Page 51 of Red Flag, Green Light

She masks her real self, thus fabricating an acceptance that still stings in the end.

Aren’t we just a pair?

I say, “I’m sorry if my visits and disposition have troubledyou overmuch. Your aversion to dealing with human beings becomes clearer each day, and, after earlier, I’m beginning to understand that your hospitality the first day I encroached upon your peace was a compulsion independent of your wishes.” I retrieve a box of strawberry Milano cookies, as penitence. “When I fixate on a goal, I charge forward, razing everything in my path.”

“Determination is a commendable trait. It’s particularly overactive in villains, and there’s nothing wrong with emulating a villain.”

She’s so…

I sigh.

Nuts. Absolutely, utterly, and completelynuts. The more I get to know her, the more I’m desperate to see more. Does something other than the foreboding promise of social interaction rattle her? What would make her laugh uncontrollably? How do I get under her skin and stay there, near her heart, forever?

“Have you gotten the bread yet?” she asks.

I have gotten the bread, eggs, several kinds of cookies, juice, chocolate milk, root beer, ice cream, chips, vegan butter, and a few avocados… Needless to say, she only told me to get the first two things. She seems to have forgotten she needs more juice since the finality in her tone right now makes me think it’s not going to be mentioned.

I provide a perfectly innocent, “Yes.”

“Great. Hurry up and check out so you can take me home.”

As I thought. She forgot about the juice.

Smiling, I readjust the hefty basket, ignore the strain in my permanently sore arms, and head to checkout. Even if she’s yet to notice the few additional centimeters of muscle I’ve added to my shoulders, at least my pushup routine has prepared me to carry this shopping basket with five kinds of juice in it around.

Hopefully she’ll notice that I look more shouldery soon. Hopefully it won’t be a situation where we see each other so often she doesn’t even comprehend the improvements. Hopefully she sees me one day and something changes in her brain chemistry, just like when I first saw her…

Hopefully, some day soon, she’ll forget about my brother entirely and only see me.

After unnerving a cashier, because I insist on going through the human-manned registers and smiling a little too wide, I make my way out to my car, pop my bags in the trunk, and find Ceres curled up in the passenger seat.

“Doin’ all right?” I ask as I slip into the air conditioned cabin.

She glances at me, past her shoulder and the waves of her hair. Big hazel eyes damp, she nods.

Mindlessly, I reach for her and swipe my thumb at the corner of her eye. “Talk to me.”

“I wish I weren’t like this,” she whispers, so frail. “I wish I couldbreathe. Just…breathe. It shouldn’t be so much to ask for. I should be able to go to a shop with a pre-meditated script and say the right things without coming home with an entire stupid bike. I should be able to go to the store without feeling like the walls are closing in. I’m so tired of being like this.” She tucks her face away from me, against her knees. “I’m so tired of living, constantly, in fear.”

“What are you afraid of?”

Her hair rustles as her head shakes and broken words leave her. “I don’t even know.”

“You’re not afraid of me, are you?”

Laughter. Short, sarcastic, but there. “No. You’re familiar. Safe.”

My heart skips beats. I’msafe. I’ve never once—in my life—beensafe.

“You seem just as out of touch as I feel. There’s comfort insolidarity.”

Oh. Well. Um.

That’s not exactly a compliment, but I think…I’ll take it.

I stare at her, at the curve of her back and the bundle of her skirt clenched in her fists as she crumples her body into a little ball.

Yeah…I’ll take it.

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