Page 10 of Light Up The Night
"My buddy Nyx grew up on a farm not far outside town, and they had horses." I don't know why I'm telling her this. "They had this horse, Spook. Nyx's older sister was the type who was always bringin' home birds with broken wings, stray cats with injured legs, malnourished dogs. Well, she found Spook being neglected, bullied the owners into selling him, and brought him home. Only, Spook was called Spook because he could be spooked by literally anything. And for some reason, that weird-ass fuckin' horse took a liking to me."
She smiles. "So you have an affinity for weird, easily spooked creatures."
"Nah, just that one horse."
"And me, it would seem." She yawns, then, a huge, jaw-cracker of a yawn, stretching her arms overhead and arching her back.
My eyes, the dirty fucks, fix like laser beams on her chest as her stretch presses her tits against the neckline of her dress. Yeah, I'm getting the impression that she's hiding a pretty damn killer body under that loose, modest, flowy dress. I drag my eyes away before she ends the yawn, not wanting to be caught ogling her.
Her moss-and-pine eyes find mine. "I am extraordinarily tired. That walk was woefully ill-advised. I feel stupid for subjecting myself to it so unnecessarily. I should not have allowed myself to behave so rashly."
"Well, I've got the bed all made up for you. So, you know, you can crash now."
She smiles at me tiredly. "That would be wonderful. I have not looked forward to sleeping this much in a very long time."
I stand up and hold out my hand. "C'mon, I'll show you."
She just stares at my hand for a moment, and then tentatively fits her tiny, delicate hand into mine. Allows me to help her to her feet—I don't miss the wince she tries to hide, or the way she limps and hobbles a few steps before willing herself to walk normally. God, she's tough. Her feet weredestroyed. If you've never walked that far, you don't understand what it's like, or the toll it can take on your body.
I lead her by the hand to my room at the end of the hall. She stops just inside and takes it in, studying her surroundings. I try to see it from the perspective of someone who didn't put the floors down and paint the walls: I picked a soothing pale blue for the walls, and instead of harsh can lights in the ceiling, I picked wall-mounted light fixtures in a warm bronze with Edison bulbs. Same floors as throughout, obviously, but I put a big, thick-pile rug under the bed to soften the room a bit. My bed is a sleigh bed, a handmade antique that I restored myself.
"This is very much not what I expected from the bedroom of a single adult male," she says. "It is…cozy. Inviting. And…clean."
"Used to be a slob, growing up," I hear myself say. "Dad and Fee were always on my ass about picking up after myself. My car was a science experiment, and I'm pretty sure there were entire ecologies growing in my bedroom."
"You clearly learned the value of cleanliness at some point," she says.
"Sure did. I spent a few years in a place where there wasn't much of a choice about keeping your shit neat." My gut burns—the last fucking thing I want is to tell this girl—the poster-childfor "good girl"—that I'm an ex-con who did a nickel in a state pen.
She doesn't reply to my statement—no follow-up questions, no leading statements, trying to dig deeper. She just turns those virulently green eyes on me, her expression unreadable.
I can't take it. "Not gonna ask what that means?"
"No." She resumes her examination of my room, wandering over to the bed, where she trails her fingers over the quilt.
"Just no?"
"If you wished to elucidate, you would have done so. Curiosity does not excuse nosiness." She traces her fingertip around the perimeter of a quilt square made out of my grandfather's flannel shirt. "This quilt is quite old, is it not?"
"Yeah," I answer. "My grandma made it…ah, shit, when? Fifty years ago? Sixty? If there was ever a house fire, god forbid, and I could only save one thing, it'd be that quilt. Loved the shit outta my grandparents.”
"It is lovely. One can sense the love that went into its creation."
I nod. "Right? After my folks split up, Grandma and Grandpa were what kept me anything like sane. Second-worst day of my life was the day Grandma passed. Grandpa went less than a week after her." My throat is hot and tight and thick. "Not bein' there for the funeral is somethin' I doubt I'll ever get over."
Fuck, fuck, fuck—what the actual shit is happening to my stupid mouth? I keep saying shit I never, ever bring up, even with Fee or the boys who have known me my whole-ass life and know what happened.
"Youdidnot attend, orcouldnot attend?" Cadence asks.
"Couldn't."
No follow-up, but she does turn to look at me, searching me. Her expressions are hard—if not impossible—to read, butthis look seems speculative, thoughtful. Like she's putting pieces together.
"So, uh. You don't have a bag or anything?” I ask. "No, like a purse, or a change of clothes?"
I watch her face go through a series of expressions Icanread: confusion, a dawning realization, and then horror. "Oh no. Oh no, no, no. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear." She covers her face with both hands. "Darn this impossible brain of mine!"
I shift closer to her. "Ah, shit, you forget it somewhere?"
