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She’s quick to respond, “I’ll walk with you.”
With that, I spin the combination on my lock and hang my bookbag over one shoulder. She looks up at me with those sweet eyes as she twists her hair around her finger like she’s won. She knew I couldn’t tell her no. She’s my weakness.
“We can do whatever you want,” she offers with a shrug that lifts her tank top up, exposing a bit of skin on her hip. She’s quick to pull it down and cover herself back up and that alone is enough to make my fingers itch to touch her there.
“I think your idea of fun and mine are different, Harlow.” She flinches at her name and I almost think I’ve fucked up somehow, but I know that’s her name. I’ve whispered it over and over alone in bed.
She wrinkles her nose and says, “I don’t like it when you do that.”
“Do what?” I ask her.
“When you call me Harlow.”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, but I don’t know. It just sounds weird with you saying it,” she answers me, continuing to follow me as I walk past two groups of kids that are clogging up the entrance to the school. I walk down three steps and although I felt her hold onto my backpack as I shifted through the people, I don’t feel her anymore. I almost spin around to see if she’s still with me, but the second I cave into temptation, I feel her soft hand brush against mine. It’s like a spark of heat, a stroke of warmth and recognition flowing through me. I have to grip the straps at my shoulders to keep from taking her hand in mine.
My eyes narrow as I take in her words as the crowd slowly dissipates, walking toward the school buses lined up in rows. I don’t get on mine and neither does she. She’s so different. She’s an odd girl, beautiful and naïve, but also alarmingly raw and genuine.
The sun’s hotter than I thought it’d be; I’m already sweating, so I stop on the edge of the sidewalk that lines the asphalt road to the school to take off my t-shirt, displaying the plain white undershirt beneath. My eyes never leave her face though. I see how she looks at me and I love it.
“I saw you like playing cards,” she says and tears her eyes away. Licking her lips, she starts walking again as I pick up my bookbag.
“Is that right?” I ask her. I bet she doesn’t know shit about cards. I could teach her though.
“You were playing poker in free period.” She’s not in my free period. I give her a side-eye and it makes her blush. She’s caught red-handed, but that doesn’t make her miss a beat in her stride. My steps slow as we round Second Street. The turning point between my way home and hers.
“You gotta go home.” I almost say her name, but I don’t. I hate how it makes her flinch, but I do love the way it feels on my tongue.
“I can go where I want to,” she bites back and looks up at me with a sharpness I didn’t see coming.
I can tell her she doesn’t belong down here, but she already knows.
I can tell her I don’t want to walk with her, but that’s a lie and I’m not sure she really gives a shit.
I can tell her I want her to come back to my room and I’ll teach her how to play. But that’s just taking advantage of the sweet little thing she is. Isn’t it?
“You just won’t quit, will you?” I ask her.
A trace of a smile plays at her lips and then she slowly shakes her head, making her backpack sway along with her dirty blonde hair. “Nope.”
My head shakes in frustration as I look back down my street. The city’s on a hill and the top, where we are now, isn’t so bad. There’s a nice park nearby and up the street are some pretty rich housing areas. But the closer you get to the bottom, to where the houses for the steel mill workers were first built, the houses aren’t the nicest, to say the least. That’s where I live. It’s littered with five-and-dimes and liquor stores. And nothing else but where we live.
And I don’t want her there.
The shame is something I didn’t expect.
“Ha—Hally,” I give her a nickname on the spot. “Let’s go this way,” I tell her and splay my hand on her lower back, sliding it under her bookbag. At first, she looks like she’s going to protest, but she accepts it.
She likes my hand on her. She likes the nickname I gave her. She likes me.
There’s no cure for the sickness she gave me that day by letting me lead her away from where I grew up. If she’d listened to me, who knows where we’d be now. But Hally doesn’t listen and as much as she pushed me, I pushed her right back.
Knock!Knock! Knock!The obnoxious sound of repeated banging on my door pulls me back into the present.
It pisses me off more than anything else.
The door opens quickly, hurriedly, but I stay still in my seat, grinding my teeth with frustration. I watch as Julie opens the door, allowing the sounds of the set to flood into the small room before closing it quickly behind her.
