Throw Like A Girl Read Online Free Page B

might as well try to stop yourself from vomiting as try to keep the weirdness from coming out. Her hands felt soiled. She rinsed them in the gray water and dried them on her pants.
    R.B. was still asleep back in the room. He didn’t like getting up early or walking just for walking’s sake. He was full of such things, little prickly dislikes. People who went around acting like theirs didn’t stink. Certain movies, the stupid ones where they didn’t do anything but talk. Certain kinds of foods. It was all Jessie could do to get him to drink orange juice instead of orange soda. He only ate when he was hungry, didn’t make a big deal out of it. He didn’t care about a lot of things other people thought were so important.
    He was proud. He didn’t like her paying for things, even when it was her own money; she had to slip it to him beneath the table in restaurants. It was as if all the ordinary hungers he didn’t have or couldn’t be bothered with went into being proud. She understood that about him, she had reached out with her heart and soul and touched that hard, hungry part of him.
    Jessie turned her back on the ocean and crossed the road, wondering if he’d want something to eat once he woke up. There was a doughnut shop a couple of blocks down, she didn’t mind going into places like that where nobody noticed what you looked like or who you were. Jessie stood patiently in line, flicking her eyes over her reflection in the mirrored panels. An average-to-plain girl with long straight hair falling in her eyes, no one you’d remember, and for the first time in her life she was glad for that because nobody was supposed to know where they were. She bought six doughnuts and a large iced tea which she balanced carefully on her way back to the room. She couldn’t believe they were staying in a real motel.
    R.B. was still asleep. He slept like he was a puppet dropped from some great height. Arms and legs flopped everywhere. His head was flung back and his mouth was open. Watching him sleep was still new to her, so she just sat there for a while. How amazing that when he was asleep, not talking, moving, watching things and working them around, he wasn’t really R.B. at all. He was this long, blue-pale, skinned-looking creature, like a shell, but she had to stop thinking about those.
    Jessie drank her iced tea and ate one of the doughnuts and then because she was getting bored she made some small, experimental noises to see if he might wake up. Scootched around in her chair. Ran water in the bathroom. She had already learned that if she wanted him to get up she should go about it in this roundabout way.
    Finally his eyes fluttered and he regarded the ceiling. Then he rolled over. “Hey,” Jessie said.
    â€œWhat are you doing?”
    He meant the doughnuts. Jessie held the bag out to him and he rummaged around in it. “Chocolate. All right.”
    And she was happy, because the doughnuts made him happy. R.B. got up to go to the bathroom with half a doughnut still clamped in his mouth and that was both funny and awful, to think of him doing both those things at once. Well, this was her new life, she should get accustomed to all manner of strangeness.
    When he got back into bed he patted the space next to him, meaning she should lie down with him which also felt strange, since she was dressed and he wasn’t wearing anything. She rested her head on his chest and R.B. ran one hand down her back and underneath the top of her pants while his other hand worked at getting a cigarette going. Once she heard the snap of the lighter and smelled smoke, Jessie said, “So what do you want to do today?”
    â€œHere I just woke up and you’re already after me to make plans.”
    â€œI was just asking. Come on.”
    There was a little while when the smoke drew in and out, then he said, “I think I’ll go get me a new girlfriend.”
    â€œOh sure.