Price #2
Inside, we’re both dripping on the bare wood floor as she peels her soaking backpack off and tosses it out the front door onto the small porch, as I silently run through all the reasons I shouldn’t have brought her here, but none of them seem to make much of a difference.
Because being here, with her, I’m in so far over my head, I can’t even see straight.
Inside, the damp, closed-up, musty smell mixes with Summer’s sweet cherry scent, making my heart thump in a primal drumbeat.
“You know that will never last, right?” she asks as I step into the small, dark space, shaking the water from my hair as I grab the crank light hanging on the wall next to the door and turn the handle in frantic circles until the dim yellow bulb illuminates the room.
“The no fraternization thing, I mean. People are people, and you have a bunch of twenty-somethings stuck in wood shacks for the summer. Things are gonna happen. Nature takes its course, whether you want it to or not—ahhhhh!” Her chirpy speech turns to a scream as she stumbles back, a single finger pointed at the small window above the makeshift sink.
I drop the light, and it rolls like a spinning siren across the rough wood floor. Summer scurries next to me, tucking herself to my side in abject terror as I stare across the room, trying to figure out what’s scared her.
“What?” I say hoarsely, squinting toward where her finger points.
“There! Right there!” she’s practically climbing me like a tree now, to which I have zero objections except I hate to see her frightened. So much so, the same sort of anger I had when I found out Hailey was being bullied at school starts to rise inside me.
As the light on the floor rocks back and forth, I catch the shimmering, undeniable pattern of an intricate web slung between the window and a shelf next to the sink. In the center, there’s the distinctive shape of a fairly impressive wolf spider.
“Spiders are the devil,” she hisses as I ease her off my side, grabbing a piece of kindling left near the cast-iron wood stove and sweeping it through the outer strands of the web, wrapping it like cotton candy on the end of the stick, encasing the spider in its own web.
I spin on my boot, heading toward the door as she races in an arc around me to the faded brown sofa, jumping onto the center cushion. “What are you going to do with it?”
I shrug on a frown. “Put her outside. She’s not here to hurt you. I’m not going to kill her, just rehome her.”
“Her? How do you know it’s a her?”
I hold up the stick into the light as I pull the door open, seeing the inch-wide spider frantically trying to free herself from her own prison.
“Females are bigger. A male wouldn’t be this big.
” I gently toss the piece of wood out the door, knowing the rain will actually help release the web from around the spider, and she will make her way to safety somewhere else.
“Jesus. I do not belong out in the woods.” She shakes her head, palming the water back into her hair off her forehead, the ends of her braids seeping water in two points just above each of her tits. “New York rats I can take, but not spiders.”
I do a quick walk, poking my head into the small bedroom, making sure there are no uninvited guests, then unlock the metal cabinet that stows a small amount of food and water.
Summer falls with a bounce on her ass in the center of the sofa, crossing her ankle over her knee and working the laces loose on both her boots before setting them on the floor.
She wiggles, tucking her legs up under her perfect ass and watching me as I wander around like I’m lost.
I need to do the one thing I don’t want to do. Tell her this can’t happen. “Summer…it’s just…we can’t—” I start, not knowing how to continue. What I need to say feels like daggers in my throat.
“Tell me something. What is it about me that you don’t like?”
“There’s absolutely nothing about you I don’t like. You’re perfect. You’re—”
“Is it that I’m a city girl? I hate spiders, and you give them new homes?
You could survive at the top of Mt. Fuji with a popsicle stick and some Tic Tacs.
What happened to make you hate the city?
Were your parents hippies, and you’re some anti-establishment adventure junkie?
” She finishes in a breathy huff as I search for a way to explain.
“No.” I draw a ragged breath, working my way back to her, scooping the crank light up off the floor and whipping the handle around until the light perks up.
Maybe the only way through this is to tell her the things I want to forget.
The things that made me promise to give Hailey a different life than I had.
“My father was in the army. We traveled, he drank, but things were okay. Mom was sort of never really there. My dad wasn’t the warmest guy, and later, after he was injured and left the army, he was less than warm. ”
She scoots over in an invitation for me to sit, her eyes as welcoming as her mouth was last night.
“And?” she says, resting her elbow on the back of the sofa, leaning her head against her palm so she’s facing me as I drop onto the cushion next to her, the entire sofa popping up off the floor when I do.
It’s taking everything I have to fight the urge to pin her down and have a feast between her legs.
“What’s this city prejudice you have all about? ”
Rain sprays against the windows sounding like a sea of pebbles trying to come through. The walls vibrate with the cracking thunder and white flashes of lightning cast shadows across the flawless skin of her face.
“We moved to Philly. I found out about being hungry and how mean whiskey can make someone.” I scratch my fingers over my jaw on a long exhale.
“Short version, Dad left, Mom went off the rails. Whenever we stayed with Dad, there was a new step-mother. None of them good. My brother was ten, I was sixteen, when we moved into an even shittier part of the city with my mom, after Dad’s newest wife decided she wanted them to start their own family and we didn’t fit in.
I was the man of the house, but I couldn’t protect my brother.
Our house was robbed more than once. Within a couple years, my brother was running the streets.
Mom was checked out. The city ate them both up and nothing I did changed anything. ”
I palm my forehead, squeezing my temples with one hand as I rest my other on her knee like that connection is going to help me somehow. I don’t think I’ve said so many words in a row in decades.
Summer nods. “You lost a lot but the city didn’t take it.”
I don’t indulge in memories of the past often, and the uneasy tightness around my throat reminds me why.
I don’t know what to do with emotion besides act out.
It makes me want to punch and break things.
That’s why I’ve distracted myself with dangerous activities.
It doesn’t leave any room for remembering.
“What happened to your brother? You talk to him still?” Summer asks as I keep my eyes focused on nothing facing forward.
“A stray bullet. Came through our front fucking window. Nick died before the ambulance even got there.”
I look to see her fingers pressed to her mouth, eyes welling, but she doesn’t say anything and I appreciate her silence.