“Don’t kick me out,” he said.
“I won’t.”
He opened his mouth to ask me something else, but then didn’t speak. His hands were splayed on either side of his plate, as if he was deliberately holding himself there.
I took a sip of the hot apple juice. At the same time, I reached my free hand across the table and placed it over his. It was an easy, natural gesture. I’d never touched another human in such a way before.
He closed his eyes, swallowing whatever else he wanted to say. Then he opened them and smiled at me.
I swear my heart skipped a beat. I had to stop staring at him. I could literally feel all the reason draining out of my brain. I just wanted to be utterly unreasonable with him, for as long as such irrationality could last.
I looked down at my croissant. He did the same.
I removed my hand from his. My skin instantly chilled from where it had been touching him. In fact, the Brave was rather chilly all round. I hadn’t needed to turn on the heat with him sleeping beside me. The hot apple juice helped to warm me now.
We ate.
“Where are we going today?” he asked.
“Where have you come from?”
“Seattle.”
“Why did you leave?”
“I don’t like to stay where I’m not wanted.”
“I doubt you could be anywhere and not be wanted … being so useful and all.”
He laughed, then sobered quickly. “I don’t like staying anywhere I’m not … anywhere I don’t fit.”
“Is your family in Seattle?”
“No. Southaven, Mississippi.” Ah, that was the origin of his accent. “And you’re from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.”
“You can tell the city by my accent?”
“No, by your license plates … and registration papers.”
“You’ve been snooping.”
“You sleep deeply.”
I laughed and passed him the last bite of my croissant. He popped it into his mouth with a wide grin.
“I was thinking of heading over to the coast today,” I said.
“I’m game. But first I want to look at these.” He tapped my art portfolio with his foot. He couldn’t fully stretch his legs out underneath the table. The portfolio was leaning against the side of my seat. “You’re an artist, yes?”
“I guess the portfolio gives me away.”
“And the tattoos. They’re your designs?”
I nodded. “I thought I was a deep sleeper. You could have looked without asking.”
“You don’t care about your glove box or the refrigerator, but I’d never touch your bag or your portfolio. They mean something to you. Will you let me look?”
“Yes. But after.”
“After what?”
I nodded toward the white plastic bag on the counter beside the sink. It wasn’t mine. “You bought more condoms, didn’t you?”
He was out of his seat and lifting me out of mine before I registered that he’d moved. He’d also managed to snag the plastic bag. He carried me back to the bed.
“You are good at lifting heavy things,” I whispered into his neck. I pressed a kiss just behind his ear, and I swore I could feel his blood rushing underneath my lips.
“There is nothing heavy about you, Rochelle.”
He laid me back on the bed and tossed the plastic bag to one side as he tugged on my T-shirt. I knocked his hands away.
“You first this time.”
He laughed. “At least close the drapes.”
I glanced around. Outside, the parking lot was filling, though no one was parked directly beside us yet. I scrambled around in a half circle and tugged the garish orange-striped blinds closed.
He pulled his T-shirt off, revealing in the dimmed morning light exactly why it seemed so tight on him.
“All the heavy lifting pays off,” I said.
“Unfortunately, I think it’s genetics.”
“Unfortunately?”
He shrugged.
I dropped the conversation part of the bedroom dance. I didn’t want to be serious. I didn’t want to talk about parents or lack of parents. I just wanted to be locked up together in the cozy confines of the Brave, creating our own version of the world … a microcosm of our own design.
I crawled forward and tugged on the button of his jeans. He leaned over and nuzzled my neck.
“No screaming this time,” he said.
“I don’t scream.”
“Don’t you?” he asked. “Well, I always rise to a challenge.”
“Yes, you do,” I murmured as I slipped my hand into his boxer shorts.
The new condoms fit just fine, but he should have bought more than one box.
∞
We lay entwined together while the sounds of the rest stop parking lot filtered in through the windows and blinds. The occasional conversation, door slam, or remote lock trigger tugged me gradually back to reality.
My stomach rumbled. Beau chuckled softly. His left arm was wrapped around me, with his hand cupping my bare ass. My head was resting on his shoulder, and I’d been watching his chest rise and fall with what I thought were the deep breaths of sleep.
I opened my mouth and let the world intrude into our paradise. “I’ve never dozed with anyone before.”
“No?” he murmured sleepily.
“No.”
He didn’t say the same, and I tamped down on my sudden urge to interrogate him about every sexual partner he’d ever had.
I wasn’t stupid. Just because I didn’t randomly take gorgeous men back to my RV didn’t mean that someone as obviously sexually experienced as he was didn’t do it all the time.
“Tell me about Southaven, Mississippi,” I said instead, though I knew this wasn’t a subject he wanted to expand on either. “This is my first time in the States.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“And you don’t have any family? There’s no one like me in Vancouver?”
I laughed. “No, there’s no one like you in Vancouver.”
He laughed. “I didn’t mean … if you mean you don’t have a boyfriend, I’m glad to hear it.”
Again, he didn’t mention if he had any attachments … but by the bulging backpack and the way he’d shown up at the diner — via walking in the rain along the highway — it was easy to guess that he was leaving something behind.
So was I, though I’d planned my exodus.
He let go of my ass, and the skin there instantly goose bumped with the sudden chill. He ran his fingers along my arm.
“This is what I meant,” he murmured. “You feel that, don’t you?”
His touch left a tingling wake down my shoulder to my elbow.
“Yeah.” I murmured my acknowledgment of the way he made me feel into the warm, smooth skin of his left pec.
“You’ve never met anyone else that you felt that … electricity with?”
“That’s a rather personal question.” I wasn’t completely teasing.
“I don’t mean …”
He didn’t seem to know what exactly he was trying to say. Or maybe he’d fallen asleep again. I lifted my chin and snuck a glance at him. He grinned at me. His eyes were darker in the filtered light than I’d thought they were before.
“Your eyes change color,” I said.
“Do they? What colors?”
“Bluer now, more green last night.”
“More green last night,” he repeated, as if he was trying to piece something together.
I was starting to get the feeling we weren’t having the same conversation.
“And … do your eyes change color?”
“I don’t keep track,” I answered, flippant and completely lying. Why was I lying?
“What else changes color?”
“Beau,” I groaned, “I’m hungry. But I don’t actually want to move, because then I’ll be cold.”
> “These are serious complaints,” he said. “Do you think we have enough water for a shower?”
“Maybe one.” I grinned while I attempted to not faint over him using the word ‘we’ and me completely loving it.
“Then I suggest I carry you to the shower so you don’t lose any heat. Then we’ll bundle you up and go in search of more food.”
“Sounds like a solid plan.”
He swung his long legs off the bed while dragging me across his chest. I wrapped my arms and legs around him in a front-ways piggyback, quashing my rising concern over the ridiculous dependency I was building the second it rose in my thoughts. Then quashing the voice of my shrink, and her condemnation of false intimacy between youths in the foster system. Supposedly, we orphans attempted to build relationships with other foster kids too quickly, too intensely. And foster kids ultimately weren’t equipped to handle the responsibility of their own lives, let alone the emotions and needs of others.
Not that I’d ever had the opportunity to build any relationships, really.
“We’ll talk about Southaven and everything else later, right?” I asked Beau’s neck as he carried me through the kitchen to the bathroom behind the driver’s seat.
“Yeah,” he answered. “And you seeing eyes change color, mine and yours. And electric shocks … and your tattoos and art.”
He took my weight in one arm while he unlatched the bathroom door.
I kept my mouth shut about him calling me on my lie. I did notice my own eyes change color, but I really, really didn’t want to talk about the headaches, the hallucinations, and the meds. The migraines affected my eyes, but I guessed that his eye color only changed depending on what color of shirt he was wearing. No mystery there … just one big complication.
One big complication that would see him out the door. Probably. Eventually. Even Carol had hit her panic button when I’d had an episode in front of her, and she’d read my file. Being told someone had a psychotic disorder was way, way different from witnessing it. But we had to talk about it eventually. The confined paradise of the Brave couldn’t last. Could it?
“Not today,” I said.
“Okay.”
We weren’t going to fit in the bathroom with me clinging to him, not unless I wanted to sit on the toilet. I lowered my feet onto the chilly vinyl floor and reluctantly peeled my body away from him. He stood half in the hall and half in the bathroom, keeping hold of me as he reached into the shower to turn on the water.
I pressed my lips to his shoulder, shivering slightly everywhere he wasn’t touching. “I have to wash my new tattoo.”
“Yeah? Time to take off the bandage?”
“It’s nothing to get all excited about.”
“It’s a part of you.” He grinned down at me.
That smile lit up his face and tugged at my heart. Literally. I once again quashed the warning that was carried to the forefront of my thoughts in my shrink’s voice.
Except that, brushing off those concerns as stemming from my out-to-lunch shrink was just a facade. Just me putting all my fears into the imaginary mouth of someone else.
Beau touched my shoulders, prompting me to turn, so I did. I was happy to have an excuse to hide my face for a moment. He gently removed the bandage that covered the peony tattoo on my left shoulder.
At some point, the facade would have to crumble. If I didn’t orchestrate the reveal, the hallucinations eventually would. I couldn’t hide my broken brain from someone I was sleeping with. Beau would figure it out. It was better if I told him.
But not today.
∞
We didn’t fit in the shower together, but we had fun trying. When I came out all scrubbed clean and fresh faced, I found Beau looking at my sketches. My collection, such as it was, consisted of a dozen or so 24-by-36 charcoal sketches, along with a few smaller sketches that I kept for sentimental reasons. Well, as sentimental as I got. Most of the larger pieces were unfinished, or needed a few final touches so I could list them in my Etsy shop. Beau had two of the bigger sketches on the table, and the others propped up against the windows, counters, and cupboards. Surrounded by my unfinished and half-finished art, he was hunched over a sketch that depicted the golden-haired woman who’d been haunting my hallucinations since last spring.
I hesitated to close the space between us. My stomach was twisted in a knot from seeing him so arrayed and so intently focused.
“Did you see this?” he asked quietly.
“What do you mean?”
He turned and looked at me then, and I wanted to pick up a piece of charcoal to sketch him. There … his eyes once again greener in the midmorning light, in that hunched, coiled posture. He was a massive presence over the tiny lime-green dinette table. Just him, surrounded by my charcoal-and-white art. Art within art.
But that was hugely cheesy. And I never drew real life, not ever.
“This woman with the knife. And here…” — he gestured to another sketch propped against the bench seat to his right — “… the dark-suited man with the amulet. Do you know them?”
“Of course I don’t,” I said, pushing by him to get dressed. “I make it all up.”
“You didn’t see the magic you’ve captured here?”
“Magic?” I scoffed. “That’s a generous assessment. It’s shading and smudging. It’s fantasy. It sells, so I draw it. It’s a tiny talent.”
“The drawing is a tiny talent?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“Did you take classes?”
“No more than you did, in school.”
He nodded and returned his attention to the drawings, studying each one of them with heavy, super-serious focus. I dressed, hyperaware of him and his questions. My chest ached a little, as if somehow I’d lied to him with my answers. Lied about what I saw and didn’t see. Though I knew what he’d meant, and so I hadn’t lied, not really.
“I’m a guest here, in your home. I’m the one invading your space, asking questions.” He spoke without looking at me as I zipped up my dark gray hoodie. “You can lie to me all you want, Rochelle. Just … maybe … you shouldn’t be lying so much to yourself.”
“Like you never lie to yourself?”
“I don’t,” he said, lifting his blazingly aquamarine eyes to mine. “But that doesn’t mean I like all the truth either. This is no tiny talent.”
“Thank you.” I wasn’t exactly sure that had been a compliment, but I didn’t know what else to say. I really didn’t want to talk about the sketches, because that would lead to the hallucinations and the sketching being part of my therapy. That was all a topic for tomorrow … or the next day.
He smiled sadly. Then carefully, only touching the very edges, he packed all the sketches back into my portfolio case.
I turned away, feeling just as alone with him three feet away as I had two evenings ago. I started unpacking my meager belongings into the double wardrobe beside the bed. I barely filled two shelves with my clothes and a third with my drawing supplies. This left the other side of the shelves entirely empty. I didn’t mention this to Beau. His backpack was still where he’d left it tucked on the far side of the bench seat in the dinette area.
He slid my portfolio along the floor until it just nudged my foot, then he leaned it back so it wouldn’t fall forward. I nodded and reached down for it, then tucked it between the wardrobe and the bed.
The silence between us was making me sick. It shouldn’t be this way. A hint of discord, and I was all choked and angsty? It didn’t make any sense, not yet, maybe not ever.
This so wasn’t me. I opened my mouth to say so, to rave and rally against the feelings coalescing all around my heart. My ever-steady, never-tested heart. But … I didn’t speak. I didn’t question. I didn’t know what he wanted from me. I didn’t know why he was here. And I found I was deeply afraid to ask.
“I’ll check the engine,” Beau said. I could see without turning my head that his hands were stuffed
in his pockets, as they’d been last night in the diner. He turned to the door.
“It’s fine,” I said.
“Still, I’d like to have a look.”
He waited at the door for me to look up at him. Then he smiled.
I nodded and he ducked underneath the doorway to climb down and out of the RV. The Brave actually dipped and righted itself as he did so.
I picked up my portfolio. I put it down on the table, unzipped it, and flipped it open. The sketches inside fanned out, falling open to one of the dark-suited man staring out at me. His expression was serious, maybe even deadly. I shuddered at the look I’d captured in his eyes. He haunted my hallucinations, my nightmares, and my art. He scared me, even tamed and captured on the page.
I closed the portfolio and tucked it back between the wardrobe and the bed. It was too wide to fit in any of the cupboards.
Beau had let it drop, as if it wasn’t more than a casual line of inquiry. And, of course, that’s what it was. What else could he want to know? He’d asked if I saw magic. He meant metaphorically, and I was so terrified of him knowing about the hallucinations that I’d shutdown at the question. Now, he probably thought I was a moron. But would he have stuck around this long if that was the case? Would he be checking the engine?
I didn’t get the impression that Beau was just looking for a ride, either in my bed or my RV. He’d been perfectly fine in the rain on the edge of the highway, all alone. And so had I.
I wandered forward to the cockpit, grinning when Beau looked around the hood through the windshield at me. He was insanely beautiful and completely surreal standing at the front of the Brave. Standing there as if he belonged, as if he’d never even thought of being anywhere else. This juxtaposition of reality and the unreal — the parking lot behind Beau and the engine hood between us, his looks and his choosing to be here — was mind-boggling.
It was more than looks, actually. It was belittling to label him so simply and off-handedly. He was present. Stable yet unencumbered. Soulful, for lack of a better word.
His answering smile told me that everything was just fine by him. He ducked back under the hood. Next, he’d be asking for the owner’s manual, and I’d be just fine with that too. Preemptively, I pulled the manual out of the glove compartment and set it on the passenger seat.
I See Me (Oracle Book 1) Page 8