by Tj Hannah
"I know. I don’t care about that... I just, I'm fucked up." I grip the steering wheel tighter as I turn into a little strip mall.
Stop opening your mouth, Sophia, I think as Corbin laughs.
"You'd have to be to hook up with Garett's skinny ass." His voice is teasing, but he shifts in his seat as if anxious to get out. I park the car, but before I can respond he pushes open the door stepping out into the afternoon heat. He stretches his shoulders out and kicks out his long legs before bending to look through the window. "Next time we take my truck."
I just sit there like an idiot, my heart pounding and wonder why. Why he said next time. Why it causes the wave of excitement to pass through me even though I just made an ass of myself. Why, every time I open my mouth around him, my inner most thoughts come bubbling out.
Corbin watches me with intense dark eyes, walking backwards with arms out as if asking me what's taking so long. His light t-shirt is fitted across his chest, his shorts low on his hips. His skin is tanned and smooth, and when I look at him I can't help but wonder what it'd be like to be with him. To have him slide his hand between my thighs under a table. My physical attraction to him is painfully obvious, and I have to shake the desire from my body and push him to the back of my mind. Maybe that’s why I felt tension. It’s just sexual. So much more intense than with Garett. That guilt stabs at me again. I shouldn’t have done that. The last thing I need to do is to involve other people in my mess.
As I approach, I can tell he's about to ask me something, so I cut him off. "Sorry. Zoned out. So what kind of phone did you have?"
Corbin stops and I turn to face him. He's a lot taller than me, and I notice that if I stepped into him he'd be able to swallow me in his arms. Looking up to his face again, I notice he's smirking at me with a wrinkled nose. "You didn't think I'd really make you buy me a phone, did you?"
"But I broke it?" It comes out as a confused question, more than a statement. Money’s never really been a thing for me. A new phone is nothing, but I forget not everyone’s parents are my parents.
"No, you didn't. You hit me with a door. It was an accident, Sophia." He squeezes my shoulder.
It was an accident, Sophia. The words bulldoze me, and a wave of fresh panic makes me clutch at my purse. I hate how fast it happens. The pounding heart, and fast breath. I hate how it blindsides me and for something as stupid as a meaningless few words.
Corbin's teasing expression turns to concern as he steadies my shaking body. His dark features all scrunched up like this make him look older, more mature than that lopsided smile.
"Are you okay?" he asks, and I nod.
"I hate those words," I say, angry with myself for saying it.
"You hate the words, it was an accident, Sophia?" Now he's back to being confused, and I can see the curiosity in his eyes.
"Just in that order." Seriously, stop talking, Sophia.
Corbin laughs and slides his arm over my shoulders and guides me to the door of a tiny electronics store. I don't pull away because it's the best feeling I've had in a long time and I want to live in it for just a little while.
"You’re the strangest girl I've ever met." He squeezes me tighter to his side as we pass into the air conditioned store.
"You have no idea," I mutter and he lets me go to wander the small aisles, looking at phones.
"Alright then, I'll rephrase. Sophia, in an act of happenstance, you hit me with a door, and it resulted in a broken phone. No big deal. It was a work phone anyway." He winks at me, and I reach across the display to smack his arm.
"You ass! I felt so bad." I look away and pick up a glossy smart phone, distracted. I cringe at the thought of one of these tiny computers and knowing that my mother could reach me in forty-two ways on one device. Corbin moves to my side and watches me place the phone in its’ holder.
“Nah, I just had to get the fuck outta there.” He shrugs and picks up a touch screen phone with a blue-grey case. My gut drops as I remember Kayla’s face when she saw us together. “How about this one, it matches your eyes.” Corbin continues, reaching out and running his thumb over my cheekbone. I know he’s teasing me, but the way he jumps back tells me he didn’t mean to touch me like that. A small bubble of panic bursts in my chest and I shake my head, taking the phone from his hand and putting it back.
I may be the new Sophia now, but simple is still better for me. Small, easy, manageable. That’s what the doc told me.
Don’t over complicate your life, Sophia. One thing at a time. You deserve time. No one can determine the length but you.
Now I can’t remember if I’m thinking the phone is too complicated, or Corbin and Garett and Kayla and all these things I’m feeling about someone I don’t know.
Maybe all of it. I don’t know anymore. Not with the tingle that still runs across my cheek from where Corbin touched me.
Fingers snap in front of my face, and I realize there’s someone else standing with us. Another snap breaks my trance and Tobie’s huge grin and wide green eyes stare back at me.
“Hello, Soph. Yes, there is a world out here. You know one with people in it?” she teases and pats my arm. “You gettin a new phone you psycho?”
Corbin stands next to me with a confused look again, and I’m starting to feel bad for him trying to figure me out. I want to tell him that it’s futile, that I’ve tried. It was an epic fail.
“Yeah, what are you doing here?” We all start walking to the counter, and Tobie holds up a plastic package.
“A controller for the Xbox. Tosh insists on an extra if you’re around now. He’s convinced he’ll turn you into a gamer.” Tobie waves the controller and rolls her eyes. Corbin snorts next to me, and I remember he’s here.
“You live with T and Tosh?” he asks.
“She does,” Tobie answers for me. “And we’re having a barbecue for her this weekend. Tosh has this asinine idea that there will be a Call of Duty-a-thon, but I’m trying to talk him out of it.”
I’m just about to answer that a game night sounds awful when Corbin lights up. He looks like a little boy for a brief moment and bounces from foot to foot.
“I love C-O-D.”
Tobie laughs, and I can’t stop from smiling. It’s kind of cute, and seemingly out of character, how excited he is getting over something so stupid.
“Come to the barbecue and save me from having to play. Those war games stress out the baby, I swear.” She rubs her belly affectionately. Corbin laughs and rubs her belly.
“Are you sure that thing is Tosh’s then? Any child of Tosh’s will be born with the ability to hit a six combination perfectly.” He teases her and Tobie rolls her eyes.
“Jesus, don’t remind me. And fuck you, asshole. Tosh is the only man I’ve ever had sex with. Not everyone is a whore like you.”
Corbin laughs again and Tobie punches him before pulling out cash and turning to the cashier.
“How do you know Tobie?” I ask Corbin as we stand in line with my phone. That was an interaction between two people who know each other well.
“This is a small city. Tobie’s my cousin.” He shrugs and leans on the counter while I pay. He’s waiting until tomorrow to get his work to buy him a new phone.
“Of course she is.” The more things that happen in this town, the more they seem to center around Corbin.
xxx
After we’re back in my car, Corbin insists I take him to his truck.
“You have plans for the rest of the afternoon?” he asks as I park in front of his work, my new phone sitting in the cup holder between us. New phone number and the only number I have is Corbin’s. It’s an indescribable feeling to know my mother can’t get a hold of me, and while I know I’ll have to eventually call her, for now I’m just going to enjoy the silence.
“No plans. I will most likely be hiding from Tosh, so I don’t have to play video games.” I joke, but his gaze shifts to me and becomes all-encompassing within a matter of seconds. I lean back in my seat, uncomfortable by how
deep he seems to be looking into me and how fast it happened. I don’t like when people look at me like that. Like they know me. His face is softer. His demeanor totally changes, and I shift my body, but I can’t take my eyes off him.
“What’s your secret, sweet Sophia?” he asks with that half-joking smile, and I suck in a quick breath.
“Which one?” I try to match his playful expression while fighting this urge to let my secrets burn out through my chest and set me on fire for him to see. For him to extinguish, just like I wanted to with Tobie.
Corbin reaches across the car and touches my cheekbone again. “The one that makes you look so fucking sad.”
His fingers on my skin only intensify the heat, and I fight back the need to throw myself across the car at him. I have never in my life felt drawn to anything as intensely as I do to Corbin. His touch surfaces a feeling I can’t quite understand. It’s a strange and foreign need that I can’t decipher.
“That secret is all mine. I’m still sorting out the truth from the lies that I tell myself.” I didn’t mean to say that much, but it feels okay with Corbin. I wish I knew what was happening inside me.
It’s hard to run from a past when everyone I meet here makes me want to tell the truth.
“The truth is a skill, Sophia,” Corbin says with a sympathetic smile. “It takes practice before it’s easy.”
"Yes, wise one." I tease him to try and lift the sinking in my chest. But the way he studies me with a smile that doesn't really look like a smile, only makes it sink lower yet.
"Ha. Didn't say it was a skill I had. Just that it's a skill."
His words have an undercurrent of a pain that I recognize and in this moment I see Corbin the way he is and not the way I want to see him. Hiding in a tangle of lies. Just like me. I should feel horrible. I should feel bad for him, but I don’t. I feel happy.
Happy that he might be just as broken as me.
My head rests back on the seat, and I watch him with a wide grin. “Fair enough.”
“You want to practice with me?” he asks.
“What do you mean?”
Corbin opens the door and comes around to mine. He opens it and holds out his hand. I look from his long fingers, up his arm to his face and back down again.
“Come. We’re going to play a little game of truth or dare.” He pulls me from the car and doesn’t let go of my hand until we get to his truck.
I feel my heart pumping all the way to my tingling fingertips.
Chapter Seven
Corbin
The wind blows in through the open window and swirls her dark hair around her face, throwing the smell of fruity shampoo through the cab of my truck. She hasn’t looked at me since I let go of her hand, but I haven’t been able to look away.
“Where are we going to play this truth or dare?” she finally says, and for some reason her voice sounds different now. Everything about her changed the instant I ran my thumb over her cheek. The way she looked, the way she sounded, the way she stood.
“To my favorite spot.” I smirk, and she looks at me with those same sad eyes, but now they seem to see me differently, as well. She pushes tangled hair from her face and smiles, but I am only thinking about what that tangled hair would look like on my pillow. Which I shouldn't be.
“Is this where I end up on a missing persons list? Girl runs away from home to meet wild charismatic boy, and no one hears from her ever again?” Her perfect lips stretch wider as I turn off the main road onto the highway.
“You forgot an adjective in there, sweet Sophia.” I wink at her, and her smile turns to a smirk. I try to keep it light. I am not sure what she is running from, but her eyes are sad enough that I’m afraid to ask.
“You mean, modest? Or humble?” she asks.
“Nah, I was going more for irresistible. Or dangerous maybe. But sexy dangerous, not creepy dangerous.” I pull my pack of smokes off the dash and offer her one. She takes it, all while shaking her head at me. I know full well that I am none of those things. A pathetic, confused, trying-too-hard-to-not-care coward is more like it. It's just easier if people think I'm an asshole. But something about her makes me want to tell her all the things inside me that I barely want to admit to myself.
She lights her smoke but doesn’t actually smoke it. She pulls her knees up and wraps her arms around them, watching the dusty grass ditches fly by. I can’t help but think this girl will be my tragic flaw. The thing that ends me.
We pass a large highway sign, and I slow down to turn onto the dirt road that takes me to Mills Lake. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Sophia gasp in a couple short breaths, reaching into her purse and fumbling around, and I am back to being curious. I wasn’t lying when I said she’s the strangest girl I’ve ever met.
Her chest rises and falls rapidly, and she hauls on the cigarette like a seasoned pro.
“Are you okay?” I ask, and she nods.
“I’m fine.” But her voice is clipped and forced. A few octaves higher than normal. I reach out and take her hand, curling her fingers in mine and running my thumb over her knuckles. I shouldn’t want to touch her this bad, especially with the shit Kayla pulled, but I can’t stop myself. Her eyes snap to mine, and I try to watch her and the road at the same time.
“Let’s start playing that truth game now, Sophia. Are you okay?” I say sternly. For some reason, I need her to tell me the truth. She shakes her head.
“No.” Her fingers squeeze mine tighter as the lake comes into view. She watches the water like it’s going to jump out of the lake and sweep us away.
“You don’t like lakes?” I ask again, not knowing where the words are coming from. I’m just guessing, but the nod of her head proves that I’m a good guesser.
I stop the truck just off from the boat launch, like I always do and I lean back in my seat. Sophia’s hand has begun to sweat in mine, and her head is down.
“Are you afraid of water?” I ask, slightly disappointed. I live to be in the water, and I don’t know why it bothers me that she doesn’t.
“I am.” Her voice is a whisper as if it’s physically difficult for her to tell me these things.
“Why?”
Her gaze comes up to meet mine, and the previous sadness in her eyes is nothing compared to what’s swimming in there now. Torture. Dark swirling clouds of a pain that are far beyond what I’d ever understand. It scares the shit out of me, and I don’t know whether to scoop her up into a hug or run like hell.
“I can’t–” Her voice hiccups and she pulls her hand back to shove it in her purse. She pulls out a bottle and expertly pops the top, shakes out a pill, and shoves it in her mouth. Her head falls back, her eyes close, and I just watch her chest. Up and down. In and out. She breathes fast at first, but the short pumps slow and smooth until she’s back to normal.
After what seems like forever, her head lolls to the side and she looks at me. Her eyes have changed again. No pain, no sadness, no fear. Nothing. They’re blank and grey.
Who is this girl?
“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it.” I hope she doesn’t want to talk about it. Whatever happened to her to cause her to panic and pop pills at the sight of a lake seems far beyond my help.
“I almost drowned.” Her grip on my hand loosens as the drugs relax her, and I let her fingers slide from mine. She says it the same way she'd say she slipped or something.
“You what?” I ask, unable to keep the shock from my voice, and she nods.
“Drowned. But they saved me. It was my fault, but they saved me.” Tears fill her eyes, and her head rolls to look away from me.
I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything. My brain swirls with thoughts and questions about her vagueness, but I can’t ask her anything. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
Suddenly, she throws open the door to my truck and jumps out. I watch her tiny frame as she makes her way to the water. She stops at the edge and looks into the lake as if she were peering over the edge of
the world. I slowly get out of the truck and follow her footsteps in the sand to the shore. I stand beside her with my hands in my pockets, wondering how this day started so light, and then sunk into a pit of thick, sticky depression.
“Do you ever feel like life has already passed you by? Like you’re dead in a sea of lies with nothing or no one around to talk to. No one who understands what it feels like to not be in control of a single facet of your life? Even your death.” Her voice shakes as she whispers. The breeze off the lake is cool, even on this hot day and she steps back as a tiny wave laps up against the sand. I let the cold water wash up over my feet, and I feel clear again. Like I always do in the water.
“Yes,” I say honestly. “I do.”
Her head lifts this time and her eyes are still distant from whatever drug she took, but she presses a small smile and laughs awkwardly, like she did when she hit me with the door.
“I had a feeling you might,” she says and sits down on the beach. “I’m running away, Corbin. But I’m guessing you know that already. I’m running away from me.”
I sit next to her, making sure my shoulder touches hers even though we have all the space in the world out here.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this,” she continues. “I’ve never told anyone who didn’t have a Ph.D to treat crazy any of this. I’m sorry. I warned you I was fucked up.” She nudges my shoulder with hers, and I smile out to the lake. I could really use a swim right now. For a lot of reasons.
“That you did.” I nudge her back. “Good thing I find fucked up to be an endearing character trait. Keeps things interesting.”
I stand and hold out a hand. She looks at it, then at me.
“Where are we going now?” She sounds skeptical.
“I'm taking you home. You just ruined truth or dare for me.”
She smiles as I pull her up so close to me I feel her heat, and I allow myself to soak it up. I’ll come back later to swim and attempt to sort out this tangle of thoughts I have about Sophia.
xxx
I don't go into the bar when I drop Sophia off at her car but turn around and head straight back to the lake. I walk along the open beach to the cluster of trees around the east bank. In the clearing by the old tattered rope is an enormous fire pit filled with charred bits of wood and the odd burnt-up can of beer. I think about texting the guys for a bonfire, but I don’t have a phone. I could swim, but I just don’t feel like it anymore. Kayla will be at work by now, maybe a little sex distraction. But then I see Sophia’s smiling face, her hair blowing around as the wind whipped through the truck.