Chapter 34
Shelly's POV
When I first woke up, I didn't bother opening my eyes, choosing instead to become aware of my surroundings in other ways. I felt the way that the bed sloped to my right. Somebody was sitting there. A hand stroked my cheek softly, petting me like I was a puppy. The door opened, closed suddenly.
"Are they serving breakfast yet?" I heard Donny ask. He was the one sitting on the bed.
"No, it starts in half an hour. Has she woken up at all?"
"No, not yet."
"Well, why don't you tell her about the breakfast cookies Chef 'Pumba' bakes and see if it brings her out of unconsciousness?"
"What if she never wakes up?" Lexi didn't answer right away, and Donny gripped my hand extra hard.
"She will wake up. She has to." She finally said, moving towards the bathroom. Her footsteps seemed unnaturally loud in the echo-y room. Donny sighed and asked, "Why don't you change out here? I'll take the bathroom so if she does wake up, she won't get an eyeful." He smirks, I can clearly hear that he thinks I would enjoy such an experience. I can imagine him holding it over my head, if he knew I was awake, wanting me to beg him for a glimpse.
In truth, I want that white boy fully covered when the sun is shining on him. He glows, kind of like the vampires in Twilight.
When I finally opened my eyes, the light nearly blinded me. I smiled, remembering the short period of time in which I couldn't see at all. A little light in my eyes didn't hurt me any. I squinted a little, trying to decipher where I was.
"Hi," my voice croaked from being unused, "What happened?"
"You went unconscious from... whatever was going on. Donny and I brought you back here. That boy is a lot stronger than he looks." She teased me, poking my nose.
"I bet he works out just so he can carry all the pretty girls." I smirked, rolling over to face her more.
"Are you going to get up? Breakfast is soon." She bent down to give me a hug.
"But I still smell like chlorine!" I whined, but before I could add that I wanted to take a shower, she crinkled her nose and said, "I know."
Donny burst out of the bathroom, fully dressed, thank vampires, "SHE'S AWAKE???"
"SHHHHHHHH," Lexi and I admonished, "Shut it, Captain obvious!"
"How are you feeling?" he asked me, ignoring Lexi.
"Just fine. Go get us a table?" I waved his question off, embarrassed. I couldn't believe that I had just passed out, for no reason.
"Okay..." he left the room.
"I'm going to shower." I told Lexi, "You can catch up with him; I will find you guys later."
"Heck no am I leaving you up here by yourself. You scared me." I grabbed my backpack and carried it into the bathroom with me. I tried to ignore the fact that I felt lightheaded as I tried to think of a response to what she had said.
"I'm sorry I scared you guys." I closed the door.
The bathroom floor was cold when I took my socks off. I hated that feeling on my skin. Goosebumps trailed up my arms and legs when I undressed. Being cold was just so... so uncomfortable. The floor of the bathtub was even colder; it felt like I was stepping on ice. I wondered if it would start to melt underneath my feet, pooling in below-freezing puddles that would turn my toes blue and purple.
I turned the water on, spinning it as quickly as I could to the hottest possible setting. A blast of frigid water crashed down on me and I shuddered, leaping back, cowering from the liquid ice. I hissed, I couldn't get my legs out of the way, they were left to be bombarded by the spray and a crisp mist rose upwards, biting at my stomach where the goosebumps tingled.
Finally, though, the water warmed up. I sighed, stepping into the thawing spray. It trickled out of the showerhead, and I wished I could adjust the pressure, but I had to deal with what I had.
"Shelly? You're okay in there, right?" I heard Lexi ask through the closed door.
"I'm fine!!" When I rinsed the conditioner out, my movements were angry. I hated being coddled like this, treated like a frail old lady who was about to keel over and die any second. Even more than that, though, I hated knowing that I was probably equal to that frail old lady. I just might keel over and die any second.
I hated it.
I didn't want to deal with my hair after I got out of the bathroom, but Lexi patiently brushed it out for me, saving me from a lot of time and wasted effort. Then I made her sigh because I shoved a hat on, anyway. Still, though, the long strands that hung out looked nice because of her. I was sure to point this out on our way to meet Donny. We were wondering if he had started eating without us, if he would eat an entire second breakfast when we came down, when the doors opened. I stepped out first, and saw something strange. Donny was giving this waiter guy some sort of secret handshake, and then nodded towards me. The waiter muttered something into his headpiece, but I couldn't read his lips.
Suddenly, I was surrounded on all sides by men, singing a version of that song that Timón and Pumba sing when they are distracting the hyenas for Simba and Nala. Only they were asking if I wanted an omelet or a waffle or a pancake. I heard Lexi erupt into hysterics behind me. Truthfully, though, I was overwhelmed and frightened by the attention that was being focused on me. Suddenly, though, a heavy-set man in a chef's hat swept me out of the midst of the ridiculous dancers.
"'Sup, Kiara?" He asked, grinning, "You wanna help me rustle up some grub?" I giggled, remembering that Kiara was Simba's daughter in the second movie.
"Sure!" I was happy to be in the kitchen, away from all of those people. I felt kind of bad that I wasn't excited about Donny's surprise. I ended up having fun, though. Pumba showed me how to flip the omelets after he gave me my own chef's hat and made sure I was clean enough to handle food. But after I caught some hash browns on fire, he ended up just letting me be the toppings girl. I threw handfuls of cheese and sausage and sliced mushrooms and bell peppers into each omelet, making sure they were cooked exactly to order. Every time someone complained to us about how long it took, Pumba merely whispered, "Hakuna matata," so that it wouldn't upset me. An hour later, the rush was over.
"Now what would you like, your highness?" he winked at me, after I threw my plastic gloves away.
"I'll just have a cheese omelet, good sir." I winked back at him.
"No pancakes?? No waffles?? No bacon bits??" he teased, shocked that I didn't want any of the 'delicacies' he listed.
"No thanks."
"I'll bring it out to your table, princess."
"Okay," I grinned, "Where do you want me to put the hat?"
"Keep it, princess. You're coming back to help ole' Pumba again soon, right?"
"I hope so, sir!"
"Hey," I hesitantly said to Donny, sitting down next to him at the table he was slouched over at.
"Hey." It surprised me how defeated his voice sounded.
"What's wrong?"
"I should've known better." His words hung limply in the air like old lettuce, yet he continued speaking, as though more awful lettuce could make the salad better.
"I should have known you would never like me. I should have known you well enough to know that you wouldn't have liked to be the center of so many people's attentions. I should have known that annoying you wasn't the way to win you over. I should have never teased you, or hurt you, or done anything that wasn't perfectly gentlemanly to you. I shouldn't have been so clingy and made it so obvious that I'm in to you. I shouldn't have-"
I didn't know what to do.
"Donny," I tried, but he only kept going.
"-kissed you without your permission. I should have just left when you said those things to me in the hospital. It was obvious you wanted me to leave-"
Leave? He wants to leave me? A sort of sickening fear spread through me as I realized that I had come to rely on him. He was always there, waiting patiently, waiting for me to be ready. And I had been taking him for granted.
"Donny." I started again; I wanted to find the words to tell him to stay. I couldn't even find the will to protect him from me anymore. I was too selfish to let him get away from me now.
"-you seemed so hurt and so disgusted with me in that moment, it hurt me so much that I just had to leave the room." His brilliantly beautiful green eyes shimmered with tears, now, and I felt my heart crack a little more, aching in my chest as I watched this wonderful boy start to fall to pieces. Before my very eyes, I saw one of the few people who I cared about in this world, falling apart.
And it's because of me.
"But I came back, remember? I couldn't let you go. I wanted to believe that you didn't do it to hurt me. That you were just hurting yourself and that you just didn't know what you were doing. I met this guy on my way out. He must've been like 24 or something. He was doing jumping jacks outside, like a maniac. I'm like, 'Dude, what are you doing?'" My eyes were locked onto the tear that now traced its path down his sculpted cheek. I wanted to brush it away, brush away all the problems that sat like boulders in between the 6 inches of space that separated us. I was afraid to touch him.
"The guy turns and just barrels into me, grabs me into a hug and just cries." Another tear slips down his cheek and I sit there, useless as my rock crumbled into sand.
"Then he started talking, about the girl that he loved. They were engaged; he said he finally got the balls to do it after they had been dating or two years. Literally, he filled his bedroom with balls- soccer balls, baseballs, basketballs, beach balls, and then told her, 'Marie Joann Palmer, I finally got some balls. Will you marry me so I can have some sense, too?'" Donny chuckled through the tears that now streamed down, one after the other like they were playing follow the leader.
"She said yes. But then she got scared, or something, because the guy got promoted and worked crazy new hours, and she thought he was cheating on her. When really he was just saving up money so he could buy her the house of her dreams, they got into a fight. Things were said between them, and she kicked him out. He checked into a hotel room after getting himself wasted and in the morning he turned on the news."
His shoulders shook a little and I snapped out of my daze enough to notice two things, Pumba backing away, not wanting to interrupt, and that I was crying, too.
"He saw her car." My green-eyed angel choked, "Firefighters were prying it open and the camera and the- the camera zoomed in on her face. So he knew, and he drove like a crazy maniac all the way to the hospital. He screeched at every red light like he was the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland, 'I'm late! I'm late!' He got to hospital and burst into her room just as the doctor was saying 'Time of death, seven twenty-two...' He screamed at them that they were wrong and that he loved her and that he was sorry."
Donny took a deep, shuddering breath.
"I didn't want to get there just for your death, I wanted to be there for you all the way, I don't ever want to end up like him, regretting something that caused me to lose someone-"
"Donny-"
"I thought that I was supposed to go back to you, help you. You didn't mean it when you told me to go, just like his fiancée didn't really want him to leave. But I guess I was wrong, I am not what you needed, ever. You need Lexi, not me. She doesn't need me, either."
"Sheldon." I needed him to stop talking, stop breaking what he had fixed of my heart. I needed him to stay.
"So, I'll-" he choked on his words. I didn't want to hear him finish that sentence. He was going to go, the one who didn't let himself get pushed away.
So I kissed him. He stopped talking. Our tears mixed when our cheeks touched.
"Don't go." I whispered. His hand came up to caress my cheek.
"You were crying." He pulled away, surprised, when his hand felt the wetness.
"Yeah, you dummy. I don't want you to go." I laid my head on his chest, although it hurt my ribs a little to tilt that far over from my chair. It was comforting for me to listen to his heartbeat.
"You kissed me."
"Maybe you should go, I think that it broke you." I teased, sitting up, but leaving a hand resting on him so that he knew I wasn't serious. Also because his muscles felt nice.
"OMELET AND BREAKFAST COOKIE!" Pumba bellowed, pretending to shield his eyes.
"What's the matter, Pumba? Never seen affection before?" Donny smirked, putting his arm around my shoulder.
I almost pushed him off, but, you know, I kind of liked his arm there. It made a nice, decorative, white scarf. After all, blinding white goes with any outfit. As a bonus, its easily washable and its warm. Just what every girl needs.
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