"Just comb it out."

Going into the bathroom this morning and starting my usual routine, which involves tending to my out of control eyebrows via a pair of tweezers, I noticed a large purple splotch on my neck. It was longer than wide, almost two inches in length stretching over neck and collar bone, long enough to have been made by a mouth.

Goddammit.

Ms. K gave me a hickey. What am I? Fourteen years old? She has been recently obsessed with trying to give me one despite my protestations and despite my warnings to not do it where people can see.

My neck? People can see that. Is this the reprisal I get for accidentally dislocating her jaw?

"Shit," I muttered and went to find my cell phone so I could yell at her while she was working her morning shift.

"Did you know that you gave me the biggest hickey ever on my neck?" I snapped once she answered the call.

"Wait. Seriously? Or are you speaking in hyperbole?"

"No, I'm looking at it right now in the mirror and it's almost two inches long and blotchy. If you don't believe me I'll take a cell phone picture of it and send it to you."

"So I can admire my work?" she asked a little too excitedly.

"Okay, maybe I'll not send you a picture of it. I don't want to encourage you."

"Just comb it out."

"Comb it out? What?"

"Take a fine tooth comb, like the kind you get at a drug store, and comb over the skin. It's supposed to break up the trapped blood or something."

"Seriously?" I wasn't convinced.

"Well if you had gone to high school like a regular person instead of locked in your bedroom reading vampire novels, then you would know this."

I made a noise that signaled that I was not pleased.

"I feel like you have your cranky voice on," she said.

"I'm cranky that I'm thirty years old and I have a huge hickey on my neck."

"Come on, babe. You're not thirty."

"In four months I'll be! I'm too old to have this thing on my neck."

"I guess it's too hot to be wearing a turtleneck."

I made another noise that signaled that I was not pleased.

"Well you have five hours till I get home so you better get your cranky out now."

When I hung up with her, I looked at the hickey again before fishing out a blue plastic comb from my purse. I'm not sure if this combing thing is going to work, but it has too. I'm too old for a massive hickey on my neck.