What Anthony is trying to say is something I can’t wrap my mind around. There’s no way Brynn likes me. When I’m not probing her for information, I’m insulting her new friend, or scaring the daylights out of her. I’m sure she’s counting the minutes until I provoke and exasperate her again.
“I understand your words, Anthony, I just don’t agree with them.”
“Alright, fine. You say she doesn’t like you. You say she has an attitude that’s mostly aimed at you—”
“She befriended Walt Jenkins! Of all people.” I blow out a disgusted breath. “Can you imagine how hard that must’ve been?”
“Pretty fucking hard, all things considered, but here’s what that tells me: She’s capable of kindness, just not toward you. And why not?”
I open my mouth to respond, but Anthony continues. I don’t think he wanted an answer in the first place. “She’s not nice to you because you frighten her. Not likeBoo!”—he holds up his hands and yells the word—“but more like you agitate her. She doesn’t like what she feels when she’s around you, and it makes her mad at herself.” Anthony taps my chest in time with his next words. “Not. At. You.”
“Do you have any more of what you’ve been smoking? It must be pretty good.”
“Actually, yes, I do have some good shit, but I’m not sharing.” Anthony tips up his beer and drains it, then hands me the empty bottle. “Here’s what you’re going to do. Tomorrow, when you spend the entire day working around her, read her body language. Does she turn toward you? Does she lean in when you talk? Touch her once, in a non-sexual way, and watch how she reacts.”
Anthony grabs his keys from the coffee table, stuffs them into the pocket of his jeans, and walks to the kitchen. “You better not have eaten all that food you went out for,” he says on his way in.
The sounds of a refrigerator door opening and closing reach me from the kitchen. A cabinet slamming. Plates moving around, then finally the dull, clunky sound of a microwave door shutting.
I sit back on the arm of the couch and look at the painting. Anthony thinks I should spend more time watching Brynn’s non-verbal cues. This whole time I’ve been trying to get her to be more verbal, but maybe she doesn’t communicate that way. All my questions, direct and indirect, the thinly veiled probes for information met with icy responses, may have been for nothing. I wonder if she’s been talking all along?
Light pink.
I sit up quickly and hurry to the shelf where I store all the paint.
Brynn’s iris is a soft, sweet, innocent light pink.
9
Brynn
Things have been weird.
Connor has been different.
He hasn’t been asking me questions, for one. This worries me. Did he search for me online? Did he find Elizabeth Montgomery? It has been months since I typed my name into a search engine. I learned my lesson the hard way.Never look for something you can’t handle finding.
If he knows, wouldn’t he have said something by now? Maybe not. Maybe the sight of me sickens him. Maybe he can’t believe he has been spending his days with someone whose face appears next to cringe-worthy headlines.
Baby Killer!
In Our Hearts, She’s Guilty.
Could She Have Stopped?
I’m sickened by the thought of Connor reading these things about me. Today is day four of Connor being quiet. What will it bring? I’m so sick to my stomach I nearly text him and tell him not to pick me up this morning. If it weren’t for the money, my intense desire to get the hell away from society and hole up somewhere, I’d do it. But, no. I have to stand even when I want to fall. My future peace depends on me.
Connor picks me up with his usual greeting. “Hey, Brynn.”
“Hello,” I say, stiff.
Last week he peppered me with questions the second I had my ass in his passenger seat.How was your night? What did you do?Today, like the past three days, he saysnothing. Not even about my shirt, which I chose because I thought it might make him laugh.
He must know.
We get to the first house on his list. We’re cleaning gutters, which really sucks. Connor takes two ladders from the truck, one by one, and sets them side-by-side along the front of the house. He climbs up the first, I go up the second one, and he tells me to pick out the biggest debris. We work for forty-five minutes, switching ladders when one of us is done with our section, and it’s silent. Horribly, terribly silent.
When I’m finished with my section, I climb down, but you know what happens when you’re upset? You get sloppy. On the last rung, I’m sloppy. Instead of stepping down, my foot catches on the side of the ladder. I fall, luckily not far, right onto my ass. At least it was onto soft grass and not the pavers three inches away.
