Free Dear Life, You Suck by Scott Blagden Page A

replacement. This could be my chance.
Yeah, my fat chance
. A beauty like her would never be drawn to a hooded, fisticuffin’, Prison-dwelling, scar-faced beast like me.
    My fuzzies fizzle.
    Either way, I won’t need to percolate my ruminations much longer, because here she comes. She’s marching straight at me like a prison warden delivering a nightstick enema, and I can practically hear her growls from here. Two football coaches are behind her, dragging Pitbull by the armpits.
Jesus, his face is trashed
. Nurse Aubrey looks whiter than her uniform.
    Wynona’s got Pitbull’s varsity jacket draped over her arm, which is funny, like she’s his mother or something. I must be smirking, because her snarl sharpens and she bites her lower lip.
    There are two kinds of lower lip bites. There’s the wide-eyed
Golly gee, you’re cute, and I sure as heckfire would like to squeeze you tight into my love melons,
and then there’s the
Holy hell, you’re an asshole, and I sure as shit would like to squeeze your nuts in a vise
. Guess which one Wynona’s wielding? Suffice it to say, I’m glad we’re not in shop class.
    Wynona freezes at Nurse Aubrey’s door while the coaches drag Pitbull inside. She’s glaring at me with gonad-slicing lasers. It’s hard to take her anger seriously because she’s so adorable. Even her bubblicious hatred is inflating me with ooey-gooey lovey-doveys. Her face is smooth like beach sand after a storm.
Damn, she’s fine
. She’s wearing blue jeans that look two sizes too big on account of they’re cinched tight around her petite waist like on a scarecrow. She’s short, about five feet, but right now she’s looming like a skyscraper. Her lips are twitching, which is confounding my efforts to imagine planting a tender wet one on her. She looks like she’d bite me if I tried. That’d be okay. Any Wynona contact would be fine with me. I should ask her out before she says a word. Toss her a psychological stumper before she gets too deeply entrenched in hatred.
    She appears to be contemplating her next move. She tosses Pitbull’s jacket on a chair and stomps toward me.
Oh, shit, she’s decided
. She takes one step onto the carpet in LaChance’s waiting area and stalls like she’s stuck in tar. Wynona and I are alone. I imagine drawling a classic John Wayner from
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
“You’re awful pretty when you get mad.”
    I try to calm myself the way I do before a fight, but Caretaker’s strategy isn’t working as good on girly anxiety as it does on squirrelly anxiety. My brain’s whirring like a ceiling fan on max speed, trying to think of something clever to say. I wonder if she can read my mind, and that’s why she hasn’t spoken yet. Maybe she’s mad at Pitbull for picking on poor, defenseless Andrew. Maybe she came to apologize.
    “I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Wynona blasts.
    Oh, well. I guess not.
    She has her arms crossed over her chest, which is unfortunate because she has awesome nubbies that I wouldn’t mind canoodling a gander at since this will probably be my last day in this fine Institute of Dire Yearning. They’re perfectly sized and shaped for her petite frame. Not boyishly small or whorishly large. What I wouldn’t give to be one of her forearms right now.
    “Well?” she barks.
    I’m sorry, my cantankerous love muffin, but I interpreted your question as rhetorical in nature. I assumed you were simply preaching and not actually expecting a response
. That’s what I should say. But I don’t because I’m distracted by the tug-o’-war going on between her expression and her words. An opposing enemy is skulking behind her bulwark of rage. An undercover operative. A traitor. What is it? What is she squinting at that she won’t leak out in a million years?
    “I asked you a question,” she says through quivering lips. “Are you proud of yourself or what?” Her eyes are intense but not angry intense.
    A response pureeing in my blender