“Just making sure.” I take it slow, using the back roads to get to the small medical practice on the outskirts of town. "You sure you're okay if someone sees us together?"
"I'll tell them the truth. I told you that."She makes it sound so simple.
I pull the key from the ignition and jog around to the passenger side to open Haven's door. She's looking a little pale again, and it makes me nervous. I palm my hands against the roof of the car and duck inside. "What's going on with you? Is this still about the blood?"
"I've only had stitches once, and it was with that glue stuff, not a needle," she says.
I don't mean to laugh, but considering I've had them ten times in the last seven years, I've come to enjoy stitches more than getting tattooed. "They're no big deal."
"You've had stitches?" she asks innocently.
I pull my shirt down off my shoulder, showing off my most recent scar from when the asshole in the cafeteria stabbed me with a goddamn fork and dragged it about three inches before I could stop him. "Prison isn't a friendly place, we'll leave it at that."
She shudders at my words as the look of an apology floats through her glassy eyes.
"You have a lot of tattoos now too," she says.
"Gotta look the part to play the part," is all I say while helping her out of the car. “Come on, you’ll be just fine.”
We walk from the parking lot into the reception area of the clinic and sign in. "There's about a forty-minute wait," says the dark-haired woman who looks like she got left behind in the eighties with her bangle bracelets and hot pink, fluorescent lipstick that’s partially covering her front teeth. She gives us both a long hard stare before taking the sign-in sheet back from Haven. "They'll call your name when they're ready for you." She smiles faintly as we turn toward the waiting room, and almost the second we’re more than a few feet away, the whispers grow.Of course. Maybe this place wasn’t the best idea, but the hospital in Baton Rouge is almost an hour away, and that drive wouldn’t bode well for either of us right now.
While in the waiting room, we’re still in sight of the front desk, and the whispers are slowly turning into loud chatter, speculation I can almost make out. I know what they’re all thinking. They know who I am. They know who Haven is. We're together, and she's bleeding, while soaking wet from head to toe.
"I think you should leave," Haven whispers to me as she gets wind of what the women at the front desk are saying.
"Is it because of what I look like or the fact that everyone knows who we both are?" I ask calmly.
"Neither. I'm worried the staff here will accuse you of doing this to me," Haven says.
So, “both” was the correct answer to my question. I expected this, but it’s still pissing me off. “DidI do this to you?" I ask her.
"No," she snaps back. "Of course not."
"Well, if that's your only answer, no one can make a different assumption without proof." I should listen to her and be more careful, considering I've been out of prison for less than forty-eight hours, but I can't live in fear of being blamed for anything that may go wrong with Haven today or ten years from now.
"Then stay with me," she says. "I want you to stay. Please."
I don't ask another question. Instead, I grab a bridal magazine from the table in front of us. Flipping through the pages, it takes less than a few seconds for her to notice what I'm reading.
"What are you doing?" she asks, curling the magazine over to see the cover. "You read bridal magazines now?"
"Do you already have this edition?" I ask her.
She glances up at me and narrows her eyes. "Why would I have any edition of a bridal magazine?"
"Most women who are waiting for their man to pop the question have one lying around somewhere, I assume."
"I already told you," she says, angered, "I turned down the proposal because I didn't want to marry him."
"He looked pretty concerned about you last night when he came whipping into the parking lot in that fancy car of his."
"He only says he loves me," she says. "He doesn't know what he wants."
"What about you?" I ask.
"My parents love him," she answers.
"That's not what I asked."
