Page 19
“What do you mean about it not being safe to go home?” Joseph asks.
“Forget it,” I snap.
As I reach for the door handle, he reaches for me. His hand wraps lightly around my wrist, and he gently tugs me towards him.
“Delilah. Talk to me,” he coaxes.
The bouncer looks in our direction. I sigh and take a step away from the door. Joseph must recognise the dampening of my annoyance because he takes a few more steps away from the club, pulling me with him by the wrist.
He walks me across the street towards a fast-food restaurant. It’s quiet this time of night, but I know in a couple of hours it’ll be filled with the last stragglers who are leaving the club, proclaiming that nothing is going to hit the spot more than a plate of greasy chips and a fatty burger.
Joseph leads me inside and towards an empty table, far away from any of the other diners. I take a seat, but instead of sitting down, he walks off to the counter. I watch as he talks to the woman behind the counter, hands over his cash card, and then comes back to the table. He sits opposite me.
“Aren’t your friends going to miss you?” I ask after a small silence.
“No. I’ll message them in a minute, or I’ll see them back in the club in a bit.” He gives a small shrug.
“Two black coffees. Your food is on the way.” The woman who had been behind the counter arrives at the table, putting two mugs in front of us. She gives us a beaming smile and then leaves us.
“I ordered you some food. I hope you don’t mind,” he explains.
“You shouldn’t have done that. I can’t pay you back.”
“You can pay me back by telling me what you meant about it not being safe to go home.”
“Nothing.”
“Liar,” he shoots at me.
He reminds me of Felix in a way. Not that his expression gives away everything he’s thinking, but that he seems so quick to recognise the lies in mine.
“I can’t tell you. You’d make a huge deal out of it with the school, and I don’t want that.”
“Dee.” He leans forward in his seat. “You can trust me. I promise.”
I shrug and adopt the same pose I usually do at lunchtime, shoulders hunched forward as I stare at him from underneath my fringe. He sits back in his seat and stops coaxing me to talk. He just sips his coffee, looking relaxed and unbothered.
Eventually, the silence between us becomes uncomfortable. It’s lasted long enough for our order to be prepared, the server popping two plates filled with food in front of us. They’re both the same—a double-stacked beef burger, chips, a side portion of onion rings, hash browns, and a giant pickle.
“You didn’t have to do this,” I state, trying to ignore the rumbling of my stomach. Breakfast this morning had been non-existent given the only slice of bread remaining had specks of mould and the milk had spoilt. Lunch was the dry ham sandwich and the banana.
“Eat, Dee.”
He slides one of the plates towards me, and my desire to be polite vanishes. He’s already paid for the food, and if I don’t eat it out of principle, he’s still down the money and I’m still hungry. Nobody wins that way.
I grab a knife and fork from the holder at the side of the table, then the salt and vinegar so I can season the chips. I drench them in vinegar and add far more salt than any medical professional would consider healthy, but I like them best this way.
He starts to eat his food, picking his chips up between his forefinger and thumb and eating them slowly. Like when I’ve seen him eat at school, everything seems so precise.
“My parents split when I was a kid. Mum has her struggles. She has boyfriends, on and off. They range from shitty to really shitty. The one who’s there tonight, he’s the top of the really shitty variety. He’s the same guy who was there the night I went home with your roommate. On the nights I don’t want to go home, I go to a club and find a guy who looks like he’s had a fair amount to drink. I let them take me home because it’s preferable to being at home.”
I spill out the information as I keep my gaze on my food.
“I’m sorry,” he says, tone soft and sincere.
“It is what it is.”
“Have you spoken to anybody at school?”
