Page 183 of Hot Mess
I opened my door just as he came around, and slid out as he took my hand.
“This is where you grew up?” I definitely tried to keep anything that might sound like judgment from my tone, but honestly, it wasn’t judgment. It was sympathy. This place felt pretty sad.
“No. Thank fuck.” He tugged me toward the house, if you could call it that. It was small, weather-beaten, in disrepair. Neglected. It looked like it could barely survive the winters out here.
“My dad moved out here several years ago,” he said. “After my mom left and I moved out and he couldn’t keep up with rent on our old place. And before you think I’m an asshole for not helping him out—”
“I don’t,” I said quickly, because clearly there was more going on here than I could know. I could feel it in the air in this place. In Ashley’s tension.
From the moment he’d picked me up tonight, he’d been a little tense. Now I knew why, more or less. Since we’d pulled into the driveway, he’d been even more tense. His shoulders were tight. His jaw set. The look in his eyes was guarded, shadowed, as he looked up at the house.
“Trust me,” he said, “he smokes and drinks anything I ever give him anyway. He’ll end up homeless with or without my help, if he wants to.”
“Okay.”
He stopped at the foot of the three crumbling stairs to the front door and hit me with his serious blue eyes. “You sure about this?”
“Um… how could I be sure about this? I didn’t even know we were coming.”
He stared at me. Then the corner of his mouth quirked up. “You’re right. Fuck it. Let’s go.”
To my shock, he turned and started right back for the truck, tugging me along with him.
“Wait. No, wait. Ashley. You brought me here for a reason, right?”
I dug my heels into the dirt and finally he stopped. He blew out a breath and turned to me. He looked up at the house over my shoulder and frowned, squinting into the evening sun that was starting to descend past the mountains beyond.
“Areyousure about this?” I asked him. “About whatever made you bring me here? Because if so, take me inside. If not, then we can leave, if that’s what you really want to do.”
He stared at the house. Something dark and heavy passed over his features. He dug in his pocket, found a piece of gum and tossed it in his mouth. And started chewing furiously.
He’d already mentioned to me that gum was one of his coping mechanisms since trying to quit smoking. That if he was chewing gum, the situation was dire.
I took his hand.
“Alright,” he said. “Let’s do this.” His blue eyes flicked to mine. His eyebrows were drawn together and he looked… vulnerable. Like a little boy, somehow.
I pulled him to me and hugged him.
“If you want to leave, we can leave,” I whispered.
“Too late,” he said, just as the door behind me creaked open.
I heard it, heard the shuffle of feet, and turned to look up at the old man who now stood on the front stoop, looking down at us.
“What the hell is this?” he barked, his sharp gaze scraping over me from head to toe. “Christ, boy. For a minute there, thought you’d brought home another one of those light-skinned—”
And then some ugly, ugly words came out of the old man’s mouth.
* * *
“Um…whatdid he say…?” I whispered to Ashley as he escorted me up the steps. I was maybe a little in shock. It had been a long time since I’d heard words like those.
Actually… had Ieverheard anyone say something like that in real life?
The old man had already disappeared into the house, barely even listening as Ashley attempted to introduce me, the screen door banging shut in his wake.
“I had a girlfriend for a while in high school who was aboriginal,” Ashley informed me. “Arturo really played the nasty old racist bastard card on that one. Ran her off pretty good.”
