by wildbow
“Wear a sweatshirt or a jacket, then. But only if you promise to take it off when you get there.”
“Fine.” I didn’t have time to argue, and started getting dressed.
She started putting away the stuff I’d left on the bed, “Brian’s a guy who appreciates being practical. That’s something he likes about you, and he’s said as much. And even though I think it’s fucking fantastic that you’re going a step further to look nice, you can do that in clothes that make sense for doing light labor. Jeans, yes. Skirt? Not so much.”
“Guess I wasn’t being practical just now.” I pulled on the top and looked myself over in the mirror on the closet door. Agreeing to this top had been a spur of the moment thing when I’d been shopping with Lisa. Actually wearing it was something else entirely; the bottom of the top stopped an inch shy of my belly button.
“You’ve got stuff on your mind with school and your dad and romance and shit.” She answered me. Before I could argue there was no romance happening, she gave me a push, “Now go! Enjoy yourself!”
I took that as my cue to hurry to the front of the loft, where I slipped on my running shoes. I grabbed my keys and wallet from my backpack, grabbed my sweatshirt from a hook by the stairs, then headed downstairs and out the door with everything still in my hands. As I got outside, I put my keys and wallet in my pockets and pulled on the sweatshirt. It took a little willpower, but I left the sweatshirt open.
A relationship with Brian was, obviously, a terrible idea. I was only expecting to be with the Undersiders for another two weeks to a month. Any longer than that, and I’d probably assume I wasn’t going to get the dirt on their boss, at which point I’d take what I had to the Protectorate. Assuming there was enough interest on Brian’s part for there to be a relationship in the first place, the idea of dating with no future was just depressing. It would just wind up being salt in the wound for everyone involved.
But I was trying not to think about that. I really didn’t need Lisa reading into my doubts and hesitations and realizing that they were at least partially based on the fact that I was planning on betraying her and the others. If I didn’t dwell on it, it would be that much harder for me to give her any clues.
Yep. Totally the reason I was avoiding thinking about it. Nothing to do with the fact that I was feeling increasingly lousy and ambivalent over the idea of turning friends in to the authorities.
I ran part of the way to the bus stop, stopped when I realized I didn’t want to get sweaty, then had to run again when I got near the ferry and saw the bus at the far end of the street. I waved for the bus to stop as it approached and got on.
The bus route I had to take to get to Brian’s was kind of a case in point for why my dad wanted to get the ferry going again. I had to go west, transfer to a different bus, go south a ways, then hop off and walk east for five minutes to get where I wanted to be, the southeast end of downtown, where the office buildings and stores gave way to apartments and condos.
It was a stark contrast to the area where I lived. It wasn’t perfect, honestly, and you could see things like Empire Eighty-Eight’s gang tags or broken windows here and there. Even so, that sort of thing was as rare as finding a house without crap in the yard or a house with stuff obviously broken or run down in my neighborhood. Even the lowest step leading up to the front door of my house was rotten out, so I couldn’t boast to having one of those nice, not-embarrassing places. If you fixed it, something else would inevitably break down, so you got used to stuff like the broken step, learned to skip up to the second one, or you entered and left through the back door at the kitchen like I did.
Brockton Bay had originally been a big trading post and port, back when America was being colonized, and some of the buildings were pretty old as a result. What I saw when I entered the area Brian was staying was a war between the past and the present. Older buildings had been fixed up and maintained to the point that they were attractive, mostly set up as Victorian style condos. But where other cities might work to integrate this with the other buildings of downtown, it seemed like the city planner or developers had intended for the inclusion of tall stone or glass buildings to be jarring. Everything looked nice, but it didn’t all look nice together.
Brian’s apartment building was one of the modern ones. Maybe eight to ten stories tall—I didn’t count—it was mostly stone, and there was a floor-to-ceiling window behind each of the balconies. Two little evergreen trees in pots framed the doorway. Brian sat beside one of the trees, wearing very similar clothes to the first time I had seen him—a steel blue T-shirt, dark jeans and scuffed boots. He was leaning back against the wall, his eyes shut, just enjoying the sun. He’d combed out his cornrows, and his hair was tied back in a long, loose ponytail that sort of poofed out below the elastic. A bit of hair had slipped out from the elastic and was blowing in the breeze, brushing back and forth against his cheekbone. He seemed so unbothered by the tickling of the hair that I suspected he might be asleep.
I was surprised he was able to relax like that. It seemed to me that kicking back like that in any urban area, even a nicer neighborhood downtown, was begging for trouble. Okay, so maybe there weren’t muggings or homeless people hassling bystanders down here, but Empire Eighty-Eight did base their main operations somewhere in this general area, and Brian was black.
Maybe he could get away with it because he was six feet tall and fit. Even if you gave me my knife, baton and a good enough reason, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t want to mess with his nap.
“Sorry to wake you,” I said, seeing if I could provoke a response.
Even before he opened his eyes, he offered me that wide, genial smile that seemed so out of place on his six foot tall frame. It was a smile that hid nothing, as honest and unguarded as you’d expect from a ten year old finding out he’d just unwrapped the exact gift he’d wanted for his birthday.
“I wasn’t sleeping,” he got to his feet, “Figured I’d wait for you here rather than risk you coming and not knowing how to reach me while I was hauling stuff upstairs.”
“Ah. Thank you.”
“I’ve still got two pieces of furniture in the car. Let me grab them and we’ll head on up.” He headed in the direction of a station wagon that was parked in front of the building.
“You have a car?”
“Rental. Doesn’t make sense for me to own a car, especially since half the driving I’d do would be to the hideout. It’d get stolen, in the first place, and I don’t like leaving a license plate number for people to use to track me down, if things go sour.”
I smiled at the word ‘hideout’. “I get it. Car bad.”
I kicked myself. Why did I keep lapsing into caveman-speak around him?
He took it in stride, though. “Car bad. Expensive.”
“Says the guy who doesn’t sweat paying fifteen dollars for coffee on the Boardwalk.”
“Touché.” He popped the trunk. There were two cardboard boxes inside, both just three or four inches thick. One of them, though, was a square maybe three to four feet across on each side.
“Need a hand?”
“I’ll get the boxes,” he said, bending down to start hauling the largest of the cardboard boxes out of the back. He stopped to hand me his keys. “You close the car door behind me, and get the front door of the building?”
I watched the muscles of his shoulders moving under the fabric of his t-shirt as he lifted the two boxes out of the trunk. His shoulders were broad, I noticed, but not in the same way you saw with people who exercised just to look buff. That kind of bulk usually looked a little grotesque to me, in a way I couldn’t define. Brian’s body was more the product of years of regular exercise with purpose and application. I looked at the lines of his shoulders and back and, further down, his waist and hips, as if I could make sense of it, define that point where his body was different, where it was more appealing than most.
“Um,” I said, reminding myself he’d asked me a question, “Sure. I’ll get the doors.�
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Damn it, Lisa, what did you get me thinking about?
Tangle 6.3
I opened the glass doors for Brian so he could carry the boxes of furniture in. The thing that struck me about his apartment building was how uncluttered everything was. No litter, no people, no noise. There was a bulletin board just past the second set of doors, which was something I normally might have expected to be a little messy, as a rule, but even there, the individual postings were carefully spaced out, and the entire thing was sealed behind a glass pane with a single small lock. It felt kind of sterile. Or maybe that was just me being used to an area with more character.
I didn’t know what to say. Not just in terms of Brian’s apartment building—I had no idea what words should be coming out of my mouth. I didn’t have the know-how to naturally make small talk. I usually got by with constant planning ahead on what I might say. Problem was, I’d been distracted, not so much by Brian’s features, but by the realization that I had been looking at them. Now that I was trying to recover, get my mental footing and plan out some conversation, all I could think was ‘Dammit, Taylor, why can’t you think of something to say?!’.
We entered the elevator, and Brian rested the boxes on the metal railing on the interior. I managed, “What floor?”
“Fourth, thanks.”
I hit the button.
We ascended, and as the door opened, I offered Brian a hand in steadying the boxes as he backed out of the elevator. He led the way down the hall and stopped by a door while I fumbled with the keys he had given me, to find the one to his apartment.
I wasn’t sure what I expected to see in Brian’s place, but he still managed to surprise me.
The first thing I noticed was that the ceilings were high. The apartment was virtually two stories, a fairly open concept with few walls. The kitchen was to our left as we walked in, smallish, separated from the living room by a bar/kitchen counter. To our right was the hall closet and the walls encompassing the bathroom and one of the bedrooms. Directly in front of us was the spacious living room, backed by a floor to ceiling window and a glass door leading out onto a stone balcony. A set of stairs led up to a bedroom set above and on top of the bathroom and first bedroom—I figured that was where Brian slept, going by the not-disheveled-but-not-quite-made bed that was in view from where I stood.
What threw me, I think, was how mellow the place was. There were two bookshelves, light gray in color, in the living room. On the shelves, I saw, there was a mix of novels, plants and older books with cracked and frayed leather spines. The fronds of some of the plants draped down over the shelves below. The couch and accompanying chair were a pale tan corduroy, oversized with cushions thick and deep enough they looked like you could get lost in them. I could totally imagine curling up in that armchair with my legs tucked in beside me, a book in my hands.
Somehow I had been expecting aesthetics along the lines of chrome and black leather. Not that I associated Brian’s personality or tastes with that sort of design, but it was what I might’ve thought a young bachelor might go for. Whether it was the softness of the colors, the little jar with stones, water and bamboo on the kitchen counter or the sepia tone pictures of trees in the front hall, the place gave me a sense of ease.
I felt a pang of envy, and it wasn’t just because Brian’s apartment was nice. I was getting a better sense of who he was, and how we were very different people, in a respect.
Brian grunted as he set the boxes down by the front closet. He pulled off his boots and I took that as my cue to remove my shoes.
“So, I’ve already got one bit started,” he told me, leading me into the living room, and I saw that there was a pile of light gray boards and an empty cardboard box leaning against the wall there. “Turns out it really needs a second set of hands. You want anything before we get started? You prefer tea to coffee, right? Or do you want a soda? Bite to eat?”
“I’m fine,” I smiled, taking off my sweatshirt and putting it down on the kitchen counter. I’d promised Tattletale I would. Feeling very self conscious with my belly showing, I tried to distract him with the task at hand. “Let’s get started?”
The first job, the one he’d left incomplete, was a set of shelves, and we started with that. It was, as he’d said, a job for two people. The shelves had three columns with six shelves each, and every part interlocked with the help of wooden pegs. It was impossible to press two pieces near the top together without ones near the bottom pulling apart, and vice versa, so we got into a rhythm where one of us would put pieces together while the other prevented everything else from coming apart.
All in all, it took us twenty minutes or so. After we verified that everything was fitting together and lined up, Brian hauled the shelf off the floor and set it against the wall.
“That’s one,” he smiled. “You sure you don’t want a drink?”
“What do you have?”
“Here, I’ve got stuff in the fridge. Come and take your pick.”
I grabbed a cherry coke. Brian grabbed a coke, but mostly ignored it while he opened the next box, the square one that was nearly four feet across, and started laying out the individual pieces on the kitchen floor. A kitchen table with stools.
As it turned out, the kitchen table was a tougher job than the shelving unit. The legs had to be held at precisely the right angle, or the bolts jammed in the holes, or forced the table leg out of position. Each time that happened, we wound up having to take the bolt out and start over. I wound up holding the first table leg steady while he screwed in the bolts at the base.
Without glancing my way, he placed his hand over the top of mine to adjust the angle a fraction. The contact made me feel like someone had plucked a guitar string that ran from the top of my head down through the middle of my body. A deep thrum deep inside me that couldn’t be heard, only felt. I was very glad for the long sleeves of my top as goosebumps prickled my arms.
I found myself defaulting to my most basic defense, staying quiet, staying still, so I couldn’t say or do anything stupid. Problem was, this made me very, very aware of the silence and lack of conversation.
Brian probably hadn’t given the quiet the briefest thought, but I found myself wondering what to say, wondering how to make small talk, or how to get a conversation going. It was agonizing.
He moved in closer to get a better look as he put a nut on the bolt, and his arm pressed against my shoulder. Again, it prompted an almost elemental reaction from my body. Was this intentional? Was he signaling interest through casual physical contact? Or was I assigning meaning to something coincidental?
“Nearly done,” he murmured, adjusting his position to start screwing in the other bolt for the table leg. His arm wasn’t pressing against my shoulder, now, but the way he was crouching, his face was only a few inches from my own. Okay, that was worse.
“Taylor, you think you can grab that smaller wrench without moving the leg?”
I didn’t trust myself to respond without making a funny noise, so I just reached for the little wrench and handed it to him.
“That’s faster, thanks,” he replied, after a second, “Want to grab me the nut?”
I did, dropping it into his cupped hand rather than placing it there, worried about what I might do or how I’d react if my hand touched his. I wasn’t going to survive the next three table legs like this, let alone the stools or the third piece of furniture we hadn’t even started.
“Taylor?” he asked.
He let the question hang, so I swallowed and replied, “What?”
“Relax. You’re allowed to breathe.”
I laughed lightly at the realization I was holding my breath, which resulted in a nervous, chuckling exhalation that only added to the awkwardness I was feeling.
He was smiling, “You okay?”
What was I supposed to say? Admit I didn’t know how to deal with being around a good looking guy?
I stared down at the ground, at the table leg I was holding. “I get nervous w
hen I’m close to people. I think, you know, maybe I have bad breath, or maybe I have B.O., and I wouldn’t be able to tell, because it’s mine, so I hold my breath like that to be safe. I dunno.”
Bravo, Taylor. Bravo. I imagined the slowest, most sarcastic of slow claps. Talking about bad breath and B.O. was totally the way to go. One of those brilliant moments that would have me cringing every time I remembered it in the next few years or decades, I was sure.
Then Brian leaned close, closing the scant inches of distance that separated us, until our noses were practically touching.
“Nope. You smell nice,” he told me.
If I’d been a cartoon character, I was pretty sure that was the point where I’d have steam shooting out of my ears, or I’d be melting into a puddle. Instead, I went with my first instinct, once more, and went very still. I became aware of a heat on my face that must have been a furious blushing.
It would be hard to say whether it was a mercy or not, but Brian was distracted by the sound of a key in a lock, and the opening of the front door.
My first thought was that the girl who walked in was Brian’s girlfriend. Then I saw her glance our way, smirk, and noted the similarity between her eyes and Brian’s. His sister.
My second thought, or my second response, really, was hard to put into words. It’s like, you could look at a Mercedes, and say that it was a beautiful work of art, even if you weren’t someone who paid much attention to cars. Along similar lines, when you saw a Mercedes with a cheap flame decal pasted around the wheels, and a tacky homemade spoiler stuck on the back, it was painful and disappointing on a fundamental level. That was what I felt, looking at Aisha.
She was beautiful, as feminine as Brian was masculine, with high cheekbones, a long neck and even though she was two or three years younger than me, she already had breasts larger than mine. I could be convinced to chop off a finger for legs, a waist and hips like hers.
