Bent not Broken

by Lisa De Jong

“I never told you my fact,” I say, stopping in front of him.

  “Oh, yeah. What is it?” he asks, smiling down at me.

  I take a deep breath. “I’ve really needed a friend lately.” Just admitting that was a big step for me. I hate when people see my weakness.

  He cups my face and lets his thumbs run across the plains of my cheekbones. I close my eyes and feel tenderness in Asher Hunt. There are crazy little things going on in my stomach that I haven’t felt in a very long time.

  When he pulls back, he just lets go, taking a few steps before walking to the driver’s side of his car. “See you tomorrow.”

  I move back to the sidewalk and wave as he pulls away from the curb. I can’t believe that I just let that happen to me.

  Chapter 8

  I woke up this morning feeling . . . different. I’m actually looking forward to something, and that’s a new concept for me. Asher shocked me when he stopped by my house last night, but I’m so glad he did. He brings feelings out of me that I haven’t felt in a long time. For the first time in two years, I really want to see and feel what it’s like to live.

  When I got back in the house last night, I had yet another missed call from Beau. On Saturday when he called, I didn’t answer because I had just gotten home from the carnival and I knew if he heard my voice at that moment, he’d come straight home.

  And last night, I didn’t pick up the phone when he called either. I don’t know why. I feel guilty because it seems like I might be replacing Beau’s absence with Asher and I’m not ready to explain that to Beau.

  Work was slow today, but I’m finally heading home to get ready for Asher’s surprise. I have no idea what to wear because I have no clue what we’re doing. I select a blue maxi dress and pull a thick brown belt on over it to dress it up. He didn’t say what time he’d be here exactly, so I quickly tie my hair into a tight knot at the top of my head and put on a little gloss and mascara.

  When the doorbell rings, my heart starts to race. When I open the door, the guy standing in front of me looks the same as every other day with his wild, but perfectly in place, blonde hair. He’s wearing faded blue jeans and a grey polo shirt which molds nicely to his body.

  And I don’t miss the way his eyes travel up my body. “Do I look okay?” I ask. “I didn’t know what we were doing.”

  “You look beautiful,” he remarks, causing me to briefly look away. Compliments are not something I take very easily. It means that someone is paying attention to me, and it makes me uncomfortable.

  “Can you tell me where we’re going? I mean, it isn’t anywhere private, is it? I like to be around people,” I ramble, not giving him a chance to answer.

  He rubs the back of his hand up my arm. “Hey, calm down. If it’s that important to you, I can tell you.”

  I nod. “It is.”

  “You know you can trust me, right?” he asks, tilting his head to the side.

  “It’s not about you. It’s just this thing I have-”

  He places his finger over my lips. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. We’re going to Omaha to hang out for the rest of the day.”

  “Really?” I ask. I expected the movies or maybe dinner, but I wasn’t expecting a road trip.

  “Yeah, I thought it would be nice to do a little exploring and see what there is to do outside of this town.”

  That makes two of us, I think to myself as he helps me into his Mustang. It’s nice and clean inside with pristine leather seats. It’s only going to be the two of us in the car, but I trust him. He’s done nothing but try to help me since I first met him.

  The conversation on the way into the city is light. He asks me why anyone would want to live on a farm, and I tell him that some people like the solitude, which turns into a discussion over the difference between the people and places in both Chicago and Carrington. I’ve never been to Chicago, but I imagine things are just a little different there.

  “Why did you leave?” I ask, sneaking a quick glance in his direction.

  He hesitates, running the tip of his tongue across his lower lip. I’ve noticed he does that a lot. “I’m not ready to share that fact yet.”

  “What fact will you share today?” I ask.

  “Let me see . . . I quit school one semester before getting my engineering degree,” he says, surprising me.

  “Why did you do that?” I ask. Engineering isn’t easy, so to put that much work into it only to quit would be tragic.

  He sighs. “That’s another thing I’m not ready to share.”

  “Okay,” I say, turning my head to look out my window. I can see the taller buildings that make up downtown and realize we must be getting close.

  “It’s your turn,” he says, bringing my attention back to him.

  “Well, my original plan for this year was to go to college and major in Pre-Law,” I say, staring straight ahead.

  I feel his eyes momentarily look in my direction, but I don’t move to meet them. “Why didn’t you go?”

  “That’s not a fact I’m ready to share today,” I say, almost mocking him. The corners of his mouth turn up, and I can’t help but let mine do the same. I may have met my match with this one.

  He asks me if I’ve been to the zoo and I haven’t. I’ve lived one hour away from one of the top zoos in the country for fourteen years, and I haven’t gone there once. He says he’s never been either so that’s where our adventure begins. I’m relaxed as we walk from exhibit to exhibit. No one knows who I am here, which to me is the best part.

  Every once in a while, Asher places his hand on the small of my back or touches my shoulder to get my attention. At first, it makes me feel a little uncomfortable, but the more he does it, the more I begin to relax.

  I make a big mistake when I agree to go with him to the reptile gardens. I should have known he was up to something.

  “Have you ever held a snake before?” he asks, lifting an eyebrow.

  “No, and I never want to,” I reply, crinkling my nose up.

  “You’re going to today,” he says, grabbing my hand.

  “There’s no way you’re going to get my finger anywhere close to the skin of a snake, let alone hold it.”

  He stops, turning to face me. “What are you so afraid of?”

  “No one said anything about being afraid,” I counter, taking a small step back.

  “That’s what I thought,” he smiles, moving us forward again. My hand is sweating in his when he stops in front of the zookeeper who’s handling a snake to entertain a few kids that have gathered around him.

  Asher steps up to the man and says something that I can’t quite make out over the screams of the children. The zookeeper looks over Asher’s shoulder and smiles at me before motioning me over to him. I swear to god I’m going to kill Asher with my bare hands after we leave here.

  At first I don’t move, but everyone is staring at me, so I feel like I don’t have much choice. My stomach turns as I step forward. I glance over my shoulder as I walk past Asher and he winks at me. I roll my eyes and take in the legless reptile that is wrapped around the zookeeper’s neck.

  “Hi, my name is Mike. That young man over there said you wanted to hold a snake, and this here is a good one to start with.” I’m frozen in place; I can’t believe I’m actually going to go through with this.

  “Now, if you hold out your hands, I’m going to place him in them to start out with. I’ll be right here if you need anything.” My fear is shooting bullets through my body.

  “Hey, if you really don’t want to do this, you don’t have to,” Asher says quietly from behind me.

  I look at the kids’ excited faces and shake my head. “No, I’m going to do this.”

  I hold my hands out and wait for Mike to place the snake in my arms. My heart beats rapidly as I try to control my body so that I don’t scare the snake. I swallow hard when I feel the scaly skin in my palms.

  “Now, let me know when you get used to him, and then I’m going to try something el
se,” Mike says, staring at me intently.

  Asher soothingly rubs my upper arm when I start to shake. After I calm down, Mike takes the snake and carefully wraps it around my shoulders. “Hold on to either side of him. He won’t hurt you.”

  I inhale and exhale through my nose, trying to calm my nerves. “You’re doing awesome,” Asher whispers. I watch the snake slither in my hands and after a couple minutes of calm, I begin to relax. I haven’t pushed myself to do anything like this in some time, but it feels good to conquer a fear.

  Mike then carefully grabs the snake from around my neck and shakes my hand. “You did great. Don’t forget to wash your hands,” he grins.

  “Thank you,” I reply, taking one last look at my new reptile friend.

  Asher places his hand on the small of my back and guides me through the crowd. As soon as we’re outside again, I wrap my arms around his neck. “Thank you.”

  “For what?” he asks, wrapping his arms around my lower back.

  “For helping me face my fears.” I pull back, staring into his bright, smiling eyes.

  “That was the goal, but something tells me we still have a few more fears to work through.”

  “It’s going to take more than a snake to work through those,” I say, glancing away.

  “I know, but I’m going to try.” He entwines my fingers with his and leads the way to the next animal exhibit. Sometimes I think he knows exactly what I’m holding inside, but I know paranoia has a grip on me. Even though he scares me, he awakens something within me.

  After the zoo, he drives us downtown for dinner at a little pizza place. It’s been so long since I’ve had anything besides the diner, sandwiches or my mom’s rare cooking. Right now, anything different would be a treat.

  We order a four-cheese pizza and two sodas before heading to a small booth by the window. Besides my daily glimpses of his life, I still know very little about Asher.

  “Do you have any siblings?” I ask.

  “I have a half-sister. She lives with my mom and step-dad in Chicago,” he says, rolling a napkin between his fingers.

  “You miss her?”

  His eyes shoot up to mine. “Every day.”

  “I don’t have any siblings, so I have no idea what that feels like. Most of my old friends couldn’t stand their brothers and sisters, so I was kind of glad I didn’t have them.”

  “My sister is ten years younger, so we don’t have much to fight about.”

  “True. Will you get to see her again soon?” Chicago isn’t that far away.

  “Look, can we talk about something else for a while?” he asks, sounding slightly irritated. I nod, but I wish he would stop tiptoeing around his past with me, but that would also mean I would have to stop tiptoeing around mine and I’m not ready to start doing that.

  The waitress ends the awkwardness, placing our pizza on the table. We eat our first slices in silence, occasionally making eye contact. I usually like the peace, but with Asher I need more. It’s like the more I talk to him, the better I feel inside. How has this guy learned so much about me already? I thought I was as translucent as metal, but he sees right through me.

  “Have you ever been fishing?” he asks, cutting the silence.

  “My grandpa used to take me. I haven’t done it since he passed away, though. I think I was ten the last time,” I say, pulling some of the cheese back from the second slice of my pizza.

  “My dad has a dock out by the lake. Come out there with me tomorrow,” he pleads, looking into my green eyes with his blue-grey ones.

  The lake is pretty secluded this time of year, but I hesitate. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you work tomorrow?” he asks, leaning his right arm over the back of the booth. I get a better glimpse of his tattoo as his sleeve moves up his arm, revealing a date ending in 2011, two years ago. He notices the path of my eyes and moves his arm down to his side. That must be another thing he’s not ready to talk about.

  “Yeah, I work until two again,” I reply.

  “I’ll pick you up at 2:30 then,” he says, standing up and reaching for my hand. “Come on, let’s get you home.” I don’t argue with him. I think if I can handle a trip out of town, I can probably handle a couple hours of fishing.

  The ride back to Carrington is quiet, and it doesn’t take long before I drift to sleep with my head resting against my window. When Asher wakes me up shaking my knee, we’re already in my driveway, and I can see the light of the living room shining through the curtain. Mom must be home early tonight.

  I rub my eyes and reach for the handle, but Asher wraps his hand around my forearm, stopping me. “Wait, Kate. I just wanted to tell you that I had a really good time today. I know I’m not the easiest guy to get to know, but I like hanging out with you.”

  I turn toward him and watch his gaze float to my lips then back to my eyes. I’ve seen that look before, and it scares the hell out of me. “I need to go,” I say, turning to open the door.

  When I make it halfway to the front steps, I turn and see him outside of his car with his forearm resting on the top of the vehicle. Even with only the light from the street lamp, I can see his eyebrows pulled together. It’s the same concerned look I saw that first day in the diner.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I reassure him as I start to walk back toward the house again. As soon as I’m inside, I lean against the door and close my eyes.

  “Where have you been, Kate? I’ve been worried sick. Your car was still here, and you don’t usually go out at night,” my mom says, her voice a mixture of anger and concern. I’m not in the mood to argue with her.

  “I was out with a new friend.”

  “Is it that boy from the diner? You heard what Diana said,” she says, putting her hands on her hips.

  “We’re just friends,” I reply as I start walking toward my room. She doesn’t spend much time being motherly, but when she does she usually picks the wrong battles. I cried my eyes out for days after I got home from Drew’s house that night, but she didn’t question my “sickness” even once. I took a shower five or six times that weekend, and she thought I was just doing it to reduce the fever I didn’t have. I’ve been a fraction of my old self for almost two years, but she barely notices. Either she didn’t know me too well before, or she doesn’t spend enough time with me now.

  Or maybe I just haven’t changed as much as I thought.

  “What do you know about him?” she asks, following close behind me.

  “He’s really nice and he’s fun. Plus, I’m pretty sure that I’m old enough to choose my own friends!” I toss back, opening my door and closing it behind me.

  She pounds on the door a couple times, but I don’t move to open it. She knows better than to come in here when I have the door closed. It’s my space, the only place to reveal my emotions without anyone seeing them.

  She finally stops. “Just be careful.”

  I change into my pajama shorts and a t-shirt before lying in my bed and staring at my favorite spot on the ceiling. There’s an old water spot, and if I stare at it just long enough, it looks like a flower in bloom. I’ve often laid here thinking about how similar humans are to flowers. We start out as seeds before we start to grow and at our peak we bloom. I lived most of my childhood in bloom; everything was beautiful and I had a great outlook. Things weren’t always perfect in my life, but to me, it was normal. I was naïve and Drew took advantage of that, blocking all my sunlight until I began to wilt. I’ve spent hours—days even—trying to figure out what it takes to bring a flower back to life.

  I’m still not sure.

  The more days that go by, the less hope I have. I’ve had a few brief moments where a few rays shined through; prom, all the time spent with Beau and my trip with Asher, but the sun always disappears again. The darkness is too powerful.

  Chapter 9

  When Asher pulls up in front of my house ten minutes early to take me fishing, I’m not ready. He honks a couple times before I open the front door and wave
my hand at him to let him know I need five more minutes.

  He jumps out of his truck and runs up to my front door, causing my heart to race. “Can I wait inside?” he asks.

  My mind starts to work overtime, and all the little voices that like to speak over me are going off in my head. I haven’t been alone in a house with any guy except for Beau since everything that happened. If something were to happen right now, my mom won’t be home for at least eight or nine hours and most of my neighbors are at work. No one would hear me if something happened to me.

  But I know Asher’s different, so I open the door all the way and move back to let him in. I take a few calming breaths and close the door before turning to face him. My stomach feels like I just took a wild roller coaster ride, but I’m going to see this through. It’s all about baby steps.

  “I just have a few things I have to finish. The remote is on the couch if you want to watch something.”

  He smiles. “I’m a little early. Take your time.”

  I take several deep breaths as I head to my bedroom to change out of my pajamas. It’s been cloudy and windy all day, so I decide on a pair of black leggings and a long grey off the shoulder sweatshirt. I check my reflection in the mirror and see that my eyes are not as dark and puffy as usual. It turns out I’ve spent fewer nights with my mind lingering in the past and more thinking of Asher. He makes me look forward to my tomorrows, and he’s always pushing me to try new things.

  I put my hair up to keep the wind from blowing it into my face, and then quickly brush my teeth before joining Asher in the living room. He looks tired and worn out today. If I left him alone for a few more minutes, he probably would have fallen asleep.

  “Are you ready?” I ask, startling him.

  He switches the TV off and stretches before standing up and walking in my direction. My breathing begins to accelerate as he moves closer with this intense, burning look in his eyes. As soon as he’s within reach, he grabs my hand in his and walks us out the door to his car. I can barely keep up, he’s moving so fast. He opens my door and waits for me to climb in before crouching down on the grass so that our eyes are level.