The Innocent

by Michelle K. Pickett

  Muriel burst out laughing.

  “I’m hoping he’ll notice me, and maybe I’ll get a date out of this mess before the house is finished.”

  “With who—the blond hottie or butt-crack guy?”

  I rolled my eyes at her. Butt-crack guy had finally moved, and my eye candy was in full view again. The problem was, as hot and sexy as he was, I couldn’t help but compare him to Chay, and the blond hottie always came up short. Chay had it all over that guy. In the looks department, in his swagger, and in the way he made my belly tickle just by the sound of his voice—smooth with just a little huskiness to it. Sex on a stick—that was Chay.

  “Well, I’m done. I guess I should go.” I stood, stretched my arms above my head, and arched my back.

  “Don’t look now but hottie is looking at you.”

  I tried to sneak a peek without him seeing. “The blond guy?” I asked.

  “Nope. The dark-haired guy with the pretty eyes. You know. Not quite blue, but not quite green.”

  “Chay?” I whispered, dropping my arms to my sides.

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Leaning with his back against your garage,” Muriel said.

  “Cr-ap.”

  “You go back to Xavier’s. I’ll put the chairs away. No biggie,” Muriel offered.

  “No, that’s okay. Here’s your glass. Thanks for the drink, darling. Kiss, kiss,” I said and blew air kisses on each side of her face.

  Muriel laughed and batted me away. “You’re such a freak show.”

  Grabbing the chairs, I started down the drive. Chay pushed off the garage and met me halfway. Without a word, he took the chairs from me and carried them to the garage.

  “So, what are you still doing here?”

  “You’re not the only one who’s able to stare at eye candy,” he said, leaning the chairs against the wall.

  “Oh? Which one were you staring at? The one with the massive butt crack or the blond? Personally, I don’t peg you for a blond kinda guy, but I may be wrong.” I shrugged a shoulder.

  He chuckled. “Ah, actually neither. I was watching the beautiful girl at the end of the driveway drinking her lemonade.”

  “Well, I’m sure Muriel will be flattered. I’m not sure how Drew will feel about it though.” I turned my back to him. Grabbing the chairs from where he’d left them, I slid them where they belonged in the junk-filled garage.

  “Hmm. You’re going to make me work for this, aren’t you?”

  I sighed and turned to face him. “Make you work for what, Chay?”

  “Us,” he whispered.

  I threw my arms up. They fell with a slap against my thighs. Looking at the toe of my shoe, I took a deep breath before answering. “My understanding was there was no ‘us’ anymore. You’ve barely spoken to me since you’ve been home and when you do, you’re almost hostile. That is—when you’re not pretending to be indifferent.”

  “Ouch.”

  “You’re angry, Chay. Either with me or with yourself, but either way, we can’t base a relationship on it. Besides, according to you, I have a boyfriend so that should put a kink in your plans before they even begin.”

  “So you’re telling me that you and Xavier are together?”

  I didn’t say anything. I wouldn’t lie to him. I couldn’t. I just looked at him and let him draw his own conclusions. That wasn’t a lie, right?

  “This was a mistake.” He turned and stalked away, cutting through my backyard and jumping the back fence like he used to do when we were dating.

  There were so many memories of us together. Everywhere I looked, I saw something that brought one back. Something as ordinary as jumping my back fence made my heart leap into my throat—I remembered all the times he used to do it on Saturday mornings when he’d come over to have our traditional family breakfast. Then he and Benjamin would play Legos or video games in the family room.

  If our relationship had to end, I wish the memories would go with it, because every time I relived one, I also relived the ending.

  ***

  “Your mom called for you a few minutes ago,” Xavier said when I walked through the door.

  Power tools. Sawdust. Bicycle.

  I shook my head to clear it of the images. “She did? Did she say what she wanted?”

  “No. Just to have Benjamin go down and get you.”

  Bicycle. Power tools. Blood.

  “Ben?” I ran to the family room. “Benjamin?” From the family room to the staircase. “Ben? Ben!” I shouted. I turned to Xavier and grabbed him by the upper arms, squeezing. “Where is he?”

  “I just told you. He went to find you.”

  I put my hands on top of my head. “You let him out by himself?”

  “I—”

  “Oh, shut up, Xavier, and help me find him.”

  I burst out the door at a full run. Pumping my arms, I pushed my legs as fast and far as they could go. When I came to our street, I could see Ben riding his bike and wearing his black helmet with the orange and yellow flames on the sides

  “Ben!” I yelled, but he was too close to the construction to hear me. I cupped my hands around my mouth and screamed as loud as I could. Still, he didn’t hear me.

  Blood. Lots of blood.

  I could see it splayed across the cement sidewalk. Ben’s BMX bike covered in it.

  Sawdust.

  The scent of fresh-cut lumber tickled my nose. I could see the fine particles floating in the air.

  Screaming.

  The images played on a loop in my mind, set to a soundtrack of someone’s screams. At first, I thought it was Ben screaming, but then I realized it was me.

  I ran harder. I was almost to him. Just a few more yards and I’d have him. “Ben!”

  “Milayna?” He stopped his bike at the end of our driveway.

  The vision replayed itself in my mind. The blood and the screams were still there. It hadn’t changed. I motioned to him with my hand. “Come here, Ben. Hurry. Please, hurry!”

  He slid off his bike and tried to turn it around. It was taking much too long.

  “Watch out!” someone yelled from inside the house.

  I ran toward Ben, but I was too far away. When I realized there was no way I’d get to him before the saw hit him, I froze. I lifted my hands, focused my energy on the saw, and imagined it dropping to the ground. But I could only watch in horror as my telekinesis failed me and the circular saw sailed through the air, blade still moving.

  Someone darted onto the sidewalk from the other side of the street and grabbed Ben. They landed hard in the next-door neighbor’s ditch.

  Once I knew Ben was safe, I was able to refocus my telekinetic energy and use it to throw the saw in the opposite direction. It skittered across the cement sidewalk—the blade still whirring.

  I rushed to Ben and hugged him to me. “Benjamin, you scared the hell outta me!”

  “Me too,” he said, his voice small and shaky. “What happened?”

  “Thank you…” I started, looking up into a pair of blue-green eyes. “Chay.”

  He smiled and shrugged a shoulder. “I like the little guy.”

  I looked down at Ben, smoothed his hair out of his eyes, and froze.

  Oh shit! Blood!

  “Where’s the blood coming from? Ben, are you hurt?” I pulled up his shirt and turned him around in a circle. I couldn’t find any cuts. Then it registered. I stood and walked to Chay. “Let me see.”

  “It’s nothing. Just a scratch,” he said.

  “If it’s just a scratch, you won’t mind showing me.” I looked in his eyes.

  He held out his forearm and showed me the slice across it—right where he’d wrapped it around Ben’s head to protect him. “Oh, Chay.” Tears burned my eyes. “You saved his life.”

  “Don’t go gettin’ all mushy, Milayna. My stomach’s already queasy from all the blood that’s dripping out of my arm. I don’t think I can stand mushy, too.”

  I laughed. “Here
, we need something to wrap around that. Xavier, give me your sweatshirt.”

  “Huh?”

  “Give me your sweatshirt so I can wrap it around Chay’s arm.”

  “Like hell.”

  “Tsk, such language from an angel,” Chay said with a glare.

  “Give it to me.” I held out my hand and waited for him to hand it over. “You’re the one who let Benjamin outside alone in the first place.”

  He ripped his shirt off and thrust it at me. I wrapped it around Chay’s arm. “Are your parent’s at work?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right back with the car.” I ran back to Xavier’s house, grabbed my purse, keys, some toys and coloring books for Benjamin, and was picking Ben and Chay up in just over five minutes.

  “C’mon, let’s go. Ben, buckle up. Let me help you, Chay.” I bent down and reached over him to snap the buckle in place. My head swam from the smell of him, and I kept reminding myself I didn’t care anymore. This was just a trip to the emergency room because he saved my brother. That was all. Just a Good Samaritan thing. Nothing more. Yeah, right.

  “Ben can stay with me,” Xavier said when I stood up and shut Chay’s car door.

  “We’ll talk about that later. Right now, I want him with me.”

  “Okay. You’ll call…?”

  “Probably not.” I walked around the front of my car when a man rushed outside.

  “Is everyone okay out here?”

  “Why wouldn’t we be? Oh, right, you mean because of the saw that went sailing through the air a few minutes ago. No! Everyone is not alright. We’re on our way to the flippin’ hospital because of one of your worker’s stupidity. Why was the blade still circulating?”

  “Well, they do that—”

  “Err, wrong answer. They have safety switches. Your finger lets go, the blade stops. That blade wasn’t stopping. It was going so fast that it was whining. So lemme guess… um… one of your brilliant workers decided to disable the safety feature to save time and energy. That way, he didn’t have to keep his fingers squeezing the button and could just keep cutting board after board without fear of his hand cramping. Is that it? And, please, don’t insult my intelligence by telling me you didn’t know. You probably not only knew, but you also gave the okay. I bet if we looked at most of these hand tools, the safeties would be tampered with. And another thing, why the hell did it take you,” I looked at my watch, “more than ten minutes to get your lazy ass down here to check and make sure you didn’t injure or kill a neighborhood kid? Huh? No answer? Well, we’ll see if you have an answer when your supervisor asks you the same question—in front of a lawyer.”

  “Wait, miss?” I stopped and stared at him. “Maybe we can work something out? Surely, there’s something special you’d like in your bedroom… no charge.”

  I opened the car door and put one foot inside the car. “What I’d like is for you to move so I can take my friend to the hospital to get stitches in his arm. Or, if you’d like, keep standing there and I’ll hit you. It doesn’t make any difference to me either way.” I got in the car, slammed the door shut, started the ignition, and pulled my seatbelt over me at the same time. Putting the car in gear, I started to pull forward. When the onsite construction manager realized I really didn’t care if I hit him or not, he jumped out of the way and I sped toward the nearest emergency room.

  “Geez, Milayna. Bitchy much?” Chay grinned.

  “He deserved it.”

  “True.” Chay drummed his fingers on his leg and looked around. “Nice car. Xavier’s?”

  I glanced at him. “No.”

  “Oh. Your mom’s, then?”

  “Nope. It’s mine. It was a graduation gift.”

  “Ah. Well, you needed a new car. That old beater was about to wheeze its dying breath.”

  “Yeah, well, it did. It died about a week or so before I left for college, so Mom and Dad called this my belated graduation gift. I accused them of it being their ‘we’re-gonna-turn-your-room-into-a-den’ gift.”

  Chay laughed. “So, the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, huh? What happened to community college in South Bay?”

  “Needed a change of scenery. I guess you can relate to that, can’t you?”

  “I guess. Milayna, I—”

  “Here you go.” I pulled up to the hospital emergency room doors. “I’ll park and Ben and I will wait in the waiting room for you. Meet us there when you’re done.”

  “Sure.”

  ***

  I hated waiting rooms. I especially hated waiting rooms when I had my seven-year-old brother with me.

  “Milayna, can I have something to drink?”

  “You just had a drink, Ben.”

  “Milayna, you brought the wrong crayons.”

  “Those were the only crayons I could find.”

  “Milayna, turn the channel on the television.”

  He’s only seven, he’s only seven, he’s only seven—it’s illegal to strangle him.

  “I can’t, Ben,” I said, trying to be patient. This was, after all, only the fortieth time he’d asked.

  “Why?”

  Ugh, I hate that word. When I have kids, I’m not teaching them how to say the word why.

  “Because it isn’t my television. It’s the hospital’s television, and that’s the channel they want it on.”

  “Milayna, I’m hungry.”

  “You just had chips and a Coke; you’re fine.”

  Okay, so the Coke wasn’t my best idea.

  Whine. Whine. Whine. Of course, after the third hour of waiting, I was feeling pretty whiny myself. Luckily, before Benjamin and I both had temper tantrums in front of the vending machines because they didn’t have peanut butter M&Ms, Chay walked out of the double doors.

  “Hey, how’d it go?” I asked when I saw him.

  His arm was wrapped in crisp, clean white bandages. He carried a clear plastic bag with Xavier’s bloodied sweatshirt in it. And he had a goofy grin on his face.

  He walked up to me, brushed the hair out of my face, leaned down, and kissed me softly on the lips. I stepped back, my fingers touching my lips.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t know. What are you doing?” he answered. “You’re pretty.”

  “Thank you. Are you ready to go home?”

  “Sure, let’s eat first though. Service here was horrible. And it stinks like—”

  “Okay!” I held my hand out to stop whatever word was about to come out of Chay’s mouth. “We’ll get something to eat.”

  “Don’t tell butthead I kissed your sister, ‘Kay, Ben?”

  “Why would I do that? I like you better anyway,” Ben said. “Why do you do that?”

  “Well, that’s good, ‘cuz I like me better too.” He tilted his head to the side and studied Ben. “Why do I do what?”

  “Kiss girls? It’s kinda gross.” Ben looked up at Chay, his freckled nose scrunched up.

  Chay waited a beat, and then started to laugh. “It is gross, isn’t it?”

  “Okay. Chay?” The aquarium had caught his attention. He and Ben were tapping on the glass under the ‘no tapping on glass’ sign, making fish faces at the fish. “Chay? Come here.” I pulled him around to me. “Did the doctor give you any medication?”

  “Yes. Did he give you some too?”

  I sucked in a big breath and let it out. “Hmm, do you have any papers?”

  He held up the plastic bag with Xavier’s dirty sweatshirt in it. Inside, he’d stuffed his discharge papers. I pulled them out and flattened them on a table so I could read them.

  Vicodin for pain every six to eight hours as needed.

  I laughed out loud. Chay was high. At least his parents could be sure he wasn’t a drug user, not if he got this high off a couple of Vicodin. I stuffed the papers back in his plastic bag and led my two guys to the car.

  “How many stitches did you get?” Ben asked.

  “Yeah?” Chay looked at me.

  “He’s f
unny,” Ben said, giggling. Nodding, I winked, and Ben clamped his hand over his mouth and laughed harder.

  “You’re the one who got the stitches.” I pointed to Chay’s bandage. “Don’t you remember?”

  “Oh, right. A few. I lost count.”

  “That many?”

  Chay leaned his head against the window. “No, that much medicine. The stuff is wicked good here.”

  I laughed as I pulled out of the parking lot. “His discharge papers said he got twenty-seven stitches, Ben.”

  “I did? Wow. What was I doing?” Chay asked.

  “Long story. I’ll tell you when you’re not so… medicated.”

  “Okay.”

  We went to Chay’s house and waited with him until Mrs. Roberts got there from work. As long as he took the pain medication, he was going to need a babysitter.

  “Thank you for staying with him, Milayna.”

  “I’m the one who’s thankful. If it hadn’t been for Chay…” Tears filled my eyes. Chay’s mom hugged me.

  “I’m sure if my son wasn’t high as a kite right now, he’d tell you he was glad he could help, especially Ben. He loves him, you know.”

  Laughing and sobbing at the same time, I nodded. I knew Chay well enough that no matter how mad he was at me, he’d never let anything happen to Benjamin or me.

  “Tell him I’ll see him when he’s feeling better. That is, if he wants.” I wiped a tear away with my fingers.

  She nodded. “The Roberts’ men are a stubborn bunch, Milayna. They need someone who has either a lot of patience, a lot of spunk, or a lot of both to deal with them. When it comes to you and me, we fall in the latter category. We’ve got the patience and the spunk. Now you just need to know if you want the man.” She smiled and winked at me. “Thanks for bringing him home safe and keeping him out of anything dangerous until I could get here.”

  “There’s no way I would have left him alone. Have fun. He’s… entertaining.”

  ***

  The following night, I sat on Xavier’s back porch. I heard footsteps just before a shadow fell over me. When I looked up, the light was in my eyes. I couldn’t see who it was, but I could smell him. I knew his scent anywhere. Fresh, outdoorsy, and something totally him.

  “Hi, Chay.”

  “Milayna.”