All She Ever Wanted - Barbara Freethy [22]
"I can always lend you money if you need it. No questions asked."
"Thanks, but I'll make it on my own."
Emily shook a finger at her. "That's just it, Nat. You don't have to do everything on your own. I'm here. I'm your friend. And I can help you. All you have to do is ask."
"I'm not very good at asking, and you should stop offering so much. People will take advantage of you."
"I wish they would," Emily confessed. "I spent so much of my childhood alone in my room, protecting myself from germs or recovering from one illness after another that I got really tired of my imaginary friends. And they got so bored, they all ran away," she added with a laugh that wasn't quite true.
Natalie stared into Emily's beautiful face and saw the lingering shadows of loneliness in her eyes. She knew that Em had suffered from acute asthma as a child. Every mild cold, had turned into pneumonia or bronchitis or some other disease, often requiring a hospital stay. Her parents had done everything but put her in a bubble to keep her safe. Thankfully, as she got older her asthma and her immune system had improved and she'd managed to convince them to let her go away to college and start living her life.
Emily opened the drawer between their beds. "I have an idea," she said, as she pulled out a small cardboard box. "If we're not going to sleep, we should wax."
"What?" Natalie turned onto her side, propping herself up on one elbow. Her dad's big gold watch hung heavy on her arm. "Wax our legs? Now? You're crazy. It's the middle of the night."
"That's when the hair grows." Emily held up the box in her hands that showed a picture of two smooth legs. "I saw this on television. You put the wax on your legs, cover it with strips of paper, leave it on for a couple of minutes, then pull. Hair gone."
"Great, we'll have bags under our eyes but perfectly hairless legs. What we really should do is study." She was surprised when Emily picked up the phone next to the bed. "Who are you calling?"
"Maddie and Laura. They'll be mad if we wax without them."
Natalie was still considering that logic when Emily started talking. "We're going to wax our legs, watch TV, and eat popcorn. Natalie can't sleep."
"I could try," Natalie protested, but her words fell on deaf ears. "They're not going to come over here for me," she added.
She was wrong. A few minutes later Maddie and Laura plopped down on their beds. Maddie had on hot red silk shorts and a matching tank top. Laura wore a long flannel nightgown. She had curlers in her hair and some kind of acne cream in thick spots on her face. Emily made popcorn in the popper her parents had given her while Maddie flipped through an x-rated magazine with pictures of naked guys. With embarrassed giggles, they voted on the best penis, ate burned popcorn, and waxed their legs with shrieks of pain. A late-night Three Stooges marathon kept them laughing until they finally fell asleep an hour before their alarms went off.
Natalie's eyes flew open as her heart filled with a bittersweet regret that those beautiful days of simple responsibilities and incredible friendship were gone. She missed those moments, the long talks in the dark of the night with her very best friends. She missed those girls, too. And as Laura had said earlier, she missed herself, the girl she'd once been. But that girl was an adult now. The past was gone, and it wasn't coming back. Unless ...
Her gaze moved to the book by her bed. Maybe she'd just read a few more pages.
* * *
Natalie wanted to escape. It was the only thought driving her actions as she set down the book just after eight o'clock the next morning and pulled on sweats and running shoes. She'd spent the night reading every shocking word of a horror story in which she was the star. The plot resembled her own life yet seemed distorted and unreal. Some of the words were hers. Some were not. Some of the actions she'd committed, some she'd never dreamed of. Underneath it all was the sense that someone had been watching, listening, a secret voyeur who knew far more about