Finally, after sixteen or seventeen solid kicks, the wood crackled and split. He burst through, hopping, spinning, and kicking to get whatever spiders remained off of him. Shaking his hair more and throwing off whatever clothes were on him, he could feel the tears of his panic spilling down his face. He hated himself for being terrified of such small creatures, and hated himself even more for letting himself be caught. Max had obviously set the whole thing up, and Rhett had fallen for the trap.
Before he could even think above covering his tracks by somehow buying or sealing the door, he looked up to see none other but Mrs. Florian standing in the doorway to the room. She was dressed in her usual black pantsuit, perhaps having come home to pick something up for the office. Her mouth was flung open as she stared at Rhett’s naked body. Rhett didn’t know what to say as they shared eye contact. All he could think to do was cover his penis and balls with his bare hands.
“What is the meaning of this?!” She shrieked. “What are you doing in my son’s room? I heard screaming and I came up straight away. Explain yourself!”
Rhett faltered, crumpling up like an old flower. His mouth shook as he tried to form words, still panicked from the experience with the spiders… Spiders that were quickly traveling from the enclosed space of Max’s closet.
“Answer me!” She demanded, her once cherubic face resembling something more like a Japanese demon mask.
“I, I…” Rhett managed to stammer out. “I got locked in the closet. The spiders came tumbling down, I couldn’t get out!”
“Yes, but what in the world are you doing in Max’s room? And put on some clothes, for Christ’s sake!”
He dropped, scurrying to collect the clothes he’d dropped on the floor. As soon as he’d grabbed his shirt, he noticed a big black spider on top of it and shrieked. He fell back on the floor, letting out little cries as he struggled to back away from the spiders crawling from the floor.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Announced Mrs. Florian, charging in to pick up his pants and shirt off the floor before brushing the spiders off with a firm hand. “You’re a grown man, Rhett! Get up!” She took him by the hand and help lift him up, tossing the rumpled clothing towards his abdomen as if she were passing a football.
Rhett could say without a doubt that this was simultaneously the most mortifying and shaming moment of his life. He left the room with her, hopping into his jeans as he went. She kept her back turned to him as he zipped himself up and pulled his shirt over his head, wondering in his mind what he was going to do about this situation. Mrs. Florian was Max’s mother. No matter what he had to say about himself and her son’s behavior, she would almost always inevitably take Max’s side over his.
He had no time to dwell on it, though. Once he was changed, he told her she could turn back around. Her expression hadn’t changed much from when they were inside of Max’s room.
“So explain yourself,” said Mrs. Florian, crossing her arms. “Take a deep breath if you must. You look thoroughly shaken. Don’t expect much sympathy from me.”
He did as she suggested, letting clean oxygen flow into his lungs. “Okay, so…”
She cut him off. “Is this going to be a long story? If so, I’m not going to stand here in the hall like some lingerer. Let’s go down to the kitchen and I’ll make some tea.”
She turned to go down the stairs without another word, and Rhett couldn’t help but oblige her. He sat at the kitchen table, watching her as she set the kettle on the burner. As much as he tried to straighten his thoughts, all he could think about was the way it felt for all those spiders to come cascading down on top of him. His skin felt itchy in an eery way, and he couldn’t help but brush his hands over his skin as if searching for confirmation that he was indeed safe.
“So, again, explain yourself,” she said as she opened the cupboard and brought down two teacups and saucers.
One more deep breath. “I went into Max’s room because I suspect he’s been trying to sabotage our relationship.”
“‘Our relationship?’”
“I mean Tula and I. Our relationship.”
She cocked an analytical eyebrow, setting down the sugar and cream. “Is that so? What makes you think this?”
“Well…” He gulped, realizing that he would have to air all of his suspicions to a woman he only knew in a passing way. She would potentially be his mother by law one day, however, so he had to start bonding with her at some point. “… Max has never shown that he’s liked me much. He’s not very friendly.”
“Max has always had a problem with making friends,” she stated in a matter-of-fact manner. “Tula and him were always so close, you know? He never felt the need to seek outside attention. But anyway, go on.”
Rhett didn’t know if this was a defense or a helpful statement of fact. She brought the kettle over and poured the hot water over his bag. “So anyway, ever since I came here, I’ve had problems. Nothing to do with him really, but issues concerning Tula and I. Strange things would happen that neither of us could quite explain. Like what happened to the oven.”
“How would that have anything to do with Max?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know, but he seemed annoyed that she wasn’t spending time with him.”
It only passed for a moment, but Rhett could have sworn that he saw her roll her eyes.
“And then… other things. We’ve had the worst luck for the past few months. We’d never had any issues when we first started dating. And then… at the beach party, I saw them hugging.”
“Hugging?”
“Like, not in a sibling way. Close-like.”
She raised her eyebrows and hummed thoughtfully over the words. “What does this have to do with you snooping through his room?”
Rhett thought it was pretty obvious what the reason was, but proceeded to explain himself anyway. “Well, I wanted to find out if there was anything to my suspicions. I felt that I had to go looking for myself.”
“Did you ever think of just talking to him man-to-man?”
Rhett almost swallowed his tongue. He didn’t know why the concept had never occurred to him. Perhaps he subconsciously figured that he’d never get an honest answer. “No, I guess not.”
“Just talk to him. Rhett, I’m certainly not thrilled that I’ve discovered you in this way. In fact, I’m a bit disturbed, especially considering how you wanted to take my daughter away from me yesterday. But you’ve always given me good vibes, and I think deep down you have a good heart.”
Deep down? Gee, thanks.
“I’m going to do you a favor. I’m going to forget that this ever happened. You’re scared of spiders, aren’t you? I’ve never seen a man so white as when I saw you in that room with all those creepy crawlies.”
“Honestly, they scare the ever-loving crap out of me. It’s been that way ever since I was a little kid. Excuse the language.”
She sipped her tea daintily. “I’ll let it slide. I wonder what Maxy was doing with those things in the closet, anyway? He did always have that pet tarantula. But I’ve never seen so many spiders in one place before.”
“Yeah.” He wanted to explain himself more thoroughly—that he suspected Max had set it all up as a trap—but he held his tongue. Mrs. Florian was a smart enough woman. She could piece things together.
“Look,” she said, placing her tea down, “you’re scared of those spiders, right? My schedule is clear this afternoon, so I’ll take care of the little things and put them back wherever it was that they came from. The door is thoroughly demolished, so you need to go down to the hardware store and buy a new one. I don’t feel the need to make a big issue out of all this, and the less Max knows, the better.”
He nodded dimly, not believing his good luck.
“Do you promise that you won’t go and do anything like this again, young man? You’ve had your fun. Now leave my son alone before you cause a calamity. Don’t run off with my daughter, don’t go sneaking around the house while everyone is gone, and don’t give me any more reasons to think that you’re anything but a gentleman. Is that clear? If any more bad events comes out from you, I
will
have you removed from my house and you’ll never be able to see Tula again. Is that clear?”
Rhett made a solemn affirmation, though in his mind, he found the wording a bit strange.
She can kick me out of the house, I grant her that, but she can’t take Tula from me. Nobody has that right but Tula herself.
Rhett excused himself, heading out to the car while Mrs. Florian put the teacups in the sink. The only thing he wanted at that moment was to get as far away from those spiders as possible.
Chapter 7
By the time Tula came back from the bakery at around one in the afternoon, Mrs. Florian had picked as many spiders with a thin piece of cardboard and a mason jar as was humanely possible. Rhett didn’t know how a woman so small and adorable could be so fearless in the face of dark creatures with eight eyes and legs. As soon as he was sure that she was finished with her task of collecting every single one of the little creatures, he took about five minutes getting rid of the old door and installing the new one. The door he bought wasn’t exactly identical to the old one, especially considering that the old paint color was a light blueberry shade and the new one was off-cream.
Mrs. Florian had her own line of reasoning for Max on why it was replaced (“I’ll tell him I went in to hang an ironed shirt he’d left in the laundry and got locked in!”), so Rhett felt more assured on the fact that he wouldn’t have to deal with a confrontation later. Tula looked pretty beat by the time she walked through the front door, possessing a slightly sallow complexion along with grey patches under her eyes. She seemed puzzled when she spotted Rhett standing in the kitchen with her mother, the both of them having another cup of tea together.
“What are you guys doing home?” She asked, sounding as if she’d just woken from a dream.
“Nothing,” Rhett answered as if he were a five-year-old caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
She raised an eyebrow at them. “You guys aren’t plotting something together, are you? Like some kind of surprise party?”
“Nuh uh. Nothing like that,” said Rhett.
A flirty grin graced her mouth, and she chose to simply walk off towards the bathroom to shower. Rhett and Mrs. Florian shared a look.
“Does this mean we have to plan another party for her?” Mrs. Florian asked with a giggle.
“I’m game if you are,” he responded with a charming smile.
“I have to admit that I’d enjoy it for the cake. Anyway, you should make yourself scarce later this afternoon. You’d probably rather have Max run into me than you, am I right?”
“You’d be right.”
“Good. And don’t forget what I told you, Rhett.”
“What is that?”
“No more fuck ups.”
The curse word coming out of her mouth surprised him, but he kind of liked it. “No more fuck ups,” he repeated back.
“Good. Now get lost.”
He took her advice, popping his head into the steamy bathroom to ask Tula if she wanted to go out for a movie.
“Sure,” she responded from behind the shower curtain. “But no guarantees that I won’t pass out in the middle of it.”
Rhett lingered in the doorway a little longer than was perhaps necessary. He couldn’t really see anything of her from behind the opaque shower divider, but the simple allure of it was enough to get his blood pumping. Her naked hand reaching for a shampoo bottle was all of her he was able to get a glance of. He waited in his room as she finished her shower, dried off, and changed. She seemed much more attentive once she had washed off, and as soon as they entered Rhett’s Camaro, she shot off on her questioning.
“What were you doing at home with my mom? You didn’t go to work, or what? Had you decided to play hooky to begin with?”
Rhett didn’t want to confuse himself later when he had to keep all the stories straight, so he decided to mention that it was all some secret that he couldn’t let on to Tula. She could needle and cajole him about it, but if he held firm about keeping his lips shut, it only made him seem more resolute about his determination to keep his mouth shut.
“You’re not banging my mom on the sly, are you?” She asked as they approached the theater.
If there were some kind of liquid in his mouth, he would have spit it out. “Gross, no!”
She giggled. “Just teasing. You’re not good enough for her. She’d want someone who looks like Fabio, like the guys in her romance novels.”
“Fabio is welcome to grab her. I don’t know how much your dad would like that, though.”
The movie wasn’t very good, but because it was a weekday showing, they practically got the entire theater to themselves. Not taking this private time for granted, they proceeded to make out in the back seats, even reaching down to fondle each other a bit. Being a good girl, Tula didn’t oblige him with a blowjob or anything scandalous like that. It didn’t really bother Rhett—in truth, he liked it better that she wasn’t nasty in that way. It gave him some reassurance that she hadn’t done anything like it in the past.
They had dinner afterwards at a burger place, the kind of hangout that attracted truckers and poor college students. They talked a bit about the movie—what they had seen of it, at least—and Rhett began his own line of questioning.
“So you and Max were close as children?” He asked as he swirled a french fry in ketchup.
She shrugged as she poked at her chef’s salad. “As close as twins typically are, I think. It was only when we graduated high school that we sort of began breaking apart. The distance and all, I guess.”
“Max didn’t take it so well?”
“He just gets into moods sometimes. Long, lasting moods. Before he met you, he was a little bit better. Afterwards he practically was like a dark cloud floating around the house. I feel bad. We spent so much time being close to each other in elementary and high school that he never really learned how to socialize with others. I could make new friends, particularly at the bakery, but it wasn’t so easy for him. He didn’t want to go to those youth clubs or join in any sports. All the time, he just wanted to be by himself and tinker on things.”