On Any Given Sundae Read Online Free PDF Page B

“See you later,
man. I’ve got some football questions for you this afternoon.”
    “All right,” he said, turning his attention
back to Mama’s hairstylist and to Gretchen, who lobbed an ice cream
scoop at him, and none too gently either.
     
    ***
     
    Elizabeth stared at her iMac’s blue screen,
heaved in gulps of air (in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent
hyperventilation) and mentally retraced the past half hour for
evidence of personal psychosis. Dinner with his family? Good
heavens, how could she have let that happen?
    Her cell phone rang. Gretchen.
    “Oh, God, Elizabeth! I’m so sorry I couldn’t
stop it. I’m going to wring Nick’s neck later. There’s no way you
have to go through with this. We’ll think of something to get you
out of—”
    “Where are you?” Elizabeth asked her. “I
thought you were working this shift?”
    “I am,” her friend said. “I told the Hot
Calzone that I needed a bathroom break. Look,” she said, lowering
her voice, “I can see why you get tongue-tied around him. He’s
pin-up-boy gorgeous.”
    Elizabeth groaned. “He’s a scheming
deviant.”
    “That, too,” Gretchen said.
    “And he wants something—something more than a
live body to take along to dinner at his mother’s house—b-but I
don’t know what it is yet.”
    “We’ll find out.” She paused. “Elizabeth, I
know this all has you rattled, but there’s no reason we can’t come
up with some excuse for you to skip tonight. People get sudden
cases of the measles or rheumatic fever or Asiatic flu or…or
elephantiasis without warning, all the time probably.”
    “ Elephantiasis?”
    “Or something,” Gretchen insisted. “My point
is, you can come down with a contagious disease almost immediately.
I can ring up my brother and ask him to give me a list of really
vile-sounding symptoms. In fact, he’s on call at St. Andrew’s right
now and I’ll bet he knows—”
    Elizabeth sighed. “Thanks, Gretchen, but you
know I can’t.”
    “Why not? Rob tricked you. That’s…that’s
entrapment. And, anyway, Nick was the one who said yes for you. You
didn’t say anything. You never actually agreed.”
    “Quite true, literally, but my silence was my
agreement. And I nodded. And I left. Not staying to work my shift
confirmed my acceptance of the terms of his deal, however bizarre.
So, even if this means long years of psychotherapy are in my
future, I do have to go tonight. But just tonight.” Unless…did Rob
mean for this to last longer than one night? The very thought made
her shudder.
    “But Eliz—”
    “Look, you know I need the writing time,
Gretchen. For all of our sakes.”
    “Damn. That’s the real reason you did this,
isn’t it? You agreed for us . That’s why you didn’t say
anything to him.”
    “I didn’t say anything to him because my
throat closes up like the space inside a cream-filled donut
whenever I’m around him. And I need the cookbook to succeed as much
or more than you or Jacques or Nick do,” she said, which was the
truth. “I’ll be all right for an evening,” she added, which was a
monstrous lie.
    There was a long pause. “Thanks,
Elizabeth.”
    “You’re welcome. Now, I have to get back to
work, and so do you.” For good measure, Elizabeth made a few
clicking noises on her computer keyboard.
    “Okay, but one more thing—”
    “Yeah?”
    “If he tries any fresh moves on you, just
tell me,” Gretchen said. “I’ll have him bound and gagged so fast he
won’t know what hit him.”
    Elizabeth laughed and hung up. How could she
tell Gretchen that doing this very thing to Rob had been the
cornerstone of many of her high school fantasies? Rob bound. Rob
gagged. Rob all hers.
    She rested her head on her arms, thought
about the terror-inducing event that stretched out before her
tonight and began hyperventilating in earnest again.
     
    ***
     
    Five-thirty wasn’t The Witching Hour in
anybody’s book, but Elizabeth decided it ought to be renamed.
    She