Playing with Fire_Shen

by Shen, L. J.

  Her eyes were full of tears. Her lower lip shook.

  “Yes,” she breathed. “That’s right. You are helping us out financially. Doing what, exactly? Can you remind me? TA, was it?”

  I could tell she was burning on the edges of hysteria.

  I’d told my parents I was working as a TA, making money doing some tutoring on the side. They bought it because I had a natural knack for math and statistics, but as time went by and the money got really good, they must’ve been having their doubts.

  “Didn’t know money’s this good in TA,” Mom said.

  I threw her a patronizing smirk. “You would if you’d ever gone to college.”

  “I didn’t have that opportunity.” Something dark and depraved that reminded me of myself crossed her features. “You know that.”

  “That’s right.” I snapped my fingers. “You were knocked up with me by seventeen, right? Great fucking life choices. Please, give me more advice about how to run my shit.”

  I shouldered past her to my room. She chased me, an angry scream ripping from her throat. Easton was still outside. Asshole probably used the opportunity to walk Grace home, now that he’d finally taken notice of the fact she was beautiful.

  And you gave him the OK to ask her out. Nice going, moron.

  “West! Please!” Mom was at my heel. I slammed the door in her face. Then opened it again, realizing I didn’t get the chance to deliver the final verbal blow.

  “Get out of my house.” I pointed at the door. “You had no right using the hard-earned money I send you every week to buy a plane ticket. Splashing on me with my own money doesn’t pass as good parenting either.”

  I grabbed one of the shopping bags from the floor, turning it upside down and emptying it at her feet. Shirts and socks rained down in a heap of cheap fabric. I thundered toward the door, opening it for her, pointing out.

  “West.” Mom still stood at the hallway, her knees buckling. She sent a hand to the wall to right herself. She looked helpless, small, and out of sorts. Problem was, she was always hopeless. For years, she’d been the recipient of help, never giving any back. For years, my parents gave me nothing, and I gave them everything.

  But even everything, I’d come to understand, wasn’t enough.

  I was fed up with living like a beggar, walking into a cardboard-framed death trap every Friday, and not even getting some privacy. Not only was I handing over my money to them, but now I also needed to give them affirmation that everything was dandy.

  “Out,” I roared, feeling my lungs quaking in my chest as I brought down the roof.

  She ran out of my house like a timid mouse. I watched her from my spot at the threshold, panting like I’d just run a ten-mile course. She jogged all the way to the top of the street, then took a right turn, toward the only bus station in this ghost town.

  I slammed the door, throwing a punch from hell to the wall beside me.

  Maybe it was for the best that everything with Grace blew up to the sky.

  She was scarred.

  But me? I was screwed.

  Grace

  Easton gave me a ride back after West kicked me out, since I’d walked to West’s place.

  He was trying to talk about football and college the entire time, but all I did was move my mouth over my flame ring, making wishes, like Grandma Savvy had taught me when I was stressed.

  The worst part was I didn’t even know what I’d done wrong. I’d popped in to drop West’s wallet off and warn him that Karlie knew we were at the food truck the night before. I’d lied to my best friend to keep both our butts out of trouble.

  I figured his mother dropped in unannounced, since he hadn’t mentioned it, and also because he looked like he was more than happy to fling himself off a cliff. I tried to make it as painless as possible, answering all of Caroline St. Claire’s questions. I even tried not to make a big fuss out of the ball cap incident, even though I could feel my anxiety sucking the air out of me, sinking its lethal teeth to the soft side of my throat.

  Was it my scar that embarrassed him?

  Was it my general Grace-ness? The broken ring and the cap and the long sleeves? My strangeness stuck out in Sheridan, Texas like a stripper in a nunnery.

  Or was West simply in one of his dangerous moods, and I was just one of his many casualties?

  Whatever it was, dwelling on it wasn’t going to give me any answers. West St. Claire didn’t deserve my sympathy, and that was that.

  Easton killed the engine when we reached the truck, turning his face to me. “Westie likes you.”

  “He’s got a weird way of showing it,” I managed to mutter, staring straight ahead.

  “He does,” Easton agreed easily. “It’s uncharted territory for him. He either hates people or is indifferent to them. You confuse the heck out of him.”

  “He confuses the heck out of me,” I retorted.

  “You know what we need to do?”

  “Kill him with fire?” I muttered.

  Braun snickered, tilting his head as he examined me in a different way. Not just a sob story, but a fully formed person.

  “Funny, he always goes for the agreeable ones. You’re a little fighter, aren’t you, Shaw?”

  I rolled my eyes. I was getting tired of hearing how West always went for girls who were the exact opposite of me. I didn’t need the reminder.

  “You were saying?” I prompted. “About us needing to do something?”

  “Oh, yeah.” He snapped his fingers. “Press him where it hurts most.”

  “And where would that be?” I finally turned to face him, too.

  The grin on his face scared me.

  “His heart.”

  I’d seen West once on campus after the dinner. We’d ignored each other dutifully. He strode past me, remaining committed to his Grace Shaw Doesn’t Exist policy, while I pretended I hadn’t seen him either. He was quiet and curt on our two shifts together. I thought about confronting him, then figured if he was in no hurry to apologize, there was no desperate need for me to work things out either.

  So, I gave West the cold shoulder right back.

  It wasn’t like I had time to sit and ponder over boy stuff, anyway. The day after the dinner with Caroline St. Claire, the local news channel announced that Sheridan’s one and only bus station was going to close down by the end of the month.

  Which meant potential caregivers for Grams would have to get here by car.

  Which meant I had to pay them gas money, too.

  Which was money I certainly didn’t have.

  That was what I’d been focusing on to take my mind off of West: looking for loopholes and ways to hire a caregiver for Grams who’d be able to commute here as cheaply as possible.

  I was hunched in front of my laptop in my room when Marla rapped on my door, sticking her face in the gap between the wood and the frame.

  “Honey pie? Whatcha doing?”

  I clicked on the X button on the website I was surfing—Care4You—and sat back.

  She scrunched her nose. “No luck, huh?”

  I cracked my knuckles, shaking my head. There was no point in lying. I supposed Marla knew it wasn’t easy to find her replacement, but I wasn’t ready for another Find a Nursing Home lecture.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”

  She nodded, entering my room and closing the door behind her. Uh-huh. That couldn’t be good. Just when Grams was beginning to eat regularly again, after figuring out she couldn’t sneak cracklins to her room for eternity.

  “There’s something I need to tell you.” She perched awkwardly on the edge of my bed.

  “Yeah?”

  “The old bat has been refusing to go out on our walks. She is not getting any physical activity. I think she is depressed.”

  “Depressed?” I echoed.

  “Ya know, down. Whatever those psychiatrist people call it. I don’t think it’s a phase. This rough patch is not going to go away, honey pie. I’ve seen this happenin’ over and ov
er, taking care of folks her age. She needs to be medicated. Properly.”

  No shit, I wanted to scream until my throat parched. I can’t drag her butt to the doctor’s office.

  But I just smiled, as I always did, nodding.

  “Thank you, Marla. I’ll handle it.”

  A few days later, Professor McGraw called me into her office again.

  “I’ll make it swift.” She breezed into the snug room, her signature scent of incense and honey wafting behind her. She took a seat in front of me, entwining her fingers together.

  “I decided not to give you an extension on the performance part of your exam this semester, Miss Shaw. Which means, you’ll have to find a way to get into A Streetcar Named Desire and actually go onstage, or you will be failing my class this semester. Mr. Finlay is well aware of the situation. I’ve spoken to him, and he said he is looking forward to sorting this out with you. I’m sorry, Grace, but consider this a favor from me to you. You must face your fears and move forward. Getting on that stage will liberate you. Whatever happened to you …” She shook her head, closing her eyes. “You cannot let it define you. Or stop you. Not anymore. Anxiety is a hungry beast. Feed it, and it will grow. Starve it, and it will die. This is my final decision. I’m sorry.”

  Later that day, I had a shift with West. Working alongside him wasn’t ideal, but in order to dodge shifts with him, I’d have to tell Karlie all about what had happened at dinner, and I wasn’t prepared to recite the humiliating scene aloud.

  West had been acting weird throughout the shift. Glaring at me every so often, spacing out, opening his mouth to say something then thinking better of it. I stuck to silence, broken only by monosyllabic, work-related requests. Whenever there was a lull between human traffic, I got on my phone and looked for caregivers for Grams. There was also a typed-out message waiting to be sent to Cruz Finlay.

  Hi. It’s Grace Shaw. Any chance of landing a last-minute role in the play? ☺

  Finally, West spat it out. “Look, I’m fucking sorry, okay? Jesus Christ.” He growled as if I’d showered him with wordless accusations. “Regardless, I think maybe it’s for the best if we don’t mess around anymore.”

  I didn’t even look up from my phone.

  He’d spent the entire week ignoring me, only to give me a half-assed apology, stuffed into a clichéd breakup line?

  “Messin’ with you again was never on the menu,” I lied, my eyes still on my phone.

  “Fine. Okay. Good.”

  He nodded to himself. For the first time since I’d met him, he looked a little out of sorts. Kind of pitiful, actually. He offered me his pinky, blocking my view to my phone.

  “Truce?”

  I turned around, giving him my back and not bothering to take his pinky in mine.

  A cold war was still a war.

  West

  The week after Mom’s visit slithered like a slimy sci-fi monster out of a sewer.

  As soon as Mother got back to Maine, she resumed her hourly phone calls, sending me two emails a day on average. She apologized a thousand times. For blindsiding me, tossing Grace’s cap, asking too many questions, and sending too many emails. She owned up to everything that went down between us ever since I was seventeen. Tried to explain. None of it mattered. The damage had been done. I kept sending money, but I dodged her calls.

  Things went from bad to worse. Before I’d seen her face, I could pretend we were okay. But after the dinner blowup, there was no denying whatever had been left of my family was dead at the root. Rotting, sullied, and irreparable.

  The cherry on the shit cake was the Texas situation.

  The girl, not the state.

  Though damn, the state got real hot, real fast.

  I’d screwed up with Grace, not only on the day I’d kicked her out, but in the days after, when I couldn’t look at her face. I was so embarrassed.

  By the time I gathered the courage to talk to her, it was too late. She treated me like I was air. She’d gotten so good at ignoring me that week, sometimes I questioned my own existence.

  Then I put on my big boy pants, owned up to my behavior, and apologized.

  And what did she do? Looked the other way.

  On our third shift working together since the disastrous dinner, Karma had finally reared its spiked dildo and decided to shove it up my ass—lube-less.

  I was minding my own business, flipping fish on the grill, low-key envying them for the state of their nothingness, when I heard something dropping on the gravel by the window.

  “Oh, hey,” Grace’s voice purred.

  I didn’t turn around to see who the customer was, still locked in my fort of quiet rage.

  “Hi,” Easton answered back.

  “Do you want to speak to West?” she asked.

  “Nope. Here for you.”

  My head flew up and I turned over my shoulder, my guard rising twelve feet. East was there, fresh out of the shower after football practice. His blond, damp hair stuck out in different directions on purpose. He wore a sleeveless surfer shirt that showed off his bulky arms.

  What the hell was he doing here?

  East met my eyes behind Grace’s shoulder. He gave me half a shrug, as if to say, You said it was cool if I hit that. Remember?

  I turned back to the grill, drawing a breath.

  “Me?” Texas asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay, what’s up?”

  “I realized I forgot to do something when I gave you a ride home the other day.”

  Pick up some loyalty from the closest drug store, jackass?

  “And what was that?” Grace asked, her voice turning suspicious. I liked that she didn’t fall at his feet. She was immune to the charms of men in general.

  “I forgot to ask for your number.”

  Motherfucker …

  “Why would you need my number?”

  I couldn’t help but grin to myself. She wasn’t one of his teenybopper star-fuckers. Faith in humanity: partly restored.

  “So I can ask you out.”

  “Ask me out?”

  Ask her out?

  “Yeah. Been meaning to do it for a few weeks now, but Coach has been on our case like a drill sergeant. Scrimmages, you see. Thought maybe you’d wanna grab a bite or something? Go to the movies? There’s a new Kate Hudson film coming out this weekend.”

  “And you like Kate Hudson films because …?” She left the question hanging in the air. My back was still to them. I was torn between wanting to snicker at her indifference to East’s persistent flirting and bashing my best friend’s (scratch that—ex-best friend’s) head against the gravel.

  “I don’t like Kate Hudson films, Grace. But I do like you. And you’re a woman. And women tend to like her, for whatever reason. That clear enough?” East asked.

  I swung my head again, glaring at him. He didn’t look at me anymore. His eyes were focused on Texas. What was the shithead trying to prove, exactly? That he could date someone I was interested in? That I liked her?

  Even if I did, I didn’t date, and he damn well knew that.

  Grace drummed her fingers over the toppings bar. “Wouldn’t it pose an issue for your roommate, seein’ as we work together?”

  “No. I asked him. Three times, actually.”

  “And he doesn’t mind?” She didn’t sound surprised.

  Turn around and look at me, goddammit. Then you’d see I’d rather see my balls eaten by a tiger than watch you go out with someone who isn’t me.

  “Yeah. Ask him yourself.”

  “No need, we’re not really on speakin’ terms at the moment.” She paused. “I accept.”

  Aw. Bet it hurt. Too bad he hadn’t listened when I told him that she didn—

  Hold on.

  She accepts?

  I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I had no argument against what was happening here and no grounds to stop them from dating. Technically, I had told Easton I wasn’t interested in Grace. And, also technicall
y, they were both single. I had no pull on either of them.

  And that drove me nuts.

  They exchanged numbers while I quietly fumed. Then he had the audacity to stick around and chitchat. Ten minutes into his riveting story about how Reign almost sprained his ankle victory dancing after a touchdown a few weeks ago, I sauntered to the window, parking my elbows on the sill, shoving Grace aside.

  “Sorry, pal, this truck’s not Bumble. Care to evacuate yourself before we get more customers?” My tone was casual. Bored.

  Easton shrugged. “My bad, man.”

  “Don’t come back unless you want to buy something.”

  “Duly noted. See you at home?”

  “Where the fuck else can I go after work?”

  “Yikes. Someone’s touchy.”

  “Get the hell outta here.”

  He did. I slinked back to the grill, knowing damn well Grace’s burn-in-hell gaze was scorching holes in my back.

  My self-restraint lasted three minutes, after which I offered her my unsolicited input.

  “Shit, Tex, didn’t peg you for the naïve type.” I let out a sardonic chuckle. “Easton Braun only does casual, in case you didn’t know.”

  “Who says I don’t do casual?” She rolled down the window, closing shop. Was it that late? Guess time flew when you fantasized about new and creative ways how to kill your childhood friend.

  She still had her back to me. “I did casual with you, and lo and behold, I’m alive and intact.”

  “Texas,” I warned.

  She whipped around, the wounded look on her face gutting me like a rusty hook.

  “Don’t call me that. Don’t you dare act like we’re cool with each other.”

  “Tell me what it’d take to change that.”

  I couldn’t believe the words coming out of my mouth. I wasn’t supposed to care. Caring wasn’t on the menu anymore.