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"Can I go in and talk to her?"
"Sure, if she'll let you into her room. That's like her fortress. I haven't been in there a single day since she came home."
That made sense because right now, he was more like the enemy. Leia saw him as she did all men—to her, they were assholes who kept abandoning and bullying her.
She couldn't see he was different because Reed, for all the golden warmth in his heart, had a shitty way with words.
"Okay, can't lose anything by trying."
He simply made a "fuck it all" gesture with his hands, flapping them around like an annoyed seagull.
I didn't want him to be mad at me, though. So I placed a placating palm on his shoulder, but it only made him wince. Taken aback, I retreated two steps. "Are you ... is everything okay?"
His expression altered again. It was like watching one of those Netflix shows where events just kept changing at a whim, and you couldn't make head or tail of anything, so you clung to the subtitles for dear life.
"I'm sorry," he muttered, his teeth set. "I can't think straight."
I tipped my head forward. "Don't worry. I'll see what I can do."
Inside their place, Asher was keeping in tune with a number by Leonard Cohen as he cooked lunch. The smell of fried clams made my mouth water. He looked up at me as I passed and grinned. "Stay for food?"
I smiled back. "Sure, come get me from Leia's room if I don't return in an hour. It'll probably be because she'll have killed me and buried all evidence."
He gave me a thumbs up, and I chuckled, moving past the kitchen, their small living room, and to Leia's bedroom door. I knocked gently.
"Go away. I hate you."
"I totally get that," I replied. "But it's not your dad. Unless you believe he's learned to mime my voice or somethin'. Can I come in?"
There was a momentary silence. I heard the soft patter of her bare feet on the engineered wood floor. The knob turned, and she opened the door. Her face was red and puffed from the tears she hadn't cried in front of her father.
If my heart had broken for Reed, it shattered for Leia.
I stepped inside and closed the bedroom door behind me. She immediately turned away as if embarrassed to show the world she could have any feelings except hate and anger.
Only, I didn't think she had any anger in her bones at all. Or hate, either. It was all just a deep-seated, desperate plea that no one around her could hear.
Listen to what I can't say.
I left her to her devices for a minute and just looked around the room. A vintage copy ofA Streetcar Named Desirelay open on her study table. It was heavily marked and well past the stage of being just read once.
That made me smile. It was what I did to books as well, particularly the ones that touched my frayed nerves and made me a better person.
My eyes caught sight of an open packet of sanitary napkins below the table. I exhaled.Veedawouldn't be my first choice, and she'd likely resorted to it because she didn't know head or tail about navigating through the bloodbath that was invading her life.
I had to find a way to speak about this without sticking my foot in my mouth. Back when I'd had my first encounter with riding the crimson wave, my mama had shrieked louder than me.
She meant to tell me everything was fine, but like most well-intentioned parents, the four-course meal and all the talk about "becoming a woman" that followed only served to freak me the fuck out.
So I definitely didn't want the same for Leia.
"How many times have you read this play?" I asked her instead, picking up the copy. "Did you watch it?"
She shook her head. "I can't go through the writing without bawling my eyes out. I don't think I'll survive a single sitting."
And she was right.
There was something about tragic women in literature, their dreams tinged in magnolia and woven in lace—and how they gave their lives to men who did not deserve the benefit of worshiping even their toenails.
