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She’s tearing up again.
“What’s wrong?” I pull her into my chest and wrap my arms around her. “You’re home, baby. Don’t cry.”
“I can’t help it,” she says. “I feel so bad because now my dad is going to have you guys shut down and possibly fined even more money.”
“No, no, he’s not,” I tell her, which is true.
Tony was so freaked out by the threat that he called the county clerk’s office and put all the rest of the past-due balance on his AmEx so that they couldn’t do anything if Barry Berry did still call the police.
It was actually a very big thing of Tony to do, considering he’s been trying to get out of paying his half since we started paying those fines off a while back.
He was convinced that if we filed a court case, we would win, since the main nature of our business is photography and he thinks we shouldn’t be categorized as a modeling agency.
But now the matter has been put to rest.
I tell Brittany this, which I think makes her feel a little better.
“I’m sorry I didn’t defend you when he said that about calling the cops on you,” she tells me. “I was just so caught off guard.”
“Well… it’s not like there’s anything you could have done,” I tell her. “And I think you were in shock.”
“Yeah, but I love you and I should have tried to stop him, or I should have at least told him that I love you to get across how much I was willing to do to keep him away.”
I pause a moment, those first few words hitting me with a bit of a lag and kind of in slow motion.
“You love me?” I ask her, not sure she’s even realized what she’s said.
“Oh, it’s too soon again, isn’t it?” she asks.
But just before she apologizes, I put a finger upon her lips to stop her.
“Shh… no. It’s not too soon. I’ve been trying not to say I love you since the moment you came into the studio for the first time. But I do, Brittany Barry. I love you and I never want to be apart from you again, and if you ever run away like that again, you had better take me with you because I never want to be without you again.”
And then we kiss, and I’m surprised by just how each kiss seems to somehow become more and more ecstatic than the one before.
“And you know, babe,” I say when I pull away, “You don’t ever have to see that man again. I will make sure of it.”
“Oh, yeah?” a voice calls from down the stairs.
And there’s Barry, rounding up a few more steps and cornering us here.
“Dude, how many places are you going to show up to that no one wants you at today?” I ask him.
“Fuck off, pedo,” he says.
“What the fuck did you just call me?” I ask, a new fury blazing inside me, as if someone just lit a match and dropped it into a barrel of gasoline. I pounce down the stairs toward him with my fists curled into balls, ready to strike, when I feel Brittany’s hands wrap and my wrist and pull me back, just like that first night when I was showing her the house.
“Stop, Simon,” she tells me as I turn to her. “I need to handle this once and for all, and I need to do it myself or I will regret it and be doomed to repeat it for the rest of my life.”
I look from her to Barry, then back to her.
“Fine,” I say. “But don’t get any closer to him in case he starts swinging again.”
And she doesn’t. She perches on the edge of her step nine stairs above him and starts digging around in her purse that’s still hanging over her shoulder.
She finally procures from it a Bic lighter and a single, slightly crumpled cigarette, which she lights and takes a few drags off of before addressing her father.
“You’re smoking now?” he asks her, which is a question I actually would like to know more about, but I feel like now’s not the time to be demanding things of her, even if they are just answers.
“I’ve always smoked. But now I only do it when I’m in a high-stress situation, and newsflash, Barry: you are the stressful situation.”
“Excuse me?” he asks her, as she spews grey smoke out all over him.
“I said you… are the… biggest source of anxiety… that all of womankind has ever known.”
She then takes another drag off of it. She’s not raising her voice like before. She’s not ever becoming temperamental.
For a moment I have to wonder what the fuck is rolled into that cigarette because this is not a side of Brittany I’ve yet had the pleasure of meeting before today.
