Progress (Progress #1) (18 page)

I shook my head and looked down. “I don’t have much of that lately.”

“Your secret is safe with me.” A warm smile spread across her face. “Now get your ugly mug over here and earn your nine bucks. I won’t ask you to do anything else during your shift today.”

“Ugly?”

She rolled her eyes. “Out of everything I just said,
that
was all you heard?” She giggled. “You’re fucking gorgeous and you know it.”

I smirked, rising from my seat. “I prefer the phrase ‘sexy as fuck,’ but to-may-to, to-mah-to.” I joined her at her side and she gave me a small hip check. I looked down at her ass, my face still carrying a small smile, and I laughed while shaking my head.

“Put on some gloves. I don’t want to know where those hands have been since you washed them last.” She nudged her chin toward the box of latex gloves on the counter next to the salad bin.

I stood next to her, feeling a slight lift of my foggy thoughts, thankful for the distraction.

“What are you doing after work today?” she asked.

Going home, hiding under my covers, breaking down, letting the insects of the house feed off my flesh…
“Nothing.”

She nodded, sneaking a sideways glance, and trayed up her bottles of parmesan and pepper. “Okay.” When she finished she picked up the tray, set it on her shoulder, and walked out of the kitchen.

I slid three large trays of salad plates into an empty shelf in the walk-in cooler and walked out to the dining room floor. Approaching her from behind, I hovered close to her as she placed napkins and silverware at each spot. She took special care with each one, straightening each place setting as she set them down.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked, fearing what waited for me at my house.

“I didn’t,” she said, turning to face me with a wide smile. But when her eyes met mine, her smile faded and she slid her hands behind her back. “Jesus, you’re scaring me,” she whispered. “Your eyes are almost all black. You haven’t shaved in days. You barely look like you can walk without falling over. Where did my Jesse go?” She cupped her hand over my cheek, and I leaned into it with my eyes closed, ignoring the small tremor in her hand.

I breathed heavily with my eyes shut tight, trying to make some sense of the thoughts running through my mind. But I couldn’t find anything to say to her. I’d think of a sentence that made sense, but by the time I went to speak, it would vanish.

Maybe she was right: maybe I was a little broken.

Not always, though; those days would come and go, and soon I’d be back to my old self—someone who could be the friend he longed to be, and who needed that friendship given back so desperately.

“You’re manic-depressive, aren’t you?”

Keep talking.

Say it for me.

Please.

I nodded as quickly as I could, keeping my eyes hidden.

“And you’re going through a hard time right now,” she whispered, rubbing her thumb against my cheek. “And you don’t want to be alone,” she added, and I nodded again. “And you want to come to my house after work today.”

I opened my eyes and looked into hers. The brightest blue I’d ever seen them, they sparkled with hope. Small wrinkles creased the bridge of her nose, dark circles that she tried to hide with makeup could be seen under her eyes, and the corners of her mouth turned down with a quivering chin.

She sniffed and looked around, removing her hand from my face when Adam came through the kitchen doors. One shaky breath left her lungs, and she smiled. With a tight nod, she said, “Good. It’s settled then. We’ll meet in the bar after our shifts and drive to my place.”

I shifted my weight to my other foot, and my shoulders drooped. I hoped she could see how grateful I was for her discretion, and for the light in her eyes.

“I’m glad you’re coming over,” she said, walking away from me. In one swift motion, she spun on her heel and walked backwards for a moment, adding, “There’s something I’ve been wanting you to show me.” She winked and turned back again, walking through the rotating kitchen doors.

Chapter Seven

Jesse

“I’ve heard life is like a game of chess,” Charlie said, unwrapping a new chessboard and laying it out on her bed.

“How’s that?”

“It changes with each move.”

I looked around her room, and the easel sat in the same spot it had last week but the painting was replaced with a blank canvas. Her comforter was softer than I’d imagined and the entire house smelled like her: cherries and faded perfume.

“Nah. It’s not like life. The winner of the game is the one who makes the next-to-last mistake,” I countered.

Her eyes brightened. “Will you teach me then?”

“Chess? You’ve never played chess before?”

She shook her head. “Never.” She held up a red queen and put it in my palm. “I have no idea what to do with all these pieces. Show me?”

The only alternative I had to playing chess with Charlie was going home. So although I was in no mood to play games, I nodded.

“This is the queen,” I said softly, holding up the piece.

Within a minute, I had the board set up. I gave her red, and I took black.

“What’s this little guy?” she said, inspecting a piece in front of her.

“That’s the pawn. He’s the weakest piece. He’s a sacrifice. He can only move forward one square, except if it’s the first move. Then, if you want, you can move him two. But he can only move forward.”

“Makes sense.”

“The game is won when a player takes out his opponent’s king.” I pointed at the figurine in front of her and she nodded.

Piece by piece, I went through their names and how to move them. Charlie concentrated on my words and asked a few questions. After I was sure she understood, I made the first move.

She tugged at her lip, looked down at the mirroring piece on her side, and made the same move I had. I couldn’t help but smile. Hell, I’d even considered letting her win for the smile alone.

“Who taught you how to play this?” she asked.

“Lily.”

Charlie nodded, opening her mouth to speak, but bit her lip to keep her words to herself.

I knew she wanted to ask how I knew Lily; if she was a relative or a case worker or a friend. She wanted to know why Lily meant as much to me as she did. But she never asked the question and I didn’t volunteer the information.

Move by move, we continued. I knocked out a pawn or two, and so did she. Her eyes focused, taking in every play and predicting my next move. She was always tugging on her lip.

“Are you religious?” she asked.

I choked on an exhale. “You’re kidding me, right? I don’t do guilt.”

She nodded with a chuckle and then narrowed her eyes at me, calling me out on my lie. “So?”

“So what?” I asked.

“Aren’t you going to ask me?”

“Ask you what?”

“This is how friendships work, Jess. I ask you a question and you ask me a question.”

I frowned, but nodded anyway. I asked the first question that came to my mind. “Are you going to start dating anytime soon?”

That time, she choked on her exhale. “I meant you were supposed to ask…never mind.”

“So?” I prodded.

“I…I don’t know, maybe?”

“You must have crushes on guys.”

“Of course I do. I mean,
did
. I mean…”

“Who was the last guy you had a crush on?”

She snickered, moving another pawn forward. “There was one boy in college. We never talked to each other. But his artwork was amazing.” She sighed. “I’d catch him looking at me sometimes. But it always just made me more self-conscious than anything.”

“Just because he was looking at you?”

She looked down and her smile was gone. “I don’t like it when people look at me,” she whispered. “They rarely have good intentions. And if I look back at them and make eye contact, they think they can speak to me. And that’s usually when they say something I don’t want to hear.” She tucked a stray red curl behind her ear. “It’s why I shake sometimes. My body responds to the fear. And the negative energy. The hate. And it’s trying to stay strong for my insides that are about to fall apart.”

“What could anyone say to you that you’d get that upset over?”

“This is embarrassing. I don’t want to—”

“Like what? What do they say?”

She cleared her throat and leaned back on a pillow, gazing toward the corner of the room to find the memory.

“There was a guy in high school. His name was Aaron. And he hated me.” Her small laugh held no joy. “And on my sixteenth birthday I walked into school with my head down, trying not to make eye contact with anyone. But he saw me. And he walked up to me—somehow knowing it was my birthday—and put his arm around me. I froze. He had a nasty little habit of going out of his way to tease me.” She closed her eyes.

“What did he say?” My jaw tightened and I listened carefully.

“‘Happy birthday, kid.’”

“That’s it? That’s all he said?”

“Yeah, but that wasn’t what upset me. In every classroom I went to that day—seven of them, to be exact—he’d left a grocery bag full of food on my assigned seat. Chips, donuts, peanut butter, bags of sugar… And every whiteboard had the words ‘Sixteen pounds for Charlie’s sixteenth birthday. A pound for every year. Eat up, fatty.’”

“Jesus. Why didn’t you tell someone? A teacher or a counselor?”

“He was a god at that school. I would’ve only made it worse for myself.” She swallowed. “There are words I’ll never forget. But the problem isn’t with what they said—or what they wrote. The problem I have is with their hate. For a split second, I can always see myself through their eyes. And I usually end up feeling the same way.”

“That you see yourself as fat?”

“Worse than that, Jess,” she whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“‘Hideous’ is a good word. But it’s even less than that. ‘Hideous’ would imply that I was a person inflicted with some kind of deformity. No. These people see me as less than a person. Like an ant on a sidewalk they didn’t know they stepped on. Not a care in the world because they know they’re better than I am.
More
than I am,” she said, her voice fading. She snapped out of her daze and gave me a tight smile. “But we’ve all stepped on ants before. Probably when we didn’t even realize it.”

“That’s ridiculous, you know. They’re just dicks. If you’re so good at feeling what they feel, then how can you not see them for who they are?”

“I
do
see them for who they are—that’s the problem.” She shook her head. “Because that same person just came from playing Go Fish with their niece, or fed a homeless man, or donated money to their church, or spent time with their dying grandmother in a nursing home. There are pieces of everyone’s lives that make them good, that they don’t show the world. No one is
all
bad.”

“So the niece, the homeless man, the church, and the grandmother all deserve their generosity. But you don’t? Please tell me you see the contradiction there.”

Her chin quivered and her hands shook. “I don’t know how to change it,” she whispered.

“Block them out. Dismiss them. They aren’t worth your thoughts! They aren’t worth your energy!”

“How? How can you say that? Dismissing them is exactly what they’ve done to me. Please tell me you see
that
contradiction.”

I shook my head. “You’re going to kill yourself. You can’t take a child’s mindset in an adult world. At some point, Charlie, you’re going to have to just let it go.”

She raised an eyebrow and smirked. “How do you know Lily?”

“What!” I snapped, not comprehending her leap from one subject to the next.

She shrugged. “Why do you know her? Who is she to you?”

Tell her.

I slouched, moving a random piece on the chessboard. “Let’s get back to the game. I’m tired and I want to go home.”

She scoffed, shaking her head. “It’s how friendships work, Jess. You ask me questions, I ask you, remember?”

Tell her.

Charlie bit the inside of her cheek, closing her eyes with a deep breath and opening them to focus on the game. She moved a piece and waited for me to go.

“It started when I was ten.”

Her head snapped up, giving me her full attention. But I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

Tell her.

“I wasn’t always like this,” I continued. “I used to be…smart. I used to be able to focus and keep thoughts from escaping through my mouth. I used to be polite, kind, and good. I used to be good.”

Keeping her body still, afraid to blink in fear I wouldn’t continue, she sat holding the queen in her hand.

“I used to get good grades,” I continued. “I had a lot of friends and I never rubbed people the wrong way. I used to be able to read books without the need to read the same line over and over and over in order to understand it. And I used to have a family…that I loved.”

My eyes darted around the room, trying to place the memories of my childhood, but they only came back in quick flashes and I wasn’t sure what more I could say about those good days.

“Then, when I was ten, it all went to shit.”

She leaned in, blinking slowly, urging me to continue.

My knee bounced, soaking up valuable energy, and a lump gathered in my throat. It took more than I had left that day to keep
her
face from my mind. “My little sister meant everything to me. She was so small. So innocent. She was perfect,” I managed to say.

“What happened?” Charlie whispered.

“I was supposed to be watching her.” I set my jaw and sniffed, staring at the floor. “Mandy was taken.”

Charlie’s chest sunk and her eyes welled with tears. I looked away quickly, trying to avoid mine doing the same.

“What happened to Mandy, Jess?”

I ground my teeth together, feeling my nostrils flare with each breath. “They found her ten miles from our house in a ditch.”
Her dirty little fingernails
.
Her broken, naked body.
I squeezed my eyes closed. “She was only five years old.”

Charlie held her stomach, heaving forward and letting her tears drop. She wiped them away quickly, trying to stay strong.

I hardened, not letting any more images pop into my head. “My mind cracked. My parents couldn’t forgive me. I stopped making sense. I stopped playing baseball, reading books, speaking to my friends. I stopped talking to anybody. There was nothing I could do to stop the blaze of emotions, the erratic thoughts. I couldn’t find a balance.”

I finally looked up at Charlie as she sat on her hands, trying to stay calm and strong.

“And that’s when I entered the foster system.” I laughed without humor. “I stumbled upon Lily there. But that’s a story for another day.”

She sniffed again and wiped her cheek. “Can I ask you a strange question?”

“I don’t know if I can answer it, but yes.”

“Will you… Could I…” She tripped over her words. She set the queen down and moved the board to her dresser.

I watched her closely, not sure what she wanted from me. She circled around the bed and sat at my side. Our knees shook simultaneously, and our thighs touched with each nervous bounce.

“I’m really nervous right now. And I don’t know what you’re going to say.” She cleared her throat. “But I just really want to hold you. Will you let me?”

“You’d let me?” I whispered out of breath, our eyes locking inches from each other. “You’d let me touch you?”

She nodded slowly. “I think.” She smiled. “I could try.”

Lying down on the bed, we both moved to our backs. I took her hand in mine and never took my eyes off her. She gestured for me to turn away from her, and I reluctantly let go of her hand.

I moved to my side, and my back faced her chest.

She laced her arm under mine, scooting herself forward, squeezing tightly. I could feel her heartbeat racing wildly, taking what it wanted from mine without mercy: three beats to each one of mine. Her breathing steady, each exhale faintly tickled the back of my neck, and my breath evened out to match hers.

Each inhale, each exhale.

And I let her have it all. I didn’t want it anymore. It was hers.

Mandy.

My father.

My mother.

My foster parents.

Bree.

All of it.

All I had in my head to give her, I gave.

Breath for breath.

Heartbeat for heartbeat.

Wound for wound.

The dread, the regret, the worry—every last thought vanished from me.

It was the safest I’d felt in a long time; away from the Madness, the guilt, the crippling thoughts, and the Grim. I was far away from the ditch, from my parents’ house, and from the broken-down barn.