Chapter 10
Ten
I ran hard that morning. Gray clouds rolled through the sky, ready to unleash rain at any time, and even though rain was just rain, I ran like I could outrun it.
I came back from my shower in lounge clothes and with a towel wrapped around my head to find Nikki sprawled on my bed, and she jumped up like she’d been static shocked when she saw me stopped in the doorway.
“What are you doing?” she asked, scrunching her face up at me.
“Me?” I scoffed. “What are you doing in my room and on my bed?”
“Oh, well . . .” Nikki smiled that conniving smile as she scooted off the bed and gestured to a few articles of clothing (some of which might have been hers) laid out on the comforter.
“I picked out a few outfit options for your date tonight. Which you are going to be late for since you took your sweet ass time out there.”
I sighed as I leaned against the door frame, holding up a finger. “One, I need to run, it’s part of my routine, and since I sweat when I run, I therefore need to shower afterward, and two”—I stuck another finger up—“it’s not a date.”
“Whatever.” She flicked her wrist at me. “Please make a decision and I’ll be out of your hair.”
As I walked over to my bed to survey my options, rain started to patter against the window.
“Is this necessary?” I sighed, picking up a bright-yellow-and-pink-striped off-the-shoulder sweater.
“Absolutely.” Nikki shifted her weight on her fuzzy-socked feet as she folded her arms over her chest. “I’ve carefully curated these outfits for maximum effect. I should be a personal stylist.”
“After you go to cosmetology school, of course.” I chuckled as I pulled on a pair of jean shorts. The oncoming rain would undoubtedly cool the air off, but it was still June in South Carolina. It would be hot from now until October.
“Maybe at the same time.” She shrugged. “Who knows?”
I spotted something out of my own closet—a red-and-white-striped button-down—and plucked it off the bed. “Okay, I’ve picked my outfit. Happy?”
“Not yet.”
She pulled the towel off of my still-wet hair and motioned for me to spin around. I had to crouch so she could tie my hair up in a claw clip.
“Perfect.” She held me at arm’s length to survey her work. “You look fab, Nat.”
“Thanks to my fashion-slash-hair stylist hybrid sister.” I nodded with a smirk.
After I dabbed some concealer on in my mirror, I reassessed Nikki, who’d curled back up on my bed.
When she was little and still learning to read, she’d come into my room sometimes at night, complete with a flashlight and her blankie and a book, and have me read to her under the covers. Part of me wanted to put lounge clothes back on and do just that.
“What are you doing?” She finally looked up at me and gave me a faint smile. “Go have a good time.”
Seeing her sitting there made me hesitate, and once again, she was more perceptive than I gave her credit for. Or maybe I was more see-through than I even realized.
“I don’t want you to feel like you can’t do anything,” she continued. “Contrary to what any of you might think, I can take care of myself. I know how to make mac and cheese, I haven’t maxed out my credit card, and I have a valid driver’s license. All that should get me by for a few hours.”
A smile tugged at my lips. “I know you can.”
“But I may stay here. Your bed is comfier,” she told me with a shrug.
“Okay.” I nodded, my smile widening. “You do that.”
At exactly two o’clock Brooklyn pulled up to my house in his red Wrangler, this time with the hard black rooftop on. Rain had started to collect in puddles on the pavement as I made a dash to his car.
“You look nice,” he said as I hoisted myself into the passenger seat.
I fumbled with the seat belt. “Thanks,” I replied with a faint smile, hoping he didn’t see the blush creeping up my cheeks.
I glanced over at him, my face still warm, and realized it was impossible for him to ever look bad, even with his glasses, messy hair, and wrinkled green Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt.
Brooklyn shuffled through a few songs on his dashboard, settling on an upbeat house-style song I’d never heard before, and I sat in a quiet contentment, watching the small town fly by like a messy watercolor painting.
But now I could pick out familiar things, like the flower shop on the corner by that Cota Coffee place Brooklyn took me to the first time we hung out.
It was starting to really feel like home, and I tried not to think about how much of that was because of him.
>> <<
Film Press was filled with old, rickety shelves of even older movies, but that wasn’t all.
Racks of vintage movie posters hung from the exposed brick walls, and glass cases of collectible items like figurines, props, and all sorts of other knickknacks lined the far side of the shop by the cash register.
Brooklyn and I snaked our way around the aisles of old DVDs.
“What about horror movies?” Brooklyn asked as he thumbed through the “Random” selection.
“I like ’em old-school. The cheesier the blood splatter, the better.”
“Damn, that’s too bad.” Brooklyn held a DVD in his hand, tapping it on his chin. “My master plan of scaring you so you’d have to grab me has been sorely ruined.”
“You’ve got jokes, I’ll give you that,” I retorted. “Does that work on other girls?”
“What other girls?”
Fine, he won that round. I quickly went back to shuffling through more DVDs. I glanced at Brooklyn out of the corner of my eye to see him smirking at me. For people who insisted we were just friends, the casual flirting came almost too effortlessly for both of us.
My hand brushed over an interesting cover—a photo of a young boy’s profile with disheveled, windswept hair. The photo was grainy and had a murky, yellow tinge. But it was the actual title of the movie that piqued my interest.
“What’s that?” Brooklyn suddenly appeared over my shoulder. I felt his breath, warm on my ear, as he reached over me to take the DVD box from my hands.
“‘Gummo,’” I read, turning the box over in my hands. “Have you heard of this one?”
Brooklyn slung his arm around my shoulders, leading us away from the DVD racks.
He read the back of the DVD box like a radio show host, describing a town of odd and nihilistic residents that gets hit by a tornado. “Oh, and it says that critics have called this film fascinating, intoxicating, life-changing, and enlightening.”
I looked at him with wide eyes, and he grinned that fierce grin of his again. “I’m in the mood to be enlightened,” he said. “What about you?”
“I’d like to think I’m very enlightened already.” I mirrored his coy grin. “But I guess this is my pick.”
“And this is mine.” He held up another DVD box with a picture of an upside-down sneaker hanging from a bloody knife.
Sleepaway Camp was written at the bottom in a similar cartoonlike bloody print.
“I’ve never seen it, but I’ve heard about it.
Apparently the acting is terrible but there’s a twist at the end that makes up for it. ”
“I’ll never say no to twists.”
We walked to the front of the shop where the registers were. I studied the figurines in the glass display case: a nightmare-inducing combination of grotesque creatures and trolls.
Brooklyn handed the young, mousy girl behind the counter his credit card, and I noticed the girl get flustered when she touched Brooklyn’s hand. I was relieved I wasn’t the only one Brooklyn had that effect on.
“The . . .” the girl piped up. She twirled Brooklyn’s card between her hands. “The card isn’t working.”
“What?” Brooklyn’s face twisted into a puzzled expression.
“Yeah.” The girl fidgeted and avoided eye contact with him. “I ran it a few times, it keeps declining.”
I watched Brooklyn’s throat ripple as he swallowed and gently lifted the card out of the girl’s hand.
“Do you want me to—” I tried to offer to pay, but Brooklyn shook his head at me.
“No. I got it.” He thumbed through a wad of cash in his wallet, pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, and handed it to the girl. “Sorry. You can, uh, keep the change.”
We left the store and lingered under an overhang, the rain coming down harder now than it had been, and thunder rumbling in the distance.
“Stay here,” he told me. “I’ll go get the car.”
“I’m not gonna melt, you know,” I replied with a faint smirk, hoping to diffuse some of the tension I felt building in the air. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, of course.” He put his hands to my forearms and forced a faint smile. “I’ll be right back. Promise.”
The way he emphasized promise repeated itself in my head. It was almost as if he thought I wasn’t going to believe him when he said he’d be right back. When he did pull up to the curb, I decided to leave the thought behind on the rain-soaked sidewalk.
By the time we got to Brooklyn’s house, the rain had become torrential.
A clap of thunder vibrated the whole house as he led me through the front halfway and back to the kitchen I’d sat in during our last brief visit.
Everything seemed smaller in the dimness of the storm outside, without sunlight flooding the rooms through all the open windows.
I took my same stool at the kitchen island while Brooklyn pulled a few things out of the fridge and placed them on the island—a tub of butter and a stack of yellow Kraft cheese wrapped in crinkling plastic.
“You hungry?” he asked as he grabbed plates from a cabinet next to the fridge. “I don’t wanna brag, but I make a pretty mean grilled cheese.”
“Can’t say no to that.” I smiled at him, which seemed to alleviate the lingering tension in his eyes. I’d seen him smile so much, it kind of sucked to see him so uneasy.
Suddenly the speaker at the far end of the counter blared to life, sending some upbeat, chirpy pop I wasn’t familiar with to every corner of the kitchen.
“Do you know this song?” Brooklyn asked.
“No, should I?” I almost had to yell over the music.
Brooklyn held his hand out to me. “Allow me to educate you.”