Love in the Time of Cynicism (18 page)

When I finish and pull back a bit from his warm embrace, Rhett takes my chin in his hand and tilts my head up to look him in the eyes. Eyes to get lost in. Eyes to fall for. And then his voice, deep and heavy with the weight of truth never before said to me, breaks our moment of shared secrecy. “I have only one thing to promise you.”

Intensity from his eyes locking my sights on him, I ask, “Which is?”

“As long as I have the gift of your acquaintance, I will never hurt you the way he did. That much I know about myself. Every time we touch, I’ll remember it’s a privilege, not a right, and something you have my permission to take away should you so choose.” He pauses, cringes at his words. “Sorry, that was getting a bit weepy, wasn’t it?”

“No,” I respond quickly. “It was flawless. Amazing delivery. Ten out of ten, would recommend.”

He laughs but remains serious. “He didn’t deserve you. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that nobody deserves you. I couldn’t even come close. But I’ll give it my best shot.”

I smile lightly at him and say, “You’re on track thus far.”

A mischievous glint flickers in his amber eyes as they flit toward my lips and he smirks. “Would this be an inappropriate time to kiss you?”

“I divulge one of my biggest secrets and your first question is whether or not you can kiss me?” I mock being offended. In truth, his calm, totally normal response has alleviated my worry that he’d pity me or be angry or change anything between us.

He shrugs playfully and tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, slowly dropping his hand. “Generally speaking, I’m always wondering if I can kiss you.”

Even as I blush and smile, I lean forward and press my lips to his, weave my fingers through the dark curls I’ve been aching to touch since we met. His palm rests on my bare shoulder blade, exposed by the cut of my loose knit tank top. Today, it was almost cold enough to justify half-sleeves, but I like to eke out what I can from the warm weather. Now that the callous of his hand is there, though, I thank god for my choice of dress; the sensation of someone touching me like I matter, like I’m an anchor and mean something, isn’t something I’ll soon tire of feeling.

“You two are supposed to be writing my paper, not osculating in the courtyard!” Dr. Sullivan, shouting from his second floor classroom, calls to us. There’s a glow of humor in his voice as he hangs out the window with a smile stuck to his lips.

Rhett pulls back from me and laughs, “On it!”

For the half hour left in the period, we get down to business, writing back and forth and editing one another like nobody’s business as Rhett scratches down everything. His handwriting, might I add, is about ten times as neat as mine, which looks suspiciously like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and is quickly out of the stenographic running. We’re focused and actually manage to get about half the paper written. It ends up being on Dr. Sullivan himself, as he’s the first person we get to talking about after he slams the window shut.

The bell rings (it’s so loud you can hear it
outside the building
) and we both sigh simultaneously.

Shouldering his backpack and standing up, Rhett asks, “When are we going to finish this?”

“Tonight?” I suggest. “I’d be willing to make you dinner if you promised to be on your best behavior.”

Suspicious, he replies, “Your parents won’t be home?”

“They’re going out on a date.”

“Amanda?”

“She has a life.”

“I’ll be there,” he agrees after a moment of deliberation. “Around…six?”

“Six,” I confirm happily. “Whenever we finish the paper, we could go, like,
out
or something.”

He eyes me carefully. “Are you asking me out on a date?”

“Do I need permission?”

He straightens up, facetiously serious. “Definitely. I cordially invite you to invite me out on a date tonight at six o’clock to go ‘like, out or something.’”

“Good.” I smile widely. “See you then.”

We part ways with quiet goodbyes and I spend the rest of the day looking forward to the night.

When I get home after a quick shift at Ebony’s, as anticipated, my parents and Amanda are out. And, strangely enough, so is Trent. I repeat, my brother who has not left this house in ages is absent. His car isn’t in the driveway and his bedroom is locked. I’m almost worried enough about this to call him. Then, I admonish myself. He
is
a grown man after all, if a poor example of one. He can take care of himself. Plus, having this big house to myself with no worries is always a good time.

With the hour and a half of free time I have before Rhett gets home, there’s a seemingly endless list of things I have to accomplish. Doing the homework I’ve been procrastinating on takes up forty five minutes of my time without consideration. Then, I dedicate about twenty minutes to working on the college applications and essays Michael’s been ragging on me to do for the past four months. He wants me to get into a good, expensive school and get a high-class education where I’ll return after a few semesters a classy young lady with a ring on her finger like Mal did. Not my plan. Though I don’t know exactly what the plan is, I know it’ll be something more rewarding than dedicating my life to another four years of voluntary soul-sucking. After I’ve done enough work on those to make it look like I’ve tried, I dash around the house doing some basic cleaning. The get-together last night has left the living and dining rooms an absolute mess and even though Rhett’s house isn’t exactly cut from a
Better Homes and Gardens
, I don’t want him to think I’m a slob. Run the dishwasher, start to defrost a chicken, put on a load of laundry, respond to Sky’s sixteen texts about
Chaz
problems. All in less than two hours, might I add. Hold your applause.

With eight minutes till six, I decide to take a quick shower. It’s been a long day where not one, but two customers spilled coffee on me. And as much as I love the scent of a good coffee, I don’t like it stuck to my hair. Feeling rushed, I dash into the lavender, polka-dotted bathroom I share with Amanda and crank the water. Ironically, water in this sweltering town never quite makes it up to ninety degrees and nowhere near the average 106. Before it’s hot enough to justify a shower, I strip and jump in, not wanting to waste time on the futility of warmth. As I attempt to relax under the constant stream of water, I begin to sing under my breath as I shampoo and condition. My thoughts wander and my singing grows louder, the only sound in the house.

The doorbell rings.
Shit
. I try to shout for him to come in but, of course, no human voice can carry through walls like a school bell can. As I’m wrapping myself in a towel and thinking through ways to avoid having Rhett see me in said towel, he rings again and I think,
screw it
.

Hair twisted to stop it from bleeding and body wrapped in a tight towel I’m praying won’t fall down, I run down the stairs with reckless abandon (pretending I’m not exceedingly clumsy and ignoring the likelihood of falling down the steps) and throw the door open.

Rhett’s face breaks into a wicked smile as he steps inside. “I see you’ve dressed for the occasion.”

“So have you,” I reply, suave as one can be standing in a towel in front of the person one’s interested in. Since I saw him last in his usual leather jacket or blazer, it’s extremely weird to see him in a white tee shirt and shorts. No leather jacket. No long sleeves.

He explains this at my first glance, “The short sleeves are a gesture of solidarity, by the way. To show you that I trust you, so you can trust me. Apparently, judging by your choice of eveningwear, that you already do.” I blush as he glances over my toweled body and continues, “Were you planning on getting dressed? I’m fine either way, of course, but it’s your choice.”

“Yeah,” I reply, smiling at how cheeky he’s being. “Give me a minute.”

As I’m darting up the stairs, he calls after me, “Nice view!”

I laugh and reach my room, shut the door behind me, and throw off my towel before shrugging on a pair of orange Soffe’s and a white tank top. I decide to take my contacts out before heading downstairs to meet Rhett officially. When I walk into the kitchen, he’s already gotten out his laptop and notebook and made himself comfortable. He glances up at me from the counter and says, “May I say, you look positively dazzling this evening.”

I grin and lean on the counter. Then, not sure what to do since I almost never have anyone but Sky, who generally waltzes in like she owns the place and eats my food, over in years, I ask awkwardly, “Want anything to drink?”

Seeing my inelegance, he laughs and replied sarcastically (at least, I assume he’s sarcastic), “Vodka. Straight from the bottle.”

I roll my eyes and get out two glasses. “Seriously.”

“Whatever you’re having,” he answers without missing a beat. As I fill the cups with ice water (because I am a lame loser who doesn’t drink soda or anything else, really), he transfers our messily scrawled out anthropology paper into simple typeface. His fingers move rhythmically and with speed I can’t pretend to comprehend over the keys, face in a mask of intense concentration.

After about five minutes, I’m sitting next to him, watching him type the words and correcting him when he makes a mistake, and he stops. He’s typed up everything we have, so we move to spit-balling ideas and phrases back and forth. Rhett picks out what he likes, tweaks it, and puts it in until we have a six page (double-spaced, but still) masterpiece in front of us. I look up at the clock. Forty five minutes have passed during this creative process and we’ve both finished out waters.

“Finished.” He turns to me and raises an eyebrow suggestively. “What exactly was your plan for the remainder of the evening?”

“Because I figured this assignment would take us a long time, there is no plan,” I admit with a laugh. “I guess this means we can do whatever we want.”

So, at eleven o’clock, we’re lying on my plush living room floor on our sides staring at one another and giggling like we’re four years olds. For some reason, everything seems funnier when you’re on the floor. The house is pitch black and the only person home is Trent, who came home red-eyed and stoned enough he didn’t see us in plain view from the door. Now that he’s been upstairs quite some time, Rhett and I have moved to lounging on the couch and I’ve got my head on Rhett’s lap – which, I’ve discovered, is almost as comfortable a resting place as his chest. The mood between us has shifted to something more serious through a long segue.

We’ve been comparing scars from childhood. I proudly show off the two half-inch lines on the top of my foot that look suspiciously like an equals sign from a wicker-basket related incident. He displays a crescent shaped scar on his index finger from a vicious binder attack. And so on until the scars on his wrist come under scrutiny. I examine them in more detail if only to further understand him. Six horizontal, flat and white and ruler parallel, one vertical, raised beneath my fingertips, garish keloid pink and treading atop the tendon that becomes prominent when his hands clench into fists. This one, he explains patiently, was the most serious.

Though to me the white ones appeared more menacing strictly in multitude, Rhett tells me that, after three hospitalizations, he learned from some shady individuals that vertical cuts were harder to stitch up. The ones that left you in a morgue, not a psych ward. They did stitch his up, though, so here he is.

Eventually, I bring up the courage to ask, “What’s it like?”

My voice is too soft in the paling silence as he mutters, “Hm?”

“Wanting to die, I mean. You don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want. The tee shirt was enough of a ‘gesture of solidarity’ to satisfy my needs.”

I specifically avoid the phrase ‘wanting to kill yourself’ because Rhett made it very clear that a suicidal person doesn’t want to swallow the pills, doesn’t want to cut too deep or to kick the chair over. A suicidal person ‘just wants all the shit to be over, by whatever means necessary.’ This distinction is crucial to Rhett, so I respect it.

He chews over my question a moment, fingers tracing tingling, electric patterns over my arms. He finally settles on the right words. “It’s like always living at gunpoint. Everyone is shouting
STAY CALM
but you’re staring down the barrel of a gun only you can see and there’s only darkness there. And if you can bear to glance away from the gun, all that’s there is the looks on the faces of the people you’re accidentally screwing up and everything is so hazy and out of focus but it still hurts because some omnipotent asshole is holding a gun to your forehead.” As his words pick up speed and volume, Rhett cuts himself off and draws in a sharp breath. “Then, at some point down the line, it becomes so overwhelming you wish he’d pull the trigger right before you realize you’ve been the one holding the gun the whole time. To test it out, you pull the trigger for yourself and wait for the bullet to smash your brain in. But then, because – at the time this is what I thought – I’m some horribly unlucky bastard who can’t even kill himself without fucking it up, the bullet doesn’t hit and I’m left there holding that goddamn gun again. And if feels like there’s nothing to live for. A lot of the time it still does.”

His voice halts near breaking and I snap to a sitting position, turn in order to look right at him even in the darkness as I say, “Rhett Tressler, there are so many things to live for I could write you a list fifty pages long without any effort.”