Beastly

by Laura Belle Peters

  I scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen, and then was a little lost.

  I wasn't sure what he was doing, but I found him outside, raking leaves.

  I offered to help, but he pointed out that he only had one rake, and suggested that I just work on my homework.

  So... I did.

  Beast didn't even say anything about me locking my door every night, or pulling the dresser in front of it. It wouldn't stop anyone from coming in, it was a pretty small dresser, but it would at least make a noise.

  Thursday morning, he dropped me off on campus, so I wouldn't have to be there as early as my father would take me, and sent me away with forty bucks.

  I was so confused.

  I had expected to be sore and bruised and barely holding it together for classes on Thursday, but, instead, I was... fine.

  Not amazing, but I had all my work done, I'd gotten some extra studying time, even, and I was on campus in time to go back to the writing center.

  When I walked back in, the girl who I'd worked with before broke off her conversation with someone else, waving at me and heading over.

  “You came back!” Miranda said. “I'm so glad, I was afraid you wouldn't. A lot of people don't, you know? We try to help, but there's only so much we can do in an hour or two.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  I needed way more than an hour of help, clearly. I was probably the biggest dunce she ever worked with.

  She looked over all the work I'd done the day before, and only winced a few times. I guess that was progress.

  Going over it line by line was excruciating and humiliating, but I had to admit, I was already seeing some of the things I'd done wrong before she pointed them out. Maybe if someone had done this with me in high school, I wouldn't be so bad at it in college.

  She sent me away with a list of stuff to look out for in my writing, and I gathered my books to head to class.

  “You really made a lot of progress,” she said as we were leaving. “I'm super impressed. Just two days? You must have spent all yesterday working on it.”

  “Um, I did have more time than usual,” I said.

  “It shows,” she said. “You're not a bad writer, you know. Just a little... clunky.”

  Hah. Clunky. Totally incomprehensible was more like it.

  The first weekend after I met Beast went by excruciatingly slowly, like most of my weekends did. Four days without school or talking to another human being who wasn't my father, unless Kandy and the girls stopped by. I hated weekends.

  That weekend wasn't too bad, with a trip to the grocery store – saying hello to a clerk was better than nothing – to break up the monotony.

  Other than that, it was cleaning, cleaning, cleaning.

  I didn't think my father even really cared about whether or not the house was clean, he just wanted me to be busy all the time.

  So, I had to scrub the grout of the bathroom tiles with a toothbrush, scrub the inside of the kitchen cabinets with bleach... you could have eaten off of the floor.

  The only really unusual note of the weekend was the meth my father proudly showed me on Sunday.

  It was pink, again. Totally different from most of the stuff he bought. He probably had a new supplier, but I knew better than to ask any questions.

  Tuesday night, after classes, my father dropped me at the far end of the drive again, but as soon as his truck had faded from sight and I'd started plodding down the long driveway, another engine fired up only twenty feet away from me.

  I was so startled that I was still clutching my chest when Beast rolled over to me in the sedan I'd seen the week before.

  He hit the power locks when he pulled up alongside me, and I got in the front seat.

  “Would you like to go grocery shopping with me?” he asked. “If you want me to just take you up to the house, no problem. You've probably had a long day.”

  “I can go to the store,” I said.

  I wasn't a hundred percent sure why he'd want me to go with him, but he was paying me and if I didn't obey him my father would beat the shit out of me, so... what choice did I have? At least if we really did go to a grocery store, he couldn't fuck me in public.

  He asked me to choose the radio station, and didn't mind when I asked to listen to country when I found a Miranda Lambert song on.

  He even asked me about how my classes were going, and I found that having him interested was... nice.

  No one had asked me about my day like that since my mother had died. I was surprised to realize that it had been over ten years. There were days that I remembered her so well that I felt like she had only just walked out of the room, and I could call her back any time I wanted to.

  “I wish I'd gotten to go to college,” he said, after hearing about my Psychology 101 lecture of the day.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  I had no idea what to say after something like that. Was I supposed to apologize for getting to go?

  “I mean, it would have been a waste, I would have blown off all my classes, but...” he trailed off.

  “You didn't get the choice?” I asked, tentatively.

  “Yeah.”

  “Not getting a choice sucks,” I said. No one knew that like I did.

  “Yeah, it really, really does.”

  We drove in silence for another few minutes.

  “Your father is such a piece of work, I'm surprised he lets you go,” he said.

  I opened my mouth to agree, to laugh, to cry with relief that someone else saw my father for the asshole he was... and shut it again.

  If this guy knew that about my father, he was in on something with him.

  I couldn't trust either of them.

  “He wants me to help with his business,” I said, truthfully. “He says that he can't trust most of his employees not to screw him over, so he wants to get me trained in business stuff so I can do some of the paperwork.”

  “Is that what you want to do?” Beast asked, as we pulled into the brightly-lit parking lot of the Ingles.

  I shrugged.

  “It's a good skill,” I said, carefully. “Sounds like something that will really help me out. I am very grateful that he is paying for my education.”

  When we got into the store and Beast pulled out his list, I grabbed a cart and followed him.

  He reached for the Jif, and I blurted out “Don't be silly!”

  He pulled his hand back and looked at me, raising one eyebrow.

  I swallowed.

  Had I really just told a man who looked like he could bench-press a station wagon not to be silly?

  “You don't like Jif?” he asked.

  “Um, store brand is the same thing,” I said. “Just, you know. A lot cheaper. It really does taste the same, though.”

  “Huh, awesome,” he said. “Do you like crunchy or creamy?”

  “I don't... my father likes creamy, that's what we buy.”

  “Let's get both,” he said. “I like both, and you've gotta try a crunchy peanut butter and banana sandwich. It's great.”

  I smiled, hesitantly.

  If this were any other man, any other day, I think I would have had fun. If I was being honest with myself, grocery shopping with Beast reminded me of going out with friends in high school, back when I was still allowed to have friends. Doing anything with them was fun, even chores.

  Beast made me feel the same way, like work wasn't work, but just another pleasant way to pass the time.

  He asked me what I wanted to eat, and bought it without hesitating.

  That night, as I stood alone in the kitchen, stirring the pasta sauce I'd offered to make, I found myself smiling.

  Before I went to bed, to pass out in my clothing on the narrow mattress, Beast called out to me.

  “Tabitha? Will you testify against your father?”

  “No, sir.”

  By the time midterms came around, I'd settled into a routine. My weekends were spent cleaning and dreading my father, broken up with wonderful visits from m
y sisters.

  Tuesday through Thursday, I would be at school and with Beast, and both were... great. I was getting my grades up for the first time in my life. With my writing improving, I was getting A's and B's instead of C's and D's.

  I could hardly believe it.

  At Beast's place, I would cook a few big meals and package up the leftovers for him to eat over the long weekend. I'd quickly clean the house, except for Beast's room, which he told me was off-limits.

  I'd have plenty of time to work on my homework, and I'd even get to take long walks by myself in the woods.

  There was a path to a beautiful little stream. Beast told me that I could go for a walk whenever I wanted to, as long as I checked for cars before I came out of the shadows of the trees. If there were any cars there that weren't Beast's truck or sedan, I was supposed to hide, stay away, not come back until they were gone.

  It was weird, but... it actually kind of made me feel a little better. He was doing something he shouldn't be.

  Otherwise, how could he afford the house? It was old and it wasn't over-the-top fancy like the one my father owned, but it was still a nice enough place, and it wasn't falling apart.

  That didn't come free.

  Our dinners weren't silent any more. He had a lot of questions about my classes, and I found that I enjoyed talking about them. Whenever I confessed that I didn't know something, or didn't understand, he didn't make me feel stupid. He just told me that I was doing better than he could have done, and he thought I was awesome at it.

  The week of midterms, standing in front of one of the plain brick buildings in the heat of a summer evening, I was surprised to see Beast pull up instead of my father.

  He rolled down his window, and I looked around, uncertainly.

  I was supposed to listen to Beast, but if my father wasted his time driving to campus for no reason, he'd be so fucking pissed.

  “I talked to your father,” he said. “I've gotta drive back in to town to get to the store anyways, seems faster to pick you up. Is that okay?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you need a hand with your backpack?” he asked.

  I shook my head.

  He popped the trunk and I put my bag in, climbing into the front seat of the little white sedan.

  He'd never asked me to clean it, but it was still pretty tidy. Not full of trash like some guys seemed to keep their cars. That was good. I guess that something from my father had rubbed off on me – I couldn't stand to be around too much mess or clutter.

  I didn't need a place to be totally bare, but... tidy. Tidy was good. Tidy was comfortable.

  The drive to the store passed in pleasant conversation, Beast asking me about my visit to the writing center - “It went pretty well, she said I am finally using the comma okay” - and me asking him how his weekend had been - “Good, I played Fallout 3 and chopped down a rotten old tree.”

  “Get whatever you'd like to cook,” Beast said, as always. “I'm not feeling picky.”

  “Are you ever feeling picky?” I teased.

  I hesitated, trying not to wince or cower after challenging him like that. Stupid, Tabitha, I told myself. Stupid.

  Beast laughed.

  I hadn't heard that very often, he usually seemed serious, solemn, sad.

  His laugh was really nice, like hot cider you drink while watching a snowstorm. Warm, comforting, sweet.

  “Maybe not,” he said. “Maybe I will be someday. Maybe I'll say 'no more good home cooked meals, I want Kraft Mac and Cheese every night this week,' what would you do then?”

  “Boil water,” I said. “I don't mind it. I mean, it's good comfort food, right?”

  He laughed again.

  “You know, I haven't had it for years. Shit, let's buy some and make it tonight. It's been a long day.”

  We bought a box for dinner, but we also bought chicken and vegetables to have over rice the next night. A man Beast's size couldn't live on Kraft alone.

  It was the weirdest thing, but I wanted him to be fed properly and done up right. If I had to cook, so be it. It wasn't like I wasn't good at it. I'd been doing it almost every night for ten years. I liked cooking, it turned out, when I wasn't afraid that I'd get slapped if I burned something.

  I rubbed the scar on the back of my hand absentmindedly. Beast saw, but said nothing.

  When we got out to the car, he looked like he was wrestling with something.

  “How did you get that scar?” he blurted out after he'd pulled out of the parking space.

  “Which one?” I asked, trying to keep my voice casual. It was apparently a bad answer, it made Beast scowl, and I immediately apologized.

  “I'm not mad at you. Just curious about the scar on your hand. It looks like an old burn,” he said.

  It was. About the size of a quarter, four years old. It was still too large to cover with concealer, although I had tried for years.

  I'd given up.

  No one, before Beast, had ever asked me about it.

  No one, before Beast, would I even have considered telling the truth.

  “I was making dinner,” I said, very quietly. “Pot roast. I forgot about it, doing other things, and I burned it. My father said that the times I had to give up my dinner because I burned it weren't enough to teach me. He grabbed my hand and held it against the side of the pan.”

  I stared at my hands, folded in my lap. The old scar was puckered and angry, like – like Beast's scars.

  Beast was burned too.

  It had hurt so badly, the night it happened and for months afterwards, I sometimes wished I didn't even have my hand any more. His scars were on his chest, his face, his back – how could he have stood it?

  I had those thoughts in a fleeting instant before Beast growled and I saw his knuckles go white from gripping the steering wheel way too hard.

  “How old were you?” he asked.

  “Fourteen,” I said.

  “You were just a kid,” he said. “Just a stupid kid, and he fucking burned you. What kind of monster does that to their own kid?”

  I shrugged.

  “Look, I was already going to ask, but now I have to. Tabitha, will you move in with me? I think I can talk your father into it. Only if you want to, though, of course. If you'd rather keep going to your father on the weekends, that's fine. I understand. It's hard to leave.”

  “I can't,” I said. “My sisters. They're a lot younger, and he's on his best behavior around them. They only come on the weekends. I have to keep them safe.”

  “Do they come every weekend?”

  I shook my head. “Their mother, Kandy, sometimes gets pissed and keeps them away for a while, or they can come but only for a night, or even just for a few hours.”

  “Okay, if I talked to your father and we agreed on a way around that,” he pressed, “Would that work? If that did, would you like to move in with me?”

  “If I could live with you instead of my father, and still go to school, and not have to clean his house, and still see my sisters and protect them? Sure. I'd love to live with you.”

  Fat.

  Fucking.

  Chance.

  “Right. Good. I'll give him a call.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why the hell are you doing this? What do you get out of this? You can cook and clean just fine yourself, I've seen you do it. You're not fucking me and you're not so busy you can't do chores for yourself, so... it doesn't add up. Are you planning on selling my organs? What?”

  He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand and kept the other on the wheel.

  “You've seen it when we go to the store, Tabitha.”

  “Seen what?”

  “Come on,” he said, sounding disappointed. It was the meanest thing he'd ever said to me. “You've seen cashiers flinch when I head to their lines, you've seen women steer their carts away from me if they have their kids with them.”

  “Well, yeah, you're like seven feet tall
, that's scary,” I said.

  “That's why I want you to live with me,” he said. He pounded the steering wheel once for emphasis. “Because you think that people are scared of me because I'm tall, and not because I have goddamn disfiguring scars covering my entire body.”