Kumbaya Much

by Bella Street

  Trent found Seffy on her back in the middle of the room, illuminated by the diffused moonlight coming in the small window above. He saw her shift slightly and knew she was awake. As he moved to her side, he noticed the way her lashes brushed her cheeks as she avoided eye contact. He settled next to her with his legs crossed, looking down at her, and not having a clue how to start the conversation that needed to happen.

  Seffy slowly sat up. When she faced him, her features were strained and bleak. A world of emotion swirled in her eyes and he braced himself, wondering what she'd say. That she'd made a mistake? That he wasn't allowed to touch her again, when even now he longed to run his hands across the smooth expanse of her skin and taste her lips?

  The rhinestone J from her old tracksuit winked in the low light from where it rested against her chest. He remembered the way it sparkled beneath her collarbones two nights ago.

  His eyes returned to hers as he struggled to formulate a sentence. But he couldn't bring himself to apologize. His only regret was this awkwardness between them, and he mentally girded himself for deep disappointment.

  She took a small breath, seeming to come to some decision. “I lied.”

  Trent's respiration increased as the words sank in. Had he heard her right, or just heard what he wanted to hear?

  She watched him, waiting for a response.

  Trent thought back to the night they'd shared. Maybe her words were based more on truth than just his desires. He lowered his voice, hope making it come out rough. “I know.”

  She reached out and touched the side of his face with tentative fingers. A look of pain crossed her features as she leaned forward and pressed her lips against his. Trent closed his eyes, absorbing the sweetness of her touch, knowing the moment was more than he'd ever deserved or imagined.

  He tugged her closer until she sat between his legs. She rested her hands against his chest. “Trent...”

  “Don't,” he whispered, guessing what she would say. “It doesn't matter.” He nudged up her chin and kissed her again, unable to get enough of her taste. She responded with a fervency that rocked him.

  Emotions finally acknowledged surged through him as their kiss went on and on in a bond their bodies would only confirm.

  ***

  Seffy slowly opened her eyes, unaccustomed to the glow washing over her face. When she saw pink light pouring through the skylight, she looked over and saw Trent. He lay next to her with his head propped by his hand, watching her. The sunlight highlighted the stubble on his chin and the caressing look in his eyes.

  “Now this is the way to wake up in the morning,” he said softly. “Sunlight, a beautiful girl next to me, no place to be just now...”

  His words brought a reluctant smile, but it felt strange. Her emotions were still raw, her thoughts incoherent, aside from the need to be with him. Seffy touched his cheek. He turned his head and kissed her palm.

  Her smile faded as the enormity of realization rushed upon her. How had she denied this for so long? How did words translate into something she could believe in? They never had before. “I love you, Trent.”

  His eyes were lit by a quiet amusement. “Took you long enough.”

  Seffy felt her face heat. She returned his lightly teasing tone. “I know, right?”

  Trent's gaze grew solemn. “Well, just so we're clear, I love you, too.”

  She slid her arms around his neck, pressing her lips against his. He returned her embrace, her kiss, pulling her against the length of his body. Seffy closed her eyes. How could she bottle up this moment, absorb its sweetness forever? How long could something so profound really last?

  How close had she come to missing it altogether?

  Trent's busy hands and lips soon eclipsed introspection altogether.

  An hour later, hunger drove them from the Light Room. As they got dressed and returned to his room, Seffy watched his easy self-assurance and wished she felt as secure. He didn't act as if his world had been upended, but more like everything was as it should be.

  Was it? She wanted to stay connected to him, but was afraid to reach out and touch him. Even after what they had shared, she had no real claim on him.

  He opened his door to check the hallway. “Are you up to a little food thieving?”

  Her stomach answered for her.

  Trent led her out of the room and into the hallway.

  Seffy held her breath as they passed Gareth's and the girls' rooms. She wasn't exactly ready to go public yet.

  Her pulse slowed as they made their way to the cafeteria without meeting anyone. If she wasn't so hungry, she'd just as soon stay tucked away in the Light Room.

  When they neared the cafeteria, Trent paused and put his finger to his lips. He peeked around the corner, then sighed. “We mis-timed our trip a little. Looks like they're in full swing for breakfast. We'll have to wait until the staff goes on break.”

  Seffy's stomach rumbled in protest. She leaned against the wall. “There are those beat-up cans of food in my room.”

  He raised his brows. “We need real, fresh food.”

  She refrained from mentioning that she hadn't had the privileged so much lately.

  Trent put his arm around her. “While we wait we could do some heavy petting, talk dirty, stuff like that.”

  Seffy stared at him, fighting a feeling of disappointment. She was uneven ground and wasn't sure how to respond. Deciding to match his mood, she said, “And how old are you?”

  He laughed softly. “You're such an easy mark. I can't help myself.”

  She sent him a dark look. “Whatever.”

  He smiled and pulled her close. When he nuzzled her neck, she stiffened. As far as she was concerned, the hallway was not a darkened, private space, and her wobbly libido agreed.

  “What's the matter?” Trent asked, hooking his finger into her waist band to keep her from going too far.

  “Sorry,” she said embarrassed that he could read her so easily. Apparently she couldn't even manage to feign confidence. “I'm just not used to...this.”

  “What, like canoodling in corners?”

  “I'm not sure I even want to know what that means, but I'm guessing, yes, that.”

  Trent reached up and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “C'mon, you've had boyfriends before, right?”

  “Maybe I just never made it to the 'canoodling' phase of a relationship,” she said, forcing a note of irony into her voice. If only he knew how little relationship experience she had outside of her friends.

  Trent furrowed his brows slightly which didn't hide the gleam in his eyes. “Well, you and Gareth..right? I mean, you two...”

  “No, Trent,” she said, fighting huffiness. “Not me and Gareth, like I've told you many times before.”

  “But you two were so tight.”

  “Not quite that tight.” The very notion made her face heat.

  His brow went up. “What was he waiting for?”

  “It was complicated.”

  “Feel free to enlighten me.”

  Seffy struggled to keep her tone casual, while worries about her past choices burgeoned in her heart. “All I'm saying is go a little easy on me.”

  Smiling, he slid his arms around her and lowered his voice. “So you're like an unawakened princess?”

  “Ugh. Do not call me that.”

  “Why? Malone does. It never seems to bother you.”

  “Maybe I don't have the guts to talk back to Malone.”

  Trent rolled his eyes. “Well, apparently I can't call you angel, either. What's so wrong with princess? Girls love that stuff. You probably ate those stories up when you were younger, right?”

  Seffy snorted. “I never liked fairy tales. The heroine's fate was always dependent on someone else.”

  It was Trent's turn to snort. “Here we go.”

  “I wish I could say I patterned my life by what I believed, but in the end I was never able to stand on my own two feet. I've always needed...help.”

  Trent sent her
a wry look. “I don't get why everyone has to be so damn independent for some concept of self-fulfillment. People need each other. It's not a crime.”

  “This coming from the guy who left home to live on the streets.” She saw his cheeks darken. “Anyway, you're right, I needed Gareth and the girls. They gave me a reason to try. They were my audience where I could be who I wanted.”

  Trent regarded her for several moments, his hands warm on her waist. “I have to admit I'm glad...they were there for you. I really am.”

  Seffy knew he really meant Gareth. “So why are you so hard on him?”

  His smile slipped. “Because he doesn't know when to step aside. He doesn't know when his part is over.”

  She knew Gareth would never humbly step aside, especially to Trent. Then again, she didn't understand why Gareth wouldn't just let her go. It wasn't as if he really wanted her. “I wish I knew why he was acting this way. I don't get it.”

  Trent's gaze searched hers. “Maybe he needed your support as much as you needed his.”

  Seffy stared at him. Such a notion had never occurred to her. “I don't get it.”

  “Maybe he needed to be the hero,” Trent continued, a strange light in his eyes. “And a hero needs someone to save. Right?”

  “Maybe,” she said quietly. But that didn't explain why he'd given up on the princess. Unless heroes were only interested in storybook kind of girls.

  “So...if I can't call you angel or princess, how about baby doll, pookie, sweet cheeks. Yes, that last one definitely has possibilities.”

  Seffy bit back a smile, glad they'd moved on from talk of Gareth. “Can you be any more of a dork?” Trent leaned down for a kiss, but Seffy twisted her head away from his searching lips. “And I don't like it when you tease me. It makes me mad.”

  He laughed softly and responded by depositing a kiss on her neck. “I'll be nice, I promise.”

  Seffy felt the now-familiar stirring his touch provoked. She relaxed in his embrace, closing her eyes, wishing they were back in his room instead of in a dank hallway waiting to pilfer food.

  Trent abruptly lifted his lips, his head cocked to some sound. “It's go time.”

  After smuggling lunch back to his room, they went up to the Light Room for a nap. As she settled in Trent's arms, the deep contentment she'd assumed would follow proved to be elusive. She felt safer, yet somehow anxious. Maybe beginning a relationship based on confused choices and stolen moments had something to do with that. But tearing herself away from Trent was unthinkable. That much was certain.

  Suppressing a frustrated sigh at her endless internal grappling, she ran her fingers down his arm. The light caught on the tiny flat scars inside his forearm. “How did you start?”

  Trent glanced at his the scars, but didn't answer for several moments. “That was the culmination of a lot of bad decisions.”

  “It could've culminated in the worst way.”

  “I know,” he said quietly. “Of course at the time I didn't care.”

  “Did you have a bad home life?”

  “Not really, but it was cooler to imagine my life was hell. To be all angsty was hip.” He regarded her as if wondering how much to reveal, regret evident in his eyes. “I was typical, I guess, getting into trouble for attention, and all the attention I got—especially from my dad—was bad.”

  Seffy found it all too easy to imagine him as a rebellious teenager.

  “I started smoking pot with my skate buddies, and it progressed. My dad basically banished me, which broke my mom's heart. I started living on the street when I was sixteen. After high school a friend got me a job on a movie set, where I more or less just took out the trash. From there I got a job as a production assistant.”

  Seffy smiled ruefully. “So you went from low to lower.”

  He grinned. “Pretty much, yeah. But I made friends quick, started going to parties, got into harder stuff...you know the drill.”

  “Yeah.”

  He sighed. “Basically I squandered my life for no reason at all.”

  Seffy figured it was more complicated than that. “So what happened that made you want to quit?”

  “You.”

  She angled her head to look up at him. “Ah, but you said you'd been to see a doctor at my clinic...so you had already made your decision.”

  “You were my inspiration to stick to the program.”

  “What made you take that first step?”

  The light went out of his eyes. “A friend overdosed and it was...a very messy death.”

  She tangled her fingers with his. “I'm sorry.”

  “He was like me; from a good home, bored and reckless. And I was wasting my life the same way.”

  Seffy looked again at his scars and felt a wave of sadness. She lifted his arm and pressed her lips against the marks, so very thankful he'd made it out in time—unlike the Trent in the Alternate Universe.

  His arms tightened around her. “So what was it like to have a truly rough childhood?”

  “Mmm, my favorite subject.”

  He turned so he could see her better. “You might as well just spill so I'll quit bugging you.”

  She smiled a little then scooted away from him, needing a bit of space. “There's no point in talking about it. It's not a cautionary tale like yours, it's an 'oh crap, that's pathetic and pointless' story.”

  “Let's hear it. Start with why you were in foster care.”

  Seffy leaned her head back onto the blankets, knowing he wouldn't let up until he knew everything.

  He took her fingers in his hand and gave a little tug.

  Blowing out a breath, she finally decided he should know who he was dealing with. Even if he reacted the same way ultimately Gareth had.

  No, she knew on some level Trent wouldn't reject her the same way.

  She cleared her throat, already wishing the conversation was past-tense. “Okay, fine, I have no memory of my parents. I was passed from family to family, presumably to people my parents knew—”

  “Whoa, wait a minute, what happened to your parents? Who were they?”

  Seffy shrugged. “I don't know. I must've asked but I was like this hanger-on with strangers. I remember a few of them telling me my daddy would be coming to get me, but then I'd hear them in private saying that they could no longer take care of me. And some of the living conditions were pretty bad, so that excuse never surprised me.”

  “And you didn't know these people?”

  “No.”

  Trent sat up, all humor gone. “How old were you?”

  Seffy shook her head. “I'm not sure. I was just a kid who tagged along. Sometimes I was dropped off with a new set of people. I remember wanting to stay unobtrusive, because some people stared at me in a way that made me feel bad.”

  “Seffy, where the hell were your parents?”

  “I told you, I didn't know. I didn't know their names. I have no memory of what they looked like. No one else seemed to know either. And after a while I stopped asking.”

  “God, Sef.” He shook his head in disbelief. “What about school?”

  She made a face, trying for nonchalance. “Yeah, that didn't happen a whole lot. The people I was with weren't big into enrolling other people's children in the local little red schoolhouse.”

  “So what, these people were like squatters, drifters?”

  “Mostly. But there was one lady, someone's girlfriend, I think. She took what little I had learned and helped me read and do math. I remember watching Sesame Street, too.”

  Trent's eyes were wide with shock. “How did you get into the foster system? How old were you then?”

  “I think I was ten. The story I was told was that I just wandered into a town alone. The cops picked me up, but when they tried to match me up with parents who were missing children, I was the kid no one was missing.”

  “You've got to be kidding.”

  Seffy sent him a look. “I told you this was pointless.”

  “So the police have this uniden
tified child, and they place you with a family—”

  “Actually, it was a really small town with a mayor who happened to be running for reelection. So he took me in. It basically turned out to be a publicity stunt.”

  “Why do you think that? Maybe it was from the kindness of his heart.”

  “Because he showed me the headline in the local paper. It said 'Entertaining angels unawares? Abandoned Botticelli taken in by town mayor.' I remember the title because he made me read it out loud and told me I was his ticket to winning. And a mayor could cut through all that troublesome red tape about documents and legalities and such having to do with fostering.”

  Trent frowned. “There weren't any kind granny types to take you in?”

  “I guess not. But the guy had a nice house and lots of books, which I liked. And encyclopedias. I looked up Botticelli because it wasn't the first time I'd heard the term used to describe me. I was so disappointed to see that the artist's angels were ugly, but at least then I knew why people stared at me so much.”

  “It wasn't because the angels were ugly.”

  “I didn't know that at the time. Then, it was kind of insult to injury.” Seffy laughed bitterly. “I found out the real reason pretty quick though. The mayor liked to take me shopping and parade me in designer clothes to show what a fine 'father' he was.”

  “What about his wife? Tell me he had a nice wife who made you cookies and tucked you in at night.”

  “The mayor had been recently widowed. I think he was working the sympathy vote pretty hard.”

  Trent snorted. “Unreal. So did the guy win the election?”

  Seffy nodded. “And I suddenly went from staying in the shadows to being a fixture everywhere he went. I was also tutored for about a year and a half until I was ready for seventh grade.”

  “You don't sound happy about all the attention.”

  She swallowed. “Let's just say he was different in public than he was in private.”

  Trent stared at her, then slowly shook his head. “No...way.”

  Seffy felt the weight of her confession dragging on her soul. “Like I said, I'm just a cliché.”

  Trent pulled her into his arms, crushing her against him.

  Seffy closed her eyes, needing his touch to eclipse the memories that continued to leak out despite her best intentions. After several moments, she whispered, “It probably explains a lot, huh?”