AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Good,” I reply, smiling brightly and skipping over to Brendon, offering him a hand to help him to his feet.
“She’s a little bit terrifying,” Chip remarks to my boyfriend.
“Try living with her,” he replies drily.
I swat his arm and he laughs. “I’m kidding! …Mostly.”
On that note, the three of us make our way down to dinner, opting for the more casual beach café over the slightly more formal restaurant. While there really aren’t any kind of rules about attire here, I’d feel a little weird eating off the resort’s fine china under glimmering chandeliers in my little workout tank and shorts.
The whole way out to the café and after we’ve settled at a table, the three of us are talking and laughing. Chip regales us on an apparently infamous story around the resort about a seagull and a diamond bracelet, and Brendon shares some stories from his crazy college days.
While my life hasn’t been quite as exciting as either of theirs, I still manage have the two of them cracking up over some of the anecdotes from my kindergarten classroom.
“Honestly, half the time it’s just the one-liners from the kids that absolutely kill me,” I say as our server walks away, having put our conversation on hold while she took our order, “You can never predict what’s going to come out of a kid’s mouth, and I’ve heard some absolute doozies.”
“Such as?”
“Well, I mean, what am I supposed to say when a five-year old boy looks my in the eye and tells me, completely unprompted, that his dad has a bunch of pictures of feet on his phone?” I ask.
And yes, it really happened.
Chip’s jaw drops and for a second, he’s silent, before a choked laugh escapes him. “Um…wow, yeah, you’re right, I would have zero idea how to handle that.”
Brendon’s howling with laughter, having heard the story before. “Tell him what you actually responded with!” he chokes out between snorts.
I groan and bury my forehead in my palm. “I just said ‘I’m sorry’. I didn’t know how the hell else to respond?”
Chip joins my partner in his roars of laughter, and I shake my head and sigh. “I wonder how that kid’s doing sometimes…”
“I think my favorite was still the one who asked you if his sister Liz’s name was short for ‘Lizard’,” Brendon remarks.
“I mean, not a completely unreasonable question, there are some weird names out there,” Chip says, taking a sip of his drink, “I met a girl in college who had her name changed to ‘Ariel’ to cover up for the fact that her parents named her ‘Areola’.”
My jaw dropped. “You’re kidding me, they named their poor kid after a nipple?”
“Dead serious,” he said, shaking his head.
“Well, shit, I’m never complaining about my name again,” I laugh.
“Why would you?” Chip asks curiously, “I think Hazel’s a pretty name.”
“Well, I don’t, really, not anymore. But I begged my dad to let me change it when I was about seven because a couple of the mean girls started calling me ‘Hazelnut.’ Which, in retrospect, really isn’t that bad, but as a second grader, it was devastating.”
“Aww,” Chip laughs, “That’s kind of adorable. When I was around five or six, some asshole kid pushed me in a mud puddle and started calling me ‘Chocolate Chip,’ and I remember being deeply upset by it.”
“Is that your full first name?” I ask him, “I’ve always kinda wondered if Chip was a nickname for something else.”
His smile falters for a moment, but he nods. “In my case it’s a nickname, technically, although no one’s called me by my real name in over ten years. Some people just use it as a first name by itself, but a lot of times it’s short for Christopher or Charles.”
Based on the hint of venom laced through the latter, I can only assume that it’s his legal name, and clearly he’s not a fan. “It’s also a nickname for Clarence sometimes,” Brendon pipes up.
Chip snorts, and I can see some of the tension leave his expression. “Well, I guess I can’t complain too much, it could have been worse.”
“Exactly,” I flash him a smile, “You could have been Clarence or Areola.”
This sets both of the guys laughing again, and I’m glad that my nosiness didn’t completely kill the mood. Remembering what he’d said about leaving home at eighteen, I strongly suspected that the name had some family ties.
And I could understand wanting to cut those. While my dad and I had been close, I’d be just as happy never to hear from my mother again. I’d tried to mend those fences, back when I was still young and naïve, but there was no getting through to her.
