Her eyes fill again. She nods, pressing her lips together.
I pull her in and hold her against me.
My chin rests on top of her head, and I stare at the dark tree line behind Backroads and think about Dale Creedy.
His truck and his smile and the twelve years he did for putting his hands on women.
He's been circling the woman in my arms for weeks.
He stood three feet from her and said her daddy's name.
The part of me that's a college student, the part that sits in lectures and takes notes and worries about probability distributions, goes very far away.
The part of me that's a brother—patched or not—steps forward.
"I need you to tell me everything." I press my mouth against her hair. "From the beginning. Don't leave anything out."
She nods against my chest, and she tells me every last detail.
CHAPTER NINE
Saylor
Telling someone the truth doesn't make you lighter. It makes you hollow.
The morning after I told Rookie everything, I wake up in my apartment feeling scraped clean.
Like someone took a spatula to the inside of my ribcage and removed whatever was keeping me upright.
He didn't flinch. He didn't look at me differently.
He held me on a freezing porch while I cried, and then he followed me home and sat outside until my lights went off.
He texted at midnight:
Doors locked?
I texted back:
Yeah.
Ten seconds might have gone by before he texted me again:
I'll handle this.
I don't know what "handle this" means in his world.
Part of me doesn't want to know. The rest of me is so tired of being afraid that someone else's willingness to carry the weight feels like oxygen.
* * *
By Thursday night, everything feels different. Not the temperature. The way people look at me.
I’m at Backroads, and a woman I've served a dozen times takes her chardonnay from my grip without making eye contact and moves to the far end of the counter.
Two guys at a high-top go silent when I bring their beers. One mutters something after I turn away. His buddy shushes him.
Not out of respect. Out of awareness that I'm close enough to hear.