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I don’t really know if I was or if I wasn’t. I’d grown more than accustomed to conquering a grumbling appetite. I knew how to go longer than a seventeen-year-old should without a good meal.
I said “sort of”, because I didn’t really want the moment to end. Because I wanted to stay there a little longer, with Conor slouched across from me on an upturned milk crate. Because if you don’t have a family, anyone can be family. You don’t know any fucking different, after all.
Conor still didn’t meet my eye as he got up from the table. He hid his face behind a kitchen cabinet door and grumbled, “Cereal all right?”
“I guess, yeah.” I grinned. Cereal sounded perfect. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d imagined something as simple as someone pouring me a bowl of cereal in the morning. Sure the morning in my daydreams had been closer to 9 a.m. than 2 a.m., and there had been sunlight and maybe even some laughter, which I certainly didn’t expect to get in the current scenario, but still. It was all there otherwise: the sound of the cereal crinkling in the plastic, the uncapping of the milk, the glug, glug, glug as it went into the bowl, the rifling through the drawer for a suitable spoon. I nearly cried when Conor slid the bowl toward me, careful, it seemed, not to get too close, and I saw that it was Lucky Charms. Wasn’t it every child’s dream to get Lucky Charms in the morning?
“Thanks,” I mumbled, either too embarrassed or too emotional to say anything else.
I stared down at the bowl for long enough to almost forget Conor there across from me, pouring more whiskey (and no more tea) into his cup. I’d heard about the ways kids at school had eaten their Lucky Charms. Eat all the marshmallows first, they’re the best part! No, you have to save them till the end! If you get a few marshmallows in each bite, each bite will be good!
I scooped up a single rainbow on the tip of my spoon and raised it carefully to my tongue. It was sweet. From there I lost any patience for any particular method. I just ate. And ate. And enjoyed.
At some point I noticed Conor was now looking at me. How long had he been doing that? What had he been thinking? Had he too been wondering about how he would draw me? Did the temptation to draw me as he saw me through the crack in the bathroom door ever creep into his mind?
When I met his gaze, he did not turn away as usual. On his face was a cocktail of emotion. I saw the lingering coals of anger, burning low, but burning nonetheless. There was something in the fine lines around his eyes that I interpreted as distant pain, like he’d been anguished for such a long period that his muscles remembered the position. I saw little flickers of irritation, of frustration, of impatience, sparks from the fire. I saw confusion. I saw, or maybe I just thought I saw, wished I saw, a trace of lust as he wet his bottom lip with his tongue. There was the kind of self-loathing I knew from looking in the mirror. Was that what I was to Conor? A mirror? But I saw, most of all, the tenseness of fear.
Conor took another shot of whiskey, this time straight from the bottle, not bothering any longer with the cup that he had set hastily aside. When he spoke his voice was strangled.
“You…you…in that…that place…”
If he hadn’t pushed aside the whiskey bottle as well it would have rattled against the table in his quivering hands. I watched as Conor hid them beneath the table, wiping his palms once, twice, three times against his thighs.
I saw that it was a strain on him to not look away. I didn’t understand why I pained him so. Why the very sight of me seemed to grip his body like a violent fever.
“Aurnia,” he said, trying to gain more control of his voice and only half succeeding, “you live there? In that place? With those…with those animals?”
I don’t know why exactly this made me indignant. I owed no loyalty to the man I called father. I had no happy memories from those four walls that made up the trailer. I myself hated the place, loathed it, feared going home to it every night. It made me shiver just thinking about it.
I guess to admit how horrible it was would be to admit that I needed saving from it. To admit that I needed saving from it would be to admit that no one had saved me from it. And to not be saved when you needed saving…well, what else was there to believe other than that you weren’t worth saving?
“It’s not that bad,” I said, raising my chin defiantly.
I was suddenly aware of the wet chill of my hair. Suddenly aware of the draft Conor’s billowing sweatshirt allowed. Suddenly aware that this was the apartment of a man who I hardly knew, who, up until that point, would not remain alone with me for more than absolutely necessary. Suddenly aware that this was not home.
How had I so easily forgotten that I had no home? How had he made it so easy to forget?
“Answer the question,” was all that Conor said, ignoring entirely my bravado.
“I do just fine there.”
Conor fixed his gaze even more intensely on me as he repeated his words through clenched teeth, “Answer me.”
His insistence only made me dig in my heels further.
“Nothing has ever happened,” I said.
I jumped when Conor pounded his fists on the table. It made the bottle topple over and spill whiskey over the edge, the teacup clattered in its porcelain saucer, and the empty bowl slid off and shattered on the floor. After the burst of noise it was silent once more. Except now, added to the hiss of the radiator was the drip, drop of whiskey and Conor’s panting breaths.
With poison in my voice, I glared at Conor and said, “Yes.”
Conor stood and began to pace.
“Is that what you want to hear?” I said to him. “You want me to tell you that I live there, alone, unprotected, in that horrible place?”
“No, you don’t.”
I blinked. “I’m sorry?”
