Chapter 12
LUCKY
The rest of that first night was low-key, which is exactly what I needed after a hurricane of a weekend.
After getting his arm all wrapped up nice and tight, James and I spent the rest of the afternoon watching TV while my clothes tumbled around in the laundry room. When evening took out the sun, his house lit itself up like a torch in the wilderness, practically glowing. I seriously didn’t notice during the day how many lights he had in his house, from the chandeliers to the wall sconces, floor lamps, hidden backsplash lights in the kitchen, and a light that glowed behind the flatscreen in the living room.
I was so used to just streetlamps and the dim glow of casinos. All of the light in James’s house made me feel safe.
Yeah, I scored the rest of my foot rub when James assured me that his arm felt fine. While massaging my feet on the floor in front of the living room couch, he flippantly shared stories of his best and worst clients at the bank while we waited for dinner to be delivered from a local place he liked. I listened, intrigued, as he kept working his thumbs vigorously into my soles and ranted on and on. I opened up about some crazy ass experiences I’d had with perverts who wanted a piece of me to assholes who only saw me as garbage to step over.
I’d never seen James’s face get so red with anger when I talked about the pervs. You’d think he was already planning ways to put his fist through their skulls.
I kinda liked that side of James.
After my foot massage and dinner—and another hour or so in front of that huge TV with a million channels—James admitted he needed to get to bed. “Bank hours suck,” he griped. “But feel free to stay up all night if you want. Chill. Relax. There’s a computer in the game room if you want to, like … I don’t know.”
I shrugged. “Sure.”
“There’s some games on there. Or you can … I don’t know. Do whatever you like.” He leaned against the doorframe and smiled. We were standing in the hall between our rooms. “Do you need anything else? Need me to get you anything?”
He had already done so much for me. I was starting to feel like his charity case. “Nah, I’m fine. You just do your thing. Go to work tomorrow, don’t mess up your routine or whatever. I’ll fend for myself here. You’ve shown me where everything is, anyway.”
“I could take a couple days off, maybe. We could—”
“Nah, seriously,” I insisted. “Don’t. I don’t need anything.”
“Lucas …”
“I’ve gotten by on the streets for more than a year. You’ve given me a roof and a bed. Hell, I’ve got my own damned shower now. I think you’ve done your part. Now, just …” I took a breath. “Just let me do my part, alright? How about I’ll look after your house while you’re at work. Clean it. Straighten stuff up.”
“There’s a woman who does that already. Every Wednesday.”
“So I’ll cut your grass, then. It’s a jungle out there. Then your mother can get off your back about it.”
He smirked. “Lucas, you don’t have to—”
“Yeah, I do.” I folded my arms. “You got a cleaning lady on Wednesdays, fine, but no one for the lawn. Just tell me where you keep the lawnmower and my ass will take care of the rest.”
James bit his lip, frustrated. Then, after a moment of hesitant deliberation, he finally gave in. “Alright. There’s a …” He sighed. “There’s a toolshed behind the garage. The riding lawnmower might even still be back there. Weed-eater. Edger. Spade. Should be anything you need, really. I haven’t even been in it for … I don’t know how long.”
I nodded. “I’ll figure it out.”
“You really could just rest here if—”
“James,” I warned.
“Just don’t fault me for wanting to take care of you, alright?” There was a flicker of emotion in his eyes. “Please just let me. It makes me feel good, to be able to … provide for someone. I’ve been here all on my own for so damned long, y’know?”
I didn’t respond back, my arms still folded tightly across my chest as I watched his face.
James let out a short sigh, then nodded at me. “Well, anyway, goodnight,” he murmured, then disappeared into his room. I then heard his bathroom door close and water begin to run.
I stood there for a while, unmoving, as his words sat on me. Let me take care of you, he’d begged. I’ve been here all on my own …
Part of me knew the feeling. Living in a house with someone else was going to take some adjusting, I guessed.
On both of our parts.
I decided to do just the same as he did, slipping into my room, shutting the door, and running a shower. I noticed a set of PJ pants and a plain white tee folded up neatly on the counter, which James must have left there for me. Something about that small gesture made me smile despite myself. It might be nice, being genuinely taken care of for a change. After peeling off all my clothes, I stepped inside and let the hot water run over my face. In no time at all, the room filled with steam, and I was lost to my thoughts.
By the time I got out, James was already in bed. The house was quiet. Too quiet. Even the hotel room had the noise of footsteps when people passed by the door, or the soft murmur of the TV, or distant street chatter and car engines.
Out in the middle of the country at James’s house, there was nothing. Not even crickets.
Just silence.
I slipped on a clean pair of underwear—black boxer briefs—then lay on top of my bed. The PJ pants and tee he gave me, I set in the drawer, which only contained my few clothes. I couldn’t bring myself to unpack everything from my backpack. At least not yet. I kept it on the bed with me for some reason. It wasn’t even about trust anymore or whether some stalker in the night was going to rob me. I was just used to having the big clunky thing by my side.
Only a person who’d lived out of a backpack could understand separation anxiety with an inanimate object.
Everything that was important to me was in that backpack.
I lay on my side, my back to the window, and hugged the cold, black backpack to my chest. It wasn’t even ten o’clock yet, but I wanted to put myself to sleep.
The trouble was, whenever I closed my eyes, my heart began to race. Then just when I thought I’d gotten myself calm enough, I’d jerk awake and sit up in bed, terrified for no reason at all.
What the fuck was my problem?
The silence and the peacefulness was really fucking with me, as if I couldn’t trust my environment without distant police sirens and the moaning of heroin addicts behind a nearby dumpster.
Calmness was scary as fuck.
I clicked on the desk lamp, then curled up on the bed facing the doorway, watching it. Even though I had shut the door, I was waiting for it to open with an armed intruder standing there. The door didn’t have a lock, which made me instantly suspicious of any tiny noise in the dark. Regardless of whether or not my brain trusted my environment, my body stubbornly refused to. It was ready at any moment to defend itself against some invisible shopping-cart-pusher in the night.
I’d been in a fight-or-flight response mode for a whole year. I guessed all of my survival instincts kicked on after my first near-death experience on the streets and never quite shut off.
I closed my eyes slowly, willing myself to fall asleep.
A minute later, I opened them again. No one stood there with a gun or a knife. I was still alone. So I closed them again.
Then peeked an eye open.
Still no one.
Closed.
After what felt like an hour of struggling, I finally couldn’t help it a second longer. I got out of the bed and opened my door. Standing in the hall, James’s bedroom door was wide open. His room was completely dark except for a wash of pale light coming in through the huge back windows. Even with the moonlight, I couldn’t quite make out the shape of him in his bed, which looked like a lump of wrinkled sheets and shadows.
A very comfy-looking lump of wrinkled sheets and shadows.
I padded across the dark house to the kitchen, opened one of the cabinets, and pulled down a random glass. After quietly filling it with water at the faucet, I leaned back against the counter, facing the rest of the house, nothing at my back but a window.
Then I brought the glass to my lips and drank.
And drank.
And drank some more.
Here I was, able to help myself to a goddamned glass of water in the middle of the night from a kitchen twice the size of any hotel room I’d ever been in.
Holy fucking shit how my life had changed in just a matter of a couple days.
I stared blankly at the silent, dark, motionless house.
The only sound that met my ears was a gentle wind that picked up leaves outside and unsettled the bushes. I stood there by the sink and slowly sipped the water, waiting for my dumb body to accept the fact that I was actually safe, that I wasn’t surrounded by enemies, that it was allowed to rest easy tonight.
Yeah, that’s right. Big tough me. Big bad-ass me, acting like I was afraid of a monster under my bed, sipping on a glass of water like a scared little bitch.
See? I felt like I had to coax my body out from a hiding place, like a little child. Nothing to be scared of, you big dumb asshole. Okay, I treated my body less like a child and more like an idiot friend who spooked at the slight shifting of a shadow, the kind of friend you couldn’t even tell corny ghost stories to with a flashlight pointed up at your chin. There’s nothing to be scared of. No one’s gonna kill you. No one’s here but James, and James is a good man. And a pretty decent foot masseuse, as it turned out. Wouldn’t have expected that.
There was a tap at the window near my back.
I jerked away from the counter so fast, the water in my glass splashed over my hand. It was just the branch of a bush scraping against the window by a sudden gust of wind.
I sighed. There went my heart again, racing. You’re fine, I kept telling myself. Stop panicking, you motherfucking wimp.
I abandoned the emptied glass on the counter, then went back down the short hall, but couldn’t step foot back into my lonesome room. Something was very much awake in my belly, something emotional, something heavy and long since starved for attention. I stood between our doors—James’s door and my own. I stood there for a long while, the tiny sounds of the house all around me.
I discovered that it wasn’t all silence, after all. Trees scratched the windows softly. The grass whispered. The gentle winds sang and danced without a care. A wall shuddered under the weight of the roof settling.
And James breathed.
The most inviting sound of all …
I stepped into his room. The hardwood floors didn’t make a sound as I crossed over them. Before I knew it, I was standing by the side of his bed.
Then I lay down next to him. Asleep, James was facing me, his eyes were shut, and his breaths slowly pushed past his lips, in and out, in and out, as he dreamt.
Soon, his steady breaths were joined by my own as my mind finally found the peace it so craved, sleeping next to James under the soft spill of moonlight coming in through the windows.