Her Mysterious Ways

Chapter 21: Male Stripper

WARNING!!! NOT EDITED!!!
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"I want to go to the zoo!" Gracie cheered, her smile beaming.

"That is very nice of you Andy, but I am too old to be walking all around a zoo. I'm afraid I can't go, but thank you for thinking of me." Grandma's wrinkled smile seemed to have a certain warmth to it.

"No no. I thought of that. I know the guy the owns it so he said he's give you a ride in their little side by side work truck thing and Cole and I can work on out dance for the wedding.

"A dance for a wedding you say?" Grandma raised her eyebrows, a smug smile plastered on her face.

"No Grandma. It's just for her friends wedding. He needed a couple dancers to dance so he asked Andy and Andy asked me. That's all." I glared at her and silently pleaded to not say anything more about it.

"Yeah. Now Cole, go put a shirt on you male stripper." Andy gave a small laugh.

"What's a male stripper?" Gracie asked, her innocence leaking into the situation that Andy just had to get into.

"Umm..." I shot Andy a death glare," it's the person that takes the envelopes off of the mail to... inspect it. Just don't call them that, call them mail inspectors, because it's rude to call them mail strippers."

"Why?" Gracie's big green eyes were full of wonder.

"Because they don't like it. Those mail strippers are picky, I tell you." I looked over at Andy, who was trying to supress a laugh but epically failing.

"Where's my pants?" Grandma barked from her chair.

"On your legs. Now get your coat and let's go." I prompted her. Then she got up and slowly made her way to her bedroom to get her coat when she suddenly emerged, looking very confused.

"Elizabeth, you should marry that Tony boy. He's very sweet and he had asked you to go with him to the movies only God knows how many times. Just give him a chance. He's right... Oh hello Tony. I didn't realize you were there. Elizabeth will be here in just a second. Elizabeth honey, Tony is here!" Grandma exclaimed as she clapped her hands together.

Andy looked at me with a worried sort of look. I pointed at Gracie and her and then pointed to the door. She got the hint and silently shuffled Gracie out the door and into the car. I heard Gracie yell 'WOW' when they got outside, but I ignored it.

"Grandma, look at this." I pointed towards the collage of her, Gracie, and me at a restaurant that I took when she was all there and we had money to go out for meals every once in a while. "That's who you live with now. Elizabeth left us. She's not coming back. Remember?"

"You don't know that. Oh, never mind. I remember. She left five years ago. Yes." Her expression faltered and was replaced with a look of gloominess.

"Okay, so now that we're caught up to date, I'll grab your coat and then we'll go to the zoo with Andy, okay?" I faked a warm smile and went into her bedroom to grab her coat.

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"Are we there yet?" Gracie whined. We had been on the road for an hour, and I was starting to wonder the same thing.

"No. We have awhile left in the drive. There's a convenience store at the next exit, so we'll stop there." She told Gracie from the drivers seat.

"Okay, so I have been wondering something ever since I saw your... vehicle." I looked over at her from the passenger seat and saw a small crooked smile spread across her lightly freckled face.

"Yes?" Her smile got bigger as she talked, but she still kept her eyes on the road.

"Why does your aunt own a hippy van?" My awkward self asked. I was serious, too. We were travelling to the zoo in a legit, honest to God, boxy, and probably filled with drugs at one point in time, hippy van.