She smiled and tilted her head to the side. “What are you fishing for here?”
“You’re a very smart girl. I’m just trying to figure out why you didn’t take the college route.”
She shrugged. “That’s really the least interesting thing about me. I’m just done with school. Couldn’t pay me to go back. At the moment I want to learn from living.”
I found myself absently picking out a book, sitting next to her, sprawling out with my arm thrown over the back of the couch, behind her shoulders.
We both held books, but we didn’t read.
The rest of the day disappeared in a little puff of smoke, without a regret, as we started talking, about the little things, and the big, about the personal, and the political. She had a mind and a motor, this one, and I found that it was just as attractive as the rest of her.
Talking to her had the most bizarre, familiar feel to it, as though we’d done it a thousand times. It was all new, every second with her, but it felt so right that it instantly found a place in my life, as though it was not something new at all, but rather a lost thing I’d found, like rereading an old book that I’d completely forgotten was my absolute favorite.
Her eyes would widen and light up engagingly when she told a story. I found myself utterly charmed by them. By her. My fond gaze would dart from her eyes to her mouth and to her cute little nose when it scrunched up with her expressions.
Her mouth may have drawn my eyes the most. Her lips were generous and lush, but as she spoke, they moved around her words, flexible, thinning and thickening, ebbing and flowing. It was fascinating how it shaped around the things she said, adding as much expression to her words as her gesturing hands.
Her stubborn chin and jaw were another fascination, firming and flexing to illustrate a point.
She’d do well on screen, I found myself thinking. As a newscaster or even an actress. It was just so enjoyable to watch her. I didn’t think I’d be the only one to think so.
And it didn’t escape my notice that even when she spoke in detail about herself, about who she was, she gave me absolutely no details as to her actual life, past or present. She’d speak of her nature, of her likes, dislikes, preferences, and weaknesses, but nothing about where she was from, nothing about her parents, her family, her schooling, her occupation. I tried to fish for more information about what she did for a living, but she only fed me that glib cigarette girl line.
She didn’t strike me as someone from her generation. She was mature, to say the least, and well spoken, even well read. She used words like nonsensical and dichotomy, as she told a simple anecdote. That struck me as odd. To my mind, she seemed to know too much to be so young.
More amazing than her ability to draw me in and engage me with her own talk was her ability to make me spill my guts to her.
I found myself telling her every awful thing that had ever happened to me. Just the worst stuff that I hadn’t shared in years, because I normally hated to talk about it. Drudging it up never made me feel better, and I didn’t figure anyone wanted to hear about it, anyway.
I told her about the guy that had bullied me to the point of terrorizing in high school. I’d been years younger than everyone else in my class, and it had made me the easiest mark.
“He was on a scholarship. He’d never have been in a school like that otherwise. It was a very expensive private school back east, and I found out later that his home life was pretty terrible,” I told her. Part of me would always feel guilty for being born too smart and too privileged, and so I had to make excuses for my tormenter before I even began.
“An academic scholarship?” she asked, the hand that wasn’t holding my book in her lap tracing soft patterns on my forearm.
I loved her relentless affectionate gestures, but I sat stone still, not touching her back. I wanted to, but it felt too forced, so I just sat and talked.
“Yes. He was very smart. Smart, devious, and violent are a bad combination.”
She bit her lip, her affectionate hand moving to clasp my cold one. “What did he do to you?”
“Just little things, at first. He called it hazing, because I was the youngest in the school, by a lot. He’d pull down my pants in front of the class or dunk my head in the toilet. Things like that. I didn’t say anything. I guess because I thought it was like a normal initiation, and I already felt like I didn’t belong. I didn’t want to be a baby about it. In fact, that was the absolute last thing I wanted to do, so I put up with it all without a word for quite some time.”
“How long?” she asked, looking completely absorbed in the story, her eyes eating up every part of my face, much like mine must have done to hers when she was speaking.
“My full first year. Like I said, it was mostly harmless, at first. He kneed me in the balls a few times, which was awful, but that was the worst of it, that year.”
She left my book resting between her legs and moved her other hand, rubbing mine with both of hers.
My gaze was glued to that book as I continued. “When we came back from summer break for the fall semester the next year, I could tell right away that things were going to be much worse. I found out later that his mother had died, and his dad had been using him as a punching bag pretty regularly. I guess you could say that I became the target for his externalized pain.”
She grimaced, shifting closer. My eyes were still glued to my book between her legs, shifting against her boxer-covered crotch. I was familiar enough with what those boxers covered that I could picture how every part of her was making contact with that lucky paperback. She didn’t even seem to notice it was there, still wholly focused on my face.
“The pranks became outright beatings. I started wearing a cup to school regularly, because that was the worst of it, when he’d knee or punch me in the groin. I was tall for my age, and though I was slender, I wasn’t scrawny, but like I said, I was years behind. It was just impossible for me to defend myself, but no one else was going to do it.”
I took a deep breath, shocked that the story still troubled me, even after all these years. “My parents noticed a few odd bruises, the occasional shiner, but I played it off, saying I’d gotten them playing tennis or in gym class. I never once ratted him out, no matter what he did. I asked him once why he hated me. His response baffled me, but it didn’t tell me anything.”