Ten Below Zero

by Whitney Barbetti

  “Do you mind?”

  “No, I don’t.” He grinned at me. There was something about the way he looked, with his scruff and his sunglasses concealing his icy eyes. His hair was sticking up and actually seemed styled. He looked so at ease with himself, and I couldn’t help but let my eyes travel down his chest, taking in the short sleeves of his tee and the muscles they exposed. I let my eyes travel back up to his face again, which was facing the road again. I’d made fun of him for his hair before, but the truth was it suited him. It wasn’t floppy nor was it perfectly styled. It was thick, inky black, and did its own thing.

  Everett was handsome. I hadn’t known before if he was society’s idea of handsome, but that didn’t matter. He was mine. With his wide smile, his scruff, tanned skin, he lit a fire within me that I thought had been dormant.

  “What are you thinking?” His voice interrupted my thoughts.

  “That you are very attractive.” I couldn’t lie. Not just because of the rules, but because Everett made it hard to tell a believable lie.

  Everett turned to look at me. My left side was facing him, and I’d put my hair up in a pony. There was no concealment of my scar. But it was as if Everett didn’t notice it when he looked at me. His eyes never dwelled on it. He only ever acknowledged it when he was kissing and touching me. I crossed my legs then, thoughts of Everett touching me flooding my memory.

  “You’re beautiful, Parker.”

  I shook my head. Compliments were uncomfortable to listen to.

  “I don’t need compliments.”

  “I know,” he said, pulling in a gas station. “But I won’t lie to you. And I’m compelled to say what’s on my mind. So get used to it.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Good.” He parked the car and leaned across the console, coming close to me. “I want you to try.”

  His words brought me back to the rules. And then I noticed our surroundings. “We’re not getting gas?”

  “We’re eating. Lunch. There’s a small diner inside. All I’ve seen you consume today are soda and limes, so I want to put something with a little more sustenance in your belly.”

  I followed him into the diner, one long row of brown booths. It looked like it was straight from the seventies. There were a handful of older patrons at the counter, sipping coffee and eating pie. It reminded me of the first breakfast I’d shared with Everett, in a restaurant similar to this one.

  Our waitress, an older woman with a wild mane of red hair, led us to our table. Everett ordered a coffee and I ordered water with limes. My mouth puckered in anticipation.

  While we perused the menus, I kept sneaking glanced at Everett. He’d slid the sunglasses to the top of his head, effectively moving back the hair on his forehead and exposing his scar. My eyes followed, morbidly fascinated by the idea of having a head cut open. His eyes lifted and he caught me staring.

  “It’s rude to stare,” he said.

  I didn’t apologize. Instead, I shrugged and turned my attention back to the menu, my eyes gliding over the many laminated choices, but I was distracted by Everett setting his sunglasses on the table and running his hand through his hair.

  “Do you know what you want?” The way he said it, I knew he had a double meaning.

  “I do,” I said. His eyes glittered at my answer.

  The waitress returned with our drinks and took our orders. Everett deferred to me.

  “A cheeseburger with fries. I’m not picky.”

  “She wants extra cheese,” Everett interjected. "And I’ll have the same thing.” The waitress took our menus and walked away, leaving Everett leaning on the table on his elbows, staring at me.

  “I still want your story, Parker.”

  “I don’t have a story. I’m a foster kid. At eighteen, I was attacked. And here I am three years later, sitting in this diner with you.”

  “I know there’s more to you than that.”

  “What is it you want to know, exactly?” I sipped my water through the straw and then stirred with the straw as I swallowed.

  “Do you know who your parents are?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t remember them. Just vague little things.”

  “Did you have any good foster parents?”

  “Sure.” My hands played with the napkin my drink was on. It was a nervous habit of mine, to straighten the corners of papers and napkins. “They were all basically good people. But I was a foster kid, you know?”

  “Meaning they didn’t form any emotional attachments to you?”

  “I didn’t form attachments to them. After the third family, I started rebelling a bit. I was twelve. There wasn’t anyone to disappoint. My foster parents were annoyed with my shenanigans, but that’s all.” Once the words left my mouth, I squeezed my lips tightly together. I hadn’t meant to say so much.

  “Do you have anyone in your life?”

  “I have Mira.” Why was I saying so much? I sucked my lip into my teeth and bit.

  “Who’s Mira?”

  I didn’t think I could lie and evading the question would only encourage him. “She’s the one who found me. She saved me.”

  “When Morris Jensen attacked you?”

  I nodded and sipped my water. “I don’t remember the attack. That’s why I won’t testify. There’s no point if I can’t remember. All I remember is the asphalt, warm under my body. I was covered in blood. And then I smelled smoke and there she was, Mira.”

  “And you stayed in touch?”

  “Yes. We don’t talk a lot. She’s busy with her jobs. But she helped me, she helped me a lot.”

  Everett nodded and sipped his coffee. “Anyone else?”

  “I have my roommates.”

  “No you don’t. They don’t care about you, not really.”

  It was a harsh truth. “Okay, they don’t. But it doesn’t bother me. I don’t care about them either.”

  “What do you care about?”

  I looked up at him, feeling cut open. “I care about school,” I started. I racked my brain. “I care about being financially stable.” Boring answers. “I care about staying in shape.” These said very little about me. Which was true, at the core. There wasn’t much to me.

  “You like limes and you like extra cheese on your burgers,” he offered.

  “I do. And space. I really like space.”

  “I’m sitting across from you at the table, Parker. I’m not in your lap. I’m not encroaching on your space.”

  “But you are,” I insisted. “Your presence surrounds me. I breathe your air. My eyes find yours. Even when you’re not physically next to me, I’m thinking about you. It’s really, really annoying.”

  “I’d say I’m sorry, but then I’d be breaking the no lying rule.”

  “I’ve never felt more annoyed by any one person in my life.”

  “Good. I like that I make you feel annoyance. Really, I do.” He drank his coffee and then set it down. I watched every movement. “I’d rather you feel anything than indifference. Indifference is the absence of feeling. And you’ve been indifferent far too long.”

  I stared at him, unable to form words.

  “I know the Grand Canyon wasn’t just big hole in the ground to you. You keep trying to hide from me, but you’re not succeeding.”

  “I’m not hiding.”

  Everett raised an eyebrow. “No?” he asked. He had a look in his eye, a look that made me nervous.

  “No.”

  “Then I’m just going to come sit beside you then.”

  Before I could tell him no, he was sliding onto my side of the booth.

  “Scoot over, won’t you?” he asked, bumping my hip. I had no choice. I moved over, shoving my purse to the wall. He was now sitting directly to my left. I pulled my arm from the table top to under the table, resting my left hand on my thigh. His cool water scent was stronger when he was this close. I turned my head to face forward, but he was too close for me to ignore him.

  I felt his arm go around the back of the
seat while his other hand held his coffee. “Do you like coffee?” he asked.

  I made a face. “No.”

  “Let me guess, you don’t like tea either?”

  “I don’t like warm beverages in general.”

  “Oh,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “We wouldn’t want to thaw you out, would we?”

  I bit on my cheek. “I’m not ten below zero.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re five below zero now.”

  “I am not.”

  “Well you’re definitely heating up at this conversation. Okay, you’re closer to two below zero.”

  “And you’re an ass!”

  “Um.” The waitress was at our table with our plates. I refused to be embarrassed for yelling. Instead, I crossed my arms over my chest as the waitress set out plates down in front of us. Even after she moved away, I was still sitting there, like a child in time out.

  Everett dug into his food, making annoying little moaning sounds with every couple bites. I hoped he choked.

  We were on the road again. I hadn’t spoken a word to Everett since calling him an asshole, for the twentieth time. He was stupidly singing along to music again. I knew he was trying to get under my skin, but he’d succeeded long ago. He lived under my skin. And he made it go wild whenever he was near.

  I stared at the window at the surrounding landscapes. “Where are we going?” I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer.

  “Vulture Mine,” he answered, tapping on the GPS. “We’re about an hour away.”

  “It’s a ghost town?”

  “Yes. I was going to go to another one on the other side of Phoenix, but it was more of a tourist trap. I wanted a real place. Not with shows and entertainers.”

  I frowned. “Is it a ghost town if there are people working on it, even for tourism?”

  “Don’t be so judgy, Parker. It’s still a ghost town, but it’s not what I want.”

  “Why do you enjoy lecturing me so much?”

  “I don’t enjoy it necessarily, Parker.”

  “And why do you use my name so often?”

  “Would you prefer me call you ten below zero?”

  I glared daggers. “Why do you think I’m so cold?”

  Everett turned down the music. “Because you are.” His looked at me briefly. “You resist touch, as if the warmth of another human touching your skin will thaw you out too much. You harden yourself to experiences. You don’t say nice things. You inflict pain with your words. You do these things to push people away. You’re cold. Ten below zero cold.”

  I let that percolate a bit in my brain. “I’m on this trip with you. I had sex with you. Therefore, I’m experiencing new things and allowing another human to touch my skin.”

  “Well don’t romanticize this situation, please, that would be too much.” He was angry. I could hear it in the bite of his words.

  Confused and annoyed, I threw up my hands. “What do you want me to say?”

  “After we had sex, did you willingly come into my arms, or did I have to pull you to me?”

  I rewound my mind back to that moment, when he tugged me close. It’d been nice. But I would have never initiated it. “You tugged me.”

  “Is that how you live your life? By people forcing you out of your comfort zone? Why not willingly put yourself in situations that make you uncomfortable?”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Our voices were getting louder, taking up space in the Jeep.

  “How do you expect to understand anything if you don’t take a step out of your comfort zone, if you don’t embrace the scary?”

  “I don’t need to understand anything.”

  “Then you’re not alive. You don’t want to feel, you don’t want to connect, you don’t want to exist outside of that big head of yours. I should have told you that you were six feet under instead.”

  “We don’t all have to live the way you think we should live.”

  “Of course not. But what is living, really? Are you going to spend the next sixty years of your life alone? You’ll die in your sleep and no one will know, no one will care.”

  I held up a hand. “Now wait a minute, Everett. You have no right to tell me how I should be living. You’re choosing to die.”

  Everett swerved the car so quickly off the road that I had to grab onto the door and the center console. He unbuckled and was out of the car a minute later. I waited for him to round the car to my door like the last time, but instead he stalked away, out in the middle of nowhere, Arizona.

  I watched him for twenty seconds before I unbuckled and followed him. When I was ten feet from him, he spun around. The look in his eyes stopped me in my tracks. I expected anger, rage. Instead I found grief. I opened my mouth to say something but clamped it shut a second later as he walked towards me.

  “I’m not telling you how to live, Parker. I just want you to live. To enjoy however many years you have left to roam the earth. Do you think it’s easy for me? To tell my family I’m done? Do you think they don’t think I’m giving up?”

  We were three feet from each other, dust swirling up around us from the wind and our movements to this spot in the middle of brush and sand.

  “Why aren’t you fighting it, Everett? I still don’t understand.”

  “Why aren’t you fighting, Parker? Fighting whatever it is that keeps you from connecting with someone, anyone. Keeps you from feeling, healing? When you can answer that, I’ll answer your question.”

  “I don’t remember it, Everett.” Frustration filled my voice. “I don’t remember what happened to me. I don’t want to remember it. I’ve been in therapy. Every single doctor thinks my mind is protecting itself from the memory of that night. So why should I fight to remember something like that?”

  “Because it’s holding you back. You’re so immersed in your indifference that you are missing out on everything out there in the world for you.”

  “Why do you even care? Why bring me along on this trip?”

  “Because,” he said, stepping closer to me. “That’s what I do. It’s second nature for me to care for people. It’s my job.”

  “I thought you worked at a school.”

  “I do. I’m a guidance counselor.”

  Whoa. I stood completely still. A million things went through my brain. “You work with depressed middle school kids,” I said, remembering. I turned away, needing space to think. “You’re a counselor.”

  “Well technically I’m not anything now. I was a counselor though, yes.”

  I tried to sort through the mess of emotions I was experiencing. “You asked me along on this trip to cure me or something?”

  “No.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Everett,” I said, eyes wide with anger.

  He shook his head. “I.don’t.lie,” he said through his teeth. “Don’t be an idiot. Do you think I ask every person I’m counseling to come on a road trip with me?”

  “Then why? Why me?”

  He walked towards me again, as if he didn’t think I could process what he told me unless he was in my face. “I don’t know, okay? That’s the truth of it. Sure, I’m stuck on you. But I don’t know why!” He ran his hands through his hair and yanked them out, doing this over and over. “You’re annoyingly observant, you like to argue about every single thing, and you go out of your way to push my buttons. But I’m still drawn to you. I don’t get it. You’re not my type, not at all.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, a little stung by that statement. My mind went back to pretty, perfect Charlotte and her perfect skin and hair.

  Everett groaned. “I know what you’re trying to do. But it’s not what you think. I don’t go for women who challenge me on everything, much less challenge me at all. I’ve had a hard life, so I’m not naturally inclined to work on a hard woman.”

  “I didn’t ask you to pursue me.” My defensive instincts kicked in and I took a step back.

  Everett reached forward and wrapped an arm around my waist, bringing me back
to him. “I know. You don’t play games. Well, not the usual games women play.” He wrapped his other arm around my waist pulling me tighter. I put my hands flat on his chest, ready to push him away. “You’re a bad actress anyway, so you’d suck at most of those games.” I rolled my eyes and pushed slightly. It was futile. The arms around my waist wouldn’t budge. “I like you, Parker. In spite of yourself and all your bad habits, I like you.”

  “Ugh,” I said, pushing against him. “What happened to being nice? One of my rules?”

  “I’m getting there. But you keep interrupting. One of your bad habits.” One of his hands slid up to my neck. I felt his fingers press into my skin there and I stopped breathing. “I like that you challenge me. That’s new. I like that you don’t go easy on me. I like that you question everything. I want you to keep questioning everything.” He brought his cheek to mine, so he was holding me like closely. Not quite a hug; he made sure there was enough distance to make me comfortable. “I like how you smell.” He nuzzled into my neck and my knees went a little weak at the contact of his facial hair on my skin. “I like seeing the fight in your eyes. I like seeing anger color your cheeks. I like hearing your breathing stop when I’m close to you, and I like feeling your heart pick up its speed in your chest when were close like this. I like that a lot, actually, the sound of your heart beating. So alive, a frantic mess of beats.” He kissed the skin behind my ear. “I like the feeling of you in my arms, the way our bodies align.” He moved his lips across my cheek. “I like watching your eyes close and knowing I’m the reason, the reason you’re feeling this.” He pushed his lips to mine and pulled back slightly. I felt his hands cradle my cheeks. One thumb brushed against my scar, but I kept my eyes closed. I was afraid to open them. “So those so-called bad qualities? I actually like them. It’s why I’m stuck on you. I want you to make me explain myself. I want you to get a rise out of me.” He kissed me again, longer this time. I wanted to drown in this moment, with Everett.

  When he pulled back, he was still holding my face in his hands. I slowly opened my eyes. “I booked our hotel tonight while you used the restroom at the last gas station.”