Playing with Fire_Shen

by Shen, L. J.

  My mind drifted to other things. My parents’ relentless calling, Texas being impossible and difficult for no reason at all, and Appleton being a killjoy and a bad sport.

  Max explained that Kade, Shaun, and a few other guys in his entourage had cornered him after the fight, making a big stink about his loss. He said he’d gotten them off his back by handing over some of his cut to settle the misunderstanding. It was Bullshit with a capital B. Everyone in that room knew Max had blown the whistle, including Max himself.

  But if he wanted to pay them lip money, it was his problem, not mine.

  Max handed me my cut. It was what I’d normally make in two months of fighting. He praised me for my form and good taste in women (“Melanie, huh? She’s bangin’.”) and sent me on my way. I was glad to get the night over with. It was late, I was sore from all the illegal jabs Kade had managed to throw in, and I had a morning shift tomorrow at the farmers’ market.

  I had no idea what mood I was going to find Texas in, but if she thought I was going to put up with her crap just because other people felt sorry for her, she was gravely mistaken.

  I shuffled back to the Ducati, which was parked on the other side of the mall, hidden away from the throng who got in through the main entrance. I’d learned early on that Christina attracted star-fuckers and high school kids who wanted to hop on her and take pictures.

  Christina was my one and only indulgence. I’d chucked her out as an expense, seeing as I played the role of someone who had their shit together. I couldn’t afford having people dig into who my family was, get dirt about my life, find out I was as broke as a stick horse. So I pretended to be someone else.

  Someone to fear.

  Someone who had a sick ride and a sinister taste for fighting.

  Ironically, pretending to be someone I wasn’t only made me even more tired of living than I already was.

  As I ambled to my bike, I heard rustling coming from the bushes behind me. I stopped, twisting my head. The rustling stopped. I turned back to Christina.

  The swooshing resumed.

  It sounded like people were whisper-shouting behind the scrubs.

  I turned around fully now, cocking an eyebrow.

  “If you’ve got something to say, come and fucking say it. See if you have any teeth left by the end of your speech.”

  Silence.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  Deciding it wasn’t my job to coax whoever waited for me in the bushes for another brawl, I got on my bike and drove off.

  Once I got home, I crawled into my room and collapsed on my bed without taking a shower. I lifted my pillow, plucked a picture from under it and kissed it, rubbing my thumb over the person imprinted on it.

  “Night, A. Sleep tight.” I pressed a kiss to the photo.

  I tucked the picture back under my pillow, hating that I was still breathing, living, fighting, fucking.

  She didn’t answer.

  She never did.

  Grace

  “Dear Lord, just because I’m clumsy, that don’t mean I have the Alzheimer’s.” Grams dangled her feet in the air, perched on the hospital bed. She moped like a punished child, glowering at the doctor like she was the one who needed to get her head checked.

  The doctor who saw her, a middle-aged woman with cropped chestnut hair and a nose stud, scribbled something on her clipboard, frowning at the chart in front of her.

  “No one is trying to suggest that, Mrs. Shaw. But since you’re already here, and your granddaughter indicated you’ve missed your last two appointments, I think a quick CT scan can’t hurt. We’ll be able to get the results faster than if you book them later on.”

  “You’re hollering down the well, Doc.” Grams shook her head, her sweet Southern drawl taking a sharp edge. She glared between the two of us, narrowing her eyes with open suspicion. “I ain’t doin’ it. I burned my hand on the stove. It’s a common mistake anyone could make. Y’all can treat me like an invalid, but that plan ain’t gonna work. There’s nothing wrong with my head. Nothing!” She knocked on her temple with her fist, as if this was solid proof she was in the clear.

  The doctor and I exchanged looks. There was so much I wanted to say to Dr. Diffie. Things that would prove Grams exhibited advanced signs of Alzheimer’s. But Grandma Savvy didn’t allow for a CT, and I couldn’t force her.

  It didn’t matter that Grams had burned her hand touching the hot stove—not for a fraction of a second, but for at least half a minute—until I burst into the kitchen, smelling the all-too familiar scent of burnt skin, realized what she was doing, and pulled her out of there, kicking and screaming.

  It also didn’t matter that her palm was now charred, red, and swollen, her skin peeling and blistering under the bandages.

  And it definitely didn’t matter that Grams blanked out on the night with West at the diner, and when I brought it up the next morning, she thought I was making up an imaginary boyfriend.

  “You are a fine, smart girl, Gracie-Mae,” she’d told me, giving my cheek a pinch and a shake. “You ought to find a boy eventually. You don’t have to make one up.”

  Marla told me she’d been hearing Grams crying in her room when I wasn’t home. That things were getting unbearably bad. I felt so out of my depth, I wished I could tell Dr. Diffie the entire story and beg her to tell me what to do.

  Instead, I checked the time on my phone. It was close to nine. I was going to be late for my shift on farmers’ market day. Crap. I’d texted Marla, asking her to take over in the ER, but also called Karlie and requested West’s number.

  Grace: It’s Grace. I’ll probably be twenty minutes late and won’t make it to prep. I’ll make it up to you. Sorry.

  He didn’t answer.

  But of course he didn’t.

  He was a crass, rude son of a gun.

  Although, you did ask him to treat you as horribly as everyone else, after he helped you out and even called you his friend repeatedly.

  Never mind that. I knew I’d done the right thing. West and I weren’t friends. He pitied me, and getting close to him was a terrible idea. This was for the best.

  The only thing was, I wished he hadn’t known how crappy my family life was, on top of having seen that ugly scar.

  Marla rushed into the hospital room ten minutes later. Tufts of her bottle-blonde hair were still in rollers, hanging on her head like window washers on skyscrapers. She looked exhausted. I couldn’t blame her. Grams had been deteriorating throughout Marla’s two-year employment at a rapid speed. Marla was approaching her mid-sixties herself and hadn’t signed up to assist women with special needs.

  I jumped up from the bed opposite Grams and threw myself at the caregiver.

  “Thank God you’re here.”

  “Came as soon as I could, honey pie. What’d the old bat do now?”

  “I can hear you!” Grandma Savvy shook her fist at Marla.

  “I found her pressin’ her hand to the blazing hot stove this morning. I had to pry her out of the kitchen kickin’ and screamin’. She won’t agree to a CT now.” I dropped my voice to a whisper, staring at the floor, “What do I do, Marl?”

  “Why, I think we both know the answer to that question,” Marla said softly, squeezing my arm. She and Karlie had been trying to hammer it into my brain that Grams needed to go to a home. I’d thought if I made an effort, I’d be able to maintain her quality of life without sending her away.

  She deserved to spend the remainder of her life in the house she’d built with Grandpa Freddie, where she’d raised Courtney and me. In the town she grew up in.

  “I’ll take over from here. You go work.” Marla slid a Styrofoam coffee cup into my hand.

  I nodded, taking a sip and saluting the cup in her direction. “Thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  “Prolly the same thing you’re doing now, but much less efficiently. Now go.”

  Twenty-five minutes later, I parked the pickup by my house and sprinted down the road towa
rd the food truck.

  By the time I got to work, a film of sweat made my clothes cling to my skin. West was operating both our stations when I stumbled inside. There was a fifteen-person line by the window and two customers shuffling on the sidelines, complaining about an order West had gotten wrong.

  Delirious from heat and panic, I peeled my hoodie from my body and threw it to the front seat of the truck, relishing the air on my damp skin in my white, short-sleeved V-neck. I shoved West out of the way from the window with my butt, taking over.

  “I owe you one,” I dropped my voice to a whisper.

  “Two.”

  “What?”

  “Twice I’ve saved your ass, and it hasn’t even been a month. Your favors are piling up real quick, Texas, and I’m going to cash in on them. Soon.” He flipped fish on the grill, rolling a green apple candy stick in his mouth. It always made him smell delicious. Like Granny Smith and winter.

  “Any chance you can stop bein’ a prick today?” I growled, hiking the plastic gloves up my fingers.

  “Not even the slightest,” he said nonchalantly, but I thought I detected something else underneath his relaxed stance. An underlying exhaustion. The same boy I saw in the parking lot, staring at nothing, waiting for the day to end.

  “Good talk.”

  “Communication is key, baby.”

  “I’m not your baby.”

  “That’s a relief. You’d make me a no-show dad, despite my good principles.”

  Principles? Ha.

  Luckily, we didn’t have time to bicker for the next four hours. We worked nonstop before we sold out of everything. West St. Claire may have been a bad boy, but he was dang good for business.

  When the endless line of customers was finally served, I took a deep breath, turning around and grabbing the edge of the counter behind me.

  As soon as I looked at him—really looked at him—the air left my lungs.

  “Holy crap. What happened to your face?”

  His entire face was slashed up, like someone had put scissors to it and tried to cut him into ribbons. The scratches under his eyes implied that same someone had also attempted to gouge them out. He had nasty red, purple, and yellow bruises all over his neck, like he’d been choked, and his lower lip was double its usual size.

  My guess was he bled buckets last night. He belonged in the ER no less than Grams did.

  “Fell down the stairs,” he said grimly. Sarcastically. Why did I think I was going to get a straight answer out of this guy?

  “What’s your excuse?” His hooded eyes drifted to my injured arm. I tilted my head sideways, not sure what he meant, before realizing I was standing there with a short-sleeved shirt and that he could see my entire purple arm.

  I let out a frantic yelp, bolting to the passenger seat to grab my hoodie. I knocked a few pans and spatulas on my way and tripped over an empty case of soda. I fumbled with the hoodie, trying to get it on me as soon as humanly possible, but the more I tried to figure out if it was upside down or not, the more flustered I got.

  Finally, West plucked the hoodie from between my hands, turned it inside out, and pulled it over my head, his movement flippant, almost lazy.

  “There.” He yanked my hoodie down, giving it a final tug, like he was dressing up a kid. “Nothing like a nice parka in the middle of a fucking Texan summer.”

  “It’s not a parka.” I wrapped my hands around my waist, shaking all over.

  I couldn’t breathe.

  He saw my scars.

  He saw my scars.

  He saw my ugly, stupid scars.

  Jarring, red, and bumpy, they were hard to miss, and I wondered if any of our customers had lost their appetite as I’d served them.

  I was surprised I didn’t throw up in West’s lap as soon as he brought it to my attention. Maybe because he seemed so unfazed about it, and already knew so much about me, it wasn’t totally shocking.

  “Texas.” His tone was low. Unruffled.

  “I … I … I have to go,” I mumbled, turning around, getting ready to bolt out of the truck. He snatched me by the arm, pulling me back in effortlessly. I jerked and cried, desperate to leave, to never face him again, but his clutch on my arm tightened, almost to a bruising point.

  He backed me into the trailer, until I had no choice but to accept that I wasn’t getting out of there before we talked it out.

  Again, I found myself trying to kick and punch him.

  Again, I failed.

  He was now crowding me so close, his breath fanned my face as he spoke. I started screaming from the top of my lungs. Like he’d raped me. Like he was hurting me back.

  “Calm the fuck down.” He bracketed me with his arms, my back against the fridge. He didn’t sound any less composed. “Or you’ll leave me no choice but to slap the hysteria out of you.”

  I shut up immediately. I didn’t think he would lay a hand on me—I already gathered he wasn’t that type of guy—but I didn’t put it past him to punish me in some other way.

  I pretended to breathe in and out. The sooner we got this out of the way, the sooner I could leave.

  “You done freaking out?” He raised an eyebrow.

  “Sure. Totally Zen,” I bit out, gulping greedy breaths. “May I have some of my personal space back now?”

  West took a step back, allowing a sliver of space between us. He leaned against the counter, folding his arms. “So.”

  “So?” I huffed.

  “You’ve got yourself a nice, angry scar.”

  He said it. He actually went out and uttered it aloud. Nobody had pointed out the existence of my scars before. Not to me, anyway. People usually ignored it. Pretending they hadn’t noticed. Which was somehow even more uncomfortable for me.

  “What’s the deal with covering it up? We all have scars. Yours is just visible.”

  “It’s gross.” I swung my gaze to the ceiling, avoiding his stare. I refused to cry for the second time in a week, and I was definitely not going to let him see it.

  “Says who?” he pressed.

  “Says everybody. Especially when people around me used to know me as someone else.”

  As someone pretty.

  “Sounds like a pity party to me. Should I bring anything? Snacks? Beer? Inflatable sex dolls?”

  “Who said you were invited?” I was still focusing on the trailer’s ceiling.

  He snorted out a laugh, slapping a rag over his knee in my periphery.

  I noticed West laughed a lot when we were around each other, but never at school.

  I also noticed he was apparently insane, because he didn’t seem bothered at all by his own dire state.

  “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. It’s just scar tissue.”

  “It ain’t attractive.”

  “It ain’t unattractive enough to prevent me from wanting to tap your ass.”

  My mouth dropped, and I blinked rapidly, trying to figure out how, exactly, I was going to answer him.

  He’d been throwing around the idea that he found me appealing every now and then.

  I still thought he either said that sarcastically or because he wanted poor Toastie to feel better about herself. At least I’d stopped thinking it was De La Salle who sent him to breathe unfounded hope in me. West didn’t seem like the type to answer to anyone, much less take direction and orders from others.

  “Was that your idea of a compliment?” I hissed.

  “No,” he drawled, dead serious. “It’s my idea of the goddamn truth. What is wrong with you?”

  Something euphoric and warm clawed at my chest. It was the first time I’d toyed with the idea that he was telling the truth. We stared at each other wordlessly. I waited for him to explain why he looked like he’d been attacked by a pack of wolves. When he didn’t, I arched an eyebrow.

  “Speaking of not looking too hot …”

  He clutched his heart, mockingly mourning my low opinion of his looks today. “You wound me.”

  “Apparently, I’m n
ot the only one. Did you fight yesterday?”

  West flipped two empty crates, one on my side of the trailer and one on his, and sank down. I followed suit. In a lot of ways, the food truck felt like our bubble. A snug confession booth.

  The rules were different in the truck. Like we shed our primary skin, of our stigma and reputation and social status. Here we were simply … us.

  “I fight every Friday.” He popped his knuckles. His biceps flexed under his short Henley.

  I looked away, clearing my throat. “No offense, but you can’t tell me people come to see you on Fridays during football season.”

  “People go straight from the football field to the Plaza, get trashed, then wake up for college football. You Texans realize there are other sports other than football, yeah?”

  “We try not to encourage other sports, as they tend to butt into the sports channels and water down the football. Do you always fight? Even when school’s out?”

  “Even if I have pneumonia and a broken rib.”

  That didn’t sound like a figure of speech. It sounded like something that had actually happened in the past. He must have really needed the money. Or maybe he didn’t care about dropping dead. I had a dreadful feeling it was a combination of the two.

  “You normally don’t look too worse for wear.” I nibbled on my lower lip, my heart rate slowing down as the minutes ticked away.

  So he saw my scars and knew about Grams. Big freaking deal.

  “I normally fight with sane people. This time, my opponent was a bitch-ass coward who did everything short of pulling out a gun. Kade Appleton, man.” He shook his head. “A dick from hell.”

  “You fought Kade Appleton?” My breath hitched.

  Everybody knew Kade Appleton around Sheridan. I’d never met him, but I’d heard countless stories. He was a bully all throughout school, dropped out at sixteen, packed his stuff and moved to Vegas to fight. Word was he’d joined a gang while he was there. “What the hell is wrong with you? He’s dubbed Appleton the Bad Apple in this neck of the woods. Do you want to die?”

  “Not actively, but surely it won’t be the worst thing in the world. All the cool kids are doing it. Kurt Cobain, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Seuss …”