by Seth King
“Taylor, go help the nice lady get into her car while I deal with this. Now.”
I already know better to question him when he’s like this, so I scurry off to the van while Stellan marches toward the pickup like a soldier going into battle. The woman graciously accepts my offer, and it turns out that all she needed was for me to lift up one of her slightly limp legs and get it out of the way while she climbed into the car using the other. I put the crutches into her back seat and close the door so she won’t hear what’s about to happen, and she thanks me and drives away.
“Hey, cock faces,” Stellan bellows as he swaggers up to the boys, making me turn and watch. “You think it’s funny to pick on the little people, huh? You think that makes you look big and tough? Well guess what- I’m bigger than the two of you, so why don’t I pick on you guys? Can I be tough, just like you two?”
He lunges forward, making them both duck at the same time, but he swings back at the last minute.
“Look at that, couldn’t even handle a fake-out!” he laughs. “You sure did seem big and bad when your target was a middle-aged woman, though!”
One of the boys scoots to the end of the truck bed.
“Let’s go, Luke,” he says to his friend. “This guy’s scaring me.”
“No, shut up,” the other one tells him. He looks over at Stellan and then lifts up his shirt to reveal a black hunting knife tucked into his belt loop…and the blade looks to be at least three or four inches long.
“Stellan,” I say as my face grows numb with fear and my stomach crashes down into my abdomen, “It’s over. The woman’s fine. Let’s go.”
“I’m not done with these little shit heads yet,” he tells me without turning around. “You wanna go?” he asks them. “Let’s go. I can handle it. Maybe it’ll teach you not to pick on disabled people, you pathetic little fucks.”
I see the tendons popping in his neck from behind. The bad version of him is about to take control any second, and when it does, I know I will be powerless to stop him.
“Stellan, seriously, let’s go!” I say as the kid pulls the knife out of his pants. “This is crazy!”
“Try me,” Stellan tells the boy, his teeth gritted and his voice vicious. “Try me right now. Do it.”
The boy stands up and clicks a button on the knife, making the blade slide out of the holster and stick straight up. As my heart thunders in my chest I creep up behind Stellan and grab his hand.
“Stellan, remember what I told you the night we met,” I say softly into his ear as I rub his palm. “Picture yourself calming down. Visualize it. It can happen. Make it.”
He stays tense for a moment, and I begin to wonder if I’ve failed, but finally his shoulders droop a bit and his breathing slows. He raises a finger at the boys.
“Say something like that again and I’ll fucking kill you, you little punks,” he says before turning to me and grabbing my hand, his eyes blazing and needy. His sudden switch in emotions shocks me and, let’s be honest, turns me the hell on.
“Taylor, I need you to walk me away from here so I won’t kill anyone. Now.”
I do as I am told, and together we leave the boys muttering in the back of the truck. We hit the shade of the trees again and the cooler air washes over me like the relief I feel inside.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs as we walk.
“Stellan,” I tell him as what he just did starts to sink in, “don’t apologize. Nobody got hurt. And what you did for that lady…you have no idea how much that meant to me. I have a…friend who is disabled, and I know he would’ve appreciated that so much.”
“It was nothing,” he shrugs. “My mother would’ve killed me if she saw that.”
“What? Why?”
Once again it’s like his eyes are a million miles away from me. “I don’t know. We have certain…disagreements about things from my past, and about my culpability regarding said things. She thinks I’m wasting my life doing good deeds to make up for those things, but what she doesn’t get is that I like doing good things. It just makes me happy. Anyway, did the lady get off okay?”
I stare at him like a thousand-piece puzzle I just opened, but I know I’ll never be able to figure out. And don’t even mention “getting off” right now, I think to myself as I peer down at his biceps, which are glistening with sweat.
“Yeah, she’s fine, she already drove away,” I tell him. “I’m proud of you, Stellan. Not only for defending her, but for stopping yourself before anyone got hurt.”
“I think it’s because of you,” he says, sounding sort of amazed. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” He pauses, his expression becoming more thoughtful. “To tell you the truth, you’re…helping me, Taylor. I know we haven’t known each other for long, but I already feel it. Like last night, when I wanted to beat up those dudes for checking you out, and you talked me down. And that first night when I wanted to go kill that guy who creeped on you, and you grabbed my hand and made me calm. Whenever I’m around you I feel the tone of my thoughts changing, getting…I don’t know, softer. Not so angry.” He smirks. “Except during certain situations, obviously, but I’m beginning to think you like that side of me sometimes.”
I blush as we turn a corner and enter a more crowded part of the trail closer to the soccer fields – and then feel all of the air rush out of my lungs in an instant. Through the crowd of joggers and dog walkers ahead, I spot a familiar face heading straight towards us, making panic rise in my throat. I’d thought a knife-wielding kid was scary? Try dealing with my mom’s gossipy church friends.
“Stellan,” I whisper, “let’s turn around. I want to go back to the- damn, she just saw me.”
“Who is it?”
“My mom’s friend from her bible study group,” I say as Mrs. DeMessner spots me and waves.
“Why is that a bad thing?”
I roll my eyes and wave back. “It’s bad because, one, she’s going to ask about us, and I have no idea how to explain what we are, and two, she’s going to tell my mom that she saw me with you, and I’m going to have to face the interrogation squad a second time.”
He stares at me blankly. “And?”
Ugh. How can I explain this in guy language? I suddenly realize that the anger pounding in my head also has to do with another thing: our status, and all his strange mixed messages about that status. If he’s going to act like he wants me to be his girlfriend, and basically introduce me to his parents as his girlfriend, then why doesn’t he just make me his girlfriend?
“Stellan,” I begin, shaking off the anger, “this is North Carolina, and my mother and her friends are all Methodists. Besides sweet tea and Hellman’s mayonnaise, gossip is the main staple of their diets. I have the reputation of a very boring, perpetually single girl to uphold, and being seen around town with you will not help that reputation at all. I mean, what am I supposed to say to them? ‘Hey, good to see you, here’s the boy I’m not dating, but whom I’m about to spend a weekend with in a scheme to get money from his parents’? See what I mean? I know it’s not really that way, but to the outsider it sounds a bit…hooker-ish.”
He shakes his head and blinks a few times, like this never even occurred to him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know I was putting you in a position like that. I’m a guy, I don’t really think about these things.”
“And I’m a girl- I’m the one who has to deal with them.”
I finally turn and greet Mrs. DeMessner, unable to avoid her anymore.
“Mrs. DeMessner! What a surprise! How are you?”
She stops and smiles at me brightly, but when she looks over at Stellan, confusion takes over. She sways a little, obviously dazed, and then turns back to me.
“Oh, hey there, darlin’! I just talked to your mama on the phone the other day about a peach cobbler recipe; I just love her, I really do.” She narrows her eyes. “But she didn’t mention anything about you havin’ such a good lookin’ friend, though.”
My face becomes redder tha
n Mrs. DeMessner’s Nike jogging shorts.
“Oh, um, sorry I didn’t introduce you. Mrs. DeMessner, this is Stellan. Stellan Goode.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” he says as he shakes her hand with a sexy smirk, making her practically melt into a pile of cobbler on the dirt ground. “Surely you’re far too young to be a friend of Mrs. Haney’s? Are you sure you’re not a classmate of Taylor’s instead, and she’s just pulling my leg?”
“Oh, I’m sure,” she laughs with a blush, fanning herself with her hand. “And my name is Deborah, but you can call me Deb any time you want.”
I feel like running into the woods, finding a hole, and burying myself in it forever.
“So are y’all just friends, or what?” she asks me after she finally tears her eyes away from Stellan.
“We’re something like friends,” Stellan interrupts, a mysterious glint in his eye. “For now.”
He needs to stop doing that, I think as I look at the ground. He’s making me like him too much- more than he could ever like me.
“Well how’d y’all meet?” she asks. “Are you in a church group together or something?”
“Um, yeah, that’s how we met,” I lie, deciding it’s a better explanation than the truth.
“Where do you attend services, then?” she asks Stellan. For some reason he gets all nervous and looks off into the trees.
“Uh…nowhere around here, ma’am.”
I throw him a suspicious look. Wouldn’t such a strong Christian be proud to share what church he attends? And suddenly I realize that no matter how hard I try, I can’t even picture Stellan sitting in a church at all.
“Well, okay then.” With a cocked eyebrow Deborah turns and winks at me. “Taylor, why haven’t you locked this handsome boy down yet?”
I grab Stellan by the arm and start to pull him away, unable to take any more of this.
“Oh my gosh, Stellan, didn’t you say you had to go pick up your dog from the vet? Yep, you did, let’s go.”
I turn back to Deborah. “It was wonderful seeing you, and I’ll be sure to give my mother your best.”
“It was great to meet you, Deborah,” Stellan calls over his shoulder as I start lugging him down the path. Deborah winks at him seductively, making me pull him away even faster.
“Why did you have to do that?” I ask him when we finally get out of earshot.
“Do what?”
“Dazzle her. Make her melt.”
“Oh, sorry, I didn’t even realize I’d done anything.”
I shake my head at him. How can he be so clueless about his effect on people? Even Deborah’s friend, who stood back during the conversation to talk to another lady, couldn’t take her eyes off him the whole time.
“Well,” I tell him, “she’s probably already thinking of calling my mom to rave about you and ask for the inside dirt.” Sure enough, I turn and see her already yapping away into her cell phone while stealing glances back at us. “Yep, too late. I wonder what she’ll mention first, your looks or your charm. At this rate my mom’s prayer group will think I’m pregnant and engaged by the time they have their next meeting. And also…what did you mean when you said we were ‘something like friends?’”
He stares ahead for a moment. “I don’t know, Taylor. I don’t really understand this thing any more than you do.”
Well start figuring it out, because I won’t wait around forever, I want to say, but then I bite my tongue, because I know I’m lying- I probably would wait around for him forever, and that makes me feel completely pathetic and needy. And speaking of waiting around: I clear my throat and decide to bring up something that has been kicking around in my brain for a while, and came to mind again after seeing his weirdness regarding Deborah’s church question.
“You know, I have another question for you, Stellan.”
He shivers a little. “You do?”
I look over and smirk at him. “Just wondering: when’s the last time you went to church?”
A shudder runs up his back. “What?”
“I was just thinking, you know…when is the last time you attended a service?”
He opens his mouth and then closes it again.
“Um, well, the thing is, I…”
I point a finger at him. “You’re not a Christian, Stellan!”
He stares at me, knocked speechless.
“And so what if I’m not?” he finally asks.
“I knew it!” I cry. My bullshit detector had gone off the second I’d laid eyes on that cross necklace – I just hadn’t wanted to listen to myself. Stellan got totally nervous whenever I brought up God, he wanted to fight people at the drop of a hat, and he had better sexual skills than a porn star. All of those parts do not add up to a Christian, to say the least.
“Why would you even lie about that?” I ask him. “And why do you wear the cross necklace if you’re not even religious?”
He reaches down and fingers the cross. “Because it was my grandfather’s, and he gave it to me the week before he died, as a memento. He was one of the only people in my life who never abandoned me, and I think about him every time I see it. But I never told you I was a Christian, Taylor- you just assumed it, along with everyone else in this town.”
“Because you led them to assume it, Stellan, with the necklace and the celibacy and all that.”
“No, the words ‘I am a Christian’ have never left my mouth in my life,” he sais, his words tumbling out. “Or ‘I am a virgin,’ for that matter. All I said was that I’m celibate, which is true, and has been for almost two years. The rest were rumors that everyone spread. When small minds don’t understand something, they fill in the details with their imaginations until it makes sense to them, and that’s not my fault.”
Almost two years, I repeat silently as a bell goes off in my head. That’s about the same time his Internet presence had sprung up out of nowhere.
“So you’re not a virgin?” I ask him, and he stares down at the ground.
“No, I’m not a virgin, Taylor. I’ve slept with one girl before. Just one, and it ended years ago, and I haven’t done anything with anyone else until you. I’m a writer, and my emotions run deep. When I like someone, I like them hard and deep and long, and that hasn’t changed.”
My mind goes blank, and I have no idea what to think. So he’s not a virgin, and my whole vision of him has been wrong this whole time. I’d thought religion could be the only thing holding him back from having sex, but now nothing made sense anymore. Why would a smokin’ hot twenty-two-year-old guy just completely stop having sex for two years?
“Do you have an STD or something?” I ask softly.
“Come on, Taylor, I’ve had sex with one girl!”
“Well, are you, like…gay, or something?”
He frowns at me. “Taylor, I just told you I’ve been in love with, and had sex with, a girl. How would that make sense?”
“Well help it make sense for me, then!” I say louder than I’d meant to. “Okay, sorry. Just please tell me why you stopped having sex, Stellan. I want to understand. I want to know you better.”
He looks up at the trees, his eyes sad again. “Look, Taylor. The past doesn’t matter. I’m trying to leave it behind and focus on now. All that matters is that I’m celibate now, and I’m trying to stay that way.”
“Then why are you even here, then?” I ask, getting angry again. “Like I said, why not just walk away?”
Our eyes meet as if they were sucked together by gravity. He points at his chest, his expression wistful. “It doesn’t make sense to me either. You’ve crawled in here, Taylor, and I can’t get you out.”
I don’t know if I want to grab his shoulders and shake him or grab his face and kiss him.
Then why won’t you get in me?
“Then I’m leaving,” I say over my shoulder as I start for the parking lot. The fact that Stellan wasn’t a Christian was a bit of a relief, to be honest, as hopefully I wouldn’t be having any more Catholic-guilt-induced nightm
ares, but still- I was sick to death of all the secretiveness and evasiveness. No matter how sexy he was, I couldn’t take it any more. It would be different if he’d been sleeping with me to help relieve all the stress he’d been causing me, but he wasn’t, and I was just about fed up. If you pushed someone away too many times, I decided, I guess they’d walk away eventually. “When you’re ready to open up to me, let me know,” I call.
“What?” he asks. “What are you saying? You’re not coming to Nashville anymore?”
I glance over my shoulder and then stop when I see that he is wearing the most devastated, vulnerable, damaged expression I have ever seen on anyone. Every inch of me aches for him.
“I don’t know. I didn’t say that. I just need some time to think, Stellan.”
I turn to leave again, unable to look at the pain I am causing him, but the next thing I hear him say is in a deep, dark, angry voice. Bad Stellan’s voice.
“No. Stop right there, Taylor Haney.”
I turn on my heel again, expecting to bitch him out for daring to talk to me like that, but instead I feel my heart literally stop beating in my chest. His tousled hair, his tanned muscles, and the searing, explosively-sexual look in his eyes all combine to make my body stop working. It takes me several seconds just to remember what I was going to say.
“But I’m…I’m pissed at you,” I croak. Bad Stellan steps forward, his gaze intensifying, his tendons popping, his muscles flexing under his skin. All my anger melts away as I realize that I’ve done it- I’ve flipped the switch, unlocked his need, brought out his sexual side, and perhaps that would lead to other things rising to the surface, too. It scares the hell out of me when he’s like this, sure, but it also lights a fire in me unlike anything I’ve ever felt before. In fact, the only thing scarier than Stellan when he’s angry is how turned on I get by Stellan when he’s angry. And those are two reactions that I absolutely cannot reconcile.
