Page 55 of Even Robots Die
It’s not lost on me that I’m currently eating in a castle and that I look anything but a lady. The old royalty would be appalled at my manners.
“Milton, is there another way out of this room?” I ask when I see that Brice still hasn’t moved from where he’s so casually leaning against the doorframe.
“The only way out is where you came from, Miss F.,” Milton answers me as I try to eat more and faster.
It’s probably an awful sight, but I don't care.
“What scares you so much?” Brice’s question pulls me out of my conversation with Milton. It’s not like it was going anywhere, anyway. I’m stuck in this room with the only man who has ever questioned the veracity of my words and who keeps asking the wrong questions.
Or, well, the questions I’ve managed to avoid so far.
So the real answer to his question is actually quite easy. Him.
I’m doing all I can not to look at him, especially not to meet his eye because I don't want to know what he has in store today.
“Nothing,” I answer instead and then stuff a whole meatball in my mouth so I don't say anything I will regret.
“Didn’t your parents tell you that lying was bad when you were a kid?” Brice asks, and once again I can't shake the feeling that he’s toying with me.
“You mean before or after my mother left us?” I snap at him. “Or maybe when I was raising my sisters because my dad was too busy gambling the night away? Or when I was the one who needed to explain to my kid sisters why we were eating bland pasta with nothing else for the fifth time that week? Or maybe when I had to sneak out and work odd jobs underage because brokers would take everything we had without that extra money? Or, well, when I had to lie about my age because no one would hire a fourteen-year-old? Or maybe you mean every time my sisters ask if I’m okay? I’m not freaking okay. I’m stuck here, not knowing what is going to happen to them. I’m stuck here while I know dad will show all the love he’s capable of but it still might not be enough for them to have food on their table every day. I’m not okay. My dad basically took my kindness for granted and exchanged me for money. So no, no one ever told me not to lie. I learned how to say half-truths so they could still be believable, but my life is now basically made of half-truths and maybe it’s more comfortable this way because I don't have to see how bad things are. So yes, I lie. I lie like I breathe, like it’s second nature. But maybe if you were in my shoes, you would do the same. So stop fucking calling me out or stop asking me anything, because you don’t want my truth. No one’s ever wanted it, anyway.”
34
Brice
She’s breathless after her long monologue. She’s also the darkest red I’ve ever seen on her, and I’m waiting for the satisfaction to kick in, but it never does.
Instead, I feel like the asshole she keeps calling me.
I kept pushing and pushing and I think I hit the point where she couldn’t contain it. I hit her breaking point.
I want to say I wasn’tthatannoying, but I was, wasn’t I?
My selfish need to feel something came with a price. Except I’m not the one paying it.
She is.
Without a single look at me, she goes back to eating her pasta.
I haven’t touched mine. I haven’t even moved from the doorframe.
I don’t think I’ll eat, though.
Because I made this.
I made that woman who looked so proud retract into herself after yelling her truth at me.
But that’s not the worst.
I think the worst in all of this is that she threw all of this in my face and even if it pissed her off to no end; she went back to eating as if nothing happened, as if she didn’t just shock me to my core.
Because no one ever wanted to hear her truth, anyway.
My heart breaks a little for her and after feeling absolutely nothing for weeks, it tears through all my defenses like wind through leaves during autumn.
I feel annihilated by what she just said. But more than that, I have no idea how she keeps holding on after what she just told me.
She’s so calm and quiet. Eating like this is normal, like it was merely a grain of sand in her eyes and it’s all over already.
