Page 97 of Why Cheese?
Clean it up. If you don’t, they’re going to burn this place down.
The gremlin shouts louder than ever. It keeps pulling on my ear, forcing me to listen to its every twisted thought.
Why don’t you do it? Put them out of their misery. Grab a torch. Gasoline. Set the cheese on fire. End this. Save them from themselves.
“Shut up!” My plea is answered by my echo telling me to shut up too.
I just wanted three months in this impossible cheese paradise. Ninety nights with four men who at least acted like they liked me. Anything to get away from…
It’s my fault. If I’d just listened to my mother and not come here, then they’d be happy. They’d still be friends. Or cheeses blissfully unaware of the world. I caused this. It’s me.
“It’s always me.” The drain gurgles in response as I feed the milk into it. After the last of it drains, I wash off the mop, then clean the floor.
This can’t last. I’m a danger to them. To everyone around me. I can’t do anything right. Look what happens when I try to pretend otherwise. All I do is ruin lives.
It’s been quiet up there for some time. I can probably slip out without anyone noticing. My hands reach for Brie’s painting that I’d left on the sink. I freeze.
It’s a version of me without the gremlin, without my mistakes, without my baggage, without my mother. A me I can never be. “I’m sorry,” I whisper to what could have been and climb up the ladder with empty hands.
The lights are out in the store. This is as good a time as any for me to make my escape. I close the trap door as quietly as possible. The edge catches on my dress, smearing a black line down the skirt, but I can worry about that later. Holding my breath, I ease around the counter.
A shadow rests against the beam, his head tossed back and legs outstretched to block my escape. Bottles catch the meager light from outside casting a blood-red sheen over the floor.
“Aujourd'hui, que reste-t-il? À ce Dauphin si gentil?”Roq sings in a soft tenor. He tips back one of the bottles, rivers of wine dribbling from the sides of his lips. “De tout son beau royaume?”
Clasping the bottle of wine to his chest, he cries out to the night, “Tout s'écroule.” Roq crumples his head in his hands. “Quoi que je fasse.”
I linger in the dark, lost at what to do. If I slip around the other side, he might not see me. Though, in this state, he might not spot me if I climbed over him.
“Roq?” I whisper.
He drops the bottle into his lap and swings his head to me. “Violette?” My harsh American name transforms into a sweet French melody on his lips.
“I’m…sorry.”
“What for?” He cocks his head and blue hair tumbles across his eyes.
“If I hadn’t come back tonight then Cheddy wouldn’t have heard you. Or Brie.” I wince, gritting my teeth for his cold wrath.
Roq’s lips pop, then he tosses his hand. “Bah. It wasn’t your doing.” He peers down the neck of the bottle, then lifts it to his eye like a telescope. Wine sloshes out of the hole and down his chest, but Roq doesn’t react.
After staring at me from the literal bottom of a bottle, Roq tosses it away and reaches for another. “It was bound to happen eventually.Les ennemis ont tout pris, Ne lui laissant par mépris.”
“You don’t look so good,” I say, crouching down. There are two empty bottles of wine beside him while he goes for a third.
“Ha. It doesn’t matter what I do to this body. Come dusk, it will be as it was in that cave outside Tournemire. Never changing, never aging. A perfect vessel for a—” The cork pops out and wine tips down the side. “—broken mind.Santé!”
Just as he lifts the bottle, I place my hand over the top. Roq doesn’t stop and smacks his lips into my skin. His groggy eyes seem to realize he’s drinking me and not the wine and they lift. I wait for him to reel back, but those wide lips start to pucker and transform into a kiss on my hand.
“Désolé,”Roq whispers, his warm lips brushing over my skin as he does. With a great heave, he sits up, plastering his back to the beam.
My legs can’t take this awkward hunched strain, and I tumble to a seat with the wine bottle in my hands. “Are you going to be okay?”
“Of course. What could possibly harm a man such as me? Drink? Bah. I bathe in wine. Brigands come to tear me from my home? They’ll only find a wheel of cheese come dawn.”
I brace myself and ask, “What about the others?”
Roq’s cocksure stance falters. The arm he’s thrown over his face starts to droop. “Others. People like me. Scared, uncertain, embracing this impossible hand fate’s woven for us because we have no choice.” He blinks against the weak light of the door where Cheddy, Brie, and Cam fled. “Ha. I spent centuries alone. I can do it all again.”
