He dropped the throw, and his hand sank into the cushion by my thigh. He was still leaning across me, so we were face-to-face when I looked up. “Jolene. You don’t have to be scared around me. I have an idea of what your life is like. I get it, okay?” He shifted, and my leg rocked against his wrist. “I know what it’s like to feel like no one wants you, like you don’t belong anywhere. You don’t have to feel like that. I don’t care what’s going on out there.” He jerked his head toward the hall. “It never gets past that door. You can always come here. Do you believe that?”
No. It was stupid. He was trying to force a bonding moment between us. He was being so serious, like I was fragile or something. He barely knew me. I belonged everywhere. Wherever I wanted to be.
He stayed just as close to me, but I stopped worrying about it. He was acting concerned about me, which, maybe he was. Maybe I’d given him reason to be, considering my birthday meltdown. He didn’t know that had been a onetime thing. A weird convergence of events that had erupted in a never-to-be-repeated way. But the concerned look on Guy’s face, and the way he’d lifted one hand to my shoulder and rubbed tiny circles on it with his thumb, made me realize he wasn’t going to take my word for it. He’d been nice, or what passed for nice to me, and even though I was growing uncomfortable, it would make him uncomfortable if I said anything; that was the last thing I wanted.
“You’re offering your apartment as a neutral zone. Got it.” Then I pointed toward the TV. “We should probably start the movie though, before it gets too late.”
“Right,” Guy said. “Wouldn’t want you to miss bed check.” He tried to soften the sting of his words by smiling, but I regretted sharing some details with him the other night when I hadn’t had my usual filter on. I’d told him plenty. He knew no one was going to come check on me.
I shrugged his hand off my shoulder.
“Hey, hey.” He sighed, and his breath ruffled my hair. “That wasn’t directed at you, okay? People should care enough about you to wonder where you are. That’s all I meant.”
“Sure, fine, but can we please watch the movie now?”
He relented, eventually, after pulling the almost forgotten throw over me, then he left one arm across the back of the couch.
I had the weirdest thought while the opening credits started. There I was with a near stranger, and he was taking better care of me than my parents. My own dad didn’t even know where I was. He didn’t care, so long as he kept me away from Mom for the exact same window of time every month. And she was no better.
Guy had to wake me up when the movie ended. His arm had slid around my back, because I’d slumped onto him. He said he didn’t mind, and I got the sense that he was telling the truth. Nothing I’d done had bothered him. Maybe he really was a nice guy.
I didn’t stiffen when he hugged me at the door. I was starting to get used to the fact that he was a touchy-feely kind of guy.
“So,” he said, still in mid-hug. “Next time I run into you with a bunch of people, what do you want me to say?”
“Hi usually works.”
“Is that it?”
I pulled free from his hug easily. He was talking about more than proper greeting etiquette. It made my skin prickle uncomfortably that this was something we had to have a conversation about. “What do you think?”
Guy looked me straight in the eye before answering. “I think that there are lots of different kinds of people with lots of different kinds of ideas. We don’t always consider things from all angles before we make judgments.”
“You don’t think we should let anyone know we’re friends.”
“That’s not what I said. I don’t want to risk a new friendship on what people may or may not decide is okay. Do you?”
What he meant but wasn’t saying was that no one was going to understand a thirty-year-old guy hanging out with a sixteen-year-old girl alone in his apartment. It sounded skeevy even to me, but it wasn’t like that. People weren’t going to reserve judgment while I explained about my broken home and empty room. They weren’t going to understand that Guy was offering me a refuge, a place where I didn’t have to be alone. And that was what he was doing. He was being a friend when I didn’t have anyone else.
“No, I guess not.”
“I’m not telling you what to say. You’re old enough to make your own decisions.”
“No. No, I think you’re right. People can be dumb.” I couldn’t believe I was admitting that to him.
“Right. I’ll nod if I see you out there. No one will object to that. But in here,” he said, “we can be as close as we want.”
It was nice to have somebody who cared enough to think about how things would affect me. I knew Adam cared about me, but he had a whole family that cared about him, and he couldn’t always be there for me. Based on how quickly the building was improving, soon he wouldn’t be here at all.
I pushed that thought away and smiled at Guy. “I’d like that.”
Based on Guy’s smile, he did, too.
ADAM
Jeremy’s intention was crystal clear when he came into my room later that night. He leaped on me and nailed me rapid-fire in the arm at least half a dozen times before I could get him off. All of this was done with almost no sound, because we were both aware of Dad only a thin wall away.
At last Jeremy stopped trying to find new parts of me to hit, and I released the choke hold I had on him. We sat at opposite ends of my bed, heaving—quietly—and glaring at each other. I was the first to quit scowling, and Jeremy seized the opportunity to get in one last cheap shot.
And I let him.
Because, yeah.
In a low voice, he said, “Two hours. And you couldn’t do it.”
“I’m trying.”
Jeremy reared back to hit me again and I jerked away.
“Okay. Okay.” I sighed, because he was right. Saying two words to Dad the last time I saw him wasn’t trying. Deliberately picking a fight with him wasn’t trying. None of what I was doing was trying.
And I did want to try. I did. I had to, because what Dad was doing wasn’t enough.
“I won’t run my mouth again. I’ll try, okay?”
Jeremy wouldn’t look at me. “You better. And it can’t just be this weekend. It has to be every time.” He didn’t mention Jolene specifically, but the point was clear enough. If I was going to do this thing with Dad, really do it, I wouldn’t be able to spend every waking moment with her. I’d have to pull back. A lot. Even thinking about that made me clench my jaw and want to yell at Dad again for taking me away from yet another person I loved.