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“You gonna eat?” I asked.
She swallowed, then hesitantly nodded.
I sat on the edge of the bed beside her, then leaned forward to open both pizza boxes on the dresser. “That’s mine, this is yours. Dig in.”
“You’re pissed off,” she whispered.
“Yeah. I’ll deal.”
“He’s relentless,” she muttered.
“I’ve got your back. Let’s eat.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip, then shook her head. “I think I should phone my father. Maybe I should do that before I eat and get it done. Hopefully he doesn’t ruin my appetite.”
I pulled my phone out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Forgot drinks. What do you want?”
“Anything. Water. Gatorade. Juice or Coke. Whatever.”
“Be back.” I kissed her nose, setting her phone on the bed in case she needed to grab his contact info. “Ignore the door if he knocks again.”
I saw Skip on my way into the kitchen, leaned against a doorway with Axel and how the conversation stopped along with the vibe left me sure he was bitching about me.
“Brothers,” I greeted.
“Jess.” Axel gave me a fist bump.
Skip said nothing, just folded his arms over his chest and flexed his jaw at the same time as his biceps.
I grabbed a beer for me, a red Powerade for her.
***
She was on the phone, toying with a loose thread on the comforter.
“I’ll figure it out. Okay, bye.” She ended the call and passed me the phone.
I tossed my phone to the dresser beside hers as I put the drinks down. “Everything good?”
“As expected.” She opened the pizza box. “Thank you for this. I’m actually hungry, surprisingly.”
“Good.”
I waited to see if she’d say anything about her father. After a minute of silence where she stared off into space, I unmuted the small television that was mounted on the wall, asking, “What’s this?”
“Gilmore Girls. You can change it if you want. I’ve binged the whole series about eight times.”
“It’s all right. We can leave it on. So, I’ve got a joint chapter church tonight. We’ll head out in the morning, back to the cabin. Yeah?”
“Okay.”
“Unless… anything else you need to do here first? Anybody you wanna see?”
“Nope,” she popped the p with sarcasm and took a bite of the pizza.
“Conversation go bad with your father?”
“It went as expected.”
She offered no more information, so I dropped it and dug into my pizza.
“How is it?” I asked a few minutes later.
“Hm?”
“The no gluten pizza?”
“It’s not bad. This is the place I got it from living here.”
“You got an apartment? You need to check your mail or water your plants while we’re here?”
She shook her head. “I couldn’t keep a plant alive if my own life depended on it. And I packed all my shit into my car when I came to Aberdeen. I was just renting a furnished room with a mini fridge and a hot plate.”
“Ah.”
“I let it go when I knew I had to leave. No job to be able to keep paying rent somewhere I wasn’t gonna be.” She shrugged. “Guess I’m homeless for the moment.”
“Where’s your father?”
“Here.”
“Here?”
“Sioux Falls, I mean.”
She offered no further information. Considers herself homeless despite the fact that she’s got a father and an aunt in town.
“Hard day,” I said. “The cop shop. Your aunt’s bad news.” Not to mention how bitchy her aunt was.
“Yeah. Hard day.” She scoffed. “Hard life. Just another day in the life of Gianna Jones.” She took another bite of her slice.
“Not every day you gotta identify the body of someone you care about and find out someone else you care about has cancer, baby.”
She washed down what was in her mouth while shrugging, then replied. “No, not every day, and I knew somethin’ was up when she said she had an appointment because that woman prides herself on not having seen a doctor since she was a kid. It’s gotta be bad if she finally dragged herself to one. But yeah… when the hits come at you on an ongoing basis, it becomes the norm.”
I squeezed her shoulder. She leaned into me, then changed her mind and moved over, straightening up. “I’m not lookin’ for a pity party, sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. None of this is on you.”
She set her eyes back on the TV.
I watched her chick television show with her while I ate a few slices, pondering shit before I rolled a joint, smoked half of it, offered it to her and she declined. She was yawning. Not talking. Still as far away as she could get on the bed. And though it wasn’t far, couldn’t be with just a double bed in a tiny room, it was clear to me she was trying to be aloof with me. I’d given her multiple openings to get shit off her chest, but she didn’t take any of those cues.
I decided to take a shower. Reflect for a minute before I settled on what move needed to come next. Either remove emotion from this thing and just look after her until this was done, or… make a declaration to her – tell her straight up where I was at and give her a chance to show me if she’s down to be in this with me.
