by Shay Savage
“I’ve heard that particular song from you too many times,” Yolanda responded.
“Go.” I spoke again as I pointed at the door.
“Weigh in tomorrow,” she said, and her tone didn’t leave any room for argument. “I’m going to start watching for change, not just going over two-oh-five. You start fluctuating a lot, and I’ll fuck you up. Then I’ll bench you until you get your shit together.”
“Whatever,” I mumbled. “Get out.”
The nonchalance was a total act. I definitely could not let Yolanda push me out of the cage—I needed the money now more than ever. I was actually thinking about seeing if she could find me another fight sometime during the week because the cost of two really was quite a bit more than one. Food was about the same because Tria was better at budgeting that, but the water bill had doubled, and the electricity was a little higher, too. I had also helped Tria cover the last couple of books she needed though she swore she was going to pay me back. It all equated to my being broke. The few hundred dollars I normally kept for emergencies was down to about twenty bucks.
“We’re not done here,” Yolanda said with a shake of her finger—pointed in my direction this time. “Don’t you dare be late tomorrow, either!”
She left without another word, and my ass found its way back to the couch.
“What did she mean about you making yourself sick?” Tria asked as soon as the door closed.
“Nothing,” I said. “She just exaggerates.”
“That didn’t sound like exaggerating,” Tria said. “She’s really pissed off.”
“It’s nothing,” I repeated. I tried to lie back down on the couch, but she wasn’t letting this go.
“Liam, don’t bullshit me.” Tria came over and sat down on the couch, pushing my knees a bit so there was room for her. “What did she mean by all of that?”
As I looked up at her, for the very briefest of moments, I considered telling her the truth.
Then I thought better of it.
“Nothing you haven’t heard before,” I said. “I told you what I used to do—fasting, running until I puked, laxatives—all that shit. It makes you sick if you do it too much. Yolanda always gets pissed off if she thinks I’m doing that. She just worries too much. That’s all.”
Tria looked at me with narrowed eyes, and I did my best to hold my gaze steady. She seemed about to start questioning me again, so I quickly piped up.
“If she had actually walked in when I was shoving my face full of that stuff, she probably would have broken the dish over my head! It still would have been worth it because your cooking is awesome.”
Her lips smashed together, and she held in a laugh as she stood up and headed back to the kitchen to finish up the dishes. Feeling guilty about the out-and-out lie I had just told her, I forced myself to my feet so I could help. She didn’t mention Yolanda or what she said again, and I relaxed as we cleaned up and watched a bunch of shit on TV before we got ready for bed.
Awkward time again.
I straddled the windowsill to smoke. It was cold outside, and I was only in my sweats and a light T-shirt. Even Krazy Katie had brought out a sleeping bag for warmth. She was sitting with it all wrapped up around her, a stack of cigarette butts in front of her, and the soft lyrics of “Kumbaya” coming out of her mouth.
I kept quiet, hoping she wouldn’t decide to sing any louder. Her singing voice was fucking awful. One night last spring, she decided to sing the entire first Wham! album in the middle of the night, and I almost called the cops myself.
Tria came out of the bathroom just as I was finishing up and climbing back in the window. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered a bit.
“Sorry,” I said. “I probably should have just walked outside—I wasn’t thinking.”
“No, no. I don’t want you changing how you do things just because I’m here. I’m in the way enough as it is.”
“You aren’t in the way,” I told her, dismissing the comment.
She huffed out her nose but didn’t respond to my remark. We both climbed into bed in silence without looking at each other at all. We always started out on our backs though neither of us ever fell asleep that way. I fluffed up my pillow and leaned against it. After a few deep breaths, I reached my arm up and across the top of her pillow, and Tria moved over to rest her head on my shoulder.
“There is a job that just opened up at the library on campus,” Tria said as she settled against me.
“Oh yeah?” I replied. She hadn’t mentioned looking for jobs while she studied her ass off for her midterms, but I figured she would start looking before too long. It was going to be a lot easier with both of us bringing in money even if she only worked a few hours.
“I was thinking I would apply for it,” she said. I felt her shoulders rise into a shrug. “It seems to pay all right, and if I can get enough hours, I wouldn’t be in your hair anymore.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” I asked.
“If I can get enough hours, I can get my own apartment again, and I wouldn’t have to keep mooching off of you.”
“You aren’t,” I told her again. “You do all kinds of shit around here to earn your keep.”
I snickered a little.
“I cost you money,” she stated.
“Not much.” I shrugged. “And you do a lot for me.”
“It’s not money, though.”
“I don’t need it,” I lied. “It’s all good.”
“I can’t be in your way forever!” She was insistent.
“You aren’t in the way,” I insisted right back at her.
“I have to be able to support myself,” she said.
“Says who?” I asked. “I bet if you checked some stats on it, you would find most college students are not living on their own.”
“Most college students have Mom and Dad paying for the dorm.”
“Yeah, okay,” I agreed, “but those who aren’t on campus are living with roommates, and even those in the dorms are usually sharing a room.”
My logic appeared to be working.
“I don’t want to be a burden,” she said softly.
“You aren’t,” I told her.
“You said you had always lived on your own though,” she reminded me. “I have to be…cramping your style.”
I laughed.
“Using that phrase is so unstylish, it can’t cramp anything.”
“That made no sense at all!” Tria laughed. “Maybe you need to do a little studying with me. At least read some of my English books.”
“Nah,” I said. “I rarely have to rely on loquaciousness in the cage.”
Tria lifted her head to look me in the eye with raised brows.
“You dropped out of high school?” she asked for clarification.
“Being a dropout doesn’t mean I’m stupid,” I said.
“Obviously.”
She put her head back down on my chest, and I pulled her in a little closer before speaking again.
“Get the job if you want,” I said, “but you don’t have to move out. It will be easier for both of us if you stay, with or without a job. Besides, I…”
My voice trailed off. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say that wasn’t going to equate to wanting to get between her legs, even though that wasn’t the real reason. Well, not all of it anyway.
“You what?” she asked quietly when I didn’t continue.
“I’m used to you being here now,” I admitted. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to and someone to watch movies with me. I don’t want you to leave.”
Well, that remark put it all out there.
“Okay,” she finally whispered. “If that’s what you really want, I’ll stay.”
I hoped my relief wasn’t too obvious.
“I also don’t want to go back to subsisting on cheese sandwiches and breakfast cereal.”
Tria laughed and playfully smacked my chest.
“Ow!” I cried as I grabbed her hand and held it
flat against my skin. I could feel my heart pounding through both of our hands. “No beating the pillow.”
“You make a good pillow,” she said.
I had no idea how to respond to that, and Tria didn’t seem to be inclined to say anything else, so we dropped into silence. Mostly I was just glad she didn’t seem to be planning on leaving quite so soon anymore. Maybe now she would actually unpack something.
I was never one for sharing my life with anyone else, but thinking about Tria leaving hurt my chest.
Chapter 16—Fear the Worst
A damn good left hook sent me to the floor on my back.
A second later, there was a big black guy with a long, dreaded goatee on top of me, slamming punch after punch into my face. I kneed him, kidney punched him, and tried to get a leg wrapped around him so I could flip us over, but most of my efforts were concentrated on protecting my head.
The guy was an animal.
Screaming from the crowd filled my ears, and with a final shove I managed to flip us over. Where my arm had been defensively protecting my face, it was now in the perfect position to move over his throat and cut off his airway. He kept punching feebly until he passed out, and I got up off the floor.
Yolanda’s hand was wrapped around my wrist and holding my arm up high as she announced my victory and pulled me back to the locker room.
“You need stitches.” She made the decision as soon as the door was closed. “It’s more than I can do here. I need to take you to the ER.”
“Fuck that,” I muttered, but then I realized the gauze she had given me only seconds before was already soaked through, and there was a decent trickle of blood running from my temple down the side of my face and down to my shoulder.
“You are bleeding a lot,” she said. “You are going to the hospital.”
It didn’t happen often, but I knew once those words were out of her mouth, I wasn’t going to have much of a choice. She helped me get my clothes on and dragged me out the back door to her car.
“I don’t have the money,” I informed her.
“I got it,” she said. “This one’s on me.”
Friday night, and the hospital was a fucking zoo. We waited for about two hours before anyone was available to look at me, and then they decided I wasn’t bad off, and I could wait longer. I borrowed some change from Yolanda and tried to call Tria a couple of times, but oddly enough, the phone rang busy. Neither of us had cell phones, and the landline was unreliable.
By the time my temple was stitched and Yolanda dropped me off at home, it was almost six in the morning. I was pretty much the walking dead at that point, and my head pounded despite the maximum dose of ibuprofen the nurse had given me.
Yolanda wouldn’t let her give me anything stronger.
The key didn’t seem to want to go into the lock, but I figured the fatigue-blurred vision was mainly to blame. Before I managed to get it in, I heard Tria’s voice on the other side.
“Liam? Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I called through the door. “I tried to call—”
The door opened, and Tria’s eyes scanned me, and she reached out to pull me inside by my hands. She led me over to the couch, where she sat me down and turned the side lamp a bit so she could see me better.
“Oh my God,” she mumbled. “Can this day get any worse?”
“I’m all good,” I assured her. “Just needed some stitches, and the emergency room was packed.”
“You have blood all over you,” she informed me. “Give me your shirt, or it won’t come out.”
I unbuttoned my shirt and pulled my arms out of the sleeves. I winced a bit and looked down at my shoulder where there was a pretty good-sized bruise forming.
“You lost, didn’t you?” Tria assumed from my appearance there could be no other conclusion.
“Nope,” I replied. “I told you—I always win.”
I grinned at her, but she didn’t return the smile.
“Your T-shirt, too,” Tria said. “It’s got blood on it as well. My God, how many stitches did you need?”
“Only seven,” I said. “It really isn’t that bad. Head cuts bleed a lot.”
I pulled off the white T-shirt I had under the other one, and Tria collected them both from me. She took them into the kitchen where I could hear her running water over them. I leaned over the arm of the couch and closed my eyes.
I don’t know how long I remained passed out on the couch, only that I awoke to Tria’s voice and figured out pretty quickly that she must be talking on the phone. It was odd because I didn’t recall her ever getting any phone calls before.
“I know what you are saying… just…just let me talk to her, okay?”
I tried to open my eyes, but the bright light coming in through the window was blinding and made my head pound. I closed them again immediately.
“Five minutes, that’s it…fine…”
There was a longer pause, and then a change in Tria’s tone.
“You don’t have to do this,” she said quickly. “I’ll find a way to come and get you…but…I know that, but…if you stay…yes…yes…”
She sighed heavily.
“Your grades didn’t suck that bad…I know, but I can’t help but try to find a way…are you sure?”
I heard her sit down heavily on one of the kitchen chairs. Even though I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, there was something about her tone I didn’t like at all. Partially covering my eyes with my hands, I sat up and looked through the cracks in my fingers until my eyes got used to the sunlight.
“If you are sure,” Tria was saying. “No…no way. I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll be there….not sure yet, but I’ll figure it out...love you, too…No, I don’t want to talk to him again. I’ll find you when I get there. Bye for now.”
I rubbed at my eye and accidentally rubbed against the bandage over the stitches. I winced and hissed through my teeth.
“How are you feeling?” Tria asked as she hung up the phone in the kitchen and came over to sit on the edge of the couch.
“I’m good,” I replied. I wasn’t sure if I believed it myself, but it seemed like the best response to give. “Had a lot worse, that’s for sure.”
“Well, you look terrible,” Tria said.
“Thanks,” I said with a wry grin. “What time is it?”
“Just past noon,” she told me.
“Still Saturday?”
“Yes.” Tria shook her head at me.
“Hey, you never know!” I would have laughed, but I was afraid it would hurt my head if I tried.
“You sure you are all right?” she asked again, her voice full of concern.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Really.”
She looked me over, and I could see her gaze fluctuating between my eyes. I wasn’t sure what she was looking to find, but apparently she found it. She gave me a quick nod and then tried to kill me with her next sentence.
“Good,” she stated, “because I have to go home.”
I knew the whole “life passing before your eyes” was only supposed to happen when you were faced with death, but that didn’t stop the last few weeks from running through my head in a matter of seconds. Everything from when I saw her surrounded by those animals in the street, to feeling her hand press against my chest when I confronted her douchebag ex, to wrapping her up in my arms the previous night, flashed in my brain as I considered what she was saying.
She was leaving.
Going home.
“What the fuck?” I yelled, which made my head pound more and made Tria startle. “What the fuck are you talking about? Going home? What are you doing, dropping out of school?”
As much as I wanted to think school was the main concern, what I really wanted to know was why she was leaving me. Had I done something to piss her off? I didn’t think so, but I’d pissed people off before without realizing it, so anything was possible. Maybe it was the fighting. Maybe she was realizing with the way I looked, the ot
her guy must look a lot worse.
Maybe she found some of that shit I still have shoved into the back of that dresser drawer.
More than anything, I didn’t want her to go. I was just starting to think that maybe, just maybe, we could be more. Maybe Yolanda was right, and it was time for me to take a chance again.
I hadn’t even tried to kiss her.
“No, no,” Tria said with a shake of her head. “Nothing like that—just for a few days.”
Well, at least my heart was pumping blood again, but that just fueled my anger.
“Did Douchebag call and tell you to come back? And you’re listening to him? You said before he was going to try to come up with a reason for you to go back there so he could keep you from leaving again, and now you are going to let him?”
“It’s not him.” Tria shook her head back and forth. “It’s Nikki.”
“Who the hell is Nikki?” I asked. I was suddenly annoyed that we did very little talking to each other about our lives.
“She’s my best friend,” Tria said softly. “She was there for me when I needed her. I can’t turn my back on her. Without her, I wouldn’t even be here.”
I stared at her for a moment, watching the wetness coating her cheeks as it glistened in the light from the lamp.
“She got you out of there,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
Tria nodded.
“I knew I couldn’t leave without a big confrontation. Keith had already told me that he wasn’t going to put up with my moving away. He even tore up the acceptance letter from Hoffman when he found it. I had been so happy when I got it, and he just tore it up!”
Tria leaned forward and put her face in her hands.
“He wasn’t going to let go,” she said, “even though I told him I wasn’t seeing him anymore. Even though I told him I wanted to go to school, he wouldn’t drop it. I shoved all my stuff in my dad’s old suitcases and ran to Nikki. She took me up near the Canadian border where her cousin lives. They were all on some extended fishing trip up to New Brunswick, so she hid me there until I could arrange to come down here.”
“I had a little bit of money after Dad died,” Tria continued. “I had been working at one of the local stores after high school and saved a bunch of that as well. I used it for the deposit on the apartment and the bus ticket. Nikki kept lying to Keith and Leo until I could move here, saying she didn’t know where I was. Her husband, Brandon, is one of Keith’s buddies. He was harassing her, too, but she still wouldn’t tell anyone.”
