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“Skeletons are meant to stay in the closet, El,” Will, mutters, but I catch his words and force a smile at him. “I’ve heard you traveled around a lot, Jack,” Will adds attempting to keep the conversation going without the awkward mention of my ex-fiancé.
Jack clears his throat, and I know he didn’t miss Ellen’s comment, but now is not the place to discuss it. He lets it go and begins to chat with Will about the places he’s traveled because of his career. The list is pretty extensive and the two of them begin discussing their favorite places to visit since Will travels often for his job too.
“How did you and Ellen meet?” Jack asks, changing the direction of the conversation for the better as I pour everyone a little more wine. We might all be a little tipsy, but the more we drink the more likely it is that Jack will forget Ellen’s little slip of the tongue.
“We met when I was a freshman and Will was a sophomore at the University of Michigan,” Ellen says proudly and both Will and I let out a riotous laugh. This is the story she likes to tell and most people don’t ask anything beyond this, but not tonight. Not after she sold me out and told Jack I liked him.
“Something tells me that isn’t the whole story,” Jack says, looking from Will to me and back again.
“Nope, not the whole story at all,” Will says, pulling Ellen a little closer and pressing a kiss to her temple.
“Let’s hear it,” Jack demands, a teasing quality to his voice.
“Ellen and Will did meet at the University of Michigan, but it’s not a simple story of meeting at a bar or being set up by friends,” I begin and Will picks up where the story actually begins and I can see the flush creeping up onto Ellen’s cheeks.
“Ellen was doing the walk of shame out to her car at about five a.m. in the parking lot of the apartment complex that I lived in,” Will continues. “I was just making my way home from a friend’s house where I had passed out on the couch and woke up because a blade of the ceiling fan had flown off and hit me in the head.”
“This is already getting good,” Jack says, nodding his head at the drunken antics of college kids.
“Oh, just wait. There’s very little that can top this story,” I say, leaning into Jack’s side as I polish off the rest of my wine. Jack signals the waitress to bring us another bottle, because even he knows this story is going to need another drink.
“Turns out there was a skunk waiting silently under Ellen’s car and when she opened the door to the car, she scared the hell out of the thing.”
“Oh fuck,” Jack says, despite not having skunks in Oz everyone knows the ramifications of startling a skunk.
“That stupid little fucker blasted me,” Ellen says, seeking sympathy. “And so I started screaming.”
“This is where I come in,” Will says, trying to sound like the hero, but I know it’s far from that. “I hear her screaming and I assume something horrible is happening. Girl in a dark parking lot screaming, you know. I run over and find Ellen smelling like death and puking next to her car. I’m still drunk from the night before and the sound of her puking makes me puke too.”
“Such a hero, right?” Ellen says, giving Will a little push, but he pulls her closer. “Now you’d think the skunk spray and the puke would be the worst of it, right?”
Jack nods a little, but I look at him and shake my head.
“That fucking skunk got in my car!” Ellen yells and I start laughing as I remember the phone call to our parents the next day. “We spent a solid twenty minutes in that parking lot trying to get that damn skunk out of my car.”
“How’d you get it out?” Jack asks, enthralled in this ridiculous story.
“Looking back now, we should’ve called the police or animal control or something, but we were both still semi-drunk and underage, our logical reasoning was not what it should’ve been,” Will says defending his decision like every time he tells this story.
“So what’d you do?” Jack asks again.
“By that point, I was kinda crushing on smelly Ellen so I did what I thought would win her over. I grabbed the skunk with my bare hands, let it spray me like a million times as I pulled it from the backseat and tossed it into the field next to the parking lot.”
The laughing at the table is crazy and I can’t tell if it’s because of the story, the wine or a combination of both.
“We puked a few more times, and then went up to Will’s apartment and I showered fully clothed washing with Bloody Mary mix,” Ellen adds like everything about this is totally normal.
“We had no tomato juice,” Will says shrugging his shoulders. “My semi-drunk ass thought Bloody Mary mix would be the next best thing.”
“And the rest is history,” Ellen quips, leaning over and kissing Will.
“The story doesn’t exactly end there. This is where Ellen likes to end it, but there’s still more,” I add, nodding my head and making Ellen roll her eyes again. “She then had to call home and explain what happened to our parents.”
While I was only fifteen, I knew something about this whole thing was off as I listened on the other end with Ellen trying to explain what happened to our parents. The best part was when our father told her that the village had lost its idiot that day.
“The car was a total loss because they couldn’t get rid of the smell. The insurance company just took our parents’ word for it. No one came to look at it. They just towed it away and left a check in its place,” I continue and we are all laughing despite how awful it really was because in the end Ellen and Will ended up together.
The night ends on that note, and Jack takes my hand in his and I lean against him as we leave the restaurant.
