Chapter Thirteen Fitz
The last thing Fitz needed at the end of this nightmare of a day was Ren singing her face off in the shower. Even if she was singing Dolly Parton—and even if she was actually doing a pretty good job of it—he’d been looking forward to ten blissful minutes of pretending he was alone in the room.
Though…if he’d taken her up on her offer to sleep in the car, he could’ve been alone right now. That was on him. She was little but scrappy, and probably would have been just fine sleeping in a Holiday Inn parking lot. Unfortunately, Fitz knew better than most what kind of human trash was out there. No matter how much she annoyed him, he wouldn’t have slept for a minute knowing she was out there alone.
And look. She’d made a bed for him out of extra blankets. She was trying to be useful. He could give partial credit for that.
Taking his bag to the makeshift bed, he pulled out his chargers and searched the walls, finally locating an outlet jammed behind a table leg, and plugged in his phone. He’d avoid his parents’ calls until the end of time but at least tried to check in with Mary every few days.
The line rang once, then again, before she picked up. “Hey, baby.”
At the sound of her soft, smoke-weathered voice, Fitz felt his muscles unwinding. He settled back on the makeshift bed. “Hi, Mare.”
“It’s late. You make it to Missoula all right?” she asked.
“Yeah. Easy drive.”
“Still gettin’ here this weekend?”
“That’s the plan.” He winced as Ren started belting “My Tennessee Mountain Home,” and the sound echoed around the bathroom and out to where he was sitting. Fitz raised his voice, suddenly desperate to get off the line. “Not much else to report, so I guess—”
“Who’s that?”
He squeezed his eyes closed. “Who’s what?”
Mary laughed, husky and thick. “I hear a girl singing in your room, child, don’t play the fool with me.”
“Must be the housekeeping in the hall.”
Her silence communicated the skepticism he could easily imagine on her face. But when she spoke, he heard only her smile: “Are you bringing someone when you visit?”
“No,” he said, too fast, too sharply. Relenting, he admitted, “She’s a classmate who needed a ride. It’s not like that between us.” For some bewildering reason, he added, “She couldn’t afford the bus or plane.”
“That’s nice of you, sweet boy.”
“Nah, it’s fine,” he said.
A silence lingered on the other end. “But if it’s just the two of you, you know what that means, don’t you? Means it’s your job to look after her whether you like her or not.”
A tiny ache flared in his ribs at the idea of Mary at this age at the mercy of a stranger the way Ren was right now. If anyone understood that Fitz’s life had been hard, it was Mary—because hers had been hard, too.
This, right here, was why he’d never let Ren sleep in the car.
“Of course I will, Mare, you know me.”
“You’re a good boy.”
I’m not, he thought. But to the only woman who mattered to him, he said, “I’m trying.”
By the time the door to the bathroom opened, Fitz was off the call and contemplating whether he wanted to Postmates some late-night burgers or burritos. He was starving. He was also resigned to the fact that he’d be floating Ren for this trip. Despite what everyone assumed, Fitz wasn’t flush with cash, but he worked hard and didn’t spend much; he wasn’t strapped, either. Later, he’d worry about how she’d pay him back. For now, hunger took priority.
“Burgers or burritos?” he asked without looking up.
“Fitz! That’s my bed!”
Now he did look up. All that hair was somehow wrapped up in a towel. She was wearing a too-big T-shirt that he hoped was covering sleep shorts, but the only thing that extended past the hem of the shirt was her long, smooth legs. In her arms was a bundle of clothing; a thin white bra strap dangled from the pile, and he immediately looked away, unwilling to put bras and Ren in the same thought.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, his eyes back on his phone.
“The bed,” she said, and stepped into view so he was looking down at her bare feet. “I made that for myself. You paid for the room, you get to sleep in the real bed.”
“It’s fine.”
“Fitz—”
“Ren.” He cut her off, looking up again. “I’m not arguing about this. I’m too hungry. Just tell me if you prefer burgers or burritos.”
A brief pause, and then: “I’ve never had a burrito before. Are they good?”
He sat up. “Are they good? Is that a serious question?” He was going to have to stop being surprised every time they ran into something Ren hadn’t experienced, but some things were beyond his comprehension. He couldn’t imagine life without burritos, and despite hours of annoyance today he felt a buzz of excitement for her to experience this. “Burritos it is. Trust me, you’re going to flip.”
She walked to her backpack and then approached, handing him a five-dollar bill. He pushed it away. “Let’s figure that out later, okay? I’ll keep receipts.”
“Okay, but please take the big bed.”
Fitz fell back again, rubbing himself all over the pile of blankets on the floor, rolling from his stomach to his back before sitting up again. “There,” he said. “I’ve marked it. It’s mine.”
“Please, if you think that will deter me, you clearly don’t know that I’ve slept in a pen with pigs before.”
“Gross.” That was hardly worse than some of the places he’d slept, but he didn’t bother mentioning it. He pushed to his knees to find the TV remote. “Why don’t you pick something for us to watch?”
Ren took the remote like he was handing her a magic wand. “Really?”
“With great power comes great responsibility,” he told her absently, scrolling through the menu of a local Mexican joint. “Choose wisely.”
“There are so many buttons.”
“Push the red one.”
She did, and let out a gasp when the screen came to life. “Amazing.”
He submitted their food order and then watched in amusement as, through a process of trial and error that inadvertently took them to the adult movie section and quickly back out, Ren navigated to the free movie options.
“What’s good?” She paused on Clueless. “A retelling of Emma? This looks fun!”
“It’s pretty good. Hit it.”
She fell back to the bed, starfishing her arms and legs like she was making a snow angel. “I’m sure you know what I’m about to say!” she called loudly, as if he was in the other room and not eight feet away from her.
“That you’ve never been on a bed that big?”
The opening credits started, and Ren bolted up at the sound, sitting cross-legged on the mattress. Fitz dug around inside to find that kernel of annoyance at every little thing she did, but at least for tonight, it seemed to be taking a break. Their food showed up quickly, and Ren patted the mattress beside her, laying down some towels and insisting they set up a little burrito picnic on the bed. At her first bite, she let out a moan so suggestive, Fitz had to bite his cheek to keep from reacting with a laugh, a joke, something to diffuse the way his brain went haywire at the sound. One look at her, and he knew she had no idea what she’d just done.
He blinked away, back to the TV, uneasy with how quickly he found himself softening to someone who, only hours ago, was deep on his shit list.
And as if some power in the universe knew he needed to remember how annoying she could be, she hit play on the movie and peppered him with constant questions.
“Have you ever been to Beverly Hills?”
“Do you skateboard?”
“Was your high school like that?”
“Does anyone really have a closet like Cher’s?”
“What do people do at parties?”
When she asked Fitz to explain the joke about balls flying toward faces, he grabbed a pillow and pretended to smother her with it. “All right,” he said, laughing in spite of himself, “let’s just watch the movie.”
Thankfully after that Ren fell quiet, grabbing the pillow and hugging it to her chest as she watched with wide, absorbing eyes until the credits finished rolling.
Fitz walked into the bathroom, pulling his toothbrush out of the toiletry bag and running it under the water. In the other room, the TV turned off, and footsteps padded across the tiled entryway floor.
“That movie was so good,” she said, walking into the bathroom with him and running her own toothbrush under the water. “But as an adaptation of Emma?” She jammed her toothbrush in her cheek, speaking around it. “I found it a little lacking.”
Fitz raised his brows, watching her begin to brush, her mouth turning foamy. “By all means, join me,” he said wryly. He’d never even had a girlfriend long enough to create a bedtime routine with, and here Ren was, standing with him at the sink in her pajamas, unselfconsciously opening her mouth wide to reach her molars.
“Shher ish sho cwearwy bootiful an schpecial,” she garbled out, and then bent to spit.
“I caught none of that,” he said.
“Cher is so clearly beautiful and special,” Ren repeated.
“So?”
“So,” she said, leaning back against the counter to face him, “Emma is a book about a girl who is considered prized and special relative to everyone in the tiny, isolated town around her, but who is otherwise completely average.”
“Okay,” he said around his toothbrush.
“It was a cute movie but makes me think whoever wrote that missed one of Jane Austen’s most important messages.”
He bent, spitting his toothpaste into the sink. “Go write about it in your notebook, Ren, I honestly don’t care this much about Emma or Clueless.”
She followed him back into the bedroom with a brush in her hand. He hadn’t noticed during the movie when she took the towel off to let her hair air-dry, but it fell down to her butt now in gleaming metallic waves that she began to painstakingly brush through.
“I may be the first to mention it,” he said, sitting in the desk chair and spinning back and forth in a slow arc, “but your hair is super long.”
She laughed a playful har-har sound. “You don’t say.”
He watched her work through a small tangle. It was mesmerizing. And then he realized he was staring. Blinking away, he looked down at his feet instead. “Brushing it looks like a lot of work.”
“It is.”
“You ever cut it short?”
“No, but I trim it a couple times a year to keep it healthy.”
“Did you ever want to chop it off?”
She hummed, considering this, and then smiled over at him. “I never really thought about it like that. Isn’t that weird? Gloria—my mom—always had strong opinions about not cutting it, so I just went along with whatever.” Ren sighed. “I knew there would be ways that I’m different from other girls, but there are so many things I didn’t realize were weird about me until I got to school.”
The words were out before he could consider where the impulse came from: “Your hair isn’t weird. It’s just different, but not in a bad way.”
Fitz didn’t miss the way her cheeks went pink.
“I guess when I was little it was so blond it was almost white,” she said. “As I got older and read more about symbolism and the types of tokens humans in various cultures and backgrounds carry with them through life, I began to understand that my parents equate my hair with how unspoiled our lives are on the homestead.” When he looked up, he found her staring in contemplation at the wall. “They can’t go back and perfect their pasts, but they can make my upbringing perfect, you know? They took a lot of pride in raising me in the way they think everyone should be raised: without the influence of pop culture or the internet and with the ability to be completely self-sufficient.”
“Seems like your parents still have a lot of say in what you do.”
Ren sighed, breaking her trance to look over at him. In that moment, she looked so much older than she had even three hours ago. “Not as much as they’d like.” She began the complicated process of braiding her hair, and he fell silent, watching her fingers capably wind strands around and around until she had a thick, tidy braid draped across one shoulder. He noticed the heaviness in her eyes, and she yawned suddenly, then clapped a hand over her mouth. “Wow, sorry. The sleepies hit me hard all of a sudden.”
“I’m wiped, too.” Standing, he moved to turn out the lights. The room was washed in darkness, and he bumped into the side of the bed and tripped over a shoe as he made his way back across the room.
Ren laughed. “You okay?”
“I’m good.” He settled on his little bed, pulling the blanket up to his waist. They both fell into silence, and in the blackness the room seemed to shrink. He thought about what Mary had said earlier and wanted to reassure Ren in some way that although they barely knew each other and the circumstances of this trip were weird, she was safe. She could sleep.
“This is like a sleepover,” she whispered, her voice giddy even with exhaustion shading it. Fitz realized she really wasn’t nervous around him at all. “I’ve only ever seen a sleepover in Grease.”
“Wanna pierce our ears?”
She burst out laughing. “You’ve seen Grease?”
“Everyone has seen Grease, kid. It’s a classic.”
He could hear her shifting in bed, could hear her legs kicking away the covers. God, he was just so aware of her.
“Have you had a sleepover?” she asked.
“Sure.”
“What do boys do at them?”
“Mostly we eat junk food and play video games.” He looked toward the bed in the darkness, wondering for the first time what her life had really been like for the past twenty-two years. “You really never had a sleepover?”
“No.”
A car passed outside the room, the tires crunching on the asphalt outside.
“Were there just no kids your age nearby?” he asked.
“Oh, there were a few,” she said. “But Gloria always said kids should sleep in their own beds at night. She didn’t like me going over to other people’s houses very much.”
He closed his eyes, marveling at how different their lives had been from each other. Ren’s overprotective mother ensured she never spent a night away from her own bed. For many years, Fitz had no mother and was grateful when he had a bed to sleep in. They were both sort of broken, just in totally different ways.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think being away from home is how kids learn to be polite in front of other people, how to be a guest.”
A long stretch of silence followed. He was beginning to wonder if she was asleep when her voice rose out of the darkness, tinged with sadness. “I’m starting to think Gloria was wrong about some things.”
He had no idea what to say to this, so he let it pass, and they fell back into silence.
“Do you snore?” she asked finally.
“No one has ever told me I snore.”
“I don’t, either.”
“How would you know?” he asked. “You’ve never had a sleepover before.”
“Good point.” She laughed self-consciously, and the sound hit him in a new tender spot in his chest. “Good night, Fitz.”
“Night, Ren.”