRIENDS. ”I was thinking maybe you should know something about my friends. Lynn thought that I'd better tell a couple of them what was going on, in case we run into them. My best friends are Pete and Jeff*”
”Jeffs the one with the big mouth,” Lynn interrupted.
Matt turned to Chris. ”Obviously, Lynn doesn't get along with Jeff. He is a bit obnoxious at times, but he has a good heart. Then there's Pete, I've known him since I was in grammar school.”
”Well, I don't have any friends dating back to grammar school.” Chris paused. ”All of my friends have come from the university and the little odd jobs I've picked up here and there. Although none of them are extremely close, a day doesn't go by that I don't get a call to go do this or go do that. I really have to limit my time due to all the studying that's required of me.” Chris stopped. She was rambling. She always seemed to ramble when she was stretching the truth. However, this truth seemed much more pleasant than reality.
Chris remembered all of the photographs arranged on the mantel inside. The two people before her had no shortage of friends.
The photographs led her to lay down the next word, VACATION. ”Tell me about some of the places that the pictures in your living room are from.”
”Oh,” Lynn answered instead of Matt. ”Most of those were just taken around here. Except for the one in the snow. Several of us drove up to Yosemite for a week. We skied, we s...o...b..arded* that picture in there is our attempt at making a snowperson.” She finished her story through her laughter, ”We couldn't quite agree on the gender!”
”But my favorite vacation* hmm* oooh*” Matt smiled. ”That time I went to Acapulco with Doug* skinny-dipping in the ocean*”
”Hey, we.don't need all of the details! And if you mention to your parents that you went with Doug, you better throw in that you picked up a couple of senoritas!” Lynn laughed.
Chris nodded in agreement. When the laughter subsided, Lynn and Matt expected her response.
”I can't really say that I've been on a true vacation. We lived so many exotic places. They all started out feeling like a vacation, but after a while they all turned into* just regular day-to-day life.”
Chris groaned when she saw the next word that Matt put on the board. EMBARa.s.s, off of the ”R” in FRIENDS. She knew that it was misspelled, but it wasn't a real game anyway. Lynn, however, felt it her duty to call it to his attention. Matt gave her a dirty look and motioned for Chris to relate her story.
s.h.i.+fting in her chair, Chris chose one of her many embarra.s.sing moments. ”I guess it would be the time I got caught sneaking into army housing after curfew.”
”What was so embarra.s.sing about that?” Matt questioned.
”It kind of turned out not to be my house,” Chris admitted. ”You know all of those houses looked exactly the same*especially after smoking a few joints.”
Lynn laughed. Matt looked irritated. ”I thought you said you don't use drugs!”
”Oh, come on! Everyone experiments during their teenage years.” Then placing her hand over her heart, she promised, ”I don't touch the stuff anymore.”
Matt didn't look convinced but shrugged it off and relayed his story about the time that he made a pa.s.s at a straight man.
”Yeah,” Lynn broke in. ”That turned out to be one of my most embarra.s.sing moments too!”
Chris looked confused. ”How so?”
”It turned out the man that I thought was giving me the eye, was actually giving Lynn the eye,” Matt said sheepishly.
”After the man rejected Matt's advance, while I was in the ladies' room, by the way, he came on to me,” Lynn explained. ”Not knowing what Matt had done, I made a big scene at how he was making a pa.s.s at me, right in front of my boyfriend.”
Matt continued the story, ”The man proceeded to tell Lynn about what I had said to him, and then told her that she should leave me and join him.”
”Needless to say, we had to come clean. By this time, the entire restaurant had overheard the conversation. The man wasn't too happy with us.” Lynn mumbled, ”I still think he was the one that broke my winds.h.i.+eld that night.”
”Just another story about my unluckmess with men,” Matt whined. ”If they don't want to hook up with Lynn, they want to hook up with the guy next to me*”
”Hey, just another story of Matt's bad judge of character!” Lynn said sarcastically.
Chris felt the conversation turning into an argument and focused on her tiles before her. She smiled because earlier that day she had thought long and hard, trying to make a mental list of items to get revenge for some of the items that Matt had asked of her the other night. She laid down the letters s.e.x. Turning toward Matt, she asked, ”How many guys have you slept with?”
”Why do you need to know how many guys I've slept with?” He looked up at Chris, expecting an answer.
”It just tells me about your character, you know, if you've been the promiscuous type, or if you've stayed at home alone, waiting for that one special person,” Chris replied.
Matt shook his head again, then smiled. ”You're answering this one first. How many guys have you slept with?”
Chris leaned back in her chair. ”Let's just say more than I should have.”
”I don't think that's a clear enough answer,” Matt teased.
”Okay, more than ten and less than fifty,” Chris teased back.
”Okay, that's a little less vague.” He smiled and continued, ”I guess I'm more inexperienced, I'll say less than ten.”
Lynn laughed. ”You should say less than five!”
”Okay, Miss Smarty Pants, you answer the question!” he snapped.
”I'd have to stick with the aemore than ten, less than fifty' answer,” Lynn replied.
”Ha! Maybe in the last six months!” Matt exclaimed.
Lynn looked at Chris. ”He's exaggerating just a little!” She explained, ”He's just jealous because he doesn't get it as often as I do.”
Feeling a little hot under the collar, Matt said sarcastically, ”Why should I? I'm not the one trying to break Susan's record!”
Lynn glared at Matt. ”You know, you can be a real b.a.s.t.a.r.d sometimes.” Lynn felt the tears welling up in her eyes and quickly excused herself. ”I believe that's my cue to leave,” she said as she turned away and rushed into the house.
Chris looked at Matt. This was another conversation that she did not understand. She had seen the tears in Lynn's eyes. ”What* ?”
Matt put his head in his hands and ran his fingers through his hair as his face reddened. ”s.h.i.+t!” he exclaimed. ”Here's one of my flaws. I take things too far, I just don't know when to stop.” He looked up at Chris, then looked through the gla.s.s door, just as they heard the front door slam. The sound made Matt wince; he stood up, walked over to the railing, and leaned on it as if for support.
”Matt, what was* who's Susan?” Chris asked.
”Someone that hurt Lynn really bad.”
”What happened?”