Playing Patience

by Tabatha Vargo

  When I pulled into Zeke’s muddy yard, I parked between his car and his dad’s tow truck. I cut my engine and got out. My shoes sank into the dirt as I cut across his small yard. The steps squeaked as I went up. I held my hand up and was about to knock when I heard a loud smashing noise on the inside.

  Someone was yelling and then there was another loud noise. Without thinking I grabbed onto the knob and turned it. The door opened easily. Stepping inside the small, shabby space, the first thing I saw was Zeke on the floor with blood on his face. His father was standing over him with fist in the air ready to come down.

  Without thinking, I jumped. I latched onto his dad’s arm and held on tight as he tried to shake me off. Once I released his arm, I jumped in front of Zeke and stared into his dad’s eyes.

  He was a big man, much bigger than my own, and he smelled awful, like beer and cigarettes. His grease-covered shirt was too tight and his hair was disheveled like he’d just woken up.

  “Who the hell are you?” he asked.

  His hot breath struck my cheek and I accidently breathed it in. The smell made my stomach roll and I thought for sure I was going to throw up all over him. The room spun as fear smashed into me, but I’d known fear many times in my life and I wasn’t going to let it get the best of me, not when Zeke needed me.

  “Don’t you dare hit him again!” I growled back at him.

  My voice surprised me. How was I able to stand up to this stranger? How was I able to get past the deep-set fear that had taken over me? When faced with my dad I couldn’t do this, and I knew how far I could go with him. I didn’t know this man from a hole in the wall, yet I stood toe to toe with him and dared him to touch Zeke.

  He towed over me and his chest bumped into my face. From behind me I could hear Zeke coming to and getting up from the floor.

  “No, snowflake,” he said through a bloodied lip. “Just let it go and get out of here.”

  Just like that, so many things made sense now—the bruises I’d seen on him, his anger toward everyone, his quickness to fight another human being. Just as I had my defense mechanisms, Zeke had his. He had shields just the way I did.

  Our lives weren’t so different. Abuse was abuse no matter its form. One wasn’t easier than the other; either way it hurt. Either way it scarred the person on the receiving end. It scarred them and broke them into tiny pieces. Zeke and I were both broken parts of a whole person and no matter what piece you put where, it would fit, because we fit. I’d always known it. We fit.

  “Mind your own fucking business, little girl,” his dad said.

  And then he pushed at my chest with big, meaty fingers and knocked the breath out of me just that easily. Still, I stood my ground.

  “You’re not going to touch him again!” I said with more strength than I felt.

  The room spun when the back of his hand connected with my cheek. I landed face first into the foul, shag carpeting. There was a scuffle behind me, so I quickly turned onto my back and tried to get up. My mouth filled with blood and the room continued to spin. Zeke had to be one tough guy if he went through this all the time.

  When my vision finally cleared, I looked up to see Zeke beating his father unmercifully. His dad didn’t give up and went back in with a punch to his cheek. The thin, paneling wall cracked when Zeke slammed into it, but he shook it off and kept punching his dad in the stomach and face over and over again.

  His dad caught him in the stomach and I heard the air squeeze from his lungs as he fell to his knees.

  “Come on, you little fucker.” His dad baited him. “Is that all you got? I bet your little bitch hits harder than you!”

  Zeke crawled from the floor and went on the attack again. He threw punches so fast his hands started to blur. Once his dad fell to one knee, Zeke attacked harder and then out of nowhere, he reached over for the guitar his mother bought him and brought it up over his head. Things started to move in slow motion.

  I saw where this was going and I heard myself scream for him to stop, but before the words left my lips, he brought the guitar down and slammed it into his dad’s back. There was a loud crack and then tiny pieces of guitar flew everywhere.

  He brought it up again and this time he brought it down and cracked the already broken guitar over his dad’s face. His dad fell hard and the trailer shook.

  Zeke pulled back a broken piece that still had the strings attached. The larger, shattered part of the guitar hung above his unconscious and bloodied father. He looked down at his guitar and then he looked down at the heaping pile of asshole he’d managed to knock out. Sorrow seeped into his big, brown eyes and then he looked over at me. He held the pieces of the guitar up as if to show me what he had done.

  It was broken beyond repair, his most prized possession. The guitar his mother bought for him years ago was gone… irreplaceable… gone. I couldn’t help but feel like it was my fault. I was the reason he’d lost something that meant more to him than anything else in the world and once he realized that he’d hate me. I hated me.

  Dark, unreadable eyes looked back at me before he looked down again and shook his head in what I assumed was aggravation.

  “Are you okay?” he asked roughly as he wiped at his bleeding lip.

  Me? Who gave a rat’s ass about me? I was fine. All I could think about was him and his guitar. He’d told me how special that guitar was and I knew what it meant to him.

  “I’m fine. Are you okay?”

  “I’ll live.” He looked like he was about to cry.

  “I’m so sorry, Zeke.”

  The floor shifted as I stood up and went to him. I reached out for his hand and he didn’t pull away. Brushing his hair from his sweaty face, his already swelling eye was turning black. He flinched when I ran my finger across the bruise.

  “Don’t be, you didn’t do anything wrong. I should’ve stood up to him years ago.” He sat on the couch and the broken guitar fell to his feet. “What are you doing here?”

  I sat beside him and laid my hand on his knee. He looked down at my hand and then looked back at me.

  “I came to tell you I was sorry. I didn’t mean what I said the other night. I just didn’t want you to get arrested.”

  The side of his mouth tilted up and he blew out a deep breath.

  “You could’ve just texted me that.”

  I went in for the kill.

  “But then I wouldn’t have been able to see you.”

  He turned to me and his eyes took in my face. Reaching up, he laid his palm against my sore cheek. Anger filled his eyes and he breathed hard, making his nostrils flare.

  “He hit you. I’m so sorry I let him hit you.” His thumb caressed what I was sure was already a forming bruise.

  “You didn’t let him do anything.” I covered his hand with mine. “Do you guys always fight like that?”

  He shook his head and closed his eyes.

  “No. I usually never fight back. I promised my mom on her death bed that I wouldn’t fight him.”

  “But you did today.” I stated the obvious.

  Deep brown eyes took me in as he brought his other hand up and laid it on my other cheek.

  “When he hit you, I wanted to kill him.”

  His confession said so much to me. I leaned in to kiss him, but his dad moaned like he was getting up. Zeke jumped from the couch and pulled me up with him.

  “You need to get out of here. When he wakes up it’s not going to be good.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  And I wasn’t. I refused to leave him in a place where he wasn’t safe.

  “Fine, let me grab some stuff. Stand by the door and don’t move. If he gets up, get out of here and go sit in my car, okay?”

  I nodded my agreement and went to stand by the door while Zeke ran to his room and started throwing random things into a bag. A piece of wood on the floor caught my eye. I reached down and picked it up. It was the part of his guitar with his mom’s signature.

  Quickly, I dug through the pieces
of his broken guitar. As if it were fate, I found four quotes that were still whole. The edges were broken and jagged, but still whole. I collected them and put them in my pocket. I was sure there was something I could do with the pieces.

  Zeke came back out of his room and grabbed my hand.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Once we were outside, he threw his stuff in the back of his car and turned to me.

  “Whose car?” he nodded over to my car.

  “It’s mine, kind of.”

  “Good. Follow me.”

  I nodded and turned to walk away, but he softly grabbed my wrist and pulled me back to him. He ran his fingers through my hair and then leaned and planted a soft kiss on my lips.

  “Seriously, snowflake, I need you.”

  Seventeen

  Zeke

  Go back to your shitty little trailer park. I wanted to see if what they said about you was true, and now that I see it isn’t, I’m done messing around with you.

  Patience’s words bounced around my head the entire ride home. The look in her eyes wasn’t right, but I couldn’t tell if she meant it or not. Either way, I was done. She was right. We were from two different worlds and I needed to stay in my zone.

  Once I got home, I went straight to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. My thoughts were a scrambled mess. Part of me wanted to go kidnap Patience and keep her safe from her asshole of a father, and the other part of me knew that I should just drop it and hope that she was okay.

  When I closed my eyes, all I could see was her face in ecstasy and the way she looked after we kissed. I’d never had a woman look at me with so much emotion in her eyes. I’d also never had someone cut me so deep with their words. I’m not sure when she got that capability, but I was positive it happened during our kiss.

  I hated to admit it to myself, but I was falling for her and from the way she looked at me, I thought for sure she felt the same way, but then she freaked out and I couldn’t understand why or what was happening.

  The one thing I did know was that something wasn’t right. Patience was hiding something. Whether it was a severe psychological disorder or the fact that her dad beat her, she was definitely hiding something.

  The next day I stayed home all day. I knew it was a bad idea being stuck in the house with my dad, but after the night I had, I had too much on my brain and that last thing I wanted to do was hang around anyone. I’d be shitty company.

  I was sitting on the couch, playing my acoustic guitar and thinking about my mom, when my dad came in the door from a tow run. Needing to be out of the same space as him, I got up to go to my room. He never gave me that chance. Instead, he went straight for the fight.

  I’m not sure if seeing my guitar with my mom’s handwriting all over it set him off or what, but he said nothing. He didn’t give me any reason for this fight. I pushed my guitar out of the way and covered myself. Except this time was different, this time he didn’t just try to break me; he also broke things around us. He threw a plate against a wall like a Frisbee, and then tossed the coffee table across the room in a heated rage.

  “You look just like her!” he spat in my face.

  My cheek exploded when he brought his fist down on it and I tasted blood, but I ignored it all. I zoned out and I would’ve stayed zoned out had I not heard Patience’s voice.

  At first, I thought I was losing my mind. I thought maybe I conjured up the sounds of her soothing voice as a survival mechanism. But then I peeked up and saw her standing in front of me and I knew she was real.

  She stood in front of my dad like a petite avenging angel. Her blue glare cut into him as if her vision could cut him in half, and her tiny fists were balled up like she was minutes away from kicking some ass. It was the most heartwarming and frightening thing I’d ever seen.

  My dad’s large frame towered over here. His shadow crept across her face, and still, she held her ground. Her T-shirt strained against her puffed out chest and her cheeks flushed with anger as she stared him square in the eye.

  “Don’t you dare hit him again!”

  My dad looked down at her like she was a joke at first. Too much beer had obviously riddled his brain. Shaking his head, he adjusted his vision.

  I remember telling her to let it go, I remember him pushing her to the side and saying something rude as fuck, but the minute I saw him hit her, a rage that I’d never known struck me. I didn’t feel anything anymore. All I knew was he had to die.

  I watched as her head snapped to the side before she went down. In that moment something cracked inside me, something other than a rib or a wrist. This time it was something deep set inside my soul. It cracked and crumbled into miniature pieces of fury.

  I didn’t wait for him to come at me. Instead, I went straight for him. My fist connected to his cheek and for a second he looked at me, shocked. Years of abuse and I’d never so much as lifted my hand to him, but he crossed a line and on the other side of that line was a new me—a me that would kill someone before I let them hurt Patience.

  My anger was fueled by years of being his punching bag. I saw images of him hitting my mother, images of his fist coming toward me, and finally, the image of Patience going down after he hit her ran through my mind over and over again. I couldn’t have stopped if I wanted to.

  He could hit me all he wanted. I’d get my ass kicked every day if that was the way it was, but I drew a thick, black line at Patience. She was the only good thing, a slice of sunlight in my eternal night, snowflakes in my hell, and I’d do whatever it took to protect her from me and my world. I’d kill him for putting his hands on her.

  I’d been so blinded by my red-hot rage that I didn’t even realize what I picked up. I didn’t know that I’d used my most prized possession to take my dad down. Heartbreak unlike any other ripped through me when I pulled back the broken pieces of string and wood, and tears threatened to break through.

  Patience knew about my guitar. She was the only other person in the world besides my dad who knew. When I looked over at her and showed her the broken parts of the favorite memory with my mom, her face told me she understood the massiveness of what I’d just done.

  My eyes met fair skin that was starting to swell and again I felt my anger rise. Breathing deep, I tried to squash it before I did something really stupid. The corner of my mouth burned and the taste of blood was on my tongue, but I was more worried about her.

  Every time I looked at her, I felt like my skin was melting from my bones. I didn’t find relief until she came to me and touched me. It’s so funny. For years my dad abused me and not once had I ever truly felt angry about it, but one hit to Patience and I wanted his blood on my hands.

  I thought I’d never see her again, but she was here and she was here to see me. Even after the drama from the night before, she still wanted to see me. So when she said she wouldn’t leave without me, I knew I had to go with her. I walked away from my dad’s house with barely any money in my pocket and a bag full of anything that would fit.

  The strangest thing was, when we got to my car and she tried to pull away, I almost couldn’t let her go. The world felt like a jumbled mess. I felt nauseated just being a part of it, but when she was near me or touching me everything stopped spinning and I was filled with a heavy dose of clarity.

  Looking through the rearview mirror, I took her in as she followed behind me in the car I didn’t know she had. I had no idea where I was going. I just knew as long as she was with me I’d be okay. The idea of needing someone to hold me together scared me shitless, but it was out there. There was no taking it back now. I needed Patience and I couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow she needed me too.

  My El Camino threw out a puff of smoke when I cut the engine in front of the cheapest motel in town. Patience stood by the door in the front office as I paid for two nights. I could’ve stayed with Finn, but I wasn’t the kind of person to live up on my friends.

  The lady behind the counter handed me my room key then smiled sheepishly
at Patience. I grinned over at her when her cheeks filled with fire. She followed me to my room and I held the door open for her as we entered the dark room.

  “I should probably go.” She picked at her fingernails.

  I threw my bag onto the queen-sized bed then turned to her. Covering her hands with mine, I stopped her from picking at her nice fingernails.

  “Don’t,” I said simply.

  I wasn’t sure if she realized I was asking her to stay, but she looked up at me through those long lashes of hers and I almost forgot I was officially homeless. I almost forgot that I laid my dad out cold and destroyed the last thing I had from my mother. I couldn’t seem to remember anything from the last few hours.

  Pushing aside a thick piece of blond bangs, I let my thumb skim her swelling cheek.

  “I’m so sorry, snowflake.” I swallowed hard.

  I’d never felt more like a failure in my entire life. I let her down. He should’ve never been able to get near her.

  “You did nothing wrong, Zeke.” She covered my hand with hers.

  Turning her face into my palm, she closed her eyes and smiled.

  “I never thought I’d enjoy this so much,” she whispered.

  “Enjoy what?”

  She rubbed my palm with her cheek again.

  “Your touch.” She grinned up at me.

  “Well, since you like it that much…” I said as I wrapped my other arm around her waist and pulled her close to me.

  Her body fit to mine with perfection. It made me question every other woman I’d ever touched in my life. My hand shifted from her cheek and down her neck and my eyes took in her full, pouty mouth. After last night’s kiss, kissing Patience didn’t seem like a tragedy. If anything, her kisses were tiny miracles. They turned the asshole inside me into a big teddy bear.

  The smell of her hair filled me when I leaned in and ran my nose up the side of her neck. She stiffened in my arms, but pulled me closer at the same time. When I got to her ear, I laid a tiny kiss on her earlobe.

  “I’m going to kiss you now,” I whispered my warning.

  I’d been thinking about kissing her since the moment the last kiss ended.