How to Ruin Series Part 113

I sit up, too. "I won't regret anything."

Ever.

He kisses me on the top of my forehead.

"Let me take you to your room. It's getting late."

25.

Approach me at your own risk.

"Boker tov," Avi says good morning to me in the breakfast buffet line the next morning. He leans forward to kiss me, but I pull away.

"What's wrong?" he asks.

Duh! He totally rejected me last night.

"Nothing."

I continue to place whatever is in front of me on my plate. I barely realize it's this creamy stuff with whole pieces of little sardiny-like fishes inside (with the silver scales attached, thank you very much). It is DEFINITELY not like sus.h.i.+. It's gross, but now that I've put it on my plate, I'm going to have to stare at it while I eat.

Before I can add more to my plate, Avi grabs the dish out of my hand and puts it on the nearest table.

I put my hands on my hips. "Hey! That's my breakfast."

I realize I'm making a scene. I don't care.

He grabs my hand and leads me toward the exit. "It'll wait. We need to talk."

He leads me into the lobby and out the front doors. A blast of steamy, hot desert air smacks me in the face.

"Okay, talk. Before I melt, please."

He rubs his eyes in frustration. Next thing you know he'll be running his fingers through his hair.

He looks straight at me and says, "You think last night I stopped things from getting out of hand because I didn't want to be more intimate with you?"

"Bingo," I say sarcastically. "But I'm wiser this morning and won't throw myself on you anymore. Besides, it's not like we were going to have s.e.x or anything."

"Where you and I go physically, our emotions are starting to follow. I can't deal with that."

"You're right. G.o.d forbid we should be emotional people. We should just call ourselves 'friends with benefits.' Or, better yet, why don't we just call this whole thing off so you can find another girl to be non-emotional with," I say as I head back inside before my armpits get damp through the s.h.i.+rt I'm wearing. In hindsight, I'm glad I decided to borrow Snotty's tank top.

"You are so stubborn," he says.

I turn around and face him before I reach the door. "I am not."

"Amy, you're the most stubborn person I've ever met. You play games in your mind and create drama that isn't there just to p.i.s.s everyone off, including yourself."

I just stare incredulously at him.

He takes my hands in his. "Look at me."

When I don't he says again, "Look at me."

I raise my eyes and look into his, which are wide and sincere.

"I wanted more last night," he says.

"Don't lie to yourself and think I didn't. I beat myself up about a million times after I left you. Believe me, I want you to throw yourself at me. But this thing between us is more serious than we're admitting to each other. You're leaving in a couple of weeks whether I want you to or not. And I'm going into the army for three years."

I can't argue his points, so I just stand there staring into his brown eyes.

He lets go of my hands and says, "You want to call it off right now, just say the word."

Then he just stalks back into the hotel and leaves me here in the hot desert heat, sweaty armpits and all.

d.a.m.n. Why does Avi have to be so logical about everything? I hate being logical. But I'm too hot to have an att.i.tude and realistically Avi is right. We're getting too attached already.

Slowly I walk back into the hotel and enter the restaurant. Avi is sitting down at a table, talking to his friends. There's an empty seat next to him with my plate on the table in front of it.

I know for a fact I don't want to end it with him right now. I want to keep this thing going for as long as possible.

Our eyes meet and he gives me a short smile. The problem is everyone else is looking at me, too. Okay, I guess I deserve it for causing a scene. I want to cringe in embarra.s.sment, but I hold my head high and sit down next to him.

I avert my eyes from everyone around us, including Avi. But when he reaches for my hand under the table and gives it a squeeze, I squeeze back. I can handle this relations.h.i.+p I tell myself. Even with its ups and downs.

"Have you ever been to an alpaca farm?" Ofra asks me.

"What's an alpaca?" I ask.

"It looks kind of like a llama," Avi answers.

"Cool."

Ofra pats me on the back. "We're going right after breakfast so make sure you're ready."

By ten in the morning, we're parked at the entrance to the alpaca farm. Then we pay for bags of food to feed the tall, furry animals with long necks. I expect the alpacas to be in cages, but they're all running around. We actually walk into the large enclosure with them.

I regard the alpacas warily. They're all shades of brown, red, black, and tan. And their bottom teeth are so huge they look like alpaca hillbillies.

I watch avidly as Avi holds out a handful of food for a large speckled gray and black one. It eats it straight from his palm.

"Watch out," I warn. "He could bite your hand off with those ma.s.sive buck teeth of his."

"They're harmless," he says. "They won't bite you. Try it."

I look at the brown bag of food I've just paid ten sheckels for. Ten sheckels for the risk of getting a huge buck alpaca tooth in your palm. No thank you very much. I walk up to a small baby alpaca and just pet it. Its fur is soft, but a bit wiry. And I laugh when she looks at me with her big gunmetal eyes and large underbite. My orthodontist, Dr.

Robbins (otherwise known as Miracle Worker to his patients), could have a field day with this animal.

I feel like I can try and feed this one because it's small. And she looks at my brown bag the way I look when I see a good sus.h.i.+ restaurant. I reach in the bag and pull out some 'feed'. The little b.u.g.g.e.r can't even wait for me to situate the stuff in my hand before she noses it with her face and scoops it all up with her choppers.

"Hey, don't you have any manners?"

The alpaca starts chewing the food in a very unladylike manner; little pieces of food are falling out of her mouth with each chew.

"Watch out," Ofra says as she walks up behind me.

"For what?" I step back several steps, away from the animal. "Avi . . . Avi told me they're harmless."

"They are," Moron chimes in. "But they spit."

"Whad'ya mean, 'they spit'?" I say, moving farther back away from the buck- toothed spitter.

"Well," Snotty says. "It's more like a loud growling-like burp, then spit. At least they give you warning."

As if having the small alpaca after my brown bag wasn't enough, once they hear me close my bag the noise alerts about ten of the large ones and they come after me, too.

"I'm not an animal person," I say as I run toward Avi. "I'm not an animal person," I chant repeatedly until I reach him.

"They love you," Avi says. "Look, they're all following you."

I place the brown paper bag with the 'feed' (what exactly is inside this stuff to make it 'feed'?) into his hand and hide behind him.

The fearless Avi takes the whole bag and dumps it into one of his palms. As he feeds the things, I hear what Snotty was talking about . . . this loud growl-like burping sound. I crouch farther behind Avi in fear.

"s.h.i.+t," I hear him say.

"What?" I can't see anything because I'm still behind him.

"It got me."

"Who got you?"

He turns around and I see, stuck in Avi's hair, a s...o...b..r-phlegm spot with little pieces of chewed-up 'feed' inside it.

"Ew, gross!" I say, stepping away from him.

"I got spit on trying to protect you from it."

"You're my hero, now get away from me. It's totally grossing me out," I say, then laugh at him.

"It wasn't that long ago I washed the snake off your foot. That was pretty nasty.

Now give me a kiss," he says, moving toward me.

I hide behind a laughing Ofra. "I did not ask you to kiss me after the snake incident."

He stops. And looks so cute all 'feed'

encrusted and vulnerable. I walk up to him, keep my distance, and pucker so it's just my lips touching his. Then I pull back.

"Now you have to wash your hair." Then I add, "Twice."

26.

History is something that should be remembered but never repeated.

Our next stop (after Avi washed his hair in the sink back at the alpaca farm) is a place called Mount Masada. I've never heard of it and I wonder why a "mount" could be a place people would want to go.

But as we drive (And I realize the vast majority of Israel is a barren desert. I truly wonder why it is so sought after.) and we come up to Mount Masada, I ask Avi, "Why are we going to this place?"

"To show you a piece of the history of your people. I think you'll like it."

My people? Who exactly are my people? I'm not sure myself, even though the rest of the gang thinks I'm Jewish. The fact is I've been brought up as nothing.

Mom doesn't believe in religion, just like she doesn't believe in low-carb diets.

We used to light a Christmas tree for the holidays until I realized at the age of seven Santa wasn't a real guy. They should honestly tell the older kids on the school bus not to tell the first graders the truth about the tooth fairy or Santa. You'd be surprised what kids learn on that yellow bus.

Well, after I found out Santa wasn't real, I told Mom I didn't need a tree anymore.

The tree didn't symbolize Christianity or anything. It symbolized Santa. Since the reality of Santa was gone there was no reason for a tree anymore. That was the extent of my religious experience, which wasn't really religious in the first place.

I gaze at the reddish-colored ma.s.sive thing called Mount Masada as I get out of the car. Everybody is taking their water bottles out of the car and I wonder why they aren't staring at the mountain.

"How old is it?" I ask no one in particular.

Moron, with his ever-present gun strapped to his shoulder, says, "The war here was in seventy-three."

I turn to him. "Nineteen seventy-three?"

I guess.

"No. Earlier."