“Good to know,” I clipped out, anger thick in my tone. So he was barred from being my friend? So then all those years I’d wondered if it was me, it probably was? Goody. This was turning out to be a fun day of revelations.
“Not want to. Elm have no choice.” He fidgeted hard in place, hands lifting to fall like he wanted to reach out to me but didn’t want to risk the rejection.
“Maybe it was for the best,” I offered, my tone light. It was the biggest pile of crap and we both knew it. My body was rigid, shoulders tense, arms folded tightly over my chest. I just wanted- I needed him to leave.
“No want to,” he growled out, frustration thick in his voice. “No choice.”
“Heard you the first time. Your parents thought I was a bad influence and made you give me the boot. I get it.” Unfolding my arms, I grabbed for the door again and gave it a yank. It didn’t budge. “My mama tried. I suck. We done here?”
“No! Not done here. Elm not done!” A spark of emotion turned into an avalanche. “Elm not done with Pru. Elm never done with Pru. Not want to stay ‘way. No choice!”
“Stop yelling at me! I hear you just fine from down here!” I bellowed back.
“Elm trying to say but Pru not hearing! Elm talk louder! Pru needs hear!”
“I’m not deaf, you great oaf!” Coming right up to him, I bumped my chest to his. It was near impossible with our height difference, my eyes near his nipples, but my intentions were clear. What now, punk?! “Can YOU hear ME from all the way up there? Is the air too thin?!!”
Bending his thick frame, he craned himself down to get right in my face. Our noses were nearly touching, forcing me to look at him feeling cross eyed, his image distorted, or pull back. I chose Optical Illusions During An Argument for five hundred.
“No choice,” he hissed right in my face.
“I’m about to make a choice you might regret, veggie boy, you don’t get out of my face,” I hissed back, tit for tat.
“Elm ‘bout to make choices, Pru not listen Elm,” he grumbled. His voice deepened until it was a gravelly rumble. “Elm. Have. No. Choice.”
“I’d take you more seriously if you weren’t always referring to yourself in the third person, Captain Spud!” Elm had been in charge of the potato harvesting as he took on more chores, heading into the teen years. He’d graciously accepted Tuber King as a running title. Anything beyond that was poking at him.
“Make Elm crazy!” he growled. Pulling back, he threw his hands up.
“Then maybe you shouldn’t have reinitiated contact with me after all these years of shutting me out, asshole! Give it a minute and I’ll be out of your damn hair, your whole family’s for that matter! The second I find somewhere else to live, I won’t be around to drive you anywhere! Ever again! For a start, how’s about getting your big assed foot out of my doorway!”
Like my words were the pin poking the anger balloon puffing him up, he quickly deflated. “No want that,” he croaked out hoarsely. “Never want that.”
Disbelief and confusion warred within me. A short, shocked laugh bubbled up inside of me. “Could have fooled me.”
“Elm have no choice.”
Instead of telling him to stick that old record where the sun doesn’t shine, a snort left me. This time when my arms came around me, folding, it wasn’t defensive, it was protective, myfingers curling around the sides of my jacket, holding on for dear life.
He wasn’t making any sense and I really didn’t want to do this right now.
Dying for a way out of this, I tried yet again to offer him an escape clause. “Okay.” My head bobbed in a nod. “Alright. You’re right. I get it.”
Elm’s hands shot up, slipped into his hair, and he grabbed fistfuls of it. “No. No get it.”
“My god, am I fucking supposed to? You had no choice. Okay, you’ve said that. But then you reached the age of majority, and this thing called adulthood came knocking. Don’t even think to try and convince me you remained that far under your parents’ thumb, and that they think I’m that fucking awful, you chose to remain distant all these years after! What changed?!”
When he looked like he might respond, I kept going. I was far from done.
We were gonna have this all out, right now, right here, and then he could kiss my ass, good-bye!
“You had choices! We all do! And you know what? Yours sucked!” Jabbing a finger at his chest, I barked, “YOU suck! You never once chose me and now I’m doing what you couldn’t. I choose ME.”
Stepping back, hands dropping to fist at his sides, he muttered a string of growling gibberish I only caught bits of, something about Cy and dibs and finally something about him not caring.
“Not in Village,” he grumbled. “We here. Now. No first, last. Others not gets to ‘cide…”
“Whatever the fuck that means,” I huffed out, but he kept going, muttering under his breath, working himself up, until his chest was heaving and his warm breath was puffing out of himlike little clouds releasing into the chilly air. “I don’t know what this is,” I admitted.
