His strong jaw seems over-worked as the muscles ripple from him clenching his teeth.
He finds me infuriating. I can tell.
Good. I find him exhausting.
I can feel his breath against my face, dancing across my cheek, slithering down the bridge of my nose before fading away into the night.
I should push him away, especially after what he did tonight, not that he’s done anything other than be a total moron to me ever since the day we met. I should definitely push him away, but between my noodle arms and my inability to peel myself away from the edge of the shoreline of his eyes, I stand here, motionless instead.
“What the hell is your problem?” His growl is low and there are still tell-tale signs of a chase in his ragged breathing.
“You mean you haven’t figured it out yet?” I manage to snap back, jutting my chin upward in defiance. He narrows his eyes before sinking his teeth into his bottom lip.
“You insisted on bringing me here. You insisted on chasing me up the stairs. Do you plan on letting me go inside or are you just going to kill me right here and now?” I snarl and he steps away from me with his arms crossed. I see a wounded expression cross his face for the first time since I’ve known him.
Did I somehow manage to strike a nerve?
What was it that I said?
I should make note of it for future reference. It may come in handy when I want to shut him up.
I stand, staring at the conundrum pouting in front of me until he rolls his eyes. “So, are you going to open the stupid door or not?”
“You expect to come inside?” I ask, my voice going up into an almost inaudible shriek in the last word. Even from out here, I can hear my mom shuffling around in the kitchen and panic is rising up inside my throat.
“Well, I sure as shit didn’t come all this way just to look at a broken door.”
21
I remember going to speech therapy classes as a young child. I hated every dreadful second of Miss Celestine’s tutelage.
“Speak up, Maverick. Use your words. You have such a lovely voice.”
It was all bullshit. There was absolutely nothing lovely about my voice and I didn’t know as many words as she thought I did. I couldn’t remember most of them. She would pile homework up, giving me new words to memorize and sentences to say. Until finally, my brain reunited with my voice and I could express myself again in words that made sense. Words that didn’t hurt.
Somehow, as I stare around this cramped excuse of a flat, I am that boy again, incapable of finding the words to adequately describe what I see before me, and something tells me that Miss Celestine would be just as lost as I am.
“This is it?” I finally manage to say when my eyes return to Beth’s after scouring over the beige-washed walls, sparsely decorated with paintings and photographs in broken and cracked frames. Nothing sits straight here. Everything is just a little off angle, but I have a feeling that even if I were to try to straighten it out, every frame, every picture, every mirror would tilt right back into its imperfect place.
There’s a stain on the carpet that looks like it’s been there for years and I shudder to imagine the source of it. An L-shaped, tattered sofa sits smack in the middle of the room with the small piece missing and a plastic chair completing the shape.
I can see the stove from the door through an open arch, as an older woman who looks just like Beth steps out to greet her.
She pauses before the words leave her mouth when she sees me, and her eyes suddenly dart around the room as if she expected some kind of prior notice to give her enough time to change all this. It would all need to be thrown away, scrubbed raw and refurnished before it became even remotely acceptable, though it is remarkably clean.
Something well-seasoned fills the air and my stomach groans. I glance behind the lady to see a pot on the two-burner stove and immediately find myself wondering how the hell something that smells so good could ever come from something so…small…so inadequate. This has to be a joke.
Somewhere a toilet flushes and not long after, a tall, slender man emerges from a room. Beth’s face falls and from the tremor in her hands I assume this is her father.
“Beth, honey?” her mother greets her. “You’re home early.” It’s more of a question than a statement of the obvious.
“And you brought a friend,” her father tacks on, coming around to the door to face me. I expect some degree of hostility. All the other homes I’ve been to with fathers seem to find me repugnant, not that I give a shit.
Beth’s father, however, doesn’t chase me with a scowl or a 9mm. Instead, he extends a hand to me. I glance down at it in confusion for a brief moment before realizing he expects me to shake it.
I reluctantly reach forward and he shakes my hand with his right hand while covering it with his left.
“Is everything okay?” her mother asks, still eyeing me from across the room. She’s cautious, there’s no mystery about that. A heck of a lot more cautious than Beth’s father. I can’t say I saw that coming. Women of all shapes and ages tend to like me. Apparently, not this one.
“Yes.” Beth answers unconvincingly, still frozen beside me.
“And who is this?” she asks, clearly not waiting for Beth to make the introductions any longer.
“This is Maverick. He gave me a lift.”
Her mom folds her arms behind her and nods. “Maverick. From your school? That Maverick?” she asks. Her voice sounds laden with suspicion and inside information.
“Yes,” Beth whispers and her father’s shoulders square.
I see. They’ve heard about me before.
“I wasn’t aware that you two were friends,” her mother says with no trace of anger in her voice, just a buttery inquisition that makes no sense to me. If there’s one thing to be noted about this woman, it’s that when she wants to, she’s very good at hiding her true feelings.
“Well, actually,” Beth stutters and I snort at the thought of her explaining this to her folks. It’s almost funny to watch her wringing her hands like a toddler about to get a thrashing for breaking a family heirloom or drowning the pet zebra.
“We’re not exactly friends,” she finally says, and her father’s jaw tightens. He knows. Well…I’m sure he thinks he knows. I can sense his intuition, but I’m pretty sure he’s not at all prepared for the actual truth.
Her mother is staring at me with veiled venom, but I’m an expert at detecting these things. She couldn’t hide it behind a screen door made out of titanium even if she tried. She doesn’t like me.
“Well, umm...I was going to tell you, I swear!” Beth stutters.
I think about stepping up and blurting it out, but she seems to be struggling. Because I’m a gentleman, and maybe even a coward, I allow her to struggle all on her own.
“Beth?” her father asks, his voice measured. “What did you do?”
“Beth?” her mother says again, more firmly this time.
Beth takes a deep breath and turns to look at me with a pained look in her eyes before hiding them behind bare lids. When she reopens them, I barely recognize her. She smiles sweetly at me and it makes me uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable when she walks over to me and slowly puts her arm around my waist. I’m too stunned to push her away even though I can feel the tension in her arms.