Brooks made a subtle shift away from her as he pretended to give a fuck about the forgotten spoon, but Rue was relentless.
“I haven’t seen you since our last electroshock therapy session,” she said around a mouth full of food.
She pushed her tray over to his and scooted until their sides connected.
Ice chilled his veins as anger flared, and he drew in a large lungful of air to gain some semblance of control.
“Get her off of us,”his passenger growled.
“Is it cold in here today or what?” Rue made a show of rubbing her arms, her shivers more dramatic than her entrance.
“Feels fine to me, Rue.”
“It’s because you’re so hot-blooded,” she giggled. “Men like you don’t get cold. You’re too rugged and smoldering and muscular and intense and–”
“Rue!” Brooks’ hands slammed to the table as he stood, their trays and silverware rattling with the force of impact.
What looked back at him was not a girl filled with fear. Fear would have been manageable. Preferable even, because then she would stay away.
No, her eyes shone with fanatic desire.
Rue was a stalker.
Brooks turned his stare to the table where his palms rested and recoiled. Ice crept out from under his hands in intricate patterns and spread across their small table. He turned his hands over and back frantically searching for any string of explanation.
“That’s enough.” A large hand gripped his shoulder as another took his tray from the table. “Come with me.”
Brooks tucked his hands behind his back as he was dragged away. He turned back to look at Rue and cringed. Her eyes shined, emphasized by the small smile and waggle of her fingers. Her gaze never left him as he was shoved to the other side of the cafeteria and seated, her eyes burning holes through his brain and straight through his nerves.
Brooks let the orderly push him to the table and sat without fuss. The last thing he needed was for Rue to piss off his passenger and get him sent to therapy.
“She’s a fucking problem and we need to shake her. I don’t like the way she looks at us.”
“Shut up,” he hissed, eyes roving over the cafeteria to be sure he wasn’t caught talking to himself.
His skin crawled from the intrusion in his mind.
“I don’t have time for your bullshit and, more importantly, being shocked literally into next week because some psychopath ruffles your feathers.” Brooks kept his voice low.
He rested his forehead in his hand and sighed, realization donning once more as he whispered, “My feathers. The psychopath would be rufflingmyfeathers. The voices are not real.”
A wisp of wind fluttered his hair as an orderly placed a Styrofoam bowl beside his tray of pig slop. Brooks lifted his head from his palm and nodded without sparing the man a glance. His hand brushed the bowl and he stopped dead.
Plump, juicy fruit rested in the disposable dish, the blues and purples so vibrant they looked like splashes from a Cezanne still-life. If Cezanne had painted fruit in a fucking Styrofoam bowl, of course.
In all of the time he spent in this prison of a hospital, he had never seen fresh fruit. Dried brown pieces of leather sprinkled over everything, sure. But never anything so fresh and still full of life.
He blinked, and blinked again.
When the blinking failed, he rubbed at his eyes furiously to clear the fog. When the vibrant colored berries were still sitting before him, a sense of awe washed over him. It was too good to be true.
Brooks couldn’t make himself waste the fruit over the mush pile on his tray. Instead, he grabbed handfuls at a time and gobbled them down like a toddler presented with cake. The juice from the plump berries ran down his chin and stained his tongue, the tartness raising the hairs on his arms as the contrasting sweetness coated his throat.
“So vibrant and full of life. A taste of what lies ahead.”
He ignored his hallucination as he gorged himself on fresh berries in a frenzy. It wasn’t until his sticky fingers scraped the bottom that he came back to reality. A pang of sorrow struck him in the chest at the loss. The first taste of anything real in this fucking place and he had wasted an opportunity to cherish the experience.
Brooks looked up, eyes wide, in search of an orderly to demand more of the tart berries, but what he found wasn’t a faceless employee in pristine white scrubs.
