In My Hour of Need

Chapter 13

Since obviously I wasn't going to eat my snails, I went to check on Junior in the bathroom. He had been there for five minutes. And speaking from experience, puking didn't take that long, especially not when you were in public. So I knocked on the doors until I found the one that Junior was behind. "Feel any better?", I asked from the outside, "We can leave now if you want, and just order some pizza back at the hotel". I heard some retching, so I thought he might need some privacy. I went back to our table and waited for five more minutes before I went back in. "Junior, I'm not believing you if you tell me you're still puking", I told him, and in a matter of seconds he came back out. "What the hell was taking you so long?", I asked. He looked at the floor. "I didn't know if it was gonna come more or not", he said shyly. I rolled my eyes and grabbed his arm. "Let's go", I said.

We went back to the hotel, where we found Jeff and Chuck complaining to the man in the administration that they had seen some rats creeping in the hallways. We just laughed and continued to our room. "So what kinda pizza do you want?", I asked Junior. He shrugged. "Whatever you want is fine by me", he said. I rolled my eyes. Like, seriously, he was going to like whatever I liked now? If that was how the next days were going to be like, I swear to God, I would kill myself. "No, really", I said, "I don't care, what do you want?" He just shrugged again. "I dunno, I like pepperoni...", he said, hesitating. "Then pepperoni it is", I said, and dialed the number before he changed his mind.

As we were waiting for the pizza, Junior was trying to fix his fucking ponytail. It kind of annoyed me that he spent so much time on his hair; it was almost like his new hobby. "Jesus Christ, Junior", I said, I couldn't help it; "Don't you have anything better to do?" He looked at me, still both of his hands behind his head, moving the ponytail around, trying to find like the perfect spot or whatever. "No, it looks so horrible when I do it; I'm trying to make it look better". I rolled my eyes and got up from the couch. "Here, let me do it", I said. I grabbed a fistful of his brown hair with my left hand and tightened it with the other, then put the hair tie around. "There you go", I said, and led him to the mirror, "How does that look?" He hesitated. "Uhm...", he stuttered. I knew I wasn't good with hair and stuff, but if I should say so myself, I liked the ponytail. I sighed. "I know, it's terrible, let me just fix-" "No, it's not that", he interrupted. "What?", I asked, looking at him in the mirror, still behind him, holding his shoulders. "Uh... I don't, uhm, I don't like how I look with a ponytail". I banged my head against his shoulder. "Good god, Junior!", I said, grabbing his shoulders tighter, "Look yourself in the mirror. Does this look ugly to you?" He was still hesitating, looking down at the floor a little now and then. I sighed once again; I couldn't believe I was doing this. It went against everything I stood for, but for some reason I just couldn't bare him judging himself like that. So I just hugged him, which made his pulse raise immediately, and his heart beating harder than ever. "Well I think you're pretty", I said, looking into his eyes in the mirror. I could tell by the expression on his face that he was speechless, but he didn't have to say anything, I knew he liked it.