The Thirst Within (5 page)

Thierry’s smile falters a little when I mention
my uncle’s death. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to call her crazy. I was just—well,
I couldn’t think of anyone sane kicking you out of their house.”

“Thanks,” I say, and feel that bit of happiness
I always manage to feel when Thierry says stuff like that. “You sure know how
to make me feel better.”

“That’s my job,” he says. “So how did the
husband die?”

Shit. The one thing I don’t want to ever talk
about.

Thierry must notice something in my expression
because he quickly moves his hand across the table and lays it over mine.
“Hey—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

Oh. The hand is cool, a little cold like mine
currently is. It feels really smooth, like he wears expensive hand cream. I
like it.

“No, it’s okay,” I tell him. I give him an
“it’s okay” smile, and he removes his hand from mine. “He just had a heart
attack. I think. I never did read the medical examiner’s report, but that’s
what the paramedics said when we found him dead the morning I after I moved in.”

Thierry feels bad about asking me, I guess,
because he doesn’t say anything else until I finish my dinner.

He offers me dessert but I decline. So he pays
the bill and we move outside to wait for the valet to bring his car.

Again, on our pending separation, I feel a
little anxiety. I don’t want our time to end. I should be getting home, I know,
but my uncle and June never time me or anything. They know that the bus takes
forever to get home. They expect me late tonight.

I look over at Thierry and his face seems torn,
as though he’s trying to make a tough decision.

“So, you’re no longer starving, Tori?”

“You did your job excellently, Thierry.” He
said that he’d take me out to dinner because we’re supposed to be friends, and
that’s his job. Well, I’d much rather he took me to dinner because he likes me,
as a date. Right now I hate that we’re friends.

“Can I take you home?” he asks, and my hopeful
heart thinks I hear a bit of sadness in his voice.

I’m sad about leaving him, so instead of
declining on grounds that I don’t really know Thierry and shouldn’t be hopping
in the car with him again and showing him where I live—so says a tiny voice in
my head, but it’s one that I never listen to—I want to say
yes
.

But I feel bad about him going out of his way
to drop me off. It’s about a ten or fifteen minute drive to my home. “I don’t
want you going out of your way to take me home,” I say, and I sigh, because I
spoke against my will.

“How do you know I’m not going to the Garden
District anyway?”

I’m immediately excited. “You are?”

“No, but your face just revealed that I’m going
to take you home, no matter what you say.”

My face falls. “Thierry,” I complain. I slap his
arm playfully with my backhand. “Ouch.”

Holy shit. He’s freaking hard, like a wall of
muscles. Good thing I only half ass hit him.

He laughs, and grabs my wounded hand. He kisses
it, and my knees almost fail beneath me. His lips are so soft. Smooth, smoother
than his hand on my hand back at the restaurant. The touch and kiss send
shivers up my arm. I look up at him, and his lips are not too far away from
mine. I feel drawn to him. I’m in fact inching closer to his face when the valet
pulls up his car, and I snap out of it.

He shakes his head as if to clear it. He pays,
walks to the car and opens the door for me for the second time today.

I put my hands over my heart, as if I’m bowled
over with cute, but I’m really only trying to stop my heart from bursting
through my chest. It started going a mile a minute when he kissed my hand.

“Any guy that doesn’t ever open the door for
you, he doesn’t deserve your friendship,” he says in response to my hand
gesture.

“Thank you,” is all I can say. I’m dangerously
close to a meltdown.

We drive off. He takes his sweet time in
getting to my neighborhood, and we talk about random things. Nola, movies,
music, computers. He mentions his email and says he’s hurt that he hasn’t
received anything from me. I promise him I’ll send him an email next time I’m
in the computer lab in school. I’ve thought about doing it all week, but I
couldn’t think of a good excuse. Now I have the perfect excuse:
per your
request
….

We talk about the Garden District and I ask him
where he lives. He says the French Quarter, to my embarrassment, because that’s
where we were already and he’s totally going out of his way to take me home. He
dismisses my complaints and assures me it’s his pleasure, but there’s something
about his tone that makes me think of duty. I wonder if he’s thinking of the incident
behind the movie theater earlier.

We reach my street in fifteen minutes. I ask
him to pull up to the wrong house—two houses down—and the ignored voice in my
head perks up, as if happy someone’s listening to her. But I point to my real
house and say, “It’s that one over there, but I don’t want them to see me get
out of a guy’s car. Too many questions.”

“Hey, it’s okay with me.”

The little voice hangs her head in defeat, and
my heart triumphs. It tells me that now, if I ever need anyone to save me from
the crazy Harrises, Thierry knows where I live and can come save me.

I look at him and I battle with an absurd
desire to lean in and smell him. He closes his eyes briefly and takes a deep
breath, the kind I take to steady myself.

“I had fun with you, Tori,” he says, opening
his eyes. He looks tortured, which is totally not synonymous with having fun.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“Yeah. I’m great. I like hanging out with you.”

I erase the words “hanging out with” from his
sentence, and pretend that he simply
likes me
.

Kiss me, Thierry.

He reaches over with his hand and tucks a stray
lock of hair behind my ear. My chest burns with something… it feels good. Then
I think I recognize it, and want to chastise myself.

“Good night, Thierry. Thanks for the ride,” I
say, looking away.

“My pleasure, Tori. Sweet dreams,” he says.

I must be imagining the gloom I hear in his
voice.

I don’t have to go to work on Sunday, which had
been a thing I looked forward to when the manager, Andrea, had assigned my
schedule for the week, but now I’m sitting home wishing I was working, because that
would mean being in the Quarter which translates being near Thierry.

I get stupidly excited when I think of him. I
know I shouldn’t. But the way he treats me, how can I help it? A super cute guy
goes out of his way to talk to you, insists on being your friend, on wanting
your friendship, picks up your tab when you don’t have money with you (or so
you claim), acts all carefree and happy around you, possibly cancels plans to
watch a movie only to take you out to eat, pays for your dinner, goes out of
his way to take you home, oh and freaking saves you from a possible assault in
the back alley of a theater… you tell me how you don’t end up in love with him
before the day’s over.

I’m not sure what I feel, but I’m so close to
being in love with him.

Shit
.

I want to see him. I’m anxious because I won’t
get to see him today if I stay here. That’s not good. Somebody, tell me to snap
out of it,
please
.

Nothing happens. I still want to see him. At
least hear his voice….

And I don’t have a phone yet. I consider buying
one before I get my first paycheck, or at least signing a contract and getting
a free or inexpensive model, knowing that I’ll be able to pay for it once I start
getting an income.

After lunch, June asks me, “Do you have work
today, Tori?”

“Yeah, a few hours,” I say.

June nods encouragingly, her shimmery green eye
shadow gleaming in the afternoon light. She smiles, respectfully even, like I’m
doing the right thing by working.

I can’t believe how I lied so seamlessly.

I don’t know why I did it. My first thought is
I want to get out of the house. My second is I really want that cellphone, so
that I may call Thierry. I’ve already memorized his number, I look at it so
much.

And then I understand. I lied because I miss
Thierry.

Brain points out that a relationship that turns
you into a liar isn’t a good one. But I tell Brain to butt off. Speaking of
butts, has Brain not
seen
Thierry’s? Jesus.

Brain has, and at the moment has nothing to add
on the case against Thierry.

An hour later I head off to my fake shift at
the theater, but I go straight to the mall instead. At the first big wireless
carrier store, I walk inside with a determined look on my face. There are many
phones here but I go for the freebies. An eager associate shows me all models
that I can get for free by signing a two-year contract. In the end, I choose
based on looks. The associate is smiling like I just announced her salary
doubled. She’s thrilled to have made a sale—like she did anything, anyway.
I
came here with the intent to buy a phone.
She
didn’t convince me to buy
anything with her sale power. But whatever.

I play with the sample phone I’ve chosen while
she runs my application. I’m a little nervous because they’re going to do a
credit check. I flip the touch screen left to right absentmindedly. Not bad for
a freebie.

“No, you don’t want that one,” a voice behind
me interrupts my inner conversation.

“Thierry!”

“Hey, Tor,” he says casually. I melt.
Tor
?
That’s the cutest thing anyone’s ever called me.

“What are you doing here?” I ask him.

“I’m a part-time stalker. But what is this? Do
my eyes deceive me? Are you actually in a phone store, about to purchase a
phone?” He speaks fast and asks his questions in quick succession, so I don’t
have a chance to reply to his stalker comment, which I very much enjoyed well
more than I should.

“Maybe,” I say, swinging side-to-side. “Trying
to. They’re running my credit.”

At that moment the associate returns with a
grave face. “I’m sorry, honey,” she says, like she’s announcing I have I only have
a few months left to live. “It looks like they denied your application.”

“Oh. Hey, no worries,” I say, unsurprised. But
how embarrassing for me that this happens in front of the guy I like! I turn to
Thierry to explain, so that he doesn’t think I’m a total loser. “I figured they
would, you know. I have no credit history, no evidence of income yet, and I’m
still seventeen. But don’t worry, my plan B is to get a pay-as-you-go phone, so
you can still call me in your time of need. I’ll be there for you.”

“Thanks, but no. Unacceptable. Hey, uh”—he
reads her name tag—“Tyra? What if I cosign? I’m an adult with excellent credit;
you’ll find.”

“Oh, certainly! That would help,” Tyra says.

“No, Thierry, c’mon,” I protest.

“What? It doesn’t cost anything to cosign. You
can’t give me a hard time.”

“I’m not giving you a hard time. I just don’t
want you to pay for anything.”

“Tori, I
just
said that I don’t have to
pay for anything.” He says. He looks at Tyra the store associate. “I’m sorry,
ma’am, could you excuse us for a minute?”

Her smile falters for a bit, but doesn’t quite
disappear, and she nods. “Sure. I’ll be right over here if y’all need me,” she
says, and walks away.

Thierry resumes his lecturing. “What’s so wrong
with me cosigning so that you can get a real phone? It doesn’t cost me
anything. You can’t complain this time, Tori.”

“Yeah, but.”

“But what?”

“What if I lose my job?”

“You’ll find another.”

“How do you know?” I point out.

“How hard could it be? Besides, if you have to
cancel your contract, the worst thing that’ll happen is I have to pay a
cancellation fee, and I’m okay with that, since I’m basically coercing you to
get a contract.”

“
That
you are,” I say sourly. “Fine.”

His face lights up. “Fine? As in, you’ll do as
I ask and won’t complain anymore?”

“You may cosign my contract,” I say. “And thank
you.”

“Great! Now about this phone….” He sets it
down. “We’re getting you a
real
phone.”

“I’m not spending money to buy a phone that
will be outdated in a year, and neither are you.”

“Come on Tor, if you’re going to get a phone,
get a smartphone, so that I can text you and email you. You don’t have a
computer of your own.”

“How do you know?”

“You said you’d email me during school. Nobody
uses school computers to email.”

“
Everyone
uses the lab to email.”

“But that’s not the only way they email. Just
admit it,” he says.

“Okay, fine. I don’t own a computer.”

“Well, get a smartphone so that you can check
your email in your phone,” he says practically.

I make a concerned face, like I’m torn. “Thierry,
those phones require a data plan. That’s more than I’m willing to pay every
month. I was going to get just the basic, cheapest voice package. No Internet
data anything.”

He looks away as if exasperated. What did I do?

“What?” I ask.

“It bothers me that you don’t want me to pay
things for you.”

“What are you talking about? You paid for my
book—”

“Yeah, and you paid me back.”

“That was the deal! And you paid for my dinner.
And took me home. And now you want to cosign my contract, risking having to pay
a chunk of money later when I get fired. You hardly know me!”

“I know you well enough,” he says. “And none of
that even counts. I’m talking about letting me do things for you that you
consider so big, but in reality they’re not that big of a deal to me. Because maybe
you don’t know, but I’ve got plenty of money. So, like this cellphone issue
here.” He points at the counter.

“What about it? It’s not an issue. I don’t
need
a smartphone.”

“Yeah you do. You just don’t know until you’ve
had one. And I
want
you to have one.”

“But it just feels….”

“How?”

Too good to be true
. Everyone says that
if the deal sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t. Of course I want him
to pay for everything. I want him to marry me and be my sugar daddy.

“I don’t know, Thierry. It feels like….”

“Like you want me to help you out, and get a
good phone.”

“Actually, yeah,” I say, and he straightens
back, a caught off-guard. “But then I feel like I shouldn’t.”

He smiles triumphantly. “No problem. As long as
at some point you think it’s okay. Let’s get you the amazing thing called the
Internet, in the palm of your hand.”

“
The
Internet? All of it?”

“Yes. And look at
this
.” He pulls his
own phone out of his pocket, moves to my side, and takes a one-armed shot of
us. I laugh and close my eyes, protesting, but he does it anyway. Then he
fiddles with his phone and after a few seconds he shows me the picture. He made
it magical, like a fairy tale book cover. In it he looks stunning, just like
the gorgeous guy he is, but somehow better. His profile is to the camera as he
looks behind him. It takes me a second to look away from him, and then I notice
he’s looking at me in the picture. Oh. I actually like the way I look. I have
my eyes closed and I’m laughing like he just told me the funniest joke. My face
looks flawless, but that’s probably the filter he applied. My hair looks like
it has golden highlights, not just my regular, flat brown.

“You like it?” he asks me.

“It’s cute!”

“Well, you can do that with this phone.”

“I don’t know, Thierry,” I say, but my protests
have weakened. “It’s expensive.”

“Tor, there’s no point in having a data plan
with a crappy phone. Here. I’ll get it, for
me
,” he says over my
objections, “to lend to you. Use it for a week, and when you decide you hate
it, give it back to me.”

“Fine. I can’t argue with that, then. You’re so
pushy.”

He smiles and calls Tyra the store associate over.
She is thrilled to hear me agree, and she’s even happier when Thierry says that
we’re buying the expensive phone. She reruns the application, this time with
Thierry’s info, and ten minutes later I have my very first, shiny new phone in
my hands.

The first thing I do is dial Thierry’s phone. It
vibrates in his pocket. He pulls it out and smiles. “Hey, look at that! An
unknown number. I wonder who it is?”

I laugh delightfully. “I have a phone!”

“That you do,” he says, following my mood.

“Do you know, I told June I’d work this
afternoon? I totally lied! I just wanted to get out, and get a phone,
finally
.”

“So you’re saying you’re free for the next…” he
shakes his head as if he can’t believe it. “Few hours?”

“Yeah. With the
Internet
,” I say, with
fake reverence.

“Screw the Internet. Hang out with me.”