It inspired me to pay Aga a visit in his den. If I made myself more present, and perhaps a little more likable, as I was advised, he might think twice about throwing my dead body in a Hefty bag and letting me sink to the bottom of the lake.
I knocked at his den and thankfully, he called me in.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” Aga said softly as he removed his reading glasses. He was in the midst of enjoying a thick novel at his desk.
“How did you know it was me?” I asked.
“Your knocks are quieter than a mouse.”
I broke our gaze and looked to the rug. “Oh. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“I was catching up on some reading is all.”
“Oh? What are you reading?”
“Finnegan’s Wake.”
“Isn’t that one of the hardest books to read?”
“It does have a reputation for being one of the more difficult books to read in English. It took the author seventeen years to write it, so if I can finish it in half that time, I can consider that a victory.”
“It’s really that hard?”
“I never have enough time to dedicate to it.”
I nodded my head. “I was thinking about making some breakfast and was wondering if you wanted me to make you something.”
He smiled, like he was aware I was buttering him up. “I’ve already eaten, but thank you. I get up at the crack of dawn every morning, so my next target is lunch.”
I twisted my hands together and picked at an ugly hang nail on my left thumb. “Well, okay then.” I really didn’t know why I was in here other than to check to see if I could stare at his face long enough to read if he were having murderous thoughts about me.
I put my hand on the doorknob and twisted when Aga said, “You sure that was all?”
“It’s just so quiet out there, I was wondering where everyone is.”
“No more quiet than usual.”
I internally groaned. It wasn’t that people were scarce out there, it was that I hadn’t seen Max yet. That was what was upsetting me.
“Since I’m here, I might as well ask since I haven’t seen him this morning.” I was trying so hard to be nonchalant about asking where Max was, but it was coming off less authentic than Donald Trump’s comb over. “Have you, by any chance, seen Max?”
“Of course.”
I raised both eyebrows and stretched my neck out like a giraffe and stood in some horrible sassy pose, waiting for an answer. “And?” I inquired.
“He’s on food patrol tonight.”
“Food patrol?”
“Hunting,” he clarified. “I wanted to say it less offensively. I was informed you’re a vegetarian, and I’m not sure what it is your kind finds offensive.”
“Pretty much everything, to be honest,” I joked. “So, how long will Max be on food patrol?”
“He should be home tonight.”
“Tonight?” I asked. I couldn’t believe this. He had taken off without so much as a goodbye or a discussion after the previous night. What the hell?
Aga looked at me with speculative eyes. “Is there a problem? You look distressed.”
“I just didn’t think tonight was Max’s shift.”
“It wasn’t, but he volunteered. Quite randomly, if I say so myself.”
I could feel my blood boiling. This was no random incident, this was planned from the moment he left my bedroom. Max went out of his way to be as far from me as possible.
The news put me in a pretty irritated state. He left me in a huff last night and then didn’t give us a chance to talk it out like adults. And people said I was the immature one.
“That’s just…” I grabbed a stack of sticky notes from Aga’s desk and began flipping the ends of the pages like a book, focusing my attention there, so I wouldn’t think about how irritated I was. “That’s just lovely.”
“Is there something wrong?”
“Wrong? Nope. Everything is so right I could make a pop song about how right everything is.”
“Are you and Maxwell having issues?”
“No, not at all.” I was saying the words, but I had no interest in sounding all that convincing. I understood Max being upset with himself, but to run off like this was just… I was annoyed.
“You know, I think I… I need to go,” I said with my eyes lowered and focused on the floor. It was common for my frustration to turn into angry tears and I did not need a virtual stranger seeing me cry. It was embarrassing enough without an audience.
“You all right, child?” Aga asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine. I just left my hair straightener on,” I told him and then scooted out the door.
I immediately ran into Brinly in the hallway, which left me no chance to masquerade just how red faced and agitated I was. She narrowed in on my face, her pretty brown eyes concerned and childishly curious.
“Whoa, what happened?”
“Nothing, just…” I exhaled loudly. “Sometimes, I just don’t understand men.”
Her pink shaded lips turned into a frown, and then very nonchalantly said, “You wanna get some French fries? French fries always helped me with guy trouble.”
“Can we get a really big helping?”
“I’ll even ask for extra ketchup packets.”
I sniffled. “That’s so sweet.”
***
I spent the rest of the day with Brinly, completely avoiding the reality that was my messed up love life, focused on scarfing down fast food, and checking out the local shops. Even though I was with a Clementine family member, I was restricted from leaving the town, so we couldn’t venture far or do anything too crazy.
When the evening came and the sun began to set, Brinly suggested that we go to her favorite spot in the entire city: a hilltop, five miles away from the drive in movie theater. It was the most discreet spot in the entire city, and it was located at the highest plateau of the land, so you were able to see the rooftops of every building and car on the streets. It was Brinly’s favorite hangout because of how serene it was, and that she could lie in the grass and have a perfect viewpoint of the giant theater screen playing movies. At our distance there was barely any audio, but the picture was clear as the summer sky.
We had driven up to this hill, and when we got out Brinly retrieved two lawn chairs from her trunk and we unfolded them and took a seat. We had ordered yet another serving of French fries and were sharing a basket as we watched the film. I’m not even sure what the movie was, but it was in black and white.
“I feel like we could get arrested for this,” I mumbled with five French fries in my mouth. “Aren’t we technically breaking the law? We didn’t pay to watch.”
“You can find any of these movies at the library for free. We’re not hurting anybody,” she said, and then stole a fry from the basket. “You feeling any better?” she asked me.
I shrugged. “No. But on the plus side, my stomach is so full of grease it’s distracting me from thinking about Max.”
“That’ll do that trick,” she said with a grin.
Suddenly, I heard the sound of bushes rustling behind me, followed by shoes crunching into the soil, quickly closing in on us. Whoever it was sounded quite big and I leapt out of my lawn chair so fast, I nearly biffed it.
Brinly remained seated in her own chair, looking at me wide-eyed like I had lost my damn mind. Then I realized why: she knew who was coming. It was Lincoln.
He raised both his hands up cautiously as he approached, and said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Who, me? Startled?” I asked with a nervous laugh, and then swallowed what felt like a fresh stream of vomit threatening to rise out of my throat. I’ll admit, being jumpy has always been a prominent bullet point on a never ending list of my flaws.
Brinly got out of her chair and tugged on the bottoms of her shirt, no doubt fixing her appearance for our new guest. Their eyes locked and a goofy, almost drunken smile took over their faces, and in that moment, I knew I
was invisible.
It dawned on me this was the first time I had seen them interact since finding out the truth.
Suddenly, this secretive spot being Brinly’s favorite made a whole lot of sense. I knew it had to be where they would meet up behind Paul’s back. Even though I despised Paul, I felt a little dirty being in on this.
I cringed and said, “Oh, man, me being here means I’m aiding you guys in your hidden romantic rendezvous.” I twisted my hands together like I was ringing out a wet rag. “My mom is probably in church saying ten Hail Mary’s in my honor as we speak.”
“No crime in the three of us talking. We did that long before anything else,” Lincoln told me.
“I’m trying so hard not to get involved in what’s going on with you guys, especially when I have no idea whose side I’m supposed to be on. When I don’t have the answer to something, I try to avoid it at all costs. I was always the girl in the back of class hiding inside her desk whenever the teacher called on the students for answers.”
“We’re not here to talk about us,” Brinly spoke up. “We’re here to talk about you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. You’re in distress and we thought we could help.”
“This isn’t meant to come off catty, but why do you guys care?” I asked. “We don’t really know each other all that well.”
Brinly frowned, and in the tiniest voice said, “Because we’re friends.”
“Oh,” I said. I felt like the biggest piece of shit. I tried to fill the awkward silence as best as I could. “Did Max say something to you about what happened?” I asked Lincoln.
“No, but I figured something had to have gone down with how weird he was acting, and then Brinly texted me and said you were having a girl’s night out to cheer you up, so I put two and two together.”
I was about to start my story, but stopped myself. “You sure you guys really want to hear my problems?”
“We wouldn’t ask if we didn’t.”
I sighed, turned my lawn chair so it faced Lincoln and then sunk down into it. “He’s afraid he’s going to hurt me.”
“Did something happen?”
“We were spending time together and things started getting…intimate, and his eyes went all yellow, like he was turning into a werewolf, and I haven’t seen him since. He was pretty upset about it, so I know that’s why he’s avoiding me.”
Lincoln scoffed and said, “I don’t blame him. He could have killed you.”
“That’s what I told her,” Brinly said.
“So, he should just ignore me until the end of time?” I rhetorically asked. “Aren’t we supposed to be adults? Don’t adults talk out their issues instead of running from them?”
Lincoln slid onto the hood of the car and Brinly joined him. “It’s not like you guys had a tiff because he forgot to take out the garbage,” he responded with a shrug. “You gotta see it from our perspective. We’re going through hell, our emotions are all over the place, we’re scared shitless half the time, and something that’s supposed to be natural, like dating, now has the added anxiety of wondering if we’re going to kill them every month.”
“Did you just imply dating feels natural?” Only a stud like him would feel that way.
He ignored my comment and said, “Until I had it under control, I didn’t even consider getting into a relationship with a woman. No part of my brain would even let me think about it. You gotta give Max props for being able to juggle all that.”
“You make me sound like a chore.”
“You are, in a way,” he said, and before I had a chance to be offended, he elaborated. “Most relationships are a chore even without the werewolf curse. If he’s willing to give it a go, you must be pretty important to him.”
“I just don’t want him to feel guilty about it. I don’t blame him.”
“Nothing you say is going to make him stop feeling guilty about it. Haven’t you accidentally done something terrible to someone? Even if they forgive you, you still feel like garbage. No speech makes you feel better, just time, and that’s with the minor stuff. He has the guilt, plus the fear of what he could have done to you.”
I reluctantly nodded. “I get it, but why can’t he just tell me how he’s feeling and not run away all the time?”
Brinly chimed in with, “We can’t all be like you, wearing our hearts on our sleeves, being completely emotionally transparent.”
“What? You’ve know me for, like, a week. How can you say I’m emotionally transparent?”
“Because you’re transparent,” she answered with a mocking laugh. “It’s one of the things I like about you, but you have to remember we’re not all like that.”
“I could normally lay low and let this blow over, but I’m only staying here for a few more days. I can’t have our future, or lack of future, being so uncertain. We’re not afforded that right now.”
“Max will get over it,” Lincoln told me. “Or he’ll leave you. Either way, I doubt he’ll let you leave here without giving you an answer.”
“Yeah,” I said somberly. There wasn’t much else either of them could say to me, and I didn’t expect anything more. Max was going to have to come to me and I was just going to have to wait it out until he blew off some steam.
I talked it out with them for a few more minutes, but eventually, I got tired of the sound of my own whiny voice and asked Brinly if it was all right that we went back home so I could get some rest. She agreed, of course.
Brinly and Lincoln said their goodbyes to one another as I packed the folded lawn chairs back into her car’s trunk. I had my hand on the lid, ready to close it, when I saw them out of the corner of my eye several yards away nestling up to each other. Her chin was dipped low as their chests collided into one another and his hands were on each side of her shoulders. Lincoln stared at her like she was a star filled sky, like it was the most serene, beautiful sight he had ever laid his eyes on and he couldn’t look away, despite their limited time together.
When she lifted her eyes back up to him, he promptly cupped her face with both hands and then gently planted a kiss on her lips. He touched her in a way that was pure and good, but also raw and intimate, like the trailing of his fingertips along her jawline was their way of making love while standing in their clothes.
I had to look away, feeling like I was intruding on an exchange I had no business being present for. I could tell they were trying to keep it short to avoid any awkwardness caused by me being there, but that they couldn’t deny themselves this one precious moment before they had to return to hiding again.
One minute of me watching them holding each other and I knew they were in love.
It was driving me nuts that, as an outsider, I could see how much they meant to each other, but yet were choosing to live a lie. How could they? I would never be able to keep up this facade.
I closed the lid quietly, so I wouldn’t disturb them and then got into the car. They were still kissing and holding one another as I settled into the passenger seat, and as I waited for Brinly to return, a terrible feeling took over me. It was envy. There they were, two forbidden lovers, managing to find a moment to bask in their love, while there was nothing stopping me from being with Max…yet we weren’t together. I was helpless to do a thing about it until he returned.
***
After I got home that night, I headed straight to my bedroom. I had a lot to think about and I wanted to put everything that had transpired behind me, and just sleep away the drama. I was tired of wondering where I stood with Max and if I should be doing something about it. I’m not the kind of girl to chase a man around, so calling it a night made sense to me.
I slipped into my matching top and bottom pajamas with rubber duckies printed on them (they’re cute, sue me), lotioned up my arms and legs, and then brushed my hair using the broken hairbrush that I had kept together with silver duct tape. I was too lazy to go out and buy a new one, so I improvised.
Knock, knock.
“Who
is it?” I called out unknowingly.
A very low, serious voice whispered, “It’s me.” It was Max. His voice was muffled like he had his face smashed right against the oak of the door.
Midstroke, I stopped brushing my hair and I felt my throat go dry. I was wearing stupid pajamas and my hair looked a mess, so needless to say, I wasn’t expecting him to show up at my door that night.
I sucked it up, tucked my hair behind my ears, and said, “Come in.” I didn’t even try to pick up my room or spray on some perfume. I didn’t want him thinking I was actually trying to impress him.
I was seated at the edge of the bed facing away from the entrance, and when the door clicked open from behind me, I didn’t even turn around. I continued brushing my hair, pretending I couldn’t be bothered.
There was a long silence, and I could tell he was waiting for me to turn around, so I divulged him with a glance over my shoulder. He looked like he had been holding his breath until our eyes met, and then he let out one long gust of air.
With trepidation he said, “Hey.”
I forced out a weak smile and finished brushing the right side of my head.
“How are you doing?” he asked.
“I snapped the handle off my hairbrush,” I told him, and presented the shambled object in my hand and dangled it from my fingertips. “Other than that, I’m peachy.”
“I swung by to talk to you about—”
“How we almost slept together and you spent the entire day avoiding me?” I interrupted. “Yeah, I figured as much. Is killing defenseless animals really more appealing than facing me?”
His face squished inward, clearly bothered by my choice of wording. “That’s not why I’ve been avoiding you. If we had actually slept together, I wouldn’t have left the bed, much less the compound. You know the real reason I left.”
I crawled out of bed so I could face him. “Because you’re worried about my safety and blah, blah, blah.”
“Don’t shrug this off,” he barked. His face was now layered with irritancy.
“I’m not shrugging it off, but I know where you’re going with this. You’re worried about me and you don’t want to see me get hurt. You don’t have to run away from me to demonstrate that.”
Lunar City Page 26
