Playing With Fire (Sweet Redemption)
Page 12
“You know how when you meet some people, sometimes before they even speak, you immediately like or dislike them?” he began. “I mean, without hearing any rumors or anything—you just see them and get a strong impression, strong enough to decide how you feel about them.” He paused, trying to find a better way to describe it. “You get a whiff of their spirit I guess. Their aura.”
Nicholas wanted to kick himself when the last words fell out of his mouth as Eddie responded exactly as expected by laughing.
Nicholas narrowed his eyes at him.
“Look, that’s how it is with her Ed. She just strikes me as a great person.”
He turned away to avoid the glare of Eddie’s white-teethed grin.
“Yeah, okay Nick,” Eddie replied in that condescending meter and tone that made Nicholas want to punch him in the face. Then Eddie’s face softened. “Hey, I’m just playing with you bro, I know what you’re trying to say. Kind of like what Charlene used to say right? Something about her spirit ‘taking to’ some people and ‘not taking to’ others.”
Eddie paused, as if carefully thinking about his next words.
“So why don’t you just go talk to her then? Find out how wonderful she really is?”
Nicholas’s heart had warmed at the mention of their old nanny, but he looked away again, this time in the direction of the library as his thoughts returned to the girl, wishing he could see her in one of its windows, but at the same time, glad he couldn’t.
“I can’t,” he said after a few moments.
He looked at the ground again, focusing on a beetle crawling over the bridge of his sneakered foot toward the emerald forest of blades on the other side.
He heard Eddie let out a frustrated breath.
“But why, man? Why don’t you just go up to her?”
Eddie’s voice was almost desperate now, all traces of amusement gone.
“Man, this is so weird. First, you, Nicholas Dhalton, are ‘in like’ with a plain girl. A plain, black girl nonetheless. Not to mention she’s what, middle-class at best? Then, you’re too scared to approach her.” Eddie shook his head and threw up his hands. “This is like the twilight zone.”
He put his hands on Nicholas’s shoulders, forcing him to look into his bewildered eyes.
“We Dhaltons are not afraid of women!” he said.
Nicholas wondered if his brother could ever become fully supportive of his interest in the girl. He often wondered if Eddie was really on his side.
“I just can’t,” Nicholas said with finality.
He extracted himself from Eddie’s grip and glanced over at the library once more before turning and walking in the opposite direction toward his class. He couldn’t, he had said. But he knew he could, and was afraid he would.
END OF EXCERPT
Chrysalis was released on June 1st, 2013. Check it out on Amazon here.