Strange in Skin (9 page)

“Is that okay to say to you?” He thought he had possibly upset me.
“It’s just strange to hear someone say that about me.”

“Anna, you’re truly breathtaking. The first time I saw you, I couldn’t look away. Every time I see
you, I find another interesting facial expression of yours. I wish I didn’t have to be blocked by this
stupid screen.” His eyes became angry and sad as he and I both realized that we were still sitting in
this prison being completely blocked from having true contact with one another.

“I find you so fascinating. I want to get to know you better, know everything about you and
everything you’re thinking. I think it’s intriguing that you’re sitting here across from me yet again.
You’re either out of your mind or you have the same strange kind of attraction for me, too.”

The realization of it all hit me hard just then. The feelings had been there all along, but I had never
been able to put a label on it before. I was attracted to this estranged criminal sitting before me. I
liked
him more than any other guy I had come into contact with in my entire life. He was gorgeous and
muscular on the exterior and yet seemed to be so kind and thoughtful, too. But he was also an inmate,
and the pieces didn’t seem to fit together like they should. He didn’t belong here, yet here he was, and
here I was with him, too. This was all so wrong, yet all so very right at the same time.

“I know I have absolutely no right saying these things to you, especially like this, in here.” He
looked around at the walls that caged him in. “I’ve tried not to think of you, tried letting you go, but
you keep racing through my thoughts. I’m being selfish, I know, by pleading with you to keep coming
down here, and I’d understand if you felt the need to run far, far away from me right now.”

I felt so mesmerized by what was happening. This was not what I had expected to go on today. He
was pouring out his heart to me in this exact moment, and I didn’t know what to say back, because the
truth was that I felt the exact same way, but I had never actually told myself these things, I just tried to
get around them, but the obsession was still there, the need and want to see him, the longing of the
days that passed when I couldn’t see him and the ache that filled me, even now, knowing that I had
actually felt jealous when I had heard that he had once been married before.

“This is so totally wrong,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes.
“I know. I’m sorry,” he whispered back in a sad, serious tone.

“No,” I stopped him. “I just didn’t expect this, that’s all.” I looked up at him then and knew he
could see my tears, but I didn’t care. “I do feel the exact same way, Emry. I do want to be near you,
get to know you. It just seems so unbearable to do it like this.”

“I know. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t keep contacting you.”

“Please stop apologizing. I’m not sorry for any of it. It’s the only good thing I have going for me
right now,” I blurted out. I saw him stare at me puzzled, but he didn’t question me any further about
what I meant by it. “It’s just so unfair to have met you under these circumstances.”

“I agree.” He sighed again, and I thought he was about to look away, but he was still looking
straight into my eyes, concentrating very hard on all of my reactions through my facial expressions,
reading me like an open book. I suddenly felt very vulnerable. Emry was breaking down my walls one
by one.

“One minute!” the officer shouted out to everyone.
“Ugh!” I exclaimed. “So frustrating.”
“I know. It is.”
I looked from his freckles back to the blueness of his eyes. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
He didn’t say anything, only nodded.
I stared at him for a few seconds more and then put my palm up to the plastic screen. I watched him

put his hand directly across from mine on the other side, his so much larger. It seemed like such a
cheesy gesture, but I didn’t care. It was the closest I had to physical contact with him. I pretended
there wasn’t a screen, that for just a moment our skin would be allowed to touch, and I’d be able to
feel the warmth of his hand against my own.

“Let’s wrap it up, people!”
The moment was instantly over as I gathered up my coat and stood. Emry just sat there watching me.
“Goodbye.” I mouthed the word knowing he wouldn’t be able to hear me anyway.
He didn’t say or do anything back. He just sat there, watching me walk away.

Chapter 5

I was actually looking forward to Friday. I had it all planned out in my head. I would go to Buck’s
house, eat his food, make chit-chat, ask more questions about jail procedures and so forth, not get too
close and go home. It would be simple and it would get me out of the house.

“You’re going to lock up then?” I asked my mother as I glanced around the store one more time to
see if anything else needed to be done.

 

My mother nodded her head slowly as she chewed on a large bite of donut that she had just stuffed
in her mouth. She put the donut down and dabbed her lips with a small white handkerchief.
“Okay. Well, I guess I’m going to head out. I’ll be home sometime later then.” I put on my coat and
gloves and wrapped a purple knitted scarf around my neck and pulled it up over my chin.

She took a sip of water and set the Styrofoam cup down in front of her on the countertop. “Have fun,
hun. Say hi to Buck for me.” She smiled. I was becoming accustomed to that look she gave me, so full
of hope that something was sparking between Buck and I. She so desperately wanted me to be happy
and what better way than to fall in love with a policeman that just so happened to be a member at the
same church where my father was the pastor and who also had grown up in Seneca, had graduated
from the same high school and lived just a short distance away?

I just didn’t see it the same way. To me, growing up with Buck wasn’t a good thing from my point
of view. He had no mystery. You couldn’t really hold a conversation about your past because you
already knew their past. I guess I had always assumed I was meant to always live with my parents and
share a home with them. The friends I had had in high school were already married and some had
little kids. Those that still remained single I held no interest for.

Why Buck had decided suddenly he wanted to show an interest in me, I wasn’t sure. What I
supposed though was that he was simply trying to settle. He viewed me as a prospect to be with
because we had similar backgrounds and maybe he thought that would be enough, but to me, I hadn’t
known any sort of passion or needing to be with anyone before, but what I felt when I thought of Emry
or actually saw his face in person, this powerful kind of longing and happiness all at the same time,
made me realize that I could be passionate about someone in this lifetime, and that someone was
definitely not Buck Brady. I would not settle for anything less than the feeling I got from my beautiful
inmate.

I saw Buck peek out of his front window when I pulled up in front of his house. It was just a small
place on the corner of the street that had once belonged to his grandmother before she passed away.
He had moved in here only a few months after graduating high school. I had never been in the house
before, but it was a common place to drive by. I put my gloves back on and hoped he had not gone to
too much trouble with dinner.
There had better not be any candles lit on the table
, I thought to
myself.

A warm gush of air greeted me as Buck opened the screen door to let me inside. I instantly smelled
the aroma of chicken cooking and something else I couldn’t quite put my finger on, some sort of sauce.
“Smells good.” I flashed him a quick smile as he took my coat from me and put it on the back of a
nearby chair.
“I’m actually
trying
to cook. I’m using one of my mom’s recipes.” He looked at me for a moment
and then raised his arm gesturing to the living room. “Make yourself at home.”
I watched Buck dart back into the kitchen which was around the corner and out of sight. I began
looking around at the tiny living room with its wooden rocking chair and pale gray loveseat with
faded yellow flowers dotting it, the very worn orange colored carpet and light green drapes hanging
loosely on the only single window in the room. It was tidy though and much better than I had
anticipated with a bachelor living here.

I walked over to a large bookshelf that consumed the entire side wall of the room and my eyes
swept over a row of encyclopedias that had probably been there since his grandmother had lived here
and a few pictures that were beginning to collect a fair amount of dust. They were mostly photos of
Buck holding up fish, a deer that he held up by the antlers that he had just shot and another one of him
and his brother, Jackie. I had forgotten about Jackie. It had been years since I had seen him. He had
been in the military and had married a girl from Venezuela. The last I had heard they were living
somewhere down south, possibly Florida. I couldn’t recall the exact details. And the last picture was
a close-up of his grandmother’s smiling face.

“Are you doing all right in there?” Buck hollered out to me.

“I’m fine, Buck. Do you need help with anything?” I strolled into the kitchen to see what he was up
to. The kitchen was very much similar to the living room. Outdated cabinets, multicolored checkered
linoleum floor and golden countertops from the 1950s.

Buck stood over a pot on top of the stove furiously stirring as it bubbled away. I immediately found
the correct knob on the stove and turned down that particular burner.

“Thanks,” he mumbled.
“What is it?”
“It’s fettuccine Alfredo, and there’s chicken in the oven.”

The Alfredo sauce is what I had initially smelled coming in but I hadn’t been sure what it was.
“Looks almost done. Can I help set the table or anything?” I quickly looked around to find the table
and was relieved that there were no candles. There weren’t even any dishes on it yet.

“In that right-hand top shelf there,” he told me, pointing. “Yeah, right there. You can use those
plates.”

I set the table quickly and poured us each a glass of ice water as he brought over the food. It did
actually look appetizing, and I hadn’t realized how hungry I actually was until I saw it. I had skipped
over lunch today and had only had a small bowl of cereal for breakfast before going to the store this
morning.

Buck sat down across from me and grinned, proud of himself for actually putting together this meal.
“You don’t get a homemade meal often, do you?” I asked him, taking a sip of my water.
“Does this dinner count?”
“No.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “Then no, I don’t, and when I do, I’m not the one to have made it.”
“Can’t wait to taste it, Buck.”

He said grace quickly and then we filled our plates with pasta and chicken. The meat was a little
dry but the fettuccine Alfredo was surprisingly really good, so I just smothered my chicken in the
sauce so I would be able to swallow it more easily.

We didn’t talk about much of anything during dinner. We ate until there was not much left, and I
helped him rinse off the dishes and put them in a small dishwasher he had hooked up beside the sink.
“It was really good. I have to admit, I’m pretty impressed,” I said, seeing him instantly glow with
pride.

 

He dried the water from his hands and tossed the towel onto the counter. “Why, thank you. That was
a definite first for me.”

“You should try cooking for yourself more often. It beats fast food every night.” I followed Buck
into the living room. He sat down on the gray loveseat. I glanced around. I didn’t have many choices
to sit. It was either the uncomfortable-looking, hard, wooden rocking chair or the other side of the
loveseat, so I sat down next to him, but tried to position my body in a manner that was away from him
at the same time.

He smiled and his hand moved toward the remote and then the TV flickered on. “So, I forgot to go
to the movie store after going to get groceries today,” he started to explain. “I don’t have very many
DVDs. Maybe something good will be on a movie station.”

I watched him go through stations one by one and read the titles at the top of the screen as he
searched for something to watch. I knew he had been secretly kicking himself for not grabbing a
movie on his way home today. The TV offered very little choices as well.

“So, are you enjoying your week off?” I asked, anxious to get the conversation revolving around the
jail.

 

A news channel popped up and Buck rested the remote on the arm of the loveseat as he thought
about the question momentarily.

 

“Yes and no.”

 

“No? You’d rather be working?” I asked, surprised. But then again, I liked to keep busy, too. He
was probably the same way.

He repositioned himself on the couch so that he could be slightly closer to me. “Well, I just get
bored sitting around here all day. There’s only so much sleeping I can do before I’m just not tired
anymore.” He chuckled at his own little joke.

“I know what you mean.” I thought about all the questions I wanted to ask and then tried to focus on
the ones that I
could
ask. “So how exactly does your schedule work? Do you switch shifts?”

“It really depends on the week. Mostly I am always daylight, but sometimes I get a few third shifts
in there where I’m working till 7:00a.m. If I work so many days in a row, I get a few off as comp
time.”

This was going to be more difficult to follow than I had thought. He didn’t seem to really know all
the times he was working, so how on earth was I going to know when he was there or not there?
Maybe I could just start looking for his car, but the jail was so large and there was a parking garage.
Were there special places allotted just for police staff to park?

“So what do you do?”

 

“What do you mean?” he asked, putting his arm up on the back of the loveseat, the smell of his spicy
deodorant filling my nostrils as he did so.

“Well,” I began slowly. “Like are you always at the jail when you work?”
“Sometimes there. Sometimes in the car driving around with my partner, Rod. Have you ever met
Rod?” He paused to think for a moment. “No, I guess you wouldn’t know him. He’s something else.
He’s a riot.” He thought about something in his head, Rod I supposed, and then laughed about
whatever it was he was thinking about. “Your dad was actually down the other day passing around
those pamphlets of his again.” He stared at me, waiting for a reaction.