Page 42 of Colt
My stomach feels like she reached through that stitched-up wound in my side and wrapped her hand around it.
I can’t not see that moment earlier today. Where I was staring at her mouth, looking at it and realizing that I wanted to devour it. That I want to devour her.
She looks away, down at her food, driving her fork through her mashed potatoes, and I have a feeling she’s imagining driving that fork through my hand.
Joke’s on her. It wouldn’t hurt as bad as getting gored by a bull. As much as I know she would like for it to. And still, I’m having trouble taking my eyes off of her.
“Does anybody want dessert?”
My stepdad makes a mean pie. My mom made dinner, but I guarantee he’s the architect of whatever masterpiece is coming out last.
Everyone agrees to dessert – obviously – and Jim gets up from the table and heads into the kitchen, coming back with twobeautiful pies. “Huckleberry and blackberry, berries picked by me.”
See, this is what I mean. Idyllic. Everyone gets heaping helpings of pie, and vanilla ice cream to go with. And I forget for a little bit that everything is shit. Honestly. That’s how good Jim’s pies are. That’s how good it is to be here with my family. That’s how normal it is. How wonderful it is.
“You and Dad should go sit,” Allison says. “I’ll do the dishes.”
“We can help,” Lily says.
Though, it’s obvious that they’re wrecked from work.
Allison sees it immediately. “No. The firefighters should go home and rest. Seriously. Until I start my clinical rotations, I’m not nearly as exhausted as anybody here.”
I think she’s downplaying. I’m noticing that she does that quite a bit. I haven’t really noticed that before. I don’t get why she does that.
I wouldn’t think that she admires what I do so much, maybe what Gentry does. He actually helps people. Makes a difference.
“I don’t want to leave you with everything,” Gentry says.
“I’m good,” she says, making a shoeing motion. “Seriously. Get out of here.”
I wait until Lily and Gentry are gone, and then I push myself into a standing position.
Allison whirls around toward me. “No. You’re not going to–”
“Allison,” I say. “I can dry some dishes. I’m not that bad off.”
I can see that she’s really weighing arguing with me. But also the moment that she decides it’s not worth it.
Smart girl.
Although, as we head into the kitchen together, Allison with a stack of plates nearly scraped clean of pie residue, I realize that it might not have been the best idea.
Because here we are by ourselves in the kitchen. I think we must’ve done the dishes together a hundred times, though. And I’ve never given any thought to it.
In fact, I remember very clearly her being about thirteen and angry that she was being made to clean up and Gentry and I harassing her by snapping dishtowels in her direction.
She got mad, and even almost started crying. Yeah, it kind of makes sense why she doesn’t like me. I was annoying, and I was sort of intrigued by the idea of being a brother. I was by myself all my life. And then I got Gentry. Then I got her. So teasing her seemed like the right thing to do, and she was soft and easy to get a rise out of.
I realize now, though, that it probably wasn’t the most gallant move.
“All right. Let’s set up an assembly line.”
“I don’t really need an assembly line. I’m perfectly capable of doing the dishes. You’re the one who insisted that you help.”
“Yeah. I’m insisting.”
She rolls her eyes, and begins filling the sink with water. We have a dishwasher. It’s just one of those things. My mom will put pots and baking dishes and things like that in, but she doesn’t want to run it for dinner dishes. And so we’ve always done hand washing at the end of a meal. It’s possible that she was doing it back then so that we could build relationships. And also quite possible that she still does it now so that she doesn’t have to admit that. That seems like it would be pretty on brand for my mom.
