Wedding Weight

Chapter 11 - It Sounds Bad

Robyn burst through the door. "I want ice cream!" she shouted, with a wild-eyed intensity usually reserved for much more terrifying sentences.

Everybody down on the floor!

I'll cut ya, man!

You're eating raw chicken!

That sort of thing.

But the wiry Latino teen - whose name, according to the cursive tattoo on the back of his neck, was Hector - seemed neither frightened nor surprised. He simply sighed wearily as if to say, "Oh, this again" and magnanimously waved his hand in front of the prismatic assortment of frozen ice cream flavors. Help yourself.

At this point, neither decorum nor hygiene were high on Robyn's list of priorities. She did not so much eat the ice cream as assault it, clawing it out of the sticky metal pans with her fingers and jamming it her mouth.

After the endless weeks she had spent drinking Tenacity's execrable concoctions, the ice cream's effect on Robyn was more sexual than gustatory. She had heard the term "mouthgasm," but had never experienced one before. Now, she was having multiples, her body shuddering and unearthly moans emitting from deep within her.

But in her frenzied state, she ate too much, too fast, and she suddenly felt a biting pain rip through her skull. She grabbed her head and howled in agony.

"Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia," Hector observed.

Still pressing the sides of her head with both palms, she cast a surprised and uncomprehending look at him. "What?"

"It's the scientific term for brain freeze," he clarified.

Mercifully, it wasn't long before the pain began to subside. Robyn let out a relieved sigh and took her hands from her head, leaving multi-colored splotches of gooey, melted ice cream in her hair.

"I'm pre-med," Hector said and she stared at him again. Sensing her doubt, he held up the medical text book he was reading to corroborate his claim. "This," he gestured vaguely towards the store, "is just so I can afford books and stuff. I have a scholarship, but-"

"I need a phone," Robyn said abruptly, having realized - now that her desire for sugar was more than satiated - that she still had no way to get home.

Stung by Robyn's brusqueness, Hector did nothing, until she added a sweetly contrite, "Please?" Only partially mollified, Hector pointed curtly towards the cordless phone by the register, revealing a tattoo on his forearm. She only glimpsed it for a brief moment, but it appeared to be The Crucifixion, with Wile E. Coyote subbing in for Jesus.

"Thank you," she said gratefully as she crossed over to the phone, lifting the handset from its cradle. She extended an index finger with the intention of dialing Brian, when she was struck by an awful realization.

She did not know her own fiancé's phone number.

In fact, she didn't know anybody's phone number. They were all stored in her smart phone, leaving her mind free to remember other, more important things, like the names of all the major characters on Game of Thrones and the combinations to each and every one of her old high school lockers.

She did, however, know the phone number of the Urban Outfitters corporate office she worked for, having given it out so many times in the past.

Julia also worked there.

Julia would help her.

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Julia chose to ignore the faint buzzing of the cell phone vibrating in her purse. Instead, she listened attentively as Caleb - an excitable, freckle-faced farm boy from Kansas - threatened to kill her.