Chapter 46: Not Cold Feet, Exactly

Thursday, April 14, 2005

I woke in a great mood, although not as good a mood as I expected to be in later this evening.

At breakfast, Donna did her best to march in and give me my morning kiss. She compensated for Carol's absence by kissing both cheeks.

Once we were all settled down, Mom led the discussion, "Mark, I'll call the hospital to see about getting your cast removed as soon as possible. Your school has already agreed to pick up the medical bills so I'm not worried about unnecessary expenses if the hospital needs more X-rays to consider taking it off early.

^-- "On the topic of the school, there's nothing definite to report about the settlement yet, but we're probably only about a week or two away from concluding it. I could do it faster, but I like making them sweat. You should be seeing some anti-bullying programs starting at school soon too." (Mom and Dad had a lawyer, and they were collectively negotiating with the Principal and the Corvallis Board of Education over an out-of-court settlement for the school having trained the gang of thugs who kept beating me up.)

I just said, "Good. Thanks."

Turning to Donna, Mom continued with, "Do you have anything important at school after lunch? No tests, no after school games, or the like?"

Donna said, "Nothing special, just the usual boring stuff."

"Good. I'll pick you up at school. Meet me outside the school gates at the beginning of lunchtime, okay?"

"Okay. Why?"

"We have some shopping to do."

Donna looked more than a little puzzled. Normally the only time Donna likes to go shopping is for running shoes, which didn't appear to be the case now because Donna always announces the need for new ones herself. Mom was going to have to take time off work to do this, and that wasn't usual. What could be so important?

#4: <Nubbins.>

#3: <Do girls have to buy bras that urgently when they get nubbins?>

#4: <Search me. It probably won't do you any good though.>

"Uh, okay." Donna was confused too, but she wasn't going to disagree with an afternoon off school for shopping. Donna does have female genes after all, as indicated by her nubbins.

I wasn't going to ask questions. It sounded like an embarrassing girly issue, and I was also very much in the mode of saying as little as possible to Mom or Dad, to avoid any last minute screwups that might disastrously affect my wedding.

I suddenly had a thought, and blurted it out, "How is Carol getting to school this morning? The car just comes here, and her bike's here too."

Mom said, "I'm sure the Williamses can find a solution to that problem themselves."

It was probably within their organizational abilities so I said nothing, and continued to say as much nothing as I could.

After breakfast I waited outside with Donna for the car. I wasn't going to stay inside and risk putting my foot in my mouth. The car drove up, I waved goodbye to Mom silently, and we left.

I sat in the backseat by myself, missing Carol. If I wanted a pantiless flash, I'd have to do it to myself, which didn't have quite the same appeal.

On the way to school, I kept worrying about Mom being "on the loose" with Donna when the wedding would be happening. Taking Donna shopping obviously didn't have anything to do with us, but there was too much at stake to feel comfortable with having Mom not tied down at work like normal.

After some worrying, I decided we must be okay. It wouldn't take long after we got to Julia's to get to the proposal. I couldn't imagine that Carol would refuse because she was already raving over how excited she was to be able to have a life with Julia and me. Apparently we'd have to wait for the Williamses to come home to show Prof and Vanessa my TK, and then to have the ceremony, from what little Julia had told me about how it was going to happen. Julia had said they'd get home quickly, so with any luck we'd also get the ceremony over with pretty quickly too.

Then if I had anything to do with it - which I was going to make sure I did - we'd be very quickly back in Julia's room with the door firmly locked behind us. Carol needed to be deflowered, and I was just the brother for the job. It should be done before dinnertime, although I wouldn't mind doing it again a few extra times after dinner. We were nearly home, in the baseball metaphor sense.

Carol and Julia were standing where the car drops us off, and enthusiastically greeted me the moment I got out of the car. After Donna was out of earshot (about 1.5 seconds after the car stopped, or about 2.0 seconds after she opened the door), I asked my girls, "How are the two lovers?"

The two lovers repeatedly told me how incredible their partner was, how much fun they'd had last night and this morning, how wonderful sex with each other was, how much they wanted more of this, how in love they were with each other, etc., etc. I was pretty sure they'd had a good time.

I wasn't envious anymore. My turn with them both was so close I could almost feel it, helped by their both holding one of my arms each against their breasts. Life was good, and very soon about to get a whole lot gooder! It was stunning that my first date with Julia was only thirteen days ago; not even two weeks. My life had been totally turned around in that time. Carol's life too. Julia is AMAZING!

Before Carol headed off to middle school, I said, "Carol, I'm thrilled that you had such a great night, and that you and Julia love each other so much. And so often, haha. It brings me great pleasure to see you so happy. I love you very much."

Carol responded, "Thank you SO much, Mark. I can't believe how wonderful my life is now. How much it's changed in the last week. I owe it all to you. I owe you EVERYTHING! I wish I could thank you properly, but there's no way I can. I love you so much for that and everything else." She threw both her arms around me and hugged me tight.

Carol seemed on the verge of tears. I finally had a handkerchief in my pocket, but I tried to calm her down by deflecting some of the credit back on her. "I haven't done much. Julia and you started becoming best friends when you first met, so you didn't need me at all. And remember, it was you who first got Julia's phone number and you talked to her a lot more than I did in the beginning."

Carol said, "I'm not falling for that one again! Julia explained all about your secretly loving her for months, so much that Annette or any other girl couldn't excite you. I think that's incredibly romantic. We both bawled our eyes out about that last night; it's so beautiful. So without your love for Julia, you wouldn't have mentioned her to Annette and I wouldn't have met her. So I owe everything to YOU. You are the reason why I'm so happy."

#1: <(a) We're never going to be able to forget that are we? And (b) I hope she's exaggerating about their "bawling their eyes out". That's just silly so long after the event.>

#4: <We're NEVER going to be able to tell them the truth about that event. How we really chose Julia's name has got to be our biggest secret, right beside stopping humanity self-destructing in every dimension. One secret saves humanity; the other secret saves us.>