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She put a hand on his throat, rubbed gently. He could feel that his voice was hoarse. From sleep, yeah, but he’d also smoked a lot this week. “Yeah, sorry. I keep lozenges in my truck.”
She called up a dialogue box and typed. “You need to cut back. Not my business or my choice, but I care.”
“Yeah, Maryshka says the same. She’s the only one in the shop that doesn’t smoke.”
Her next sentence handed the question back to him, rather than answering it herself. “How about you? What did you want to be?”
In the dead of night, sitting with a woman like this, after the day they’d shared, he was susceptible to saying things he probably shouldn’t. But the words came out anyway. “In middle school, I imagined being this kid my brother and I beat up.”
At her startled look, he knew he’d roped himself into having to explain. “We only intended to take his lunch from him. It wasn’t long after my mom died. Being an angry asshole was my only goal in life. The kid had a note in his lunch.I’m proud of you –Mom.That’s why I wished to be him. Living a life like that. The note was what made us decide to beat him up. Colt dropped it on his chest after and gave him an extra kick in the nuts. Probably ended his chance of having a family. Good times.”
She met his gaze, held a beat, then started typing. “The technology expanded my communication options. Through that, I discovered anything in that field interested me. In middle school, some kids pretended to be my friends so I’d break into the school’s computer system and upgrade test scores and report cards, download exams. Find teacher addresses so they could egg the houses of their least favorite ones on Halloween.”
She wasn’t hesitating, the words flowing across the screen, suggesting it was the same kind of memory as his. A distant pain she’d moved on from, but a significant turning point, even if only in hindsight.
“When a couple of them were caught on the cheating, they sold me out. The principal, Mrs. Standwell, sat me down. Pushed a piece of candy across her desk to me. Let it sit there whileshe ate one herself. She said, ‘When you’re standing behind a wall, screaming silently for people to see you, get to know you, become your real friend, you can become desperate enough to accept the ones that most definitely aren’t.’”
He laid his hand on her leg. She glanced at him and kept typing. “Just like you, I had the whole I-don’t-give-a-shit attitude down, but the way she said it and looked at me, cracked something. She told me if I’d show them how I had gotten into the system and offer some suggestions for improving their security, she wouldn’t expel me. She also transferred me into an advanced English class with Mrs. Warren. She said, ‘When you communicate differently from others, your command of words is as important as knowing ones and zeroes.’”
A tight smile. “She also told me if I fucked with Mrs. Warren—yes, she used those words—‘She will tie you to a chair and read you obscure sonnets until your ears bleed.’”
Tiger grinned as Skye closed the dialogue box and swiveled her chair in his direction. “Did you test that out?” he asked.
She mouthed, “Hell no,” confirming that Mrs. Warren had lived up to her terrifying rep.
“If you’re still serious about wanting to learn, want to come over to my place next weekend and learn how to tune a bike?”
Crazy, but after he threw it out there, he found himself holding his breath a little until she nodded. He liked the sparkle of interest in her gaze. Then she sobered.
“You haven’t asked me again, how I lost my voice.” She signed then typed it as well.
“You answer it if you want to, Mistress. I get the feeling it’s not an easy one to answer.”
She gave him that penetrating look she often had during a session. It made him curious about her intent, until she opened a document she must have typed while he was asleep. Shegestured to it,Read, then pantomimed a cup of tea or coffee, a question. He shook his head, telling her he was fine.
When she went to get her own, he watched her. The sweet movement of her backside under the llama print, the delicate protrusion of her shoulder blades beneath the thin pink shirt, the tilt of her head. How she brushed her hair from her forehead as she took a mug from the cabinets.
His gaze slid back to that picture of the two of them. She’d left it up, and it stayed in his peripheral vision as he began to read what she’d pulled up on the screen for him.
“Car crash when I was four. They think it was the result of traumatic brain injury, but the final decision was idiopathic mutism. Meaning they don’t really know why my ability to speak never returned, even after everything else healed and seemed fine.
“My father was driving. ‘I’ll take your voice with me to heaven / I’ll listen to you sing every day / You’re an angel like no other.’ I thought he was singing that to me. I had my hands on his face, in his hair, holding on, but he said, ‘keep your eyes closed, baby.’
“The raised bed of the truck in front of us had smashed through our windshield. It took his head off. It had ended up in my lap, where I sat in back in my car seat. They had to pry my fingers off of it.”
Jesus Christ.He glanced toward the kitchen.She was steeping her tea, her back to him. She’d typed it the way he suspected she’d thought about it, rough and disjointed, circling around and cutting through, no real flow. That was how you had to talk about something this difficult, cutting it into pieces and scrambling it so the whole cohesive picture didn’t crush you. He got that. He returned to reading.
“When I sawThe Little Mermaid, the part where Ursula took Ariel’s voice, I thought it meant I’d get it back when I eventuallymet my prince and had true love’s kiss. I was little when I believed that, but it still went through my mind the first time a boy kissed me.
“After I got over the disappointment of it not being true,” –eye roll and silly face emojis that gave him a painful smile—
“I thought, ‘if I get my voice back, my father won’t have it up in heaven to hear me sing to him.’ So I realized I didn’t want it back. I’d borrow other voices to create one for myself. He could keep mine.”
She was leaning against the brick pillar outside the kitchen, looking at him. He could smell the fragrance of the tea. Rising, he went to her. He took her tea and set it aside, then drew her into his arms. Hers slipped around his back, and her body lifted in a sigh, a letting-it-out. He put his head down over hers.
It was life, wasn’t it? All these horrible and wondrous things together. The best way to handle it was to know when you needed to balance it. And who with.
He’d given her a lot of himself today, things he hadn’t told anyone. She’d given him back the same. He wanted to give her more. The invitation hadn’t been there earlier, but the need was there now. And she looked tired.
