Page 59 of Miss Behaved
“Welcome!” A woman with tattoos from her hands to her neck greets us from a counter as we make our way in.
A sign above her head reads Rage-Capades. It’shanging over a wall with various tools and bats.
“A rage room?” I look up at Carson. “I thought this was supposed to be‘creatively productive’?” I throw up air quotes.
“Therapeutic, creative, productive, all the same thing.” He leads me to the counter. “Plus, wild thing, you’re the one hell-bent on cutting loose and proving everyone wrong this trip, so here we are. Let’s go crazy.”
Carson has a look in his eyes I remember from when we were kids. The same one that told me he was up to nothing but trouble. I was always straitlaced, and he loved toying with my strings.
“All right,” I tell him.
The woman with the tattoos introduces herself as Amy, and when she sweeps her hair off her shoulders, I spot a layer of purple beneath the black. I’ve always wanted to do that, put fun colors in my curls. Pink, teal, maybe purple. But I’ve never done it. Even if I have a job that embraces creativity and doesn’t come with a dress code.
How many years have I kept myself locked away in a perfectly self-contained shell?
“Office, restaurant, warehouse, or store?” Amy asks, flicking through her list and checking them against a set of cameras. “Looks like that’s what we’ve got available.”
Carson looks to me for an answer, so I go with restaurant. After all, who doesn’t want to smash dishes just for fun?
Amy leads us into a prep area, where we suit up in head-to-toe coverings, protective eyewear included, before she takes us to our designated space. It’s surprisingly put together, and aside from the marks on the floors and walls from what I guess is previous use, it looks a lot like a restaurant.
Table, chairs, dishes, glasses, paintings.
“Here are your tools.” Amy points to a wall that has a variety of choices, from bats to paint guns. “And here’s the rules: no hitting yourselves, no hitting each other, no removing your protective gear, and no destruction to the outer walls, but everything else is within limits. Got it?”
Her cat eyes flick up to us, and we both nod before she disappears and closes the door behind her.
Carson wraps his arm around me and angles us toward the wall of choices. “So, what’ll it be?”
I’m tempted to go for the sledgehammer, but it looks about half my weight, and there’s a better chance I’ll break myself than anything in the room, so I reach for a bat instead, pressing the thick part of the handle into my palm.
“Good choice,” Carson says, his voice muffled from the suit that covers my ears. While he’s as handsome as ever, I’m positive I look ridiculous in this head-to-toe trash bag.
“Have you done this before?” I ask him, noticing he didn’t pick anything up.
“Once, yeah.” He nods. “You have fun; I’ll take care of whatever is left.”
“Are you saying you don’t think I’m tough enough to destroy it all by myself?”
Carson leans down and brings his body flush with my chest. He wraps his arms around my waist, picking me up off my toes and meeting my gaze. Our outfits create a bubble of space for our faces. His mouth hovers a mere inch away.
“Oh, I have no doubt you can be an absolute fucking tornado, Monica.” He smiles. “But that table there’s solid wood.”
“Challenge accepted.” I smile, closing the gap between our mouths to plant a kiss on his perfect lips. He holds me tight, and I melt against him, turning off my thoughts and just existing in this moment with Carson. Deadlines, expectations, and hesitation fall away, and it’s just him and me standing in the eye of our own hurricane.
I break the kiss and try to catch my breath. My skin is sore from the scrape of his stubble, and I don’t ever want to let go of that feeling.
He gives me a final peck before lowering my feet back to the ground and turning me by the shoulders to face a room waiting to be destroyed.
I’m suddenly intimidated by it. Breaking things feels wrong, especially to a girl who has never intentionally destroyed anything. I look around the room, wondering what to do first. A wall of glass tempts me, but I can’t help but also see it as a waste making a mess of it.
Carson must sense my hesitation, because he stands behind me and presses his firm chest against my back.
“Don’t think about it,” he says in my ear as he rubs my shoulders.
“That’s all I know how to do,” I tell him. “Plan, think, plot, think some more. My brain is basically a calculator with words.”
He runs his fingers to the back of my neck and presses his finger on it once, making a clicking sound with his tongue.
