“I want to show him what he’s missing.”
I nod, staring straight ahead, feeling as powerless as a pig fattened for culling. I guess fake anything is better than nothing. Maybe time will allow her to see Leif’s true colors—that he’s nothing but a man who has to mark his territory whenever he feels threatened.
“Okay,” I agree, hoping that the little seed of regret in my heart doesn’t blossom into an untamed forest. “Whenever you want to stop, just tell me.”
Clearing the air must’ve revitalized her confidence because—still Velcroed to my side—she picks up her untouched food,finally digging into her wrap of perfectly grilled chicken and melted Monterey jack. Her sigh seesaws on the edge of a moan.
Staten muffles her words, her cheeks puffed out like she’s a chipmunk hoarding nuts. “This is the best chicken quesadilla I’ve ever had.”
She elicits a full-fledged laugh from somewhere deep within my belly. “I’m glad something about this night went right.”
“Don’t say that. Watching you play wasn’t totally terrible,” she jokes. “You’re actually really good.”
Did she just…compliment me? Without her usual side of sarcasm?
Am I breathing? It doesn’t feel like I’m breathing. It’s as if every vital function in my body is close to shutting down. If you told past me that I’d be casually chatting with the girl I almost killed, I wouldn’t believe you.
“I don’t know. I ate shit pretty badly in the second period.”
She quirks her head at me, a little dollop of jalapeño sauce by the corner of her lips. “You did?”
Oh, thank God she didn’t see it.
I don’t think before I wet the pad of my thumb and rub it over the piquant casualty. The second I contact her skin, her big, Bambi eyes regard me with caution, the circumference of her pupils enlarging due to the close proximity or the limited lighting or who knows what. My disproportionate reflection ripples in those dark vortexes. She doesn’t shy away, nor does she scream in disgust—a respite for my tattered ego.
“I, uh, got distracted,” I eke out, hand still hovering midair.
“By what?”
By you.
I shove my arm into my lap. “By…nothing important.”
It’s like Staten’s smile is engineered to make my heart race and stop at the same time. “Well, if it’s any consolation, I don’t think one mistake undermines your performance.”
After everything, she still gives me the benefit of the doubt. This is all fake. I can’t get attached. We both have an objective, and nursing feelings isn’t one of them.
While she starts to make a decent dent in her Mexican rice, I savor the warmth from her body that transfuses through my arm, wishing on all the stars in the universe that the night isn’t quick to end.
“One double scoop of caramel cookie crunch,” the cashier announces, handing off the diabetes hazard that is Staten’s choice of dessert.
A waffle cone swaddles two heaping vanilla scoops, which are speckled with Oreo crumbs and interspersed with swirls of golden brown. A drop diverges from the nest and races down the raised, crisscrossed surface of the wafer.
My unimpressive, small cup of mint chip is next, and I rummage around in my pants pocket for a rumpled twenty, depositing it into the outstretched hand that hovers before me.
I don’t have a big sweet tooth, but when I glance over to see Staten already carving out a gulley in her ice cream with her tongue, overdosing my body with sugar seems like a pretty fair tradeoff. Despite me being normally acclimated to low temperatures, the frigidity of the shop clots my sinuses—a worthy opponent of the bleak weather that sieges outside.
Marianne’s is a postcard-worthy little shop. Two display cases bearing compartments of homemade flavors flank either side of the register, the bottom trimmed in a backsplash of pristine, white tiles. A black, chalk-scribbled menu hangs overhead—embellished with hand-drawn doodles of miniature ice cream cones—and a sit-down counter protrudes off the adjacent wall, hidden beneath a built-in arch. The walls themselvesare made of eggshell-colored combed brick, whereas the ceiling is a bare bones exoskeleton of joists and hanging bulbs. Lastly, a mural of Maple Grove is painted on brickwork in shades of coffee grounds, the bumpy topography stippled with a fine brush.
“Keep the change,” I say, tailgating Staten as we duck out of the entrance and emerge beneath the scalloped awning, locating an aluminum bench that will serve as our temporary shelter for the time being.
I take my spoon and begin to tackle my modest mound of mint, though the writhing in my stomach isn’t because I’ve substituted my clean diet for a sugar-filled one.
Staten plops down on the cold metal, humming happily under her breath, and I join her at a respectable distance.
“How are you feeling about the literary analysis essay due in a few weeks?” she asks in between licks, still oblivious to the fact that any talk of schoolwork makes me clam up.
“I feel like I’m gonna add another F to my growing grade graveyard,” I mutter, feeling as picked apart as a diamond under a jeweler’s loupe. Something to be fixed. Something that doesn’t just need a good polish but a total deconstruction.
