The Girl With the Pink Bat
Copyright© 2025 by DB86
Chapter 8
I walked around for hours to calm myself down before I decided to go home. I felt so much shame and anger that I could barely face Ray.
When I got to my place, I was surprised to find Ray waiting for me.
“Are you okay?” he asked me, with true concern.
“I’m fine,” I lied, not very successfully since my voice sounded like it had been sanded raw.
I wanted to shut myself in my bedroom before the shame seeped out through my pores and turned visible, but Ray didn’t let me.
“I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed. I’ve always wanted to go skinny dipping and never have. Swimming at the lake at night always scared me,” he said, in a casual tone.
“Uh, really?” I said, raising my eyes to meet his.
He nodded and winked at me. “I think you had better taste than Floyd, but who am I to judge?”
“I did a lot of stupid things when you left town. I was at a low point. It happened and I’m not proud of it. Floyd was always a moron and I was acting as one. We were never an item.”
“Janice Cooper used to pick on Floyd when we were in high school,” Ray remembered. “She used to call him Dum-Dum.”
Janice Cooper was a bully in high school. She played many cruel pranks. That’s how she got the nickname ‘Queen of Mean’. When she returned from college, she took charge of the local newspaper, The Middletown Gazette.
“Yeah, well, you wouldn’t recognize Janice now. She’s a changed woman. She got married and has two boys.”
“Are you serious? We should go to church and start praying.”
I gave Ray a puzzled look. “Why?”
“Janice Cooper a changed woman? Must be one of the signs of the Apocalypse.”
We both laughed hard.
“Are we okay, Ray?”
“Everything is fine, Supergirl,” Ray said. “I made stupid mistakes, too. Yours, at least, didn’t broke your heart in two.”
He opened his arms to me. We hugged, a long, tight, much-needed hug, and as I stepped back, he looked at me, “I’m sorry I wasn’t around much these last months. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to hang out with you, it was just that, well, I needed some time to get my life back on track. I missed you.”
“I missed you, too,” I admitted, resting my head on his chest.
I woke up at seven A.M. with nausea. I rushed to the bathroom. Bent over, I sucked air through my gritted teeth and willed the nausea to pass. It didn’t, only working steadily up my throat and making me think I was going to barf all over the room.
Closing my eyes, I counted to ten until both the dizziness and queasy stomach settled.
When I got out of the bathroom, I went to the kitchen to find something to drink.
Ray had already gone to work.
I poured myself a glass of water and drank it in one long gulp.
“Ahh! Much better, I have to quit drinking for a while,” I said to myself.
As soon as I got to the construction site, Floyd came to me followed by Paul.
He looked at the floor for a while, playing with his fingers until Paul slapped not-so gently the back of his head and ordered him, “Talk.”
“Kara,” he said solemnly. “I’m real sorry about what I said at the bar. I shouldn’t have—”
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