I didn’t try to kiss him again, and I didn’t suggest lunch anymore. He took me to PT; he took me home. We made polite small talk. How farest thee? Good, how was your day? I guess so we could feel friendly, even though we weren’t really friends.
Things got worse with Loudon and, at what turned out to be my last PT session, LaReigne texted me to say, Do you have somewhere else you can stay tonight? I didn’t.
Sitting in the truck, waiting for Gentry to go around to the driver’s side, I started to cry. My hip still hurt, and probably it always would, and I couldn’t afford the prescription for my pain meds, and I was homeless again.
“My lady,” Gentry said when he got in the truck. “Thou art unwell?”
“I just can’t go home right now. I guess you can take me . . .” To my mother’s house or my cousin Emma’s, because I didn’t have money for a motel. I texted Emma first, but she didn’t answer.
“If thou art willing, couldst come to my mother’s keep,” Gentry said.
That was how I’d ended up meeting his family.
Ranked in order of evilness and stupidity:
Vicky, his youngest sister. Hot Topic’s Number-One Customer. Typical teenager. Bad attitude about everything and under the impression that makeup is the great equalizer. Hint: it’s not.
Miranda, his mother. An overgrown teenager. She hadn’t looked old enough to be Gentry’s mother, and when I tried to shake her hand, she giggled and just looked at me. I wasn’t surprised her other kids had such terrible manners. It was more surprising that Gentry didn’t.
Marla, his middle sister. Mean. Bone mean. Even at our shittiest petty teenage worst, LaReigne and I never talked to each other the way Marla talked to Vicky.
Brand, his younger brother. Two prison tattoos short of a hate crime, and about to be too old to be charged as a juvenile. He wore a Confederate flag T-shirt, which was such bullshit because Kansas was a free state.
“Oh, holy shit,” Brand said when Gentry introduced me. “Dude got himself a real live girl.”
“Plot twist,” Vicky said. “Lady Zhorzha turns out to be a real person. I did not see that coming.”
“I thought she’d look like a princess,” Marla said. “And not a—”
“Are you going to get dinner?” Miranda said.
“If it thee liketh, my lady.”
Gentry went on being polite, and they went on being assholes. It’s not like I’m Miss Manners or anything, but I never ordered anybody around the way Gentry’s family ordered him around. To take out the trash, while the rest of them sat on their asses watching TV. To go get them dinner, from fucking Taco Bell. To get up and refill Miranda’s wineglass. To get Marla a different kind of hot sauce from the fridge.
While we ate, Marla and Vicky were texting on their phones, and then Marla looked up and said, “Can I go meet Lilah at the mall?”
Miranda shrugged and said, “I’m not driving you.”
“Gentry will take me.” They pronounced it Gent-ree. He pronounced it Gen-tree.
“I wanna go,” Vicky said.
“You’re not going.”
“Mom!”
“Take your sister,” Miranda said.
“I fucking hate you, zit face,” Marla said to Vicky. Then she turned to Gentry, who still hadn’t finished eating in between all his other errands, and said, “Take me to the mall.”
“There’s this word you maybe haven’t heard of,” I said. “Please.”
“Fuck you, Lady Thunderthighs.”
“Oh, ow. My feelings.”
“Spew not thy venom on Lady Zhorzha,” Gentry said.
“Spew not thy venom,” Marla said in that shitty teenage voice.
“We should start buying lottery tickets, Marla,” I said. “If we win, I can get lipo on my thighs and you can get a plastic surgeon to fix your ugly nose.”
“Fuck you!” Marla started crying, but I didn’t feel even a little bit bad.
“You think you’re so much better than us,” Miranda said. “Just like Gentry. You’ve been looking down at us since you walked in here.”
I was a guest in her house, and on another day, I would’ve kept my mouth shut and made nice. My whole existence since I left home at sixteen was built on being polite to strangers, but I’d reached the end of the line that day. I stood up and put my backpack on.
“I don’t think I’m better than you. I am better than you,” I said. Then I felt bad. “I’m really sorry, Gentry.”
“Well, fuck you,” Brand said. “You’re nobody special, you bitch.”
“Nay, I may not,” Gentry had said to the person he sometimes talked to on his left. He clenched his hand into a fist. “Truly they aren queds, but they aren my kin.”
“Oh my god, Little Lord Fauntleroy and his invisible friend,” Miranda said.
His own mother said that, and the rest of them laughed.
When I walked out, Gentry followed me. We stood in the street, him scratching the back of his neck with both hands. I didn’t know him that well, but I knew that meant he was upset.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t need to worry about me. I can get the bus home.” Anywhere was better than there. Even a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t have been the first time I stayed in one.
“Nay, my lady.”
He walked over and opened the passenger door on his truck for me. I don’t even remember discussing it, just that Gentry drove us to a motel. I wasn’t sure what it would mean for us to get a motel room together, because that stupid kiss was still hanging over me. Whatever happened, I decided, that was up to him. Once we were in the room, he knelt in front of me where I sat on the edge of the bed.
He took my hand—the first time he’d ever touched me—and he didn’t seem too sure about how to hold it. I expected his hand to be sweaty. Nervous. But it was dry and steady.
“Lady Zhorzha, canst thou forgive me? I am shamed that my family was uncourteous to thee.”
“It’s okay. You don’t get to choose your family.” I squeezed his hand, to let him know I didn’t take it personally, and maybe as an invitation to something else. He squeezed back for a second, and then he let go and stood up.
“I must leave thee,” he said. “For I serve the Duke of Bombardier this night. I shall see thee in the morn.”
He went and I stayed. Somewhere around one A.M., LaReigne called me, not to tell me I could come home, but to tell me Loudon had kicked her out and what should she do?