Sheltered(4)

“Hey, you’re not dead,” he said. She felt sure he’d intended to sound flippant, but she recognized the real tone underneath almost immediately. Not because it was familiar—it wasn’t. And it certainly didn’t sound familiar from him, in his cool too-deep voice with his edgy clothes and his punk hair.

But it was, nonetheless. Relief. He was relieved she wasn’t dead, even though he didn’t know her from Adam and she’d just cussed him out about occasionally buying something that was probably just one step up from cigarettes.

She turned her head slowly—it had to be slowly, because he actually almost touched her when she moved, and said something that probably should have sounded comforting, like go easy—and looked up at him. Then wished she hadn’t.

His reality-bending presence didn’t get any easier, up close and in her face. In fact, she felt almost certain he was burning a dark hole through the fabric of her mother’s beige living room as they spoke.

“I’m alive.”

Yeah, but for how much longer? That black hole he’s burning is bound to suck you in. Any second, now. Any second…

“When will your parents be home?”

She wished he hadn’t asked that. She wished she didn’t know what he meant, either. He could have meant it in all sorts of ways, really—bad ways. Even possibly sexual ways. But she understood he didn’t.

He knew. He really knew what would happen if they caught a boy in here with her. Not even a boy, really—he was all the way a man. He had stubble on his cheeks—rough, course stuff—and hair curling out of the top of his t-shirt and the big hand close to her face was worn-looking and all knuckle. As if he’d spent his life scouring dishes or maybe clawing his way up Mount Doom.

However, she couldn’t help noticing the soft roundedness of his cheeks, and now that she wasn’t challenging him the mean line he’d set his upper lip into had relaxed. In fact his mouth looked almost…she didn’t even know. She wanted to say like a woman’s, but the rest of him—all jagged and bullish—contrasted too sharply with those soft curves. And then there was the haircut and the tattoos…up this close she could actually make out one on his neck, for God’s sake.

What sort of person had a tattoo on their neck? She’d thought the inside of the wrist and the webbing between thumb and forefinger were tender places. The neck seemed like tissue paper to her. As if he’d blasted a confetti tower with a flamethrower.

“If you’re having trouble speaking you should probably let me know somehow,” he said, because oh God she’d taken a thousand years to respond to him. He’d asked a question and she’d answered by staring and staring at him like a maniac.

“Eleven. It’s always eleven on a Wednesday. Bridge with the Pattersons,” she managed to get out, though once she had, that familiar, brittle little voice at the back of her mind whispered, Yeah, but what if they change their minds tonight? What if, what if?

It wouldn’t even be the belt, for a creature like this in the house with her. It’d be a hole dug in the garden and her in it.

“Thought about taking you to the hospital, but call me crazy—didn’t think that would go down so well.”

This whole thing wouldn’t go down so well, she thought in response, but of course didn’t say. He’d already exposed too much of her. Any more and she’d be naked in front of him, probably shivering and even more embarrassed than she currently felt.

“Thank you,” she said, because those were nice, safe, expected words. He didn’t look as though he had expected them, however. His thick, dark brows raised, and she noticed yet another thing about him.

He’d had a piercing in one of them. There was a mark there, a little strip of missing hair, where it had been.

“No problem. Even scumbag drug addicts can do the right thing sometimes.”

She felt her face heat.

“I don’t think you’re a scumbag. Or a drug addict. I just—”

“What?”

Don’t jostle me, she thought, but it was too late for that. He’d started jostling her all the way back by the fence. She could feel him, creeping under her skin and shaking her all around.

“Look, I’m not an idiot, okay? I know pot isn’t Satan’s weed, or whatever.”

He flicked his gaze to hers, so steady and dark and too intense.

“When did I say you were an idiot?” he asked, and she tried to remember. She really tried. Unfortunately, all she could come up with were vague impressions of him.

“You didn’t. You just implied it. With your…earrings and your haircut.”