19. Chapter 19 Theo
Chapter 19 Theo
L eslie is kind and chatty but swats my shoulder when I mistake her for Staley’s mother.
“Aren’t you sweet?”
Leslie’s eyes light up, pulling her lip into a mischievous smile, if translated, screams I know why you’re here, and you’re not fooling anyone.
“I’m Leslie, and I’m not her momma. How’d you get your curls to hold so well?”
Leslie isn’t shy as she bounces one of my curls above my ear. Her question is genuine, and I admire her full head of curlicues, wild with frizz and untamed but gorgeous.
“Um, I washed them?” It’s a question because my hair does what it wants when it wants. Today, it is compliant; tomorrow, it might not be.
Leslie laughs and shoves my shoulder again.
“Ugh. Men have it easy. I got one flat tire, and every product I put in this hair sweated out immediately. Oh, to be young and handsome.”
A fucking towel stood between me and Staley’s bare skin a minute ago, and the image is seared into my brain. All common sense disintegrated within my body when she invited me over.
The temptation to go to her and put my mouth on her pink lips, to fill up the void, was an instinct filled with greed and nothing more. I want to close every space between Staley and me with touches, grazes, and long-winded inhales of her sunny skin.
If someone asked you what color the towel was, could you tell them, Theo?
Leslie hovers at the edge of the foyer where the tile meets the carpet, frozen in a state of voyeurism, eyes bouncing at a dripping-wet Staley walking down the hall and back to a love-drunk me. Words pass through Leslie’s lips, but I barely decipher them and linger longer than I should at Staley, clenching my fists behind my back to display I have restraint.
I’ve heard men will think about baseball or their grandmother’s dentures when they’re trying to slow their bodies down. Instead, I choose to recite the word etymology in my head and focus on the word restraint:
“from the Old French restreinte, feminine past participle of restreindre ‘hold back’”
Heat simmers at the image of Staley walking away, only to be covered with something as useless as clothes. A small groan of defeat, but much closer to a painful squeak, sneaks past my lips.
“You okay over there, Theo?” Leslie must have children because she knows how to toe the line in a playful, teasing way.
A gulp coupled with a nod is all I can muster.
“Why don’t you join me in the kitchen with Russell? I don’t know why she thinks I’m watching Maury . It’s not even eleven a.m. yet.”
The house is cozy, with mismatched pillows strewn about the bold-colored furniture. A gold-embossed deer head with bifocals hangs proudly on a gallery wall among the mix of childhood artwork and framed posters for rock bands from the nineties. It’s tasteful. The eclectic gallery wall warms my insides because a family lives and loves here. Photo collages in cheap frames hang on the walls, mainly of Staley at various ages. Other pictures show who I imagine must be Staley’s father. And another man, an uncle perhaps.
Leslie waves me over to the dining room table, where a middle-aged man sits in front of a cold, soft-boiled egg, sliding it around in his bowl. The dining room glows with sunlight as crisp air blows through the cracked windows. Picturing a younger Staley with two braids sitting here and enjoying her breakfast makes me smile. Leslie greets the man with a side hug from her standing position.
“Russell, my favorite human. I see Staley made you breakfast, or tried to anyway.” She scrunches her face in disgust as she removes the egg, discarding them in a garbage can underneath the kitchen sink. Leslie whispers close to Russell’s face, which is unresponsive. “I’ll make you something different, sugar, don’t worry. We need you energized for your big appointment today.”
Leslie busies herself in the kitchen as Russell looks through me, worsening my discomfort.
“Hi. I’m Th-theo.” Meeting new people and introducing myself are on my list of top five things to avoid. I offer a courteous smile and wait for him to acknowledge me and shake my hand in return, as dads do when a guy hangs around their daughter. Russell looks past me, and I turn to assess; no naked girls behind me or wielding ax murderers. Leslie returns with cinnamon-sugar toast, cut into small squares.
Russell’s face lights up at Leslie with admiration and gratitude. Leslie places her index finger over her lips and smiles.
“Russell, Theo is a friend—a classmate—of Staley’s? What class did you say you two are in together?”
“Um, I didn’t. The Craft of P-poetry. I’m the TA.”
“Huh, I don’t think I’ve ever known Staley to show a lick of interest in anything poetic or book related.”
Russell picks at his sliced-up toast, nibbling but wearing most of it, but Leslie doesn’t let the mess stay for long as she sweeps it away.
I can’t put my finger on the vacancy in Russell’s eyes—aside from the unspoken sadness lingering in the room. I’ve inserted myself in some way. Guilt overcomes me, and I want to show myself out, pretending this whole snafu is a bad fever dream.
“I’m not sure what’s taking Staley so long. I’m sorry, Theo. Let me check on her. Usually, the girl throws whatever semi-clean piece of clothing she can find off her floor onto her body and is out the door in minutes.”
This revelation does not shock me in the slightest or turn any part of my affection or lust for her off. If anything, I add it to my turn-ons column. What do clothes matter, clean or dirty, if I get to remove them from her body? Not one iota.
“It’s okay, Leslie. I can leave if n-now isn’t a g-good time.” I stand to leave and take a few steps toward the foyer.
Russell looks between Leslie and me, his eyes childlike and puzzled.
“I’m sure she’s almost finished.”
An alarm chirps from Leslie’s wrist, ceasing her interrogation; simultaneously, Staley yells down the hallway, “Dad, Leslie! You better skedaddle before you miss the appointment altogether. The purple-haired receptionist does not take kindly to late arrivals.”
Halfway to the front door, from making a clean exit without embarrassing myself more, Staley and I collide with one another. Shaking the breath from both of our bodies. A coat slips from her hands and hits the floor, and it’s as if clowns come pouring from a car at the circus, one oddity after another. We bend to reach for the coat, hitting our heads together, and because I’m dead set on righting this butterfly effect back to homeostasis, I angle in again, but she does too.
Exasperated, we remain bent over, hesitating for fear of what the other’s next move will be. I’m inches from her forehead, close enough to rest my own against hers because when I’m in her presence, it’s a respite I’m desperate for, a gentle melding of two minds. A thick braid hangs over her shoulder, no longer in the dripping wet state it was before.
Our hands reach the coat at the same time—again. From far away, I imagine we’re opponents about to tug of war on the clothing until one of us claims the victor. Staley’s face is wild—breath heavy—and I see, no, I grasp, the weight of what is unsaid. There’s something here for her too, and it’s laced with cliches often frowned upon in my line of work.
The notion Staley and I somehow found one another by sheer accident is a romantic proverb: easy to say and entirely relatable. Consider the odds of me booking a cuddle session to get over my fear of being unlovable because of my speech disability, and Staley is the one to show up to set this whole wild chain of events off. To complicate things better, Staley is a big fan of my other work. The universe is a pressure cooker of irony.
Her eyelashes flutter over the tops of her spot-kissed cheeks, and this only builds up my mild obsession to endear each tan speck of her with my mouth, to feel her burn under my touch the way I fantasize she might. Footsteps gather in the foyer, bodies looming over us. Leslie breaks this odd pre-mating ritual up with comic relief.
“Are y’all playing a game of keep-away or seeing who can blink first?”
“I dropped Dad’s coat.” Staley blushes.
“Sure, whatever you say, sugar. I’ll take the coat. Your dad and I will be back in a couple of hours. The house is all yours.”
Leslie’s implication is promising and equally terrifying. Staley’s dark brown eyes widen, and I’d give anything to make her eyes bloom brightly again.
Leslie and Russell get out the door and leave Staley and me with nothing but an awkward, heated silence. The urge to ask her if she’s listened to the latest Luca Blue chokes me because I want to know if she knows yet or if I need to pull the Band-Aid off and spill the truth, even if I’m afraid to. Maybe I should start by sharing the poem I wrote about her in my shower but leave out the part about how I finished on the shower wall. This idea is wrong on many levels. I lead with the safer choice.
“Leslie is r-really nice. I don’t th-think your dad l-liked me much.” I keep my voice tame.
Staley shakes her head, a softness filling her eyes. Maybe she didn’t want me to come here after all, and I’ve put her in an uncomfortable situation. I make things twice as amateurish and settle Staley’s worries without knowing what they are.
“No, it’s okay ... I don’t h-have much experience with d-dads.” I ramble on because I am making this about me, not her.
“Theo, no, I’m sure you were fine. My dad isn’t well. You were a surprise to his normal routine, but then again, the whole day was fucked from the get-go.”
Her sigh holds a bit of reluctance, and I wait for her to say more because I want her to. I want to know everything about her, and I would pay all of my Luca Blue earnings to decipher the nervous look she’s giving me.
“Early onset dementia. Most days, he only knows Leslie, which is odd considering she’s only here a few days a week. He did say my name this morning, which was nice.”
I hear what Staley isn’t saying loud and clear; her father doesn’t remember her most days. My heart breaks a little as I offer a tight smile and open my mouth to speak an apology so she knows I would never be this obtuse on purpose.
She waves me off before I can say a single word.
“Don’t. You said it yourself—no pity. I know what I live with daily and what’s ahead of me. Pity suggests I’m weak in some way, and my dad is too. But we’re stronger than we look, I can assure you.”
I reach for the crook of her arm as she turns her back to me. The shudder her body makes underneath my touch is a sight I tuck away for a later date.
My familiarity with the disease is minimal, but what I do know about it is enough for me to want to scoop Staley up in a compassionate hug. If she were anyone else, this grab would be considered neutral, as if I were stopping a stranger on the street to hand them something they might have dropped. This collision, though, where my hand meets the suppleness of her arm, is connected and heated, begging for her not to turn away from me. It’s meant to be grounding and caring because I care more about this woman than anticipated.
“I don’t p-pity you and your situation. I admire you. Is this why you w-work so much? Why you n-need the poetry class?”
Staley nods at me. Well, this explains a lot. My problems are insignificant by comparison. The bow shape of her lips presses together as her eyes search my face until they land where the two of us are linked. She makes no attempts to disband us, and all I can see is the gap between us, which I’ve yet to close.
“I work my ass to the bone for the money; we need it. The class isn’t for me. It’s a promise I made to my dad: to graduate and get my degree. All of this is for him. And I’m sorry. I know my mouth gets ahead of me sometimes, and what I thought was a compliment came out as rudeness. I never meant ...”
The tip of her nose draws a line downward, and her eyes shut, unwilling to look at me again.
Say something, Theo.
“You have a lot on y-your plate. H-how do you manage it all? Here I am a-adding to your f-full schedule, selfishly.” My touch shifts from a desperate clutching to a subtle finger sweeping back and forth against the inside of her arm.
“No, I prefer to stay busy. Helps to redirect my focus from all of this.” She looks around the space, sad but still holding on.
“If it’s any c-consolation, I admire your mouth and everything coming out of it.”
Her expression bounces back up to mine, pushing her cheeks into a prominent smile until I notice a dimple in her chin.
“Well, I think your voice—the way you speak—is attractive, and I’m not other women, in case you were wondering.” She chokes these words out in a challenge, daring me to let her prove it.
Panic and lust clamor for dominance. I want to hold her and be the kind of man Luca is in voice but in presence. It would be easy to press her against my chest, inhaling the scent of the summer and linens baked into her blazing hair. Kissing the place where the crest of her forehead gets wrinkly when she gets fired up would make my entire life. I wonder if she’ll let me. Forehead kisses are the ultimate affection I wouldn’t dare give anyone else. Old lingering fear causes my fingers to tremble and my free hand to sweat. I don’t know how to do this without risking utter humiliation.
Against my better judgment and desire, I drop her arm and take a step back to bolt, run, and close the book on us before I allow her words to feel honest and trustworthy in my bones any more than they already do. If only there were a way to write me out of the lustful corner I’ve painted myself into to turn the metal of the doorknob until it cools the heat coursing through my body. It seems all Staley and I can do is open doors and close them on the other, and I cannot muster the courage to turn back to her and stay put.
“Luca. Wait.”
Oh, shit.