Vince smirked. “I don’t think we cared about accuracy. We just wanted an excuse to throw G in the lake.”
Grady shot Vince a wary look. He craned his neck side to side, eliciting a few low popping sounds before muttering something about his back bothering him.
“It’s probably from cramming yourself into that girly little coup for two and a half hours every day,” Vince goaded. “You know, you could trade it in for a -real- car.”
“Hey, it’s a perfectly manly vehicle.” Grady bickered back at a near-whine. “And I’ve almost got the thing half paid off.”
“Not at the rate you’ve been getting tickets in that cop-magnet.” Vince laughed. He edged around Angie, gathering up the movies. Angie absently noted how quick he was to put them away. Vince had been entertainingly dramatic in the films — possibly even talented, she thought. Yet he didn’t appear to relish the attention.
“I might be able to fix your back.” Angie looked to Grady, gauging his receptiveness to the idea. “I’m pretty good at massage.”
“Seriously?” Grady’s bark brows raised in surprise. “Are you going to school for it or something?”
“I might after I finish my Associate’s degree,” she answered, hesitating. I -might- do a lot of things, if I could just make up my mind.“I’ve taken a few classes on it. It’s pretty expensive to get certified, and I don’t know if it would be a good idea to end up with a job where I’d be so dependent on my hands.”
“Yeah, but it pays really well.” Grady looked around the room, seeming uncertain. “What do I need to do?”
Angie waved a hand toward an open area of the carpet in front of the dresser. “Just lay flat on your stomach.” After he’d complied, she knelt beside him and placed her hands against his shoulder blades. She could tell she would have some difficulty, given how muscled he was.
“I’m next,” Vince said as he stood and meandered back to the futon. He’d put in one of the rental movies, seeming content to entertain himself as he lounged.
“We’ll see how much trouble he gives me first,” Angie said before rising. “Okay, so I could wear myself out trying to tenderize you the old-fashioned way…or I can try this.” She placed the pads of her bare right foot between Grady’s shoulder blades and slowly added more of her body weight behind it.
Relenting to the pressure, the air was forced from Grady’s lungs in one long, whimpering groan. The end of his deflation was punctuated by a simultaneous round of popping sounds. Angie felt the abrupt chorus resonate up through her leg, and she smiled to herself in satisfaction.
Vince shuddered. “You know what? Never mind. I’m good.”
Grady shrugged his shoulders as Angie lifted her foot. “No, actually…that feels a lot better.” He sounded surprised. “What is that, the Japanese back walking thing? Shiatsu?”
“Close.” Angie chuckled. “‘Shiatsu’ means ‘finger pressure,’ I believe. ‘Ashiatsu’ is ‘foot pressure.’” She reached out and placed a steadying hand on edge of the dresser, mindful not to jostle the pictures and knickknacks. “Hold still,” she warned, placing her lead foot flat along one side of his spine before using the dresser top to reduce her weight as she pulled up the other foot.
Grady sucked in a breath and grunted. He continued to hold that breath while she steadied herself and began rocking forward and back. She shuffled her feet by tiny increments upward as he finally exhaled, rolling onto the balls of her feet to concentrate her weight between his shoulders. Several more cracking sounds resulted, and she hopped back onto the floor to give him a chance to recover.
“Wow. I’m pretty messed up, huh?” Grady muttered, muffled in part by the carpet.
“Did you break him?” Vince called from his side of the room.
Angie nudged at Grady’s side with her foot. “Can you still wiggle your toes?”
Grady bent his toes and then rolled his ankles, though he seemed sluggish about any other movements. He eventually rolled himself onto his side and then up into a sitting position. “That feels a -lot- better.”
Angie smiled. “Good. But I’m not done—turn around.” She folded herself down to sit behind him. Picturing the location of his trapezius muscles in her mind, she began kneading her fingers along his neck and shoulders. As brawny as he was, she had to switch to using the flats of her knuckles with a twisting motion to address the deeper points of tension.
Grady became even chattier as his posture melted into a forward slump. They talked at length about their shared interest in a particular punk rock band, which led them into other commonalities in their backgrounds, and even personal beliefs. Angie was pleasantly surprised by the ease of their conversation. Like her, Grady came from what he considered to be a somewhat functional family and had grown up in a church where his parents were active members. As a result, he’d taken any sort of personal faith for granted until his mid-teens. In the retelling, he spoke with an openness that Angie appreciated.
Once she’d finished her work, he turned around to continue their conversation face to face. By that point, Vince had long since fallen asleep sprawled across the futon, and they made an effort to keep their volume low.
“My sister must be about the same age as yours,” Grady said, after they’d touched on the topic of siblings. He pulled out his wallet and offered her a picture of the sixteen-year-old in question.
Angie took it from him to examine. The slender young girl shared her brother’s dark, expressive eyes and tanned complexion. Her heart-shaped face was one of pleasant features, enhanced by an expert layering of makeup. Shoulder-length hair had been lightened, highlighted, and ironed to fall in a silky curtain around her head.
“She’s gorgeous,” Angie said with a smile as she handed the picture back. “I bet she’s popular at her school.”
“Yeah, she does pretty well for herself.” Grady formed a fond smile, tucking the photo back into his wallet. “She’s always entering some sort of pageant. My mom must have dropped a couple grand on dresses for her already,” he grumbled, and then seemed to think better of his tone. “Not that I think it’s -bad-, it just all seems a little…shallow. And she’s not a great judge of character yet, so she’s got all of these loser guys chasing after her who only want one thing. I end up being the one to run off the worst of them.”
“Not easy being the oldest, is it?” Angie gave a commiserating chuckle. She patted at her pockets to locate her own wallet and drew out a picture. “This is my little sis.”
Grady plucked the photo from her hands and flipped it around. His eyebrows shot upward. “Wow.”
Angie expected that reaction. Her sister was just as stunning as Grady’s, by her estimation. Her hair was a warm, golden brown and waist-length, framing her petite face in loose waves. Her eyes were large and shown a brilliant blue. To top it off, she touted a flawless smile from behind full, pouty lips. “Yeah. She gets people’s attention, too.”
“She’s really pretty,” he remarked, seeming enthralled. “And…you know…dainty. She looks like a pixie.”
Angie nodded. “I know. Most people find it hard to believe we’re sisters.”
“I can see why.” Grady stared at the picture a moment longer before handing it back, looking suddenly abashed. “I mean, you’re pretty too! Just...in a different way.”
Angie formed a dismissive smirk, shaking her head as she replaced the picture. “We’re different on just about every level—which is probably why we’ve never gotten along. But, hopefully once we both move out we can figure out how to be friends.”
“So, you’ve really never dated at all?” Grady diverted back to a point from earlier in their conversation, which she guessed was an attempt to recover from his verbal blunder.
“Nope.” She shrugged, replacing her wallet. “I couldn’t even get a date to senior prom. And I asked four guys to go with me just as friends, so it’s not like I didn’t try.”
“The guys up there must be morons,” he groused.
“It’s okay�
�it’s starting to feel more like an accomplishment.” Angie mustered a half smile, glad she’d gotten to the point where she honestly meant it. If the road trip had done nothing else for her, it had at least given her that much growth. She was done with feeling sorry for herself. “I think it was an expected part of high school for people to play relationship musical chairs. But I didn’t want to risk hurting somebody unless I was serious about them.” She paused for a few seconds to consider, drawing her knees up to her chest in reflection. “So I guess I’m kind of…intense. I’d probably be too much for most guys to handle, anyway.”
Grady shook his head, holding up a hand in assurance. “Hey, at least you’re up-front about it and not all into mind games. The girls around here are crazy.”
“I don’t think that’s a regional thing. Most of the girls -I- know are crazy.” Angie laughed. “I mean…I’m not claiming sanity here. I have been driving around the country by myself for weeks.”
“Yeah, but that’s an awesome kind of crazy.” He grinned in admiration.
Uncomfortable with the praise, Angie looked back across the room at Vince’s sleeping form. His face was turned away from them, but from what she could tell, he hadn’t moved at all in the last hour. “Tell me about Vince,” she heard herself say before realizing she’d put the thought into words. She looked back to Grady with a tight smile. Trying not to come across as too interested, she added, “I haven’t had much luck getting to know him since I got here.”
Grady raised a single brow in surprise. “Really? Vince is pretty easy going, usually.” He hesitated, casting a glance toward his sleeping friend before returning his attention to her. “Well, he’s a great guy. We’ve been like brothers since we met in high school.” He diverted his eyes upward , seeming to collect his thoughts. “He started out at some private school in Mississippi, and I guess public school here was kind of a joke in comparison. He was always ahead of everybody and bored to tears.”
Grady chuckled in reflection and then seemed to sober. “He hasn’t had it easy, though. I think his parents get along fine when they’re not drinking, but…they drink too much sometimes. I used to stay over all the time, and it seemed like his parents were always coming home from the bar screaming and cussing at each other. Weekends, weekdays, it didn’t seem to matter. He’d have to go break them up and make them go to bed. I don’t think he’ll ever drink—he knows how ugly it can get.”
Angie felt her brows pinch in sympathy. “Oh. That must have been hard on him.” She secured her arms around her calves, allowing her chin to rest atop her right knee.
Grady shrugged a shoulder. “I know it sounds a little messed up, but he’s been doing that since he was a kid. To him, it’s normal. I think he’s just glad they stayed together this long.” He shifted uneasily. “His parents are really nice people—they just…do their own thing. You know, free spirits. As long as Vince got good grades, they didn’t bother him. Sometimes I wished my parents were that lax.”
Angie frowned. “I don’t think you would have liked feeling responsible for your parents.”
“Yeah, maybe not,” Grady said, brow creased with concern. “It’s just hard to imagine swapping places with him, you know?”
She nodded, knowing precisely what he meant. She’d been trying to picture herself in Vince’s position from the moment Grady began sharing his observations, but the idea impressed her as altogether foreign and devastatingly lonely.
Grady wasn’t one to let silence linger. “Anyway, so Vince started going to church with my family. He’d never really been before, and he had a lot of questions. He picks stuff up fast, so when it got to where I couldn’t answer something, I brought him to the youth pastor. They got along pretty well, so Vince started coming to the youth group with me and a few other guys. We all ended up getting baptized together. Formed a band in Vince’s basement... We were really fired up for a while there.” He recounted with a wistful smile and a liberal use of hand gestures. “Things were pretty good. And they stayed that way until around the middle of our senior year.”
Angie sat up a little straighter, curiosity piqued. “Did…something happen?”
“Alaina happened.” Grady made a face, rubbing at the back of his neck as though some of the tension had returned. “One of the girls we hung out with a lot. She was kind of like you—tough, smart, different. She was just like one of the guys, up until she and Vince ended up in a play together. They had this scene where they kissed. It wasn’t a big deal, but after the play was over, a couple of her friends kept telling Vince that Alaina was in love with him. They begged him to ask her out.”
“And…he did?”
Grady grimaced, lowering his head. “Vince didn’t plan on dating anybody until he got to college. Said he wanted to be in a better position to take care of somebody else. But I…kind of told him it was a good idea.” His tone was rueful. “See, Alaina had this really hostile thing against the whole concept of faith. Something about a bad experience she had at a bible camp, or something. I figured if anybody could show it to her in a different light, it’d be Vince.”
“Ah,” Angie said, keeping her face as neutral as possible. She could already sense he was alluding to an emotional train wreck, and wondered if she was staring at its unwitting conductor. “I take it that didn’t turn out very well.”
Grady shook his head. “He fell for her after a while…started chauffeuring her around everywhere and doing whatever she wanted. He got set on making her happy, and he quit going to church. I don’t know if she actually made him stop coming or what, but I know she was having a lot more of an effect on him than he was having on her. By then, I was busy with my own girlfriend issues, so I really wasn’t looking out for him like I should have.” His expression twisted with guilt.
“After we graduated, Alaina got accepted to a college a few hours away. I guess she started right away with summer classes, because she moved there just a week or two after graduation. Vince got a job in Birmingham, but he worked it out where he was driving to see her every weekend. It seemed like that was going to work fine for them. But then, out of the blue he gets this ‘Dear John’ email after she’d been down there just a couple of weeks—”
Angie winced. “She broke up with him in an email?”
Grady nodded. “I was here when he read it. Something about how they were growing up now, and should be free to go their separate ways. He tried to call her to figure out what was going on, but she blew him off. He had to find out from some mutual friends that she’d pretty much gone wild as soon as she got there—partying every night and going home with different guys,” he went on, solemn in tone. “She told Vince they were through the day after she moved in with two guys she met at some frat party.”
Angie’s jaw tightened in mounting indignation. “So, she basically ripped out his heart and fed it to a wood chipper. No remorse.” She heard the flatness in her own voice as she summed it up. Part of her found it odd how fast Grady’s insights had moved her from being uncertain about Vince to protective of him.
“I don’t know.” Grady gave a slow, sad shake of his head. “But I remember she had this phrase she really liked: ‘Never say you’re sorry.’ She went around and signed everybody’s yearbook with it. So maybe that just became her life’s motto.”
“That’s not exactly justification for being so…callous,” Angie muttered in disdain. “Her parents wouldn’t be just a little disappointed if they knew what she’d been up to?” she asked, hoping he might provide her with a reason for pity over animosity.
Grady snorted. “I don’t think they’d ever believe it. Not that she’d be honest with them about any of it. She always said they didn’t understand her—”
“Oh, boo hoo,” Angie droned, rolling her eyes as she made the motions of playing an invisible violin.
Grady chuckled, but it didn’t quite pass for humorous.
Angie frowned as something nagged at the back of her mind. “I think I remember Vince acting different online.
It would have been…a little over a year ago? He came up with a couple of new evil villain concepts around then, and a lot of really dark plotlines.” She wanted to kick herself for not making the connection until now.
I never thought to ask why.
Grady nodded. “It tore him up. He got depressed, and I ended up staying with him a lot. He had me really worried for a while,” he confided. “I guess that’s how he coped. He kept himself busy with college and his job—filled in any leftover time with the internet and gaming.”
Angie stood and stepped up to the dresser. She remembered seeing one particular picture had been laid face down, behind a handful of ceramic dragon figurines and next to a childhood photo of Vince with his father in a fireman’s uniform. She cast a glance over her shoulder again to make sure Vince was still asleep before she picked up the frame. “Is this…her?” she asked Grady, motioning with a tilt of her head to the prom portrait featuring Vince in a tux, poised genteelly while holding the arm of a tall, slender girl in a crimson gown.
Grady peered up at it and nodded. “Yeah.” He then added offhandedly, “See why you remind me of her a little? I bet you can pull off a dress pretty well, too.”
Angie studied the picture, struggling to ignore his attempted compliment. True, they both shared darker features and hair, but that was where any physical similarities diverged. Angie didn’t consider herself to have the keenest eye for beauty, but she did have a decent grasp of symmetry — and this girl’s face didn’t have it. Her smile was lopsided, with a greater upturn to the left side that was emphasized by the framing of midnight curls she wore down over bony shoulders. There was a slight turn to her pronounced nose, and her eyes were deeply set — giving them a beady quality that struck Angie as sinister. She had to wonder if her perception of Alaina would be the same if she hadn’t first heard of the wanton harm the girl had inflicted.
“No…I don’t see it,” Angie said at last, setting the frame back down onto its face before crouching back to Grady’s level. And I don’t want to. “Girls like her give all of us a bad name. It’s probably a good thing I won’t be meeting her,” Angie added, surprised by the anger creeping into her voice. What had gotten into her? From what she’d been told, it wasn’t as though the girl in question had claimed to uphold some value system that she’d subsequently violated. Common decency wasn’t truly common, after all. For all Angie knew, Alaina’s choices had trapped her in a bleak cycle of self-perpetuating misery.
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